What is SunPath Reading?

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

2010-06-10T01:43:00.001-07:00

Am reminded again how Joan's experiences in this book are kind of a
"twofer" for two large types of loss she describes so well.

- sudden loss (mom enters coma, Charlotte, etc) - Joan's experience of
husband's death suddenly at home

- also long uncertain scary losses where you are at mercy of docotors
(mom seemingly indefinitely in a coma and no one seems to be able to
remember how long it was)- Joan's daughter getting pneumonia, in coma,
other medical issues ( but apparently now ok at end of book) however
all the medical research Joan did reading her book on Intensive Care
is much appreciated. I wonder if we could have helped differently had
we known more... (there goes my own magical thinking of wanting to
make it better, to control a situation I could not control).

So many things I can not control and I still have trouble just
worrying about the stuff I can control and doing that Like going to bed.

"Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity"
- Joan Didion from the book.

Sent from my iPhone

Joining a Band!

2010-05-19T09:37:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to a band rehearsal for the first time in 18 years -
if you don't count my short stint in Stanford Band, (which I don't).

I don't have a clarinet yet, although I played for 8 years (5th thru
12th grade) in VC. So it was sight reading and "air clarinet" last
night. (this is a link to a music store they recommended, I'm also checking out a used horn on Friday).

It was the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, which meets at Lowell High
School in SF. My new friend Claudia told me about this on Saturday -
she plays flute and piccolo and really enjoys the band and loves the
director.(and like me, she is "straight but not narrow" and married).

I was surprised at how homey it all felt from the years I spent
sitting in the clarinet section all through school.
The band room, while a bit more deluxe than VCHS', still felt the
same: similar layout with storage for instruments and rooms to
practice lining the walls, podium for the conductor, etc.

Clarinets sitting in the same place - to the conductor's left. Almost
as numerous as the VCHS horde of clarinets- at least 10 I counted just
at this one rehearsal.
I first sat in the section leader's chair while I waited for him to
show up, and then moved to the row behind, and eventually sat in a
chair behind the back row and looked over people's shoulders as more
clarinets showed up.

The music seemed doable and the fingering came back to me as I sight
read, except for some of the sharps and flats. (the high b flat? The
really low e flat? ???)
Some of the songs were easier than others, but the band themselves
were still working the hard ones out so I did not feel weird.

Jadine, the director, seems really awesome. I love Mr. Bowen, but this
is obviously a level above, even just on the basic level that we are
all adults who are voluntarily here to play music (and hopefully get
better).

Very impressed by her direction in dynamics (piano vs forte, etc) and
in trying to get the group to listen to each other as a live band.

In high school somehow I never thought of us as playing off each other
and changing our style to fit the live performance like a jazz band.
I just thought we all had our parts, and if we all play in the right
time, it would sound ok.
There's a whole other level here - for example: she tells two sections
playing a syncopation in response: "just listen to each other - don't
try to count it."
She also had 7 instruments play a part of a song where they all come
in a beat after the last, and asked the group to listen and try to
count the voices.
Afterward she said that it was not as important what she asked us to
listen for, the important thing was that we generally listen better
when listening for something.

I briefly felt like I was in a Glee episode when I first got to the
school and 3 cheerleader/yell team types were hanging out outside. One
was wearing red which reminded me of the Cheerios!
I had some trouble getting in before I called Claudia, because the
front doors were locked. It turns out there is a side door that they
use- she came out and got me (and nicely dropped me off at San Bruno
Bart afterwards).

KillScreen

2010-03-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

My cousin has co-launched this magazine, which also fits on the "What is Sunpath Playing" blog.

Very smart, well designed, and apparently also very popular.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2010-03-14T20:40:00.001-07:00

To remember this - Ellen recommended today at Pat's birthday party.

to read: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

2009-09-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

King leopold's ghost

2009-07-25T09:22:00.001-07:00

Notes
Andre, the Belgian we met in France.
Didn't he say he led African tours? Is he an offshoot of King
Leopold's focus on the Congo?

David kessler, the end of overeating

2009-07-11T10:15:00.001-07:00

Sent from my iPhone

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

2009-07-01T23:32:00.001-07:00

Checked out from the rwc library and it is also an Oprah's book club
book.

Hard to avoid the temptation of reiterating the back co er since it is
in front of me right now.

Anyway what I loved most about this book is all that happened after
Eliza Sommers follows her lover to CA during the Gold Rush.

Walking to Bart last night I was thinking about the history of San
Francisco and looking up at the tall downtown buildings.
Thinking about all the different boom times.

I also really enjoyed the character of Tao Chi'en, a Chinese doctor
who helps Eliza stow away on a ship sailing to ca from her native Chile.

First Grade Cheater praise -"published"! - on the Can I Sit With You blog

2009-06-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

From: Pat Murphy

Wonderful. You really capture the trickiness of being a smart kid -- but trying to fit in.

pat

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 1:30 PM, David Zarubin

This is awesome! Great job! I love you.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Solveig Zarubin <solveigp@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.canisitwithyou.org/?p=441

I am exaggerating a bit here, but it is all fairly true. (and feels kind of weird to have it out in public).

For those who don't know, this blog is a chronicle of adults' memories of the "stormy social seas of the schoolyard" - founded by two moms (Shannon Des Roches Rosa and Jennifer Byde Myers) who wanted their kids to feel a little less alone. They gather up a selection of the blog contributions every year into a book and sell it.
Proceeds benefit the Special Education PTA of Redwood City (SEPTAR).

Finally I wrote something for this after buying both books, and going to most of their readings.
When I went out for drinks with the core group after the last reading, they pointedly remarked that I was the only one there at the table who hadn't yet contributed to the blog. So I decided to jump in and do it!

cheers,
Solveig

Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

2009-06-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Just finished this today on Bart and writing about it now on Bart.
This is kind of "another side" of the story of Vergil's Aeneid - the
voice of Lavinia - who is fated to marry "a foreigner" who turns out
to be Aeneas - of course all kinds of war ensues since all the locals
wanted to marry her too.

Vastly over-simplified, of course.

I thought the more interesting part is the first third or so before
Aeneas even shows up.

Lavinia winds up "meeting" the poet in one of her family's sacred
groves... And thusly she trusts the prediction of the oracles (knowing
that the whole story is a fiction anyway from the mind of the poet).

So that part actually a lot more fascinating than all the war and all
in the rest of the book. Of course the whole thing great because it
is Le Guin.

Also there seemed to be some common threads with Lavinia and her poet
meeting in the forest, and the Red Magician in Lisa Goldstein's book
that I just finished. Who talked with her main character also in the
woods.

For My Dad on Father's Day

2009-06-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (June 20) I was taking BART up to San Francisco to hear The Brazen Hussies reading at SF in SF.

I was listening to some family tapes that I had digitized on my iphone and that I should get on CD and send to my dad and sisters.

I'm a toddler on the tapes and both parents are singing and reading with me - in the past I tended to fixate more on my mom's voice because I don't have her here in the world any more (she sings "Sweetheart, Sweetheart" and tells me she wouldn't trade me for a million dollars, and we sing "Plop, Plop, Fizz Fizz" and other stuff).

But I also can hear how much my dad loves me as well. He's actually on the tapes more than my mom - it seems like my mom is off in another room for parts of the time, since I can hear her distantly talking, but it's my dad who is directly interacting with me for a lot of it.

And I hear his love for language and his hope that I will also enjoy it as much -- in all the poems he has me repeat (such as "There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile...").
And stories he read to me on the tapes.

It's such a warm and familiar voice and I realize that this is probably the most familiar voice that I can currently still hear live. It's a voice I've heard literally all my life, and he still sounds so much the same, even now.

And it's a voice I don't hear often enough because I don't call him regularly, or hook up the webcam I got from work so we can video skype. (although I did do that today for Father's Day and it was quite fun).

After dinner when I get to the reading, I'm pretty relaxed before Lisa Goldstein kicks it off with the first story, which is in the first person and from a male perspective, which she says is new to her.

I've never heard this story before of course, and I've only just met Lisa an hour prior, but when she starts reading, I feel like I am suddenly at home.

Something kind of primal takes over - "listening to a story = safe at home with people who love me".
And the story itself is really really good - which accounts for quite a bit of this feeling...but the other part I realize is that I am so familiar with this and it's such a positive experience for me. And that started with my dad and my mom reading to me at an early age.

I settled down into the Variety Preview Room seat as if it was a comfy armchair in a living room with people who love me...and I just relax and stop caring about anything I might have been worried about before....
I'm aware of this more acutely because I was listening to the "toddler story tapes" so recently on the train, and feeling the same feeling wash over me then.

During Pat's story, which is next, I am thinking about my dad even more because of the character's dad in the story.

I am also thinking about my mom after hearing her voice so recently, and wondering what it would be like if she were there with me. I think she would have also liked these women and these stories. Lots of good female energy in the room (Pat, Michaela, Lisa, Carrie, Rina, Ellen, etc) - but it's not the same as having my mom around or even being able to picture her properly.

There's an empty seat on the right next to me and I am trying to picture my mom sitting there. I can't really picture her physically very well anymore. I'm kind of using the memory of hanging out with Ginny, but then imagining her with Mom's face and hair (which is kind of wacky).

During the more emotional parts of Pat's story with her character's dad, I actually put my hand on the seat next to me as if I was holding on to my mom or my dad, whoever is there.

So many people, both the characters in the stories and in the discussions over dinner, are taking care of their aging parents now - or have recently lost them.

My dad might be hard to deal with sometimes now, but I want him to know that he is appreciated and loved, and that I'm so happy he's still around!

Brazen Hussies 6/20

2009-06-20T22:21:00.001-07:00

Lisa
Magic of everyday life
Rick
Literature of the imagination

Lisa is very close to magic realism

Micky (Roessner) - we can write what we want in speculative fiction

Pat - fascinated with gateways that take u to fantasy world
Science - you are figuring out diff portals
Pat advice earlier during the break about advising writers how to find an ending - it's usually already there in the story.

Example - when she read this story last year, she did not know last
year that rocky would be so important

Lisa - it is really fun writing - although perspective about stuff no
one has seen before

Rick asks Pat - You are describing stuff the reader has never seen
She does not know if it is a fantasy element or not
If 3rd person the author is telling you what happened.
But in 1st the char is telling you what is happening

Pat: This story would be different if read in the New Yorker.
The viewer/reader completes the Story

I write the words but you complete it says Pat.

Michaela - 2 nd person has Creepy quality to it

Michaela's next novel is 1st person
Extrapolating but no wonder.
Pat talks about "The Woman in the Trees" (from Points of Departure ) which was in 2nd
person.
Workshop said it should not be in 2nd person, but she left it there because she did
not want reader to be able to escape

Pat brings up conversation I started or at least contributed to, at the break about fairy tales.

(Brought up the Book of Lost Things by John Connolly).

Pat points out her fascination with Peter pan and her story on her
site called peter

I find it really interesting to look at fairy tales, says Lisa, who wrote a
story called Ever After.

Lisa brings up her fairy tale research

Rick - science fiction takes us back to the ability to look at the
world for the first time.

Transformative view of the world...

Ellen question
Where does fantasy go ?
They say speculative fiction can be everything
Ellen says what about the bar fight? (regarding what is fantasy, what is "hard science fiction", and what is speculative fiction).

The Hussies basically agree that they don't want to get into the bar fight.

Pat says -I choose not to fight - it's all marketing.

It is in the eye of the heholder...someone might see Pat's story as speculative, another might see it as completely realistic.

But that is what is great about YA - you see all the genres mixed together on the same shelf

Rick - we are all just looking for a decent book to read.

Michaela and Pat (and Ellen! and also Lisa!):
We love research!

Lisa is also a research junkie.
Question about the Bart train now going to Millbrae....
Being in the shape of an aleph for Dark Cities Underground.
But she is sad now it goes to Millbrae and therefore no longer in that shape.

Ellen question: Do you feel like writing sometimes feels like homework
Because research is so much fun?

Pat example of research getting carried away - In Clan of the Cave Bear, character stopped in the
middle of a chase scene to talk about basket weaving.

Fudoki by Kij Johnson

2009-06-18T00:48:00.001-07:00

I read a story by Kij Johnson and wrote about it earlier - that one
was focusing on dogs and this one more with cats (and people)
There is an aged princess in Japan telling the story of a cat who is
traumatized by earthquake and loses her whole group and is in danger
of losing her fudoki, which is partially a history of all the cats in
the group but also "self and soul and home and shrine, all in one to a
cat.
I am not done with the book yet, but I like it so far.

The book of Lost Things by John Connolly

2009-06-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

I just finished this book - we bought it at Borderlands this weekend.
Really liked it - originally interested because David, the main
character, is a 12 year old boy who loses his mom to cancer, even
though he tries to keep her alive thru a lot of little OCD rituals.
(note that I am surprised that the iphone suggests thru !)

He winds up entering a fantasy world and hears his mom's voice
beckoning to him to come save her, because she is not really dead.
I remember having dreams like this too.
Unclear really what really happened to him, and even scarier, what
really happened to two other children who disappeared earlier- if
David was on a coma and his story was a fantasy, then what about the
others?

Unexpected bonus appendix - a whole ton of info on the fairy tales
that Connolly twists around..the 7 dwarfs are spouting socialist stuff
because their book in David's bookcase is next to a political theory
book - shelved by similiar color! (LOL line - are you saying we are
small? Are you sizeist???)

Croning ceremonies

2009-06-16T08:29:00.001-07:00

http://imaginemdd.blogspot.com/2009/06/at-what-age-will-woman-be-croned-in-my.html

Sent from TwitterFon

Sent from my iPhone

Ursula K. Le Guin: CHANGING PLANES

2009-06-16T00:39:00.001-07:00

I read this in the airports on the way to Wiscon. Actually flew
through Denver which is where she ends the book. Cool metaphor of
zoning out in airports and then changing planes to a whole different
dimension.
>

> http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ChangingPlanes.html

A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park

2009-06-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

Filter House by Nisi Shawl

2009-05-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

I got this book at Wiscon and got Nisi to sign it at the sign out...

This was the co-winner of the 2008 Tiptree award.
I did really enjoy it but didn't quickly finish it after Wiscon.
Faves - Wallamelon

WisCon 33: Favorite moments

2009-05-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

My favorite moments of WisCon 33.

Also in reading the Chronicles of WisCon 32 I think I missed at least 60% of what was fun then - so I know this is just a small chunk of what everyone else experienced. But it is my chunk.

1. Ellen Klages' Guest of Honor speech
(Right afterwards I ran up to my room and wrote a long email to my husband about the impact of this speech).
Also glad that I planned in advance to sit with bindr and Vy (and it turned out, Rina, Jacob, Amy, Anna, Matt, and Rez) for the dessert salon, which offset quite a bit of "who am I going to sit with" anxiety that had started to kick in already on Saturday.
Getting to hear Ellen read ALL of "Time Gypsy" at her reading on Saturday, since I love that story. With lovely and well-acted English accent for the character Sarah Baxter Clarke.
And of course the Tiptree auction!

2. Finally getting to read the end of Pat's story from her reading!
(the portion she read at WisCon is the 3rd time I've heard a portion of it, due to faithful attendance at her Bay Area readings!). Very moved by the 2nd half of the story.

3. Hanging out with folks after the Governor's Club closed on Saturday night.
Eating rhubarb pie provided by Geoff Ryman after it had mysteriously appeared in his room (after we determined it was not Nisi's pie), watching Pat entertain people with her bristlebots, and discussing some "interesting" YouTube vids.

4. The strong emotion when K. Tempest Bradford (and Catherynne M. Valente) introduced Nisi Shawl and presented her with the Tiptree Award. (And Nisi introduced her mother Rose!)

5. Random conversation with Jennifer Stevenson in dealer's room which led to an invite to join her and friends (Margaret McBride, Anne Harris , and Victoria Janssen) for lunch.
Both conversation and lunch invite initiated by Jennifer - next year I will practice the art of striking up more conversations). Enjoyed the conversation at lunch (touching on many topics) and got some extra info from Jennifer re: targeted marketing, and also Roller Derby!

6. The panels overall! The Kickass Moms panel still sticks in my head the most. commented on it on live journal.

7. Parties on Sun night:
Getting more writing advice/support from Eileen Gunn and Diane Silver and hearing about Eileen's Microsoft past. Meeting Georgiette who has been coming to WisCon since WisCon 3 (and was wearing a beautiful dress).
I, on the other hand, was not wearing a beautiful dress! While I would not have ventured into the Fancy Dress party by myself with no fancy dress, I was with Pat which made it easier.

8. Signout - Briefly meeting Catherynne M. Valente (I love In the Night Garden but haven't yet read Palimpest, which she signed for me).
In chatting about my name she tells me that she too will soon have a "Russian Z name husband". (hers more Russian than mine since he lived there until he was 12 years old. Hopefully my Z 3rd gen Russian husband will come to WisCon next year).

9. Non-WisCon but still important to the weekend - Memorial Day picnic with my godparents at their house after they picked me up at the Concourse on Monday (and then dropped me off at the airport).
Really nice to talk to them and start transitioning back to the "real world"slowly. If I plan this well enough hopefully this can be a WisCon tradition, as I was also able to see them last year. Their house is so comforting.
They have lived there for over thirty years. They met my parents when all were young working in Monroe, WI, where I was born. It's really inspiring just to watch them interacting together - they are one of the main current role models for a long and happy marriage for my husband and I (since his parents divorced when he was two and my mom died when I was 16). My godmother wrote this email about my mom for me a couple years ago.

Regrets on WisCon:
I wish my flight hadn't been delayed since I missed all of Friday night - got in really late at 12:30 am by cab, but jazzed and hard to sleep.
Wish I had planned my panels out a little more, I feel like I missed several that I should have gone to (plotting the novel, romancing the beast, children's books that we remember... etc)
Wish I had talked to more people and put myself out there a bit more.
Wish I had read more of Geoff Ryman's work and Nisi Shawl's, before WisCon.
Or at least remembered that Geoff also wrote and coded the interactive novel 253, which I loved! So I could talk about it.

WisCon 33: plane ride home

2009-05-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

The trip from Madison to Chicago was relatively uneventful. There were a group of people on my plane obviously talking about WisCon but I didn't talk to them much.

At O'Hare I walked under the Brachiosaurus replica (which I really appreciated, in the large airy concourse, a huge beloved dinosaur!) And twittered about it.

In the gate area Freddie Bear spotted me reading Nisi Shawl's Filter House, and came over to talk. She mentioned her friend Lyn also had been at WisCon and they were both on this plane.
(BTW, I love Freddie's blue sparkly glasses but did not tell her.)

On the plane my seatmate turned out to be Lyn (Paleo) who lives in the Bay Area and co-wrote
"Uranian Worlds: A Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror" - and now works for First Five of Contra Costa county. (Small world since both Dave and our friend Anna Olsen worked for First Five of San Mateo County in the past).
I found out from Lyn that Freddie is the famous Freddie Bear of WisCon T-shirts fame.

Actually I didn't find out more about Lyn until a little later in the flight, since we were initially talking about WisCon and then reading (me reading Nisi, she reading Ellen's Portable Childhoods).

It was fun talking but I think both of us were very tired. I'm only now recovering from not being tired yesterday. Trying to do work and WisCon writing at the same time.

rhubarb pie at WisCon (yay we did not eat Nisi's pie!)

2009-05-24T08:37:00.001-07:00

Very happy to be at right place, right time (both always seem to be the case when getting the chance to hang out with Pat at WisCon) -- for an impromptu rhubarb pie offered by Geoff Ryman.

One thing I noticed this morning - that group was not talking about their work or really much about writing specifically at all, just hanging out.
I was thinking of stuff I could have said this morning - I was looking at my earlier post about the 2008 anthology and remembering how much I liked KJF's story "The Last Worders".

But in that group, same feeling as when standing near Pat when talking to Cory Doctorow - it's not a place for the superficial fandom of "oh, i love such and such! You are the best since sliced bread!"
-- it's just "Hey, here we are sitting on a couch in a hotel hallway."

Not sure if Karen really has ever met me. It was nice to see her, since last year I had not read anything of hers, and now I've at least read "The Jane Austen Book Club" and the short story mentioned above.

I don't remember actually talking to her last year, and Pat probably assumes that we have met (since when she does introduce me to people, like Liz Henry, sometimes I know them).

Karen read out loud an excerpt from Laurell K Hamilton (that she found online using Pat's laptop) and there was much amused disdain (of Hamilton). Interesting and sad that the romance genre is so popular, and some of it is good, but more of it isn't so much.

WisCon 33: Ellen Klages 10 am reading

2009-05-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

I was trying to decide whether to see Ellen read at WisCon (as conceivably I _could_ hear her read in the Bay Area...) or to go to a panel on "Reinventing the Adventure" which featured Carol Emshwiller.

I'm so glad I went to the reading, as she was able to read "Time Gypsy" which is one of my favorite stores, in its entirety!

Basically she picked that since she never gets to read it this much time to read it anywhere else: "Where else do they give you more than an hour to read!?!"

Before she started, she told us that she'd had to go grab a copy of Portable Childhoods from the Tachyon table, since this is one that is a little long to have memorized:
- "Do you have a copy of my book?"
"Yes, you know, we published it!" and off she went.

There was also a bit of banter about the suggestion that she could bring the book back, signed, to the Tachyon table, with an inscription that reads "Mangled and Spine Cracked by Author"
(she had bent the spine back and then wondered if Tachyon would be upset about that). The audience seemed to agree that a book mangled by its actual author would be a pretty cool thing.

(I wonder what actually happened to that copy since i did buy a copy of portable childhoods from tachyon later in the day).

Anyway -it was really fun to hear her read "Time Gypsy" - I have the chapbook which I should get signed. I had totally forgotten that Sarah Baxter Clarke has an English accent! EK did a great job switching back and forth between the accents (of course!).

(oh and before the reading when I was hanging around near the reg table, she marched up and asked "anybody know where the Guest of Honor reading is?!?")

I also like the whole theme here of looking up to a mentor and then realizing that there is a real person behind the mentor (of course if you get a chance to actually see that person). In this case in the past they are the same age. But the two women meeting in the present would obviously be different.

SBC would no doubt have another side of herself (the professional mentorly side) that she would usually have for Carol.

I think Sarah S might enjoy these stories.

WisCon fandom

2009-05-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

I am only now (3 days before I fly out) starting to get back into the "WisCon mindset" - or at least the mindset I seemed to be in at the end of WisCon last year.

Bought "Changing Planes" by Ursula K. LeGuin, which I will read while flying out and actually changing planes.

I was going to write here a list of people I was interested in seeing again (all of them I met last year!) and new people I want to talk to if they're there:

Kij Johnson ( see below comment about "The Evolution of Trickster Stories by the Dogs of North Park After the Change")

It's kind of overwhelming going back now that I have something to expect...

I wish we had planned better so that Dave could come with me. Or Kari...
Plan to stock up on non-perishable foods to sustain the Con Suite provisions...

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

2009-05-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Invaded the Redwood City Public Library last night to look for Tiptree Honor Books before WisCon...

Found Camouflage by Joe Haldeman (which attracted me because I just read parts of it in the Tiptree Anthology Vol 2).

More below about the actual book....but was momentarily distracted when creating alink to the book for this blog(and excited).

There are 2 signed first editions of Camouflage for sale on Amazon for $100 and $150!

So I'm not going to try to summarize the plots here because we can read them on Amazon. The part that I initially liked in the Tiptree selections, was the tale of the "changeling" who decides to come out of the ocean and learn to become a human.
(Amazon paragraph about Tiptree collection had a good summary: "an immortal, shape-shifting alien who alternates between male and female identities, human and animal. ")

The view of human culture, sexuality, war, etc was fascinating coming from this perspective (instead of the human trying to understand the alien).

It also seemed like it must have been fun to write the changeling's way out of various tight spots (being chased by someone who ripped off your arm? No problem, just jump out the window, get to the water, make yourself into a fish, and swim away!)

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 2008

2009-03-01T17:27:00.001-08:00

edited by Ellen Datlow
and Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant.

Checked out from the library along with many others. This is a huge book, of course - it's 458 pages. (I had started it long before starting on Watchmen and then finished today after finishing Watchmen).
- it gathers up (obviously) the best fantasy and horror (from the 2007 calendar year I think) - plus several long essays that sum up the best from that year in both genres, plus music, graphic novels, and movies.

Here are some notes:

Stories that I liked the best (most of these I did like, but not going into a detailed review here. This is mainly for me to remember what I read so I can go back and look again for these authors, etc).

* The Evolution of Trickster Stories by the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson
I wonder if this writer ever goes to WisCon. I'd bet she does since she divides her time between the Midwest and the West Coast.
I really liked this story (dogs get the power of speech but sadly this spooks almost everyone and they are kicked out of house and home. One woman still talks with them).
It reminds me of Pat's work.
One of her stories - "26 Monkeys, and the Abyss" is nominated this year for a Nebula (see her site).

* Up the Fire Road by Eileen Gunn
I didn't know that a Sasquatch can change how people perceive it, including Maury Povich and a couple of x-country skiers who get lost on its mountain...but now I do!
really good story.

* Winter's Wife by Elizabeth Hand
Really liked this. Liked the world, liked the Icelandic sorcery and the folk tale feel of the story.

* Troll by Nathalie Anderson
this goes very well with Winter's Wife. from the troll's point of view:

"And where do they get off, those billy goats,
calling themselves gruff? Here they come again
traipsing so innocent..."

* The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics, by Daniel Abraham
First this captivated me because it came from a spelling bee anthology (the word here being cambist (currency exchange).

* The Last Worders by Karen Joy Fowler
I liked this first because it's by KJF and also because of the portrayal of the 2 main characters who are twins (interesting reveal that they are twins, they are writing the same last name in their notebooks when fantasizing about the same boy).
Also perhaps feeling a little guilty that I am having trouble getting into "Wit's End". I skipped finishing that to dive into this anthology. This just moved along a lot better as a story.

* A Reversal of Fortune by Holly Black
I don't know if I could win an eating contest with the devil by eating a multitude of sour-gummy frogs (plus one extra!).
She is also the author of the Spiderwick Chronicles

* The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
I liked the time travel in this and the aspect of meeting (or avoiding) your self in other times.

* Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell
(I want to get her short story collection - "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves).

* The Hill, by Tanith Lee
Mysterious house with exotic animals kept around it - mystery of why and what the owner is like, and what is happening with all this weird stuff going on in town?

* Splitfoot by Paul Walther
This one freaked me out - a poltergeist-type scariness in a house that it's only being visited because the owner wants to transfer ownership...And the characters who come to view/transfer the property were very unique and interesting.

* The House of Mechanical Pain - by Chaz Brechley
Also freaky and also sad. I do like the type of story where someone is exploring an old house and the people who live there - really horrible things happened in this house.

* The Monsters of Heaven by Nathan Ballingrud
The lost child, the parents driven apart by guilt and grief, and the "angels" who are so creepy (and unexplained, they're like X-files weird things - but in a short story I guess there's no time to explain).

* Mr. Poo-Poo by Reggie Oliver
Also very disturbing and sad because there is no real escape for Mrs. Poo-Poo.

* Closet Dreams by Lisa Tuttle
Also very good but disturbing

Here's a bunch of stuff from the 2007 Summaries to go back and read!
Fantasy
Ursula Le Guin's young adult series (Voices, Gifts, Powers)
Guy Gavriel Kay - Ysabel
Naomi Novik - dragons and European colonial
Logorrhea - Good Words Make Good Stories - ed John Klima
Shadowbridge - Gregory Frost
In the Cities of Coin and Spice - Catherynne M. Valente (sequel to In the Night Garden)
Territory by Emma Bull - Western with witches, blood, Wyatt Earp
One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak - "a lyrical debut novel of Midwestern magic realism"
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare - fast paced immensely entertaining fantasy novel set in NYC.
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos - R.L. LaFevers - 11 yr old heroine can tell when ancient artifacts carry a curse

Graphic Novels
The Arrival - Shaun Tan

Watchmen!

2009-03-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

Just finished Watchmen today.
I should have probably read it before going to see the preview and cast panel at WonderCon yesterday - preview would have been way more fun!
Here is an annotated Watchmen site...

I will be really flabbergasted if they manage to convey all of this in the graphic novel onto the screen. Terry Gilliam (and Alan Moore, the writer) had said that it seemed almost impossible to fully do this in a theatrical movie release. Terry Gilliam apparently had been pushing for a miniseries.

The opening of the graphic novel was mystifying me for a long time, until I got to where Dr. Manhattan tells us more about his origin. That and Rorshach's past filled in a lot of the question marks in my head.

Anyway, great book - can't believe I hadn't read it this whole time. Dave had bought it back when working at Barnes and Noble because there's a big "20% off" sticker on it.

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

2008-12-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

I loved this book so much and it was so resonant with me that I read it twice.

I don't want to spoil what all happens but it's a lot about female adult friendships and mothers (both lost and found) - and set in the modern Bay Area (always nice to have characters meeting monthly over a bowl of tom kha gai).
Also one of the characters has a therapist and has the same kind of thoughts that I sometimes have (what does the therapist do right before and right after the appt? - and other thoughts).

Research Links for Nano character

2008-11-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Character has been working as a medical technologist, goes back to medical school in her fifties ( and also moves to CA to do so).

Occupational info on being a med tech:

I think she may go take some small classes before med school. unless she thinks she's ready (probably she would be if she had gone right from undergrad/med tech school to med school, but not now).

So you want to be a doctor? posting

Bay Area med schools:
UCSF - would be interesting too because of Joyce's experience there training to be a nurse too, right?

The Wednesday Sisters

2008-10-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

I read this book a few weeks ago but now it's almost due at the library so I write...

This book hits a lot of buttons for me.

Amateur writers meeting in a group to write and one gets published... (it's almost like the adult version of "The Wild Girls" - adult meaning that it is adults who gather to write, not kids)....
The group motivates themselves to write by taking turns taking pictures of themselves in a coffin.

"What if you _were_ in that coffin and hadn't done what you wanted to, hadn't written".

Set in the late sixties or so when my mom was close to the age of the women in the book (although she was a little bit younger)

Cancer involved - both with the mother of one of the characters and the character herself.

Bonding through adversity

Set in the Bay Area (in Palo Alto - with Kepler's involved, the beginnings of Intel, etc).

Podcasts from Pat Murphy and Carol Emshwiller's SF in SF readings

2008-07-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Rina Weisman of Tachyon Publications has posted the links to several podcasts done at the SF in SF reading I went to on 6/21 -- with Pat Murphy and Carol Emshwiller.

I was really interested to hear the interview parts which we in the audience only vaguely overheard at the event.
The interviewer asked Pat some good questions about The City Not Long After and her process of writing that and wandering around San Francisco dreaming it up, and about Wild Girls. Yay!

It's also quite fun to listen to Pat's story again - I was just drinking it in when I first heard it and didn't realize I would get to hear it again.

The part about the fairy meetings at the fictional toy company are just hilarious and I can hear myself laughing again in the background on the podcast, almost.

"my fairies wear clothing of tanned mouse leather...they are grimy, hardscrabble fairies..."

(I remember when I heard that line initially, I picked up on the word hardscrabble, since Hassler had his "hardscrabble girls".)

aargh! The ending in the middle again!

Podcasts (the interviews are the last two links):

Carol Emshwiller, Pat Murphy and Terry Bisson at SF in SF:

Carol Emshwiller reads at SF in SF:

Pat Murphy reads (and throws cards) at SF in SF:

Carol Emshwiller interviewed at SF in SF:

Pat Murphy interviewed at SF in SF:

Writing Rules that Carol Emshwiller likes to break

2008-06-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

At the link above.
On Saturday night I went to go hear Pat Murphy and Carol Emshwiller read as part of the SF in SF series. I really enjoyed it, it's such a treat to have Carol visiting here (as she divides her time between Bishop, CA and New York City) and plus, Pat read a story that was fresh from her head (just written this week).

I'll update with the podcast links from the readings.
The post linked above has some good advice from Ms. Emshwiller, as originally published at Fantastic Metropolis.

Neil Gaiman on "Writing the Next Thing"

2008-06-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

A Quote from Neil Gaiman's Journal (on his site:

Perhaps somewhat motivating...

Dear Neil, I am sure you have probably answered this question before and are probably, therefore, very sick of it. But, I still must ask. I am an aspiring writer and am wondering how you stayed motivated during times of great failure. I understand what many writers mean when they say the love of the art drives them. What I am concerned with is how to deal with the inevitable denial of a piece of literature that you have invested everything in?

Write the next thing.

Maybe the world will catch up with your brilliance eventually, or maybe you'll look back in ten years and decide it wasn't that great really after all. Doesn't really matter. Times of great failure or times of great success, the problem is the same (how do you keep going?) and the solution is the same: You write the next thing.

Dave bought The Sandman Book of Dreams, which is an anthology of stories inspired by The Sandman series, and edited by Gaiman and Ed Kramer.
One of the most interesting things about this anthology is reading his introductions at the beginning of each story; he talks about where he met each author and how - some of them in signing lines at readings.
It reminds me of his introduction to Ellen Klages' Portable Childhoods and his descriptions of Ellen.
What would it be like to have such an intro written about me someday?
This book has Lisa Goldstein, one of the Brazen Hussies, and Delia Sherman, whom I met at WisCon, and also Tad Williams. We met Tad at a convention here in the Bay Area, but can't remember which one.

BNL in San Mateo!!!

2008-06-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

"I've got orange pants
I wear them when I dance.."

"When I make mistakes
I use a lot of salt
Cause salt makes m'steaks taste great"

- which isn't that hard to emulate as I try to do so at home right now...

--- "Raisins" - from Snacktime by Barenaked Ladies
Performed live at 3:30 pm at Barnes and Noble, San Mateo, 6/12!
I was in 5th "row" of the sitting on the floor crowd.

There was actually a little girl, maybe 5 or 6, who was wearing her orange pants (and
a stylish black button down shirt with flames on it).
She was dancing her heart out and got a special bit of attention and pointing from Ed. Apparently specifically dressed for the occasion by her mom, who gave her a big hug afterward.

It was just an awesome experience. They were playing in front of a huge window on the 2nd floor of the Barnes and Noble across from Hillsdale Mall, here in San Mateo.
It was almost impossible to get a good picture with the backlighting. Hopefully someone did get a shot and they post them online soon. :-)

So different listening to them in such a small space during the day. They can see you!

The kids seemed to enjoy it. There was a contingent of fan club women my age who had BNL shirts and were sitting in the front row, too.

Luckily we all didn't have to sit outside in the heat (although the line wasn't as long as I thought). They brought us into the store at about 2 pm.
I was surprised when the band suddenly took the stage (or little platform) since I was thinking they'd be introduced by someone from the bookstore.

"Please welcome, US!" Ed says.

So fun to see them so close up (and for free!). It was fun to watch Kevin's keyboard playing and Jim's bass playing, especially - you don't get so much detail when at Shoreline and they are far away!
Also the interplay between them and their interactions with the audience.

They had some thematic banter based on areas of the bookstore - but didn't comment about all the current events books which were the closest to them...
Notes on the banter (for some reason I had no network access on my phone, so I couldn't twitter or message):

This band is well known for their witty banter - onstage, and on the songs.

They started off with some shoplifting advice for all - something like "Hey, everyone here is pretty distracted right now, so if you tried to walk out with something, they probably wouldn't stop you..."

They also pointed out that Nikki Sixx had been at this same Barnes and Noble the day before...
Ed: Think of the double header on that one -- stay over night after Nikki Sixx to be here for our show..
research - he did come Oct 28, 2007 to this B&N. For the book "The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star" (and in other googling I find that Nikki is a San Jose native. Who knew?)

So it appears to have been an untruth that Nikki was there the day before...we'll see.
I remember their banter about the Kentucky Fried Chicken on El Camino near California Ave in Palo Alto. We saw them at a club there that was called The Edge, I think.
They were fascinated by the statue of Colonel Sanders that is on display there, but I can't remember exactly what they said.
This was sometime in the mid to late 90s. I can't remember if I was still at Stanford or just graduated.

Anyway. back to the present.

They played "Another Postcard" - which I forgot has such strong monkey references. Maybe we should always play BNL in our new monkey-themed bathroom (courtesy of Linda, Grady, and Michelle Woods' wedding presents).
"Another postcard, for chimpanzees"
And every one is addressed to me..."

Ed sang "Raisins" - and showcased the girl in orange pants above.

They also played "One Week" - really a nice number of their big singles along with the new songs. Hard to tell how many of the kids had heard these songs.

Steve sang "Ninjas"

A little blond girl named Amy (apparently her name was Amy Brubeck, according to the San Mateo Daily News) jumped up at one point with her hand up.

"Do you have a question?"

She requested them to play "Allergies"!

"The first child who actually ASKS for Allergies" - someone says (Steve or Tyler?)

"You can request, but it doesn't mean anything will happen" - Ed

"Tyler, do you know the words?"

"Maybe someone can hold up the words for you...maybe the girl who requested it..."

So Amy winds up standing near the drum kit holding the Snacktime book. I never saw her turn the page -- but obviously Tyler knew the words...
Amy was pretty blown away by the drums but she stuck it out!

Jim Creegan's song was "pollywog in a bog", which has a great refrain sung by Ed. Seemed like a great opportunity for the kids to jump up and jump, but those of us on the carpet stayed seated so everyone could see I think.

Kevin's song was "Eraser" ("If I make an error I can always make it better with my eraser..")
- which began with a mini-contest of "how long can we hold the "Eeee" syllable at the beginning of the word. Kevin won it seems.
He was wearing a pair of shiny aviator glasses and had a 50% off sticker from Barnes and Noble on his shirt.

I think at this point they played "7,8,9" which was quite brilliant. They warned kids that it was a scary song, and they might want to plug their ears if they are prone to nightmares.
Also that you can tell it's going to be scary, because it's in a minor key!
(They play example of the same opening chords in a major key) - this one would be happy!

They sang the lyrics of "Rhythm of the Night" by El Debarge, at the beginning of "If I had a million dollars" -- and dedicated it to El before starting. Hard to tell if people caught this also, but pretty cool.

amazing to hear it and sing along in such a small group. Steve yelling "sing along! LOUDER!"
"IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS!"
...I'd build a tree fort in your yard...
No kraft dinner was thrown...it seems like that would have been fun for the kids, but maybe the security staff had confiscated it.

And, they had a whole riff comparing Barnes and Noble to the Odd Couple, which prompted Tyler to play the theme and they all hummed and chimed in...
"That's for those kids who were born in 1961!"

"Or the kids who watch Nick at Nite," Ed says.

The waiting in the autograph line was pretty hot and sweaty, but the kids held themselves in line pretty well.
When I got up to the line I was feeling self-conscious because I had my old towel with me, that I grabbed from the car to sit in the line outside.
Also my plastic sack with my ice latte cup in it...

Ed was first - he said he would personalize the CD, so I spelled my name...and he says, "Cool name!"
So I got a "Cool name" from Ed Robertson, who joins the bevy of (mostly literary) famous people who have been exposed to the name.
I thanked him for coming.
Kevin was next - I thanked him by name, but he seemed pretty tired (and still had his sunglasses on)

And then Steven - also tired. I told him I'm the kid here, and I was kind of playing hooky from work. (side note, yay to him for the weight he's lost since the band started. He looks quite trim - much better than the Gordon cover, for example).

Next was Jim Creegan, and he asked what I was going to do with the rest of my day playing hooky - go fishing or something.
Didn't want to sound nerdy and say - well, actually more working.

And then Tyler, who was not very animated (tired...) but did sign and I thanked them again.

It's hard to express being a long time fan (not uber long, but before the success with "one week") - in a line like that. It's like all my author signings --"Oh I love your work, here's how to spell my name"...

Dave had said - you have to go even if you miss work for it.
This is what you have wanted as a kid - to have your favorite band come to your town and play in some store somewhere.
As a kid, the band in question was Huey Lewis and the News.

I have to also say - their song Crazy ABCs is just brilliant.
so many cool definitions: - and in the song they are doing commentary that is not on the lyric sheet, but they didn't sing it at the show:
(although Ed reads portions in this interview on ABC):

Hey Steve, Hey Ed
That sounds nice, what is it?
A new alphabet song I'm working on...
(steve says something about he just learned the old one...)

A is for Aisle
B is for Bdellium (gum like tree resin, starts with a silent B)
C is for Czar, and if you see him would you mind telling him?

Steve - ok hang on
aisle?
Ed: aisle, like a theater

D is for Djinn
E for Euphrates
F is for Föhn, but not like when I call the Ladies
(umlaut added by me after finding it on wikipedia)

Steve: I thought phone started with a p..
No, it's föhn, it's a kind of wind...
G for Gnarly
I for Irk
H for Hour
J for Jalapeno, good in either corn or flour... tortillas
(Steve: nice rhyme)
K is for Knickknack
L is for llama
(rama lama ding dong, what's so strange about llama?)
(it starts with two ls..)
M for Mnemonic
N is for Ngomo

(From me - this makes me feel ignorant - which Ngomo do they mean?
The Star Fleet admiral?
Or maybe the city in Gabon? I am taking too much time with this...or maybe Alicia Ngomo in London)

O is for Ouija Board
P is for Pneumonia, Pterodactyl, and Psychosis
Q is for Qat
ok - Q - cat? what?

Ed: it's qat, it's an evergreen shrub, it's a perfect scrabble word because it's a q with no u, there aren't many of those
Steve: you have too much time on your hands.

R is for Argyle

Steve: (singing along) --no it isn't
Ed: ok, you're right, I couldn't find a good R word.

S is for Saar, a lovely German river
T for Tsunami, a wave that makes me quiver
U is for Urn and not like earning money
V for Vraisemblance from french and therefore kind of funny
W for Wren, Wrinkly and Who
X is for Xi'an, an ancient Chinese city, true

Steve: ancient chinese city, huh? my guitar player, some hotshot...

Y is for Yperite a very nasty gas
Z is the final letter, and by final I mean last
Steve: ok when you say zed, for the benefit of our American friends, you really mean Z, right?
no I mean zed, like zed zed top
(riff of zz top) - and note - if you click the link above you hear the riff, so fyi - if you're listening to something else, it will be overshadowed...)

the guys who all have beards, except the guy whose _name_ is beard...
yeah I always thought that was interesting...

And in the ABC interview I linked to above, Ed mentions their "Bathroom Sessions" on Youtube. He'd noticed all these fans putting videos of themselves playing BNL songs (many at home and some in bathrooms).

So he thought he'd do this also, and just started doing little videos of himself playing the songs filmed by a little webcam on his laptop.

Here is Ed and Steve doing "one week":

Ysabeau Wilce - author of Flora Segunda...

2008-06-06T15:34:00.001-07:00

This is the official website of Ms. Wilce, whom I met at WisCon at a dinner organized by Ellen Datlow (which Pat invited me to).

Her site makes so much more sense now that I've read her book. It's an awesome site but it was a bit confusing prior.

So many things about the book that I like, it's hard to get all of them in right now. Just finished it yesterday - Pat had lent it to me on Monday night.

Testing Scribefire plug-in

2008-06-06T15:30:00.001-07:00

Posting this from Scribefire - let's see how it works.

New Play about Hedy Lamarr

2008-06-03T18:28:00.001-07:00

Frequency Hopping, a new play about Hedy Lamarr, who was in my Nanowrimo Novel after Peri told me about her...

It is playing in New York.

Breaking the Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction

2008-06-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

I checked this out from the library before going off to WisCon (as part of a small "anthology orgy" with On the Couch: Great American Stories about Therapy, and Caught in the Organ Draft: Biology in Science Fiction, which was edited by Asimov).

They're all overdue now - I am renewing this online because I am just starting it now.

Some comments quoted from Terry McMillan's preface, which are trying to help me write:

"Writing is personal. Try to write the kind of stories you'd like to read. Do not write to impress. Do not write to prove to a reader how much you know, but instead write in order to know.

...
Everyone has a different opinion about what a good story should do and here are a few that I love:

'A story is a war. It is sustained and immediate combat.'

'Your character should want something and want it intensely. It need not be melodramatic, earth-shattering or tangible. But it should be important to them whether or not they get it.'

'A good story is a power struggle between equal forces. Something keeps getting in the way of the protagonist from achieving whatever they desire.'

Great WisCon GoH and Dessert Salon Summary

2008-05-28T16:42:00.001-07:00

The title of the post is the link.
From "Feminist SF - The Blog!"

A great summary, especially of the GoH speeches.

Also this post about the opening ceremony.

There is a Feminist SF wiki with a page about Pat...which I found linked off of another post on this blog.

Some role models aren't as nice...

2008-05-28T13:08:00.001-07:00

As those I met at WisCon this weekend.

After googling "Wiscon" in addition to looking at LiveJournal, I find Wil Wheaton has blogged about Elizabeth Bear's postings of stuff she's overheard as WisCon.

And then I found this awesome 2 part story (Part 1, Part 2) of what happened when Wil Wheaton met one of his heroes, William Shatner, on the set of Star Trek V.

Even famous people get to be dicks sometimes I guess, but Shatner could have been much nicer at the outset, especially to a fellow Star Trek actor.

If edited to be under 1000 words, this might be good for Can I Sit With You?

A Story Every Fortnight: The Hassler Memorial Challenge

2008-05-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

I want to just push myself to write, and I don't think I can sustain a Nanowrimo every month.

If I can do this the whole year, and do Nanowrimo, I'll have about 20 stories plus another novel by the time WisCon comes around again next year.

Inspiration #1:
Jon Hassler was the first author who really responded to me (literally with several letters and postcards) and inspired me.
He just died this spring at the age of 74.
On Hassler's website there's a Q and A. One of the questions is:

Q. When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?

A. I began to write on September 10, 1970, at the age of 37. I believe I had imagined myself a writer form the age of five, when my parents read to me, but I was a late starter. On that morning I awoke to a voice in my head saying, "Half your life is over, Hassler, you'd better get started."

Note that eerily, the way it turned out, his life really was half over, but he wrote right up to the end.
And then this article goes into more detail about how he started - he sat down that morning and started writing the first story, finished it 2 weeks later. After 28 weeks, he had 14 stories.
This was 1970, and so there were 8 years of getting the stories published and trying to sell his first novel until 1977 when it was published (Staggerford).
So, I'm 34. I don't really know how much time I have. My mom died at 42. Who really knows?

Inspiration 2:
L. Timmel Duchamp (see Aqueduct Press Blog - could not find a personal site for her yet)'s guest of honor speech at WisCon, and the entire experience of WisCon.
There is nothing keeping me from doing this but myself, really.
And just like I had the Nanowrimo party and the play afterward with PM, EK, MR to look forward to, here I can look forward to going to WisCon next year and being able to say that I've done this. IN addition to Nanowrimo, and maybe even if I feel ready, applying to something like Clarion.

Inspiration 3:
Pat's work (and she didn't start writing until her twenties, so I'm just 10 years behind her, and 3 years ahead of Hassler).

So here's the thing, and I don't even need a bake sale to get it kicked off (or even need to tell anyone if I don't want to).

Every two weeks, on the same schedule as our sprints for work, I will write a story. The first "sprint" ends next Monday, which is only about a week, but otherwise I will be off kilter from the work schedule.
No promises as to the length of the stories, but they should have beginning, middle and end and they should be written as if someone is going to read it (even if they don't).
Let's see how this will work.

Geoff Ryman wrote 253!

2008-05-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot about this interactive novel set on a London tube train.
He's the co-Guest of Honor with Ellen K for WisCon 2009.

Note in 2009 - I can't believe I forgot about this. Again, in the WisCon 2009 posts, not sure when would have been the best place to talk about it - probably in the panel discussion about his work but I didn't make it to that either.

I really liked this novel.

Inklings of WisCon

2008-05-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes hanging around all these talented writers, editors, and others at WisCon, I feel a little bit like someone who was there during the meetings of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (the Inklings) when they were writing The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series.

It's the same sort of feeling as getting Hassler's postcards when I was high school and college, but live conversation and/or eavesdropping is even better.

"The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction, and encouraged the writing of fantasy. Although Christian values were notably reflected in several members' work, there were also atheists among the members of the discussion group."

"Special Economics" story by Maureen F. McHugh

2008-05-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

This line, I don't think I would have read anywhere else:
(the character has just bought a cell phone from a plastic cell phone kit that you throw in a kettle like a dumpling and it forms itself into the shape of a phone...)

"She bought a newspaper and scallion pancake from a street food vendor, sat on a curb, and ate while her phone dried."

--From The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow, who organized last night's dinner at Restaurant Magnus.

quotes relating to mothers, a bit late

2008-05-24T23:46:00.001-07:00

It's a couple weeks past Mother's Day, but I'm sitting here thinking about my mom and about part of a story I heard read today, and a quote from Garrison Keillor that I found again on Sharyn November's website.

Odd connections, but here goes.

I went to a reading of Aqueduct Press writers, which included Eileen Gunn and Eleanor Arneson, as well as Andrea Hairston who read from her novel Redwood and Wildfire. At one point in the reading I was starting to go off into tears- without using too many details, the main character's mother dies, and the narrator is just blunt about it - she was gone and she was never coming back.
And the character says (or thinks, I can't remember) - something like "She was never really dead. Redwood is a spell that Garnet left behind and she lives on in Redwood this way" (I am misquoting because i didn't write it down exactly -- Garnet, the mom, is a conjurer in 1898 in the American South, and she is murdered by a gang of white men. And so Redwood decides to become a conjurer also and that's apparently the content of the rest of the book.

I followed her out to the hallway to tell her how meaningful this was, but she was quite busy and I kind of felt like it wasn't the most original comment...but it was what was happening for me in that moment. I also told her about the SF Fringe Festival because she said she was putting on a play in January. I feel a bit dumb about that too because she's been a theater professional for 30 years apparently, and knows about fringe festivals.

Then -- just now I went and looked at Sharyn November's page she made about her mother, and again found this quote she listed from Garrison Keillor.
I don't think I can read this quote too many times. Although I have to modify the number since before it said "having picked up so much of her in 34 years.

You are the continuation and resurrection of your mother, having picked up so much of her in 16 years, and so you go on, as her living legacy to the world. You'll miss her every day of your life and there's no getting around that. But she gave you precious gifts and you bear them onward.

Just wanted to say - it is nice being around Tom and Ginny this weekend but it was a bit eerie waking up on Friday morning and hearing them talking. It felt like I was a little kid again, hearing the murmuring of mom and dad (either before I went to bed or before I woke up).
And Ginny's voice, when muffled by two doors, plus only listening out of one ear, does sound like my mom. I guess it's the similar accent, too.

Cerise Review of DD:HH

2008-05-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the Capes and Consoles party which is co-sponsored by Cerise Magazine (and Iris Gaming Network), and talked to Robyn Fleming (wanted to tell her I enjoyed her panel on Friday).
And was pleasantly surprised to find a mostly positive and spot on review of DD:HH in their May issue when I got back to my room and started clicking around their site.

This is the same reviewer who reviewed Wedding Dash and wasn't too happy with the script. We think this was partially because of misreading a dialog box - I think it was the "did you get a career yet?" line. I'm pretty sure that is not what the line said, but I can't remember what we meant right now.

Overall, she did enjoy DD:HH though, it looks like she even got people to play multiplayer with her. She loves the teenagers, although I was entertained by this:
"(Unfortunately, this game breaks no heteronormative bounds. Girls don’t flirt with girls.)"
We had to do some struggling to get the Sims in Sims 2 to "Propose Union" to their same-sex partners (in 2004, before Gavin's help) - so for this audience, I'm not sure if we could push to have same sex teen couples and Wedding Dash same sex weddings, for that matter...

The WisCon program is crazy...

2008-05-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

Crazy Busy!
Several programs I want to go to are happening at the same time. I guess that's a good thing. It's not for lack of trying on the planners' part -- there are things going on every day, and scheduled into the night.

I went through the program today while on the plane, and kept almost exclaiming "Dang!" out loud when coming to a conflict.

It's my first time at WisCon so I have no idea what I'm getting into.

Met a very nice woman in Mpls airport, on her way to WisCon with baby and hubby. She was also having issues with Northwest Airlines (hers were much worse than my one delay).

My godmother came to pick me up at the airport because I'm staying with them tonight, and a woman came up to us to ask where the shuttle was for the Concourse Hotel (where WisCon is being held).
It was kind of fun to explain that I didn't need a shuttle, I had a ride. Unfortunately I couldn't help her either.
Really fun visiting with Tom and Ginny - they were quite tired after their days at work, and I am still on California time so I'm awake...
I'll probably have to see their alpaca farm in a different visit...

The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum

2008-05-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from email to Julie Buxbaum, who came and spoke to our group at Kapp's Pizza last week:

(also fyi - there was this Washington Post review, which was favorable, but Julie pointed out that it didn't go very deep into the emotions of the characters. It's all well and good to be Carrie Bradshaw's smarter sister, but that's not all this book is about.)

I went and bought the book at Books Inc down the street that night and finished it the next day. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking about the impact of crying at the end, and wound up finishing it while sitting at Peet's Coffee and starting to sob.

On top of how the book speaks to me, as a woman and a motherless daughter, I also find it very inspirational to hear of people (especially people close to my age) writing first novels successfully.
I did the National Novel Writing Month last year (NaNoWriMo) and was really happy to finish something that vaguely is a connected storyline, in 50,000 words and 1 month!
Right now I am at WisCon, which is a feminist sci fi and fantasy convention, and hoping to recharge batteries here.
One of the women in my life who is one of my "Ruths" (author Pat Murphy, she was the officiant at my wedding) flies to Madison from San Francisco every Memorial Day for WisCon, for almost 20 years now --- she thinks it's pretty cool, and it looks like it will be.

Anyway - quick list of my favorites in The Opposite of Love:

* Ruth and the book club. Emily's thoughts about how much she wants to be with this group of older women, regardless of what they're reading, really hits home to me.
Especially as I get older (I'm 34, Mom died at 42) I am more and more drawn to women who are in their 50s and 60s at least. They are the only models really for what it's like to live longer than 42.
And Ruth being a career mentor for Emily too, as my friend Pat is (although my writing is just getting going, she's also a good overall career mentor. Just in the 2 years I've known her she's had some of the most interesting jobs ever.)

* picture of Emily's mom on the beach - taken before she was born, connecting to a mom she never knew. I have a similar picture of my mom standing in front of a lake, and I always thought it was weird that I feel closer to this picture than to the later pictures that I remember being there for. nice to see a character having the same feelings.

* writing the letter to her mom and the feeling that she sees her around - this is part of what my NaNo novel was about.

* I really liked the prologue with the ultrasound (or is it sonogram) -- we know that there is a baby coming eventually, and there is a father, but don't know who the father is exactly. I think you did a great job with the character of Andrew also -- As I got to know him better, I really felt so hopeful that it would indeed turn out to be Andrew who is the father.
Very real, but not sappy, descriptions.

* references to other people being "grownups" -- their friends having a "grown-up" apt, and so on. My husband and I still talk like this sometimes!

* the whole theme of being afraid to really commit. Sometimes I just want to push people away because I am afraid of losing them if they get too close. I'm pretty happy that my husband withstood previous attempts to do this and stayed with me, and that we are married!

Anyway - thanks again for coming. I hope that your work on the second book is going well. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Remembering Jon Hassler

2008-05-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

I was very sad to hear that Jon Hassler had died in March - Kari told me during the wedding week. She had thought I must already know, since it was all over the news in Minnesota at the time.

I signed the online guest book link that Dave found. I hope his wife and family are doing ok.

It's also really amazing that he kept writing even during the worst of his disease. Apparently there will be a new novel called "Jay O'Malley" which he was able to finish before he died.

Note on May 22 -
I reread Staggerford and A Green Journey again after buying them at the fountain of all lost books, BookBuyers in Mountain View.
It made me miss him more- there's a lot of stuff I didn't notice the last time I read.

1. I was a person nosy about teachers, and here's a book about a high school English teacher that is pretty candid - it begins "First hour, Miles yawned."

2. In both books I realized that I was gravitating toward the Miss McGee character and that I identify pretty strongly with the "hardscrabble girls" that she would take in and help out. I think I would have let her do that for me but maybe I would be resentful about it, I don't know.

How to Survive in the Line of Fire

2008-03-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

I want to write about this now while it's still fresh in my mind...might be good for the germ of a future story.

I was riding BART and reading Pontoon, by Garrison Keillor (which is making me nostalgic and thinking a lot since it has a mother dying plus a woman going home to MN for her wedding...). Also the book review on this link has Keillor with a shaggy graying beard.

I was late (it was after 9 am) so I didn't have a seatmate for most of the trip until Civic Center when a woman sat down next to me.
When I was packing up Pontoon to get off at Montgomery, I see that my seatmate is reading a little card that is titled "How to Survive in the Line of Fire" and has all of these tips and diagrams for trying to stay out of harm's way in that situation.
It looked like something from those Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbooks, and after googling around, I am pretty sure it was.

It made me wonder why she has this at this time. Does she have the whole set and she reads one each BART ride to be prepared? They are meant to be humorous but this one was a bit surprising to see she was reading it specifically.
When I got up I accidentally jostled her and all this colored paper she had fell on the floor. I helped her pick some of it up. It looks like she is making a card for someone - she also had colored pencils...
Is she making a card for someone going into the Army? Is it just a joke card? The tips were so realistic that it seems it wouldn't be a joke.
She was in her thirties or early forties, long brown hair curly in ponytail. She was grateful for me trying to pick up the papers even though I could only grab one and hand it to her before I had to run off the train.

It was also kind of weird since I am not usually on this train at this time - I missed my appt in Rockridge so wound up taking the train up from Millbrae like normal.
Side note - coming out of BART I also saw a woman wearing the same boots I just bought on Saturday. She is thin enough that she can tuck her jeans into the tops of the boots...

Lois Lowry's iPhone lives!

2008-01-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

I'm in the midst of trying to pack, trying to prepare for our wedding, lots of stress - but I was very happy to see this blog post from Lois Lowry (the author of many awesome books including the Anastasia Krupnik series which I loved as a child)

So you know I am nosy and have links to Lois's blog on this blog. Before Christmas I had checked in with her and saw to my dismay that her purse was stolen, along with her iPhone!
(and also that she is a football fan - she loves the Patriots, which surprised me a bit too).

Anyway -- I checked in with her blog today to find this miraculous tale of new year wonder!
The iPhone that was lost has been found - frozen in a snowbank, still inside her purse.
I'm surprised the thieves didn't want it.

Would they have been able to reset the phone number without proof that they own it? I wonder.

Anyway - good stuff. Also on the Running Air blog I see Mad and her daughters all have new coats just in time for our new year storm, and Vy has been reading Nebula recommended works all break.

Bhutto Assassinated

2007-12-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan and I believe, the first female leader of a Muslim country, was assassinated yesterday (Thursday). The link goes to an account by a photographer who was there - this picture is his picture taken before the attack.

I didn't find out about this from the radio or the TV news, oddly enough I was checking out a new blog post by my cousin, where he's talking about the New Hampshire primary he's soon to participate in, and he mentioned this at the beginning of the post.

This is very sad - especially sad since when I was googling for articles about this event, most of the links were about the earlier attack on Bhutto in October in Karachi, where she survived and was quoted talking about it afterward. Since most of those posts didn't have a date on the first search results page, it was a momentary feeling of "oh, she's not dead. She's talking about the attack!" But no, it was just the earlier attack.

Cancer Rant on Craig's List

2007-12-27T19:17:00.000-08:00

I am taking a break from packing and found this posting on "best of Craig's List" from a person (woman I'm assuming) who is recovering from Hodgkin's lymphoma (which is similar to what my Mom had).

And it's really just a very realistic rant about what it is like for her to have cancer, go through chemo, hear friends telling her about all their relatives who died of cancer, and so on. It's very annoymous but I would have wanted to write back to her and say "you go, girl"!

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages

2007-12-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

I'm actually rereading Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell right now, but I wanted to write about Portable Childhoods since I realized I only need a quick spiel on the Facebook thing.

And of course this is just me writing reading notes. I'm sick right now also and am writing this in bed on the laptop (having just had some generic Nyquil like cold medicine). It's kind of comforting to have Portable Childhoods and Max Merriwell hanging around. Also I just reread Points of Departure, but I guess that is a different post.

My copy is paperback and is signed but I think I bought it from Amazon, so that is mysterious. I didn't remember having noticed that it was signed when I bought it on the site. Maybe I should have bought it locally (and could have had Ellen sign it too, I guess) --- but I wanted it pretty quickly.

I like Neil Gaiman's intro because he paints a pretty good picture of what Ellen seems to be like in person (he calls her "a force of nature" which is quite fun) and how that differs from her writing. It's also obviously quite cool to have him writing the intro at all. I blogged here earlier about when we first met Ellen at the Gaiman reading in Berkeley - she was sitting behind us and we heard "nebula award" and our ears perked up. Then Dave actually asked her who she was. I think she thought we were more than a little crazy.

Basement Magic
I loved this one, maybe partly because I share this fascination with basements and I kind of miss not having one here in California. That one house we saw that was quite crappy, almost sold itself to me on the strength of having a huge, albeit unfinished, basement.
I also think Dave would be interested in this story with the stepmother theme too .
motherless daughter, strong female role model in Ruby, magic that comes true...

Intelligent Design
God as being almost like a spoiled child, making the world by whim, while his grandmother is the one who's been there even longer...
I think overall I didn't like this one quite as much as the others, but still liked it.

Green Glass Sea
Doesn't need much more description other than that I love Dewey (and I wonder when her birthday is).
And where is my copy of Green Glass Sea?

Clip Art
Nice "documentary" of a young girl who collects paper clips. amazing amount of detail with the clips and their names, and the cutting between different scenes...

Mobius, Stripped of a Muse
Ever increasing layers of authorship -- a scene...it goes for a while, and then the unseen writer is like, "no that's not working" and the scene starts again....
It sounds like an improv game almost (and maybe it is).
I liked this one a lot. Good pre-nano story.

Time Gypsy
I love this one -- woman goes back in time to meet physics scholar she's admired all her life, and winds up falling in love..

I bought this as a chapbook when I was at borderlands. Maybe at the same time I bought Green Glass Sea..
Part of why I like this is just the fandom of finally meeting and getting to know, someone you've admired for a long time.

A Taste of Summer
This is probably my favorite story in here that I hadn't already read before. I just love the feeling of adventure when she actually crosses the street, looking for refuge, and the cool science-y role model type that Nan is. Really similar to my character in the Nano (and not suprisingly).
I also liked how Nan isn't conventionally dressed - showing Mattie that's it's ok to wear men's clothes....whcih she hadn't really seen before.

Portable Childhoods
This one, sometimes I see myself in the unnamed child and sometimes in the mother, who always seems a little bit amazed to have this person in her life, her daughter, who is her own little person - different from the mom, and she wonders if the two would have been friends.
Also please note on p158 - there's a whole thing about St. Elmo's Fire, interesting because of Pat's affinity for St. Elmo.

And all the stuff about shuffling cards -- how important it is to learn and what a milestone it is. I totally feel that way too. I learned to shuffle at my grandma's house because we were playing a lot of solitaire, and I wanted to shuffle better. Dr. Gammell wound up teaching me.

And last but not least
In the House of the Seven Librarians
Which i had already read in the Firebird anthology but I love so much. And here kari is going to be a librarian.

And the best part -- the afterwod for me..
" I didn't start writing, or at least writing seriously, until I was almost forty."
there's hope yet for me!
Jon Hassler had said the same thing.

Online interview with PM

2007-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

I found a long bibliography of Pat's work on the Speculative Fiction Database, and while poking around I found this interview -
in which her interviewer, who's interviewing via chat, suddenly disappears, as she nonchalantly continues the interview with herself, and then smoothly welcomes the interviewer back to his own interview:
"Welcome back Jim! While you were gone, I started talking about my new book from the Explo, The Color of Nature..."

Wonderful example of, even apart from her writing, why Dave and I both think she's so awesome.

Another reason: The Brazen Hussies Blimp.

And yet another reason: interview chat taking place while Pat has to run off and corral the Blimp.
So Folks...let's give Pat a hand so that she can supervise this rather wild blimping.

WisCon

2007-12-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

I just registered to go to WisCon to reserve it in there right after the wedding time.
I also booked a room in the Concourse Hotel where the con is held.

Only thing now is to book a plane flight - may fly to Minneapolis and drive to Madison from there, especially if one of the twins wants to go.

Here's Pat's guest of honor (and TipTree founding) speech, at the 1991 WiscCon.

NaNo Dedication

2007-12-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

Trout in the Dishwasher, by Solveig Pederson

Inspired by Pat Murphy, Susan Juby, Madeleine L’Engle,

Madeleine E. Robins and Ellen Klages

For David, who does keep me fed and almost sane, and makes life fun.

And for my mom, Diane Marie Dahlen Pederson. 1948-1990

“Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.”

-- Pat Murphy, The Wild Girls

I'm not going to do much with the NaNo "novel", at least not right now, but can post the dedication page, and more info than I sent in a larger group email earlier, about some background.

Last night I went to the NaNo party at Root Division .
That was quite fun as my first time - Chris Baty actually bestowed me with a sticker on my crown (yes, paper Burger-King like crowns, but they were generic, not actually from Burger King). The stickers had numbers for how many NaNos one has won. Many have 6s or 7s on their crowns by now, it's been going on for 9 years.

I was also glad I was there to hear Chris' toast because it really captured the feeling of - "wow, we've been writing every day or trying to now, as much as possible for a month, and now...we don't have to anymore...but we kinda still want to!"

He told a story about accidentally bringing his laptop with him to a concert last night (after he was done with his NaNo) and then having to sadly leave it on his bed, crying its "dell tears" in its neglect.

Then I went to Killing My Lobster's first all female show - "For the First Time" which was appropriate for the first-time NaNo person, and conveniently next door to Root Division where the NaNo party was. The link is to a SF Weekly review of the show, which is pretty spot-on - there were parts that were amazingly funny but parts that were not.
Ellen and Mad met Pat and I there. More details/thoughts to be written in my actual journal...

And here's the NaNo Dedication (see below) - I had emailed out the basic dedication but not the paragraphs below of extra background info. See I don't want to email out the novel but will talk about bits.

In addition to the major literary inspirations below, Annie Lennox was my constant companion throughout the entire month, and actually popped up at the main character's door during a North Dakota snowstorm looking for refuge.

Also, my co-workers Shannon and Peri have been thanked in person and on Facebook -- Shannon brought up the idea of cooking trout in the dishwasher, and our co-worker Amy did it and wrote about it on facebook, getting my attention.

Peri told me about the cryptography career of actress Hedy Lamarr, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr) which gave my 12-year-old main character, Anastasia, an interesting topic for her combo science/writing project, and resurrected a huge amount of word count in the middle of the month. This article is really a great summary of her career as inventor, with a lot more detail than I found on the wikipedia.
It's really fascinating about the culture clash between the military and Hedy and her co-inventor, as their patent was partially inspired by a player piano, and as soon as the military read that, it lost a lot of credibility.

NaNoWriMo - done on time!

2007-11-30T19:43:00.001-08:00

Here's my last posting in the "30 minute word wars" for NaNoWriMo.

My main character got caught up in an interesting conversation, and then a dream sequence followed, which carried through most of the last 5,000 words, written today, the last day of Nano.

It feels pretty good - I was able to finish on time even though I spent 10 days at least in the middle of hte month obsessing about my apartment hunt.

I'd like to thank:

* Dave, for being very understanding and supportive, and cooking endless meals for me.

* The word wars on the Nano site, which provided structure for the task of writing thousands of crazy words so quickly.

* Annie Lennox and her new album, "Songs of Mass Destruction"

* Pat Murphy, Madeleine Robins, and Ellen Klages, for providing inspiration, and the impetus to actually finish, because we are seeing a play on Dec 1 and I told them all I'd be done before that time!

Unwrapping the Gifted: blog for teachers of gifted kids

2007-11-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

Here's another site I'm looking at instead of actually writing.

This woman who started this site is in Montana.

NAGC (Gifted Child) conf in MN - Keillor keynote speaker

2007-11-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting karmic thing maybe (or maybe there are conventions for teachers/parents of gifted children all the time).

This is one of the topics of my Nano, and I just googled around looking for some info on what a good "gifted and talented" teacher is supposed to be like, since I didn't think I had one.

It turns out that their convention was just a few days ago in Minneapolis, and Garrison Keillor spoke.

Also, we just saw Beowulf last night, which should probably be a separate topic.

LiveJournal

2007-11-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

It appears that LiveJournal is the place for writers, more than facebook or myspace. Or even blogger.

I have linked two LiveJournals already to my links area - it looks like there are even more due to the links that they have linked to in their blogs.

Wild Girls Writing tips

2007-11-03T14:14:00.001-07:00

These are from the back of "Wild Girls" - quotes from Pat's fictional writing teacher, Verla Volante:

A good writer tells the truth by telling lies.

When you're talking to a character, you find out what they think and feel. But what a character feels isn't always true.

Pay attention. Notice things and think about what you notice.

Sometimes you're writing about one thing and you realize that you're really writing about something else.

You can work on a story while you're doing anything that doesn't engage your whole attention.

Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.

Annie Lennox's blog

2007-10-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Annie Lennox has a blog on her site and she's posting really frequently. One post has a list of beauty hints (I think of her song "Keep Young and Beautiful" when reading it).

She also has various thoughtful things to say about her activism for HIV/AIDS, plus random things like stories of seeing rats outside venues that she's performing in, of watching a couple actually arguing in the middle of one of her shows (!!!) etc.

It loads in really slowly because she has various artsy graphics. Right now I just want to read the text in the blog, but the page reloads every time I want to see a new blog post...

There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, by Pat Murphy

2007-10-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

Rereading There and Back Again because I picked up a nice pre-signed copy at Borderlands Books when I bought The Wild Girls.

This is Pat's space-opera homage to The Hobbit -- but here it's not Bilbo, it's Bailey Beldon, a norbit (I think I read somewhere that the word was coined for Pat by Ellen Klages) who ventures forth from The Restless Rest, his cozy home in our solar system's asteroid belt, in the company of Gitana, a mysterious female wizard-like figure, and Zahara, with her group of "sibs" (female clones).

What I love about this book is that I usually get caught up in all of the stuff Pat herself has dreamed up - the 'pataphysicians, the space travel through black holes, etc, the base 12 math, etc.

-- and I forget about the underpinnings to Tolkien. But when there's a more clear or obvious reference (such as when Bailey finds his "ring" and goes through the riddles scene)
I think - "Oh cool, that part is familiar - that's how she tied that in..."

I had forgotten that this book, like "Adventures in Time and Space..." and "Wild Angel" has a "mysterious Murphy" -- here, it is "The Curator" who presides over a host of artifacts which sound suspiciously like they could also be Exploratorium exhibits!

I like the cover as well - maybe because every time I look at it, it reminds me of Annie Lennox, who is another of my favorite people.

I also love the character of "Fluffy"! Read the book to find out who (or what?) Fluffy is!

The Stone War by Madeleine E. Robins

2007-10-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is a book that has the lions in front of the NY Public Library coming to life to fight on the side of a band of survivors of a bizarre disaster in New York City -- plus emotionally gripping characters and relationships, and a faun!
That is a very simplistic rendering but this blog is more for me to keep track of what I was surprised or delighted about.

Books for Motherless Daughters (and others too)

2007-10-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

I started thinking about making a list like this because in various groups and talking to my sisters I am always recommending books, movies, music that has helped me.
Either these help me dredge up feelings that I bury otherwise, or make me feel less alone.

Kari and I talked about this list and she added several others

Books
The Wild Girls, by Pat Murphy
* this is a book for the 12-year-old that I still feel like I am, because that's when my mom first got really sick (in the coma).
And for those whose mothers left them as children or are emotionally distant, there's a lot of stuff relevant to them here too...

Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers, by Hope Edelman
These are both great books - Motherless Daughters is divided up by age the person was they lost their mother. We find in our group that people sometimes don't feel ready to read these for a while, it's just too close.

Summer of the Great-Grandmother, by Madeleine L'Engle
L'Engle is best known for "A Wrinkle in Time" and the rest of her Time Trilogy, as well as many books for adults. This is one of her Crosswicks Journals, about the summer when her mother was declining into senility and they brought her north to their house (Crosswicks) to take care of her before her death.
This is a great book for everyone and especially for those with a recent loss -- L'Engle remembers the mother she knew, and her mother's past, that she doesn't really know. And talks about how hard it is to take care of a mother who's sometimes herself, and something not.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
This book is about the year after Joan's husband suddenly died in their house, while she was making dinner. I was moved by this book because she has feelings that I thought only kids who experienced loss were having (like extreme guilt about not being able to help, and wanting to save his shoes because of a fantasy that he'll come back and get them)

The City, Not Long After, by Pat Murphy
The main character in this book loses her mother, and then goes to San Francisco to warn the city of an impending invasion (she and her mother were trying to do this when she died).
Oh, by the way, there's been a plague in SF so it's back to a more agrarian trading existence. The girl (Jax) finds the house where her mother lived and feels her presence there. I guess I also like it because she's very self-reliant but learns to get help from people (which I have trouble with)

The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis
One of the Chronicles of Narnia - in this book Digory's mother is sick, but he is able to bring her a magic apple and she gets better! Oh wish fulfillment! Of course she doesn't live forever, but she does get better.
C.S. Lewis' mother died when he was a child.

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis
Another Chronicle of Narnia, the last. Our pastor (whose mom also died when he was a kid) finally showed us that he had actually read all of the series, when he used the below when he spoke at our mom's funeral:
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The Wild Girls, by Pat Murphy

2007-10-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is the review I posted on Amazon.
I wrote more about this in my journal and in an email to Pat.

I love this book.

I don't want to give any spoilers about the content, and I think there's enough information about the book at Pat Murphy's site and here on Amazon for readers to learn about that. The book itself is just really good.

Plus, it makes me want to
1. write more, and
2. also get to know my mom better via the questions that Joan and Fox learn to ask in the book (unfortunately this is not possible for me, except via #1).

Pat has written that she wrote the book for the twelve-year-old that she once was, and I feel like she wrote it for the twelve-year-old that I was also. And for the 33-year-old that I am now (and all the ages in between).
I bought an extra copy for my 13-year-old niece.
The woman working at the bookstore where I bought the book (Sorry Amazon, I went for a local bookstore on this one) told me that she has been waiting for this book "for years!"

December 5, 2007
I still love this book.
It really did serve as a good inspiration for my NaNo novel.

Discovered recently the link to Pat on the Speculative Fiction Database
which also includes her birthdate. We are both Pisces, which somehow does not surprise me too much.
Useful for potential gift surprises...

Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life by Michael Krasny

2007-10-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

I just bought this book on Sunday morning when hanging around at Kepler's while Dave was working in Menlo Park nearby.
I got up to the counter to ring it up, and the guy said, "Are you going to the event?"

"What event?"

He points at the huge sign to the left of the counter. Michael Krasny, host of KQED's Forum (ie my constant companion if I'm in the car from 9 am to 11 am, and I often listen to the podcasts other times) - was discussing the book, the next day, Monday.

But I had to be at focus groups at work so I couldn't make it. Nicely, the Kepler's guy offers that they'll have Krasny sign it to me.

I just picked it up today, and was reading it tonight after bringing pizza to Dave, at work tonight too. He had written, "To Solveig - Best wishes for a good life with good books and good listening!"
All the "goods" were underlined. It's pretty cool - seems like he could be a bit more original with his adjectives, but I'm not complaining. I haven't finished the book yet. Maybe this is an inside joke.

It's kind of fun to read about some of his interviews, like his early one with Gore Vidal, that didn't go so well. He usually sounds so prepared and put-together on the radio, it's quite amazing. Also he manages to make the book, at least in the first part I've read before he meets his wife, a little bit spicy! I was surprised.

Summer of the Great-Grandmother, by Madeleine L'Engle

2007-10-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

I wish I could still find a graphic of the cover art for the edition of this book that I have.
I store my letter that I got from Madeleine in 1990, in my copy of this book. My mom died in 1990 but the letter is dated several months after that.
This book overall was very comforting -- as I think I started reading it at some point when my mom was sick and perhaps after she had moved home with us.
L'Engle talks in this book about what it was like to spend her mother's last summer, with her in their house at Crosswicks, with all the generations - grandchildren, etc.

She writes about the mom she knew, and what she knows about her mom's life before she was born, and how the two differ, and about how hard it was for her when her mom sometimes seemed to be there, and be her mom, and sometimes was somewhere else. (Her mother was declining due to Alzheimer's).

The Severed Wasp, by Madeleine L'Engle

2007-10-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

I was also reading my beloved copy of "The Summer of the Great Grandmother" this week and also decided to check this out from the library, because I wasn't sure if I had read it or not.

Much (all) of the present storyline of the book takes place in New York, in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I know that she actually spent time at the library of this cathedral - Kati and Kari and I had always wanted to bump into her on the grounds, and we're sad now, that that is never going to be possible.

It's interesting that in these couple weeks where I seem to be quite present for my teen self (doing the focus groups, promoting Pat's "middle grades" book, thinking about what I was doing during these teen years) -- that I read this book and will be reading "Wild Girls".
This book, although an adult novel, has a lot of teens and children being mentored and encouraged to develop their talents (both in Katherine's past and present). Katherine Vigneras, the distinguished pianist who is the main character, becomes a teacher/mentor for a young girl who finds she is a good composer (she loses her ability to practice her main talent, dancing, because of a tragic accident).

Yolande, a former pop singer, teaches another young girl who has a singing gift.
And really there is a good mystery here, but on top of that is just feeling like I'm spending some time hanging out with Madeleine L'Engle. You feel that L'Engle herself, as a famous author living in NY, may have dealt with some of the prank calls and other trappings of fame, that Katherine does in the book.
And then in Pat Murphy's "Wild Girls" -- we have a charismatic writing teacher who brings out the talents of Joan and Fox...

PBS Once Upon a Time show on YouTube and elsewhere

2007-10-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

On YouTube and at the link above, there are actually people talking about the PBS Show Once Upon a Time. I found this by googling Kerfumbly after nostalgically looking at the "Teeny Little Super Guy" videos from Sesame Street.

This was one of my favorite shows but i usually mainly ended up watching it when home sick I think because it came on during the day.

The person who made the site above wrote the following - they watched the show on South Dakota Public TV - I watched it on Praire Public Television (North Dakota). I wonder why North Dakota's was not called by the name of the state also.

"It was produced by NPTV (Nebraska Public Television). Actually the Nebraska Department of Education had a hand in it, and it was produced at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. The story revolved around this librarian named Marian that had been kidnapped by a witch named Kerfumbly. Kerfumbly demanded a story every day, and Marian would put ingredients into a machine and out would come a book with a story containing elements of all the things she had fed into the machine, and Marian would read the story to us (and the witch).

Chronicling some reading on Facebook

2007-10-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

I am also chronicling the "what I am reading right this minute" on Facebook's iRead.

And I started a group for Pat's Wild Girls book - see on profile.

Haven't posted here much at all since earlier this year, though.

The Falling Woman, by Pat Murphy

2007-10-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

I am resurrecting my blogging habit here since I'm also keeping my iRead app on Facebook updated.
This is Pat's Nebula-winning novel -- it's been often described as more mystic realism than science fiction, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I could not remember for sure if I had read this already or not. There is some sort of parental abandonment/early loss thread that is certainly present here (although it doesn't speak to me as resoundly as "The City, Not Long After" does.
Here Elizabeth leaves her daughter Diane to go off and be an archeologist.

In "The City" Jax's mom actually does die, but her spirit still seems present in San Francisco, and it appears that in "The Wild Girls" -- Fox's mom inexplicably leaves her and her dad. Fox believes that her mom must have turned into a fox.

PRETTY CHICKEN

2007-01-06T11:30:00.001-08:00

This is my dad reciting a poem that his grandmother used to recite by heart. I'm testing how this works for me to suddenly choose to post it to my blog after seeing it.

I really like how he's sitting in the rocking chair and ends up rocking back and forth as he gets into the reading.

Also see in the background our mantel and fireplace in the house in Valley City, ND. The picture above the fireplace is one my parents have had for a long time. The smaller pictures underneath are of us, my Grandpa, etc. There's also a really cool small heavy bell that is on the mantel but can't be seen here.

To the right of my dad's head is part of an Ederstrom painting of a grain elevator.

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld

2006-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to an interview with Curtis Sittenfeld, while sitting in the library writing on my work laptop. Curtis is about 2 years younger than me, since she won a Seventeen short story contest in 1992 when she was 16.

This title is a very ironic title, but I bought this book on the day that Dave proposed to me, which was a bit bizarre.
We were in Mendocino shopping at a bookstore and I saw the book - it is her 2nd novel after her debut, Prep, about a girl from Ohio who goes to an East Coast prep school.
So I bought it, but Dave thought I already suspected that he was going to propose that night and that's why I picked it. I didn't even think about the title of the book until after Dave had proposed and he pointed this out.

The Christmas weekend was very romantic and I already wrote about it in a more private journal.
But this book is really awesome, the character has a lot of similarities to me in having low self-esteem, not believing that the words "Hannah's boyfriend" are real. (she feels like it is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp).

And Curtis apparently is constantly having the reporter question of whether or not the events in Prep and in this book are autobiographical. She basically points out that now that the two characters are out, there are a lot of differences between them so they can't both be autobiographical...
(Oh she is saying in the interview that Ethan Canin, who is a doctor and a alumnus of the Iowa Writers Program, was one of her teachers in graduate school there in Iowa).

Curtis is a Stanford English major grad also, and there are various scenes in this book, especially in the college years, where I see a lot of stuff coming from my memories of Stanford (Hannah doesn't go to a cappella and improv shows as a freshman because she thinks they're kind of stupid, but then realizes all the bonding and socializing happening at these shows).
Also Hannah didn't like eating alone in the cafeteria and has a very similar relationship with her therapist - she has this idealized notion of the therapist's normal life which is similar to mine.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón

2006-11-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Buy On Amazon!
A summary from the Amazon site below. This book has the clearest timeline I've ever seen of the events on 9/11, and an easy to understand view of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission's report.
It's interesting in light of Rumsfeld's quote that so few understand the war in Iraq. Perhaps Jacobson and Colón should bring out a second book directly about Iraq, too.

"On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government’s fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission's investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn." - Amazon review excerpt

The Riddle of the Wren by Charles de Lint

2006-11-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Buy on Amazon!

I seem to be on a "first novel" kick - both writing and reading. This is Charles de Lint's first novel, which has been out of print for a while. de Lint says in the author notes that this isn't the first book he wrote, but the first book he started, and that he had written seven different versions of it.
Like Pat Murphy's The Shadow Hunter, it was reprinted several years after its first publication as a hardcover limited edition, and he was "pleased to find it in the seeds of themes he's still exploring in my work to this day."

I really was impressed by the depth of the world he created - language, race names (erlkin, etc) travelling between worlds by tracing symbols on henge stones - it reads like it is a book in a long-established series.
And the main character's journey to really find out who she is and how she's supposed to accomplish what seems to be an impossible quest, resonates with me as well.
Also, when browsing around on his site and that of his wife, Maryann Harris, I found this account of how they met (it's the foreword to a collection of the yearly Christmas stories that he writes for her each year). It seems so random that people so compatible meet so randomly.

ASJA meeting at Mechanics Inst

2006-11-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

Pat invited me to a meeting of the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) - we're both not members but we shelled out $10 for the privilege of hearing two senior editors at two San Francisco publishing houses (unnamed here) reveal how writers can make use of new information and technologies on their route to successfully publishing, and publicizing, their books.

Pat's take on the evening as a whole was that they were making the situation seem a bit too rosy - it might be easier to publish as writers these days but definitely not easy to make a living. They had proposed that writers hire their own publicists at a relatively high cost to fill in the gaps left by the publisher's publicist when they move on to the next book. This sounds like a good idea but in practice not very feasible - sounds like it eats up the advance for the book quickly.

However - the meeting was interesting and was held in the Mechanics Institute, a very beautiful and historical building in SF on Post near Mont. BART. We went down the staircase pictured above, and peered into the library windows on each floor. It looks awesome and the library was open, but we needed member key cards to get in.

Clinton: Don't Let the Perfect become the Enemy of the Good

2006-11-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

I went to a rally for Prop 87, which establishes a $4 billion program to reduce oil and gasoline usage by 25 percent, with research and production incentives for alternative energy, education and training, funded by a tax of 1.5-6 percent on producers of oil extracted in California. (And here's a link to the Forum show about the prop, and thanks to Forum for the concise summary of prop87, cut and pasted above).
Bill Clinton was the star attraction - so much so that when the rally was asked, "What are we here for?" many yelled back "Bill!".
He was very smart, the speech just went from point to point flawlessly and of course he is a master of the art of making everyone feel like he is speaking to each of them.
It was just amazing to actually see him in person - I was relatively close to the stage, and he was the first President I ever voted for (in 1992 when I was 18).

Don't Let the Perfect become the enemy of the good - that the opponents say the proposition is bad because it's not perfect. No, it's not perfect but it certainly seems like it will be better than what we have now. He pointed out that people have been using this argument to impede change for 600 years and that Californians shouldn't fall for it now.

Mikebaudio, who I found on Flickr, was there also and took much better pictures than I did. He took the above picture of Clinton and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, and here is Bonnie Raitt, who sang "Something's Happening Here" - the acoustics were great for those there live but the little movie I made of her sounds very muddy.
Below is a view of City Hall that I took. Note the blurriness of the Treo, I had forgotten the real digital camera, The view is looking up from where I was standing. It was very beautiful. Apparently this was a big day for Clinton, he went to another rally in SF after this one, and then went to Stockton!

Cruel Tutelage by Monkey - song lyrics and dancing

2006-10-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

MONKEY! I'm dating this post on the night we went to the Monkey show, but actually writing it a week later when we received the CD I ordered from Asian Man Records (buy it, it's $10 including shipping!)

It's very fun to finally hear the lyrics more clearly than we could hear them in the club show. - especially "Trailer Park Love" - "If she don't get flowers, she'll burn off your pants."

So far my favorite songs are "You Don't Know" and "Would You Wanna?" It's pretty cool that we actually know two members of this band which has been chugging along making this music for ten years already.
Oh and also after listening to the album a couple more times, I have the line "Give me the head of the head of the radio station" from "Voice of America," constantly running through my head.

Too Late to Die Young by Harriet McBryde Johnson

2006-10-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

Another book bought on Oct 25, this one at Modern Times bookstore.

She opens the book by telling us about what it was like for her, growing up with a congenital neuromuscular disease, and then having to watch the Jerry Lewis telethons every year, talking about all the children with muscular dystrophy who were surely going to die (even with the help Jerry was asking for).
Her parents had tried to say, for example, that the boy they talked about on the telethon who had died had some sort of other muscular dystrophy, the kind that kills people (similar to mom trying to tell us her cancer was not the kind that was so harmful).
It just sounds very hard to grow up as a kid - but she did grow up, outside of most expectations, and now has been protesting against Jerry's telethon's regularly for years, and working as a practicing lawyer (and author!) in Charleston, SC.

The other big point she makes here is the "false necessity" of the nursing home and other care centers for the disabled. She is arguing for increased aid for those who need it, so that they can have caregivers in their homes. It sounds like having a small team of trusted people to help with things that she can't do alone, must be cheaper than a nursing home, especially since she can keep working as a lawyer to fund this team.
At one point in the book she falls out of her wheelchair and has to unexpectedly go to the hospital in a town she doesn't know. There's a very real danger that she could fall into needing a nursing home, since the hospital won't take care of her for as long, and she wasn't able to physically get home to be near her team.

And the book is not all policy and argument, by any means, although she loves to talk.
It's also mostly funny. She gets a whole lot of butts out of her face in the crowd at the Democratic Convention, (they end up building a little cage around her to keep people away) and it made me think of how crushed I feel in a crowd, just being short.
She writes also of the joys of zooming along in her power chair on her way to the courthouse in Charleston, and just generally living life, a life that she didn't think she would have this long. She keeps thinking throughout her childhood and adolescence, "Well, I'm not going to live that long, but when I die, I might as well die educated," for example, or "I might as well die a lawyer"...

She just wrote a YA novel about two girls at a "crip" summer camp, which also looks quite good.

The Shadow Hunter by Pat Murphy

2006-10-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!
I also found this book at Borderlands on Oct 25 along with "Green Glass Sea" - an autographed copy of the 2nd edition of Pat's first novel!
I think I had never read this before - it's very interesting in that she wrote the book in 1982 (on a typewriter as she points out in the intro) and then went back into the story in 2002 to "update her future" - adding things like cell phones and such that are now prevalent but were pretty uncommon or not invented in 1982.
It's an interesting meta-time machine right there - the character of the Neanderthal boy in the book is brought forward into an utopian world created by a scientist (reminded me a bit of the Jurassic Park island) and then the 2002 version of Pat goes and reframes the future to fit the new future.
(She compared this a bit to trying to fix just one thing in a kitchen - you end up wanting to redo the whole thing).

I liked the book and Pat's ability to put us in these different worlds and minds, even in the 27-year-old "promising young writer" version of herself, as she put it.

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

2006-10-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

I completely loved this book - I think I was one of the first to buy it at Borderlands on Valencia in SF as they hadn't yet put it out on the shelves and I had brought up the postcard to them, asking "Do you have this here yet?"
Then I took it home and read it all afternoon. I was sad when I was done just because the main character, Dewey is such a great character - had I read it when I was younger or if I read any slower, I would be able to live with the character longer.
The story is about Dewey and Suze, two girls growing up at the Los Alamos site, in the midst of all the top scientific minds building the bomb. Dewey gets to talk to Nels Bohr just randomly on the street for an hour about her scientific projects, for example.

From the very beginning, where Dewey is coming on the train to New Mexico but she doesn't know where exactly she's going because of the secrecy around the war, I was hooked in. Details like her experience of the sleeper seats and the observation car reminded me of our trip across Canada in 1987 from Banff to Vancouver.
Anyway, I won't go on any longer about it. It's an awesome book, for everyone (not just for kids). I'm happy for once that we eavesdropped on Ellen as she sat behind us at the Neil Gaiman event, otherwise I might not have known about her (unless PM happened to tell me).

Best American Non-Required Reading 2005

2006-10-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

Foreword by Mr. Eggers, with much stuff about 826 Valencia and the people who were on the editorial board for the book (more interesting to me now that I am trying to be on the editorial board for the 826 Quarterly) and Intro by Beck.
A lot of great stuff here - I recommend it - I liked "The Death of Mustango Salvajie" by Jessica Anthony, about a female bullfighter. And Al Franken has a piece here about his USO Tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, called "Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs".

It was also fun to read in combo with "Firebirds" and "The Green Glass Sea" and thinking about writing for teens/young adults in general.

Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology

2006-10-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

This is a book to benefit the Save the Children foundation for tsunami relief -- a very interesting anthology of science fiction and fantasy, and for a good cause (although I checked it out from the library).

To remember the favorites:
"Report from the Near Future: Crystallization" - this was a pretty scary account of a humongous traffic snarl in LA that would clog up the entire region. Triggered by just a few seemingly small events. Seems like a little too close to reality for comfort, but very well done.

"Tough Love: 3001" by Juliet Marillier
The author had just run a writing critique group where she learned that "no amount of literary technique is going to make a person a good writer."
This story was very entertaining because the participants in the group were all aliens who chose pseudonyms of famous writers, and the one who decided to call himself Gaiman was the coolest.
and "Sea Air" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, about a boy who realizes he's meant to be of a different race entirely - even though he's always been afraid of the ocean, he eventually rejoins his family in the sea. (this is like several other stories I vaguely remember. It seems very Lovecraft).

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

2006-10-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

I love Anne Tyler. When I was reading this it was during a time when I was thinking about a supergroup salon of wise women - Anne Tyler, Nora Ephron, my therapist, and PM of course.
I always forget how much I like Anne Tyler's work - I don't think about it that much, but when I see a new book I always pick it up and I'm surprised and pleased.

This book opens with what seems to be a purely coincidental event - two families congregating at the Baltimore airport to welcome Korean orphans that they are adopting.
This chance meeting of these families at this pivotal point in their lives becomes an event they mark every year, highlighting their cultural differences and characters as Tyler moves around in perspective throughout the book. We're in Maryam's world (the matriarch of the Iranian-American side) for most of the book, but it was so cool to have a book starting with one of the characters as an infant (Jin-Ho, arriving from Korea) and then later in the book we get a couple chapters from her POV as a young child. What do all these well-drawn family members look like, to this newest addition to the family?

Liz Hickok - San Francisco in Jello

2006-10-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

We are now the proud caretakers of this print - from Liz Hickok's series where she creates San Francisco out of Jello and photographs the results!

All thanks to Leo and his "Take care of my stuff, I am going to Japan!" party, and to Birk, who noticed the picture on the wall going up the stairs and commented that it was Jello!

I had heard of Liz Hickok already and am fascinated by her work, but I had just been too focused on getting up and down the stairs without falling to look to the side and notice the pictures.

Pedro and Me by Judd Winick

2006-10-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!

This is a very moving graphic novel by Judd Winick, Pedro Zamora's roommate in the infamous Real World San Francisco house and good friend. Some parts were a little hard to read, thinking of Mom especially in the hospital scenes around Pedro's bed (They were all there when he passed away, friends, family, everybody). I read it really quickly a few weeks ago but it hit me pretty hard at the time. Dave read it also and no longer disses Judd anymore.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

2006-10-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

This story is what happened when us war babies grew up and needed answers. When we got them, they weren’t what we expected at all.

Set in 1950s London, this book begins when Penelope is invited to impulsively share a cab with Charlotte, a stranger who sees her standing at the bus stop. She also gets invited to tea, which she accepts because she muses that if this were the beginning of a book, she has already started it off by getting in the cab - not going to the tea would cut off the story in the beginning.
I liked the characters and the first person perspective - I won't blither on more about the story itself, but this is a book that looks and feels like a frothy "chick lit" book on the outside, but has some real substance when you get into it. (Very like Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld).
It's also a treat to see the beginnings of the rock era in England - Johnnie Ray is the hottest thing ever to these girls. But Penelope's uncle from America has brought over some 45s and pictures of Elvis, soon to conquer everywhere in the next year.
Buy on Amazon!

Hot Ticket!?!

2006-10-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Kari and I were talking about the Khaled Hosseini reading and I told her about the gaggles of high school girls taking pictures of him after the reading with their cell phones. She asked if he was Hot. I said, yes, I think he is.
She had to unexpectedly have a day off this week due to testing snafus, and the bonus was that Barack Obama was on Oprah that day.
I mentioned that Obama and Hosseini could run for office, and Kari put in that they could run as the "Hot Ticket!" Kari is volunteering to be their campaign manager.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2006-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

I went to the Khaled Hosseini event for One Book One County (San Mateo Reads) event, today at San Mateo Performing Arts center. I had loved this book, The Kite Runner, although it was so emotional and disturbing that both Kari and I are not sure if we would want to re-read it again soon.

Dr. Hosseini was asked at the end of the night whether he thought that "the pen is mightier than the sword" and whether his work would help to bring peace to Afghanistan.
He said he had no hopes of that, but that part of fiction writing is talking about the kinds of things that people don't want to talk about, but that they know to be true. For example, the Pashtun/Hazara prejudices he writes about in the novel - he's been criticized by other Afghans for "bringing out their dirty laundry."

Buy on Amazon!

Blankets by Craig Thompson

2006-10-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to read this for a while and just saw it in the graphic novel section of the San Mateo Public Library (hidden away upstairs in the teen/YA section there are DVDs, manga, graphic novels, plus a coffee stand!) - Sidebar, it feels completely sinful to wander around in a !library! with a steaming cup of hot coffee. But no signs against it!

I read the entire book one night while my partner was at a sleep center study. It was awesome. Set in Wisconsin, mostly in the winter, it begins with Craig and his brother as little boys, they share a bed, fight, and draw on large pieces of computer paper (this is pictured in the acknowledgements to thank their dad's friend who gave it to them. It was dot matrix computer paper, connected together with the holes on the edges, which I remember my dad bringing home from work when I was little).
They also challenge each other to walk on top of the crusty frozen snow without falling in, I remember this vividly from growing up in ND.

Craig eventually meets Raina, at a Christian summer camp and falls in love - she gives him a handmade quilt (more blankets!).
She is beautiful and hangs out with both the geeks and the popular people - unbellievable to Craig.

On BART the other day I was looking in the reflection of the window at the cell phone screen that an older gentleman ahead of me was looking at. I realized how common this practice probably is (the voyeuristic looking at people in reflections) but how awkward it is to describe.
An example of the kind of detail in this book is that Craig and Raina are shown looking at each other through the reflections in the windows of her dad's car when her dad is driving them home.
Look at all the words to show that but in the book it was one panel and it said it all. (Craig was in the back seat of the family minivan and so this was the best way for him to see her).
Buy on Amazon!

Factoring Humanity by Robert J. Sawyer, and YouTube

2006-10-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been checking out a lot of Robert B. Sawyer's books from the library - this is the latest.

There's a lot here in the plot to try to summarize (and it's probably summarized best on Sawyer's site) but I'm thinking about it in conjunction with YouTube because of the descriptions of a "human overmind" in the book.

Heather Davis, a psychologist, has been trying to decipher a set of radio messages from our neighbors in Alpha Centauri (yeah, this is kind of like Contact, isn't it.)
They turn out to be the plans for building a Hypercube, a four-dimensional cube, also often called a tesseract.
(Sidebar - I remember how amazed I was when I first read the word tesseract somewhere other than in Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. I naiively thought she had made up the word, so it was quite mindblowing to think that at least the concept existed, if not the mode of travel used in the book).

And Heather eventually gets this device built (its first form is as an unfolded hypercube that only stays rigid while under sunlight). After she gets inside one of the cubes, it folds itself up, disappears, and Heather inside can actually see and access the "overmind" of all humanity - "Neckering" or linking to different people through each other.

Kind of uber six degrees of separation, as she finds her husband's mind by first finding the prime minister of Canada and then working her way back down.
It's really a mind-blowing concept, but especially the way Sawyer describes it, with Heather getting caught up in historical figures' minds, etc, not all that different from websearching in process, but amazing to think of actually being able to look out through someone else's eyes and know what they're thinking (and all they have thought about before).

And then I came back to the computer, where YouTube was up (I was looking at a WoW machima movie earlier).
On one of the popular lists I find this series of videos from a man named Martin, who apparently has now passed away (the most recent video is from his wife).
I hadn't thought of YouTube as much as a "video journal" or archive medium, on top of all the Steven Colbert clips, but this really makes it an accessible (buy cheap webcam, get youTube account and net access) venue for people to tell their stories (and get them heard by more potential viewers in a more immediate way than even blogging does)

The end of the book calls out more hopeful uses for the overmind - Heather ends up being the ambassador for the human overmind when the Alpha Centauri overmind comes calling, which leads overall to greater peace in the world, less selfishness, etc. (Why would the human race as a whole feel empathy or a sense of community if it thinks humans are the only ones in the universe...)
There's so much dreck in YouTube that I'm definitely not saying that it's the path to all human understanding, but certainly it is contributing to the "small world" feeling.
I just did a search for Iraqi videos on YouTube. It appears most are being made by Americans in Iraq, instead of Iraqis themselves or else they are just spoofs.... but here's a kid singing.

Buy on Amazon!

Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea

2006-10-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

Here's an interview she did before writing this book and here is the SF Chron's very long review.
Although this is set in a dilapidated town on the East Coast instead of in ND, and Trisha's family is way less dysfunctional than mine was, much of this is resonating with me - especially the "in crowd" clique, constantly concerned with fashion, shopping, and the mall, which Trisha ends up pretending to be part of in order to get a job at "Omigod!" which apparently is the trendiest spot to the clique.
I don't know, I can't really do it justice in this space. I now want to go read the rest of her stuff too, instead of just hovering in the bookstore and voyeuristically paging through Rent Girl, for example. This is her first actual fiction book, and looking at the Amazon blurbs, it amazed me that the whole book took place over the course of one day.
It just kind of washed over me in a rush and I wasn't really thinking about how quick the timespan was...

Buy on Amazon!
And she is going to be moderating a panel at the Women on Writing conference in March again this year.

Firebirds, edited by Sharyn November

2006-10-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

Buy on Amazon!.
I originally became interested in this book because I evesdropped on Ellen Klages at the Neil Gaiman reading and found that she has a story in the new Firebirds anthology (Firebirds Rising) - which is her famous story about the girl raised by "feral librarians" (DZ overheard her mention this story which is why he perked up my ears too, normally we are not so nosy... ha ha).

But the new book is still "in processing" at the San Mateo library system so it may be a while before I can get a copy. I think this means that all the librarians are passing it around to read before they release it to the general public!

The editor of this book is Sharyn November (who I really want to meet after reading through her site - I'm not sure if I would be able to ask people who know me to describe me as she has), and also a motherless daughter whose page about her mother has inspired me). Plus, the Firebird imprint is also responsible for Pat's "The City" coming out in paperback finally.

I am just going to list the stories and authors that I really liked, with short blurbs about them so I can remember to go back and get their other works:

* The Baby in the Night Deposit Box - by Megan Whalen Turner. Best described almost as a girl raised by "feral bankers" - a baby is deposited into a bank and grows up there safe from the clutches of her evil aunt, until the evil aunt comes to make her withdrawal. This was so hilarious and sweetly odd that I told it to dz in the hot tub, and he actually listened to the whole thing.
I got all excited looking at the author bio which said she lives in Menlo Park but curses, she has moved to Ohio!

* Mariposa by Nancy Springer - really great story of a woman who has lost her soul (quite literally - it's a physical object in this world and she's about to get an artificial one put in, like plastic surgery). She decides to try to find it first, and returns to her childhood home and her mom and grandmother (who have certainly found their souls already or not lost them) to see if she's left it there.

* Medusa by Michael Cadnum - good to get the story from Medusa's perspective for once! As he said in the Author's Note, she couldn't always have been such a terrible creature.
Also note that he has a book out about the Vikings: Daughter of the Wind.

* The Black Fox - adaptation of trad. ballad by Emma Bull and illustrations by Charles Vess
Very nice to have a mini-comic story from Charles Vess here in the anthology

* Hope Chest by Garth Nix - a train pulls out of the station in a sleepy little town, leaving a large steamer trunk precariously balanced on the edge of the platform, with a little baby swaddled in a pink blanket on top. Of course the townspeople save her before she can fall, finding a note that reads, "Alice May Susan, born on the Summer Solstice, 1921. Look after her and she'll look after you."
And she does.

* Little Dot by Diana Wynne Jones - from the cat's point of view, about "her human" (a wizard, apparently) and also has a very interesting mobile hen-house type contraption that the cat can actually use to fly around the yard and the house with.
I am surprised I haven't yet read anything else by Diana Wynne Jones, she seems really quite awesome, and she wrote Howl's Moving Castle.

* Flotsam by Nina Kariki Hoffman
Jeff meets a young alien named Poppy at the basketball court, who needs to get back home (and looks human enough to pass until he tries to talk...). She also wrote a book recently called Catalyst which has first contact themes as well, but not the same characters or world.

Sidebar - we just watched Star Trek: First Contact last night on DVR - which I find fascinating because the 2063 year that they travel back to, the year of first warp drive and first contact, is not that far away. They can now shield microwaves using a "invisibility" cloaking device. Not far to visible light...

* Cotillion by Delia Sherman - I can't succinctly summarize this at all but to remember it - ball, faery world, Valentine brought back to human form by girl (and lots of cool music played on old instruments). This is the story of Tam Lin, btw, I am cribbing from a review elsewhere to remember that.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, by Neil Gaiman

2006-10-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Fragile Things: Buy on Amazon

I just finished this a couple days ago and it is very wondrous indeed. It's been inspiring me to write more stuff of my own and just imagine (for example, the butternut squash that was sitting on our countertop for several days started to assume a sinister aspect in my mind - is it a visitor from the fairy world? An alien? Why aren't we eating it? What's up with that?).
Dave did bake it up yesterday and made a soup of it, it was delicious and hasn't harmed us (yet).

I'm not going to say anything about the stories themselves as they should be a surprise and Dave hasn't finished the book yet. Neil has a great intro in the beginning where he talks about each story/poem in the collection - his intro is much better than anything I could do.

Dave and I were lucky to see him reading in Berkeley, Monday, Oct 2. It was a surprise from me to Dave, and he was very surprised, although he had guessed it was Neil Gaiman that morning (of course I did not confirm and remained cagey. It was good that the event was at the Berkeley Rep instead of at Cody's, because I could honestly say when we were driving up there, "No, we're not going to Cody's!")

We didn't get to stand in line for a signing (and so didn't get our copy of Good Omens signed, as well as American Gods, etc) and didn't go to Kepler's the next day for the signing there, but I think it worked out well that we got our pre-signed copy.

FngKestral on Flickr went to both events, here's his/her pictures. The Kepler's event looked like a bit of a madhouse and Gaiman looked much more tired there. The above picture shows him exactly how he looked at the Berkeley reading we went to. We were in the front row!!!

Sitting behind us was Ellen Klages, whom we were eavesdropping on because she mentioned being a Nebula Award finalist. After Dave found out her name, we told her we would read her work, and when I googled her at home we discovered she is a friend of Pat's, and has co-written several of the Exploratorium science books with her and that Ellen has her first novel (The Green Glass Sea) coming out in the next couple weeks. (post to follow on that, although I did order her chapbook story "Time Gypsies" and can write about that). Ellen also has won a Nebula in 2005. I'm planning as well to get the Firebirds Rising anthology from the library, to read Ellen's story about a girl being raised by "feral librarians".

826 Valencia Tutoring Notes

2006-10-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tutoring Esmeralda

I did not write this, but someone doing drop-in tutoring at 826 Valencia last year did, and I think she is describing one of the girls I worked with last Monday (this Monday I had a job interview).

The girl's name is Esmeralda, and I recognize her easily entertained nature, especially about spelling -- in this journal note she laughed and laughed at how she was spelling "butterfly" - "butfly".
When I was helping her (if this is the same person) - she got into a giggling jag when trying to spell Mississippi (she didn't need to do this for her homework, she was being challenged to do it by her friend who was already very adept.)

"Miss-iss-i-pipi (ha ha ha giggle giggle)" I think it was all the "pees" that got her going.

etc...
Until finally she got it - "Miss-iss-ipp - i !"

I just signed up to help some fifth graders come up with stories in their classroom next Wednesday morning, then to go over to Rockridge for my 1:10 appt.

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

2006-04-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Storm of Swords: Buy on Amazon

I can't remember if I have already written about the other books in this series.
This is the third one. I started this off originally by reading Game of Thrones, the first book, in a weekend in order to go to the Kepler's book club on a Sunday night and talk about it.
Pretty crazy.
I do kind of inhale these books even when I am not on a deadline, making it harder to write intelligently about them.
I hated Sansa in the first book but actually really like her now, that is one of the traits of these books, unexpected char and plot development - he has no qualms of killing off any character.
Other favorite people are Arya, Danaerys, Jon Snow, and Samwell Tarly.
I finished this on April 11 and immediately went to get Feast for Crows, the newest book.
In Storm of Swords, at one point I thought 3 main characters had just died. It turned out to be only one of them had died so it was a little less nervewracking.
He does kill off a lot of his characters but many do seem to keep coming back.

Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith

2006-04-03T00:28:00.000-07:00

Very inspirational and chatty book by Anna Deavere Smith, writer, actress, playwright, former Stanford professor and currently teaching at Yale!

Letters to a Young Artist: Buy on Amazon!

She's set the book up so that she is writing a series of letters to a young high school student, a painter named BZ who has "won a mentor" in a contest.
I want to take some notes on some of the memorable bits of advice below as I think I will bookcross this near the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland so that others will have a chance to read it (for free) also.

I actually have met Anna also, briefly when I was working in the office of the Dept of Drama at Stanford (under the incomparable Office Manager and all-around character, Athena, who should be the star of her own short story someday).
Anyway...I had answered the phone for Anna, took messages, put stuff in her mailbox, etc...and eventually got to see her play Twilight: Los Angeles (which is based on the LA riots) on my birthday for free as a comp play!
I had the weirdest experience concerning Anna's "fame" as an actress and also as someone who I actually "knew" - in the summer my sisters and I were driving back to Stanford from North Dakota and we stopped at a theater to see the movie Dave.
ADS is in Dave in a minor role, but still is onscreen for a good while, and I was totally frustrated because I knew I had seen her before and could not remember what other movie she was in.
When I was leaving the theater, it finally hit me.
This is Anna Deavere Smith who I've actually spoken to, in real life! I think this was the first time of just randomly seeing someone in a movie that I had seen first outside of movies and TV.
(I told this story to Karen from work on Friday night and she told a matching, yet opposite, story of seeing this gorgeous guy in the Gucci store, waving to him, and then trying to figure out why she knows him, since he had waved back and said hi. She realized that the guy had been Damon Wayans!)

Anyway.
I never actually took a class from ADS at Stanford, I sat in on her Interviewing class but didn't keep going with it. I think it looked more than a little bit scary and a lot of work. I wish I had taken the class.

This book is really quite inspiring just from its conversational tone - the letters are all one-sided, of course, from ADS to BZ, but she fills in the gaps for the other side, "So you say they're going to tear down your high school's painting studio and put in a biology lab? Fight back!"
and so on.

* Presence - example, Gloria Foster, the Oracle in the Matrix movies. Study photographs to learn about presence.
* "Being in it, and out of it, at the same time" - feeling as others is empathy - more useful and more important than sympathy, which is feeling for others
* confidence - determination sometimes even more important
* self-esteem "Be strong, be new, be you"
* discipline - example of Anna's swimming
* The Man - whoever has the money or whoever has the power to work out the money needed and the venue needed to expose your art - man or woman, etc.
* wow - she was a fat kid? hard to believe! She was terrible at jumping rope and so now is learning to jump rope to break some of those chains (perhaps I should take gymnastics or something...)
* procrastination - "active avoidance" - if she has something to do, she programs herself to do it so quickly that procrastination can't set in
* mentors - are different than teachers because you pick them, you seek them out
* from p. 87:

"I just got a call from my agent saying that there's a job for me on a television show called The West Wing. Have you seen it? It's written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote a movie called The American President, which I am in. And the actor Martin Sheen, whom I adore (and who was also in The American President), is in it. I don't think I'm going to do the show... Do you like it? Have you seen it?"

* From p. 88:

" You're funny! You think I'd be a fool not to do The West Wing?"

* From p. 89:

"My publicist agrees with you, he's saying, "Get on that plane, and go to LA!!!" He says The West Wing is a big hit."

* Lots of advice here about feeling alienated and depressed. BZ apparently was feeling pretty alone at her school as a high school painter.

Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell by Pat Murphy

2006-04-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

"
Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell is about the nature of reality and the nature of identity-and some of the confusions of being a writer. "
-Pat Murphy, from her website.
Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (Buy on Amazon).

This book is just crazy good!
I remember liking it the first time I read it but is even more entertaining now after having met and hung out with Pat a little bit. (This copy was actually a gift from her, given to me at our gamegirls design meeting).

I'm not sure I'll ever again have the experience of reading a book with so many identities, alter egos, pseudonyms, and even characters named directly after the author, all sharing various traits with the author which are very fun to try to puzzle out, during a span of time when I'm actually in communication with the author herself.

In this book we have: a cruise ship, an author on board (Max Merriwell) who writes as two different pseudonyms (Mary Maxwell and Weldon Merrimax). And wait, Pat Murphy (the real one I've met) wrote and published two previous books under these same pseudonyms (Wild Angel by Mary Maxwell and There and Back Again by Max Merriwell).
And even weirder, the pseudonyms appear as real people on the ship as it is passing through the Bermuda Triangle, causing very mysterious events.
There's two women traveling on the ship, Susan, the main protagonist, who is a bit unsure of herself after a divorce and gets a good pep talk on confidence from Mary Maxwell - see below.

Susan is a big fan of both Mary and Max and has some commentary on these books she's reading (She's reading Wild Angel on board), and is traveling with a friend, also named Pat Murphy!
(the fictional Pat Murphy is a young graduate student in physics who is writing the Bad Girls Guide to Physics: and Pat and Susan had met while working at the SF Public Library)

Of course, Pat Murphy (the real author, the one who also works at the Exploratorium and studied biology) actually "collaborated" with the fictional character and put up a real website at the www.badgrrlzguide.com link above. I was really entertained to find this out, I think I didn't bother to check it when I first read the book.
(Apparently the hope was that the Exploratorium would eventually publish a Bad Grrlz Guide to Physics...I'd guess the URL was going to be used for that).

Pat's also provided some entertaining points on differences between real and fictional Pats (fictional is a better pool player, and so on) and includes in the website the recipe for the famous
Flaming Rum Monkey, invented in the novel.

On top of all this, for the price of admission we also get a lot of writing advice (Max is having a writers' workshop on board, saying a few things that I actually remember hearing from Pat when attending a seminar she gave at a conference) plus Clampers and a giant squid!

Here is the conversation between Mary Maxwell and Susan which I am trying to keep in mind when I find I'm losing confidence and/or trust in myself. The other thing that is good to remember at those times is Pat (real Pat) calling me "a force to be reckoned with!"

" Mary was leaning back in her chair, studying Susan's face. 'I think you tell yourself the wrong sort of stories,' Mary said.
'What?' Susan said, startled, but trying to remain relaxed.
'You kick yourself for getting lost. You tell yourself that you don't look good with short hair. You avoid taking the shortcut. Little things, but they all add up. You don't trust yourself at all.'
Susan didn't know what to say. 'I suppose you're right,' she began. 'But...'
Mary held up her hand. 'No buts,' she said firmly. 'You need to learn to trust yourself, to trust your abilities. There are so many possibilities for a woman who knows how to use her imagination.' Mary sipped her drink, still considering Susan.
Susan bit her lip, feeling inadequate. Mary seemed to be taking her on as a sort of project, and Susan wasn't sure how she felt about that. She leaned back in her chair, wondering how she might distract Mary and take her attention off of Susan's shortcomings." (bold type added by me above)

Susan sees Weldon Merrimax at the bar and thus is able to change the subject.
I really see a lot of myself in these comments about Susan. I showed this passage to my therapist because we've been talking a lot about me not being able to take praise very well and being so hard on myself. Also I totally do this same thing when I feel too under the microscope with my therapist, I try to change the subject and start talking about something completely different, even though we're actually there for the express purpose of looking at these kinds of things for me. Must be more than a little frustrating for her.

Hi-Liner Class of 2005 Family Histories

2006-03-28T23:31:00.000-08:00

So I was looking around on the website of my alma mater, Valley City High School, and saw this interesting link to several essays written by Mrs. Wendel's English class on their families' personal histories. (Mrs. Wendel was my 7th Grade English teacher, this is an 11th grade class here).

Since they are public record and out on the web I don't feel any guilt in linking to them and maybe perhaps being inspired by them for other stories. There's a lot of North Dakota grit here just in the first few stories in the As.
I do notice that the habit of starting your essay with a question "Have you ever... " and then "Well I ..." is firmly entrenched in these kids.

Hi-Liner Histories