2011: Later, gator!

Well, 2011 has crept out of my life.  The year was chuggling along smoothly with surprising new reads (I finally hopped on the A Song of Ice and Fire bandwagon and remembered that romance novels aren't quite that bad when I need a reading boost) and surprising talents (I wrote a book - almost done with draft 6 and feeling like I might, just might, let other people read it) when December hit. 

My world shattered into a thousand tiny pieces when my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor December 4.  Things still haven't settled after three weeks of crazy but we are moving forward.  The surgeons did a fantastic resection, Mom is recovering well, and the radiation and chemotherapy schedule is set to start January 4.  The path ahead of her is uncertain but she has good doctors and therapists and we're going to put up one hell of a fight.

In the middle of all this, the poor little book blog gets neglected.  I still haven't caught up with my reviews.  Oops.  Being a reader I was presented with a dilemma.  I could (a) write my reviews (which takes about 30-45 minutes/review depending on what I have to say), (b) read a book, or (c) edit my own book.  It's safe to say that (b) and (c) won out, with (c) taking a bit of an edge because I almost didn't finish the biggest, but simplest, challenge I ever signed up for.

The Goodreads Challenge

I said I would read 100 books this year.  I've wanted to do this for several years now and always fell short.  Goodreads's little challenge seemed well within my reach...until I started writing.  I didn't read a book for weeks unless you count constant re-reads of my own poor manuscript, quibbling over the placement of a "her". 

But I did it.  I read 100 books.  In fact, I read 102 books.  *cue trumpets*

I liked most of what I read (five stars is "amazing", four stars is "I really liked it", three stars is "it was good/ok/readable", two stars is "meh/uninteresting", and one star is "I really wanted to light this on fire" - I have no one star books because those books I usually don't finish reading and don't bother to review most of the time):











According to Goodreads the longest book I read was A Storm of Swords (according to me, I think it was A Dance with Dragons, but that's probably a quibble over format and the ebook format didn't have any pages listed for ASOS so I had to make do with the MM format just to get page counts).  My favorite book this year is either One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Shatter Me, A Game of Thrones (probably that whole series because I went on a serious binge), or The Wierd Sisters.  I never can decide. 

Also, according to Goodreads I read 32,330 pages this year.  Excuse me while I peel my contact lenses out of my dry little eyes.  I actually read faster on my nooks (yes, I said nooks because there are several...pardon me while I go beat down Mr. Collins) - if I don't have to turn a real page then I don't have to move my eyeballs and, somehow, that turns into reading faster.  Craze-balls.

I finally read some Jane Austen off-shoots (thanks to Sourcebooks' wonderful ebook sales during December - JA's birthday month) and remembered that, while I really, really still don't like Austen variations/sequels/straight-up modern re-tellings, I do like clever adaptations (cf: Bridget Jones's Diary and Clueless).  I find that I enjoy stories that use JA as a jumping off point (like A Weekend with Mr. Darcy) rather than one of her novels as a skeleton.  My reading of the collection Jane Austen Made Me Do It added more evidence for that conclusion.

I did some re-reading, too.  I picked up Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks (the NYRB Classics re-issue) and read it aloud to my kitty-boys one evening during a storm.  I pulled out my D'Aulaires (also re-issued by NYRB Classics) when I needed some inspiration from Norse mythology  I turned to Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series (with Eloise and Colin and flowery Regency spies) because Letty and Arabella are good friends in a pinch.  And my beloved Jane bolstered me with Pride and Prejudice when I inclined to insomnia due to worrying over Mom.

Other challenges...well, I sorta failed.  The Booker Challenge?  I had good intentions but barely scratched the surface.  I only read one Newbery book (yet to be reviewed).  Only one Best American.  Boo.  Fail, fail, fail.

My trouble is the writing.  What I read seeps into what I write.  Not a bad thing, necessarily (I generally find that authors who cop to the whole "I couldn't possibly sully my process by reading other people's stuff" attitude have the most ghastly prose), but when one realizes that she has unconsciously appropriated key words and phrases from well-known authors...and those words/phrases are unique to said authors' worldbuilding...one starts to sweat just a little.  And stop reading.  (This is where the romance novels come in...they somehow don't affect the writing and saved my bacon with the Goodreads challenge).

But enough about 2011.  On to 2012!

I, Juan de Pareja

I am woefully behind in my Newbery project!  Only one book this year!  The 1966 winner of the Newbery Medal.

I, Juan de Pareja is the imagined autobiography of real-life painter Juan de Pareja.  Juan was born a slave of mixed-race in seventeenth-century Spain and willed to master painter Diego Velasquez on the death of his mistress, becoming Velasquez's assistant. He was later freed and became a respected painter in his own right (The Calling of St.Matthew is his most famous work, apparently on display at the Prado but I can't get a link for it). 

de Trevino's rendition of Juan (or Juanico, the diminutive used for much of the book) presents him as a an open, good-hearted boy, a good Catholic, and an earnest servant with some self-awareness that he is different from Spanish servants.  As a young man he becomes more aware of his situation as a slave.  Although he does not actively rebel against "the system", there is some feeling of injustice or unfairness in how he can be owned simply for being dark-skinned and born of a woman enslaved. 

The best passages of the book come from Juan's budding fascination with painting and his attempts to learn to paint as Velasquez does although the slavery laws forbid it.  Juan's awe at how Velasquez used light and dark in the paintings, how the colors were mixed, can be shared by the reader.  I don't paint or draw and I felt awestruck just reading the imagined depiction of Velasquez's studio.

This book is not a fast read despite being fairly short.  I think it would be of good use in a unit on slavery to show that the concept was not limited to certain parts of the world and to introduce the historical foundations of racism and slavery.

Now for the vocabulary - there were so many words!  Some are in Spanish or have a religious or historical origin.  Definitely a good book for making word-lists:

laboriously, siesta, sweetmeats, mantilla, mangy, urchin, rosary, melodious, vestments, deceit, maravedis, constricted, cipher, ignominy, conviction (idea, not jail), sullenly, niggardly, coddled egg, morsel, frugal, Damascu paper, capricious, dictated, "Ay de mi", taciturn, fretful, portended, premonition, miser, penury, Romany, subservient, crony, scourged, real (coin), zaguau, prophetic, intuitive, retching, ravenously, "Quien?", pattered, magistrate, tottering, convent, mortars, apprentice, obligated, commissions, taffeta, azure, schemer, copyist, scrivener, dais, vulgar, frivolous, inconspicuously, corpulence, puritanical, parasite, stripling, indefatigable, sanctity, shriven, manumission, slap-dash, departure, jovial, craggy, impetuous, retinue, unguents, encysted, despondency, repentence, temerity, wallowing, miasma, ominously, swart, obeisances, coolly dispassionate, Regent, cosset, meticulous, adulation, communicant, scrupulous, treachery

Whew!

God bless us, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

My family was so thankful this year for one very good reason:

Mom (and yes, that's the hat I started knitting when she was in the SICU).  We got to have her for about six hours today for the Christmas holiday and it was so nice to have her home for a little while - it was the best present of all.  She'll be discharged from rehab on Wednesday!! 


So to quote Tiny Tim:  God bless us, everyone.

'Tis the Season: Are we there, yet?

The bookstore has been batshit crazy as of late.  People have suddenly remembered THEY NEED TO BUY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS and RIGHT NOW!  Which is a) a good thing for business, but b) kindergarten rules apply at the bookstore:

1.  If you (as a customer) see me (a bookseller) woking with another customer (showing him/her books, listening as the customer describes what he/she is looking for, looking something up on the computer while said customer looks over my shoulder, etc) DO NOT butt into the bookseller-customer conversation by saying "I just have a question."  Congratulations, so does the person I am currently helping.  Now you look like an inconsiderate jerk and makes me not want to help you at all.  The only exceptions are emergencies like "Call 911!", "I think there's a fire!", "I'm having a heart attack!", or "I lost my child!"  Trust me - I, and my fellow booksellers, will drop everything to help you in those situations.  Your need to find Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible does not constitute an emergency.

2.  Remember having to line up to go to the lunchroom?  The same principles apply to queue lines during Christmas (or any time of the year, really, and are totally not limited to bookstores).  Line-jumping because you are "in a hurry" only gets you redirected to the back of the line.  Pretty sure the people who lined up politely are also "in a hurry" but will be put-out because you budged in front of them.  And some of those polite customers are vocal if you do!

For the chuckles, some random gems from the season:

• "I need a copy of Wine Spectacular."  (How about Wine Spectator?)
• "Does the Elf on the Shelf come with the shelf?"  (Er, no.)
• Related:  "Elf on the Shelf looks like it was resurrected from my Grandma's garage sale." (I completely agree...tacky and creepy...yet, I must sell them, boo.)
• "Do you sell Wal-mart gift cards?"  (No, Wal-mart's up the road.)
• "Do you sell Amazon gift cards?"  (This one always tempts me to just be really rude.)
• "Do you have my class textbooks?"  (It was finals last week.  Some college student just assumed we would have copies of her $300 economics textbook on hand for her to use.  Because we're the library, donchaknow.)
• "I need the book for the TV show."  (For serious, which TV show?  Game of Thrones?  The Walking Dead?  Simpsons?  Mad Men?  Downton Abbey?)
• "Do you have books about South Carolina ghost stories?"  (Says the customer with the "Shop Locally" button from the Chamber of Commerce; dudes, we are in IOWA...unless you want Flannery O'Connor, which is about as close as I can come with on-hand stock, we have to get that from one of the stores in South Carolina.  It took nearly 10 minutes for me to convince her that paying for the item in store and having it shipped directly to the recipient from our warehouse was equivalent to "Shopping Locally".)
• "I need a book for my [insert middle-grade age here] grandson/granddaughter.  He's/She's an advanced reader."  (They're ALL advanced readers, every single one of them, yet when I actually get books that would be high school level - which is the level claimed - for a fifth grader those are always "too hard"; be honest with yourself and pick out something the child will actually read.)
• "Do you have an abridged version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?"  (Considering thsi is a children's book, written around a 4th grade reading level...no...but I do have a Sparknotes if you'd like that instead.)
• "I want the English translation of Romeo and Juliet for my daughter in high school."  (Must. Control. Fist. Of. Death.  Please, take this No Fear Shakespeare edition and run before the literature snob comes bursting out of my chest to hurl vitriol at you.)
• "Do you sell athletic socks?" (Not yet.)
• "Do you have The Self?" (This was a toughie...after going around and around with some questions, I figured out she wanted The Help.)
• "Do you have the book I Killed Lincoln?"  (Close...so very close....)
• "This book is too long."  (It's George RR Martin, what did you expect?  We've only been waiting for YEARS for it.  Also, this was said about the new Stephen King...nothing out of the ordinary there, either.)
• "This book doesn't have a Lexile score."  (Take it up with Lexile - and then tell your child's teacher to stop relying on a computerized system that downgrades Hemingway because he uses short sentences and won't score books in blank verse because the computer can't "analyze" them.)

Bonus:  Overhead at the hospital on Hanukkah:  "That's a mariachi band - it has an accordion." (No, that's a klezmer band - accordions are not exclusive to South of the Border.)

Gratuitous Cat Picture Friday (6): Stuck on you

Poor Dante.  He's so staticky right now - rolling around on the floor caused all the paper bits from punching my own gift tags to stick to him (there're lots more on his tummy but he wouldn't let me take a picture).

Surprises from my Secret Santa!

I received my Secret Santa package about a week ago but I've been really remiss in blogging about it (particularly as I would remember while at work and had no picture of what I actually received).

Well, my SS was Jill of Book, Books Everywhere and just look what was in my package!





Talk about getting spoiled!  I almost cried when I opened the box.  She sent EL Doctorow's Ragtime (something I keep thinking I have then get home and realize I don't have it), Tasha Alexander's And Only to Deceive (my SIL says those are good), Richard Paul Evan's The Christmas List, and Patricia Miller Mauro's Safe from the Past AND chocolate (yum, yum).  Thanks so much, Jill!  This December has been hard, what with Mom's diagnosis and surgery and all (she's doing so well, we're all so thankful), so a lovely box of Christmas cheer and book love was just what I needed. 

Thank you many times!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sourcebooks is the place for goodies on JA's birthday!

In honor of Jane Austen's birthday (December 16) Sourcebooks is offering the ebook editions of Darcy-inspired fiction for $1.99! 

There's a "Darcy for everyone":

Darcy and Fitzwilliam
A Darcy Christmas
The Darcys and the Bingleys
Darcy's Voyage
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star
The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice
Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy
Mr. Darcy Goes Overboard
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre
The Pemberley Chronicles
Pemberley Ranch
Searching for Pemberley
The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy

I picked up Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star, The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice, Searching for Pemberley, and Weekend with Mr. Darcy (not listed on the Sourcebooks page but found for $1.99 when I ran "sourcebooks+darcy" into the B&N search engine).  I find that I enjoy the Austen-inspired stuff more when they use the works for inspriation as opposed to writing "sequels" or "variations" with the original characters and settings.

The special pricing runs through December 30 so get 'em while they're hot!

(I also picked up Penguin's Holiday eSampler for free...just in case you're looking for more holiday deals.)

A hat for my mother

I am knitting a hat.

I am knitting a hat using a pattern I like.

I am knitting a hat using a pattern I like out of a yarn I loathe. 

I am knitting a hat using a pattern I like out of a yarn I loathe because I am sitting in the waiting room of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit waiting to go back and see my mother.

I am knitting a hat using a pattern I like out of a yarn I loathe because I am sitting in the waiting room of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit waiting to go back and see my mother because my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor less than a week ago and underwent brain surgery yesterday.

My mother needs a hat.

My mother is allergic to wool.

This yarn is acrylic. I hate acrylic.  It's a royal pain in the ass to cable with and it feels wierd.

But my mother needs a hat when she goes home because it is December in Iowa.  It is cold and I don't want her head to be cold. 

It took two hours of searching through my stash two days ago trying to find a non-wool yarn because I didn't have time to go to the yarn store.  It took two hours because I was crying so hard I couldn't see.

My mother has one of the best neurosurgeons available.  I know he does great work.  I know he does great work because I work at this hospital.  I know the SICU nurses are the best nurses you could find anywhere.  I know because I have worked with them on some of our research studies.  I know they will take good care of my mother.  I work here and I have made sure she is getting the best care anyone could ever find.  I know all of this and I am scared as hell.

I am wearing my staff ID and pager like a shield.  I slept with my pager last night, a talisman against the phone call in the night.  I work at this hospital and they will take good care of my mother.  They will.  I tell myself that with almost every stitch of this yarn that sticks to my fingers as I knit.  I tell myself this as I struggle to make this inflexible yarn work a C10F or C10B.  Every single stitch of this infernal yarn keeps my mother here.

This yarn is acrylic. I hate acrylic. It's a royal pain in the ass to cable with and it feels wierd, but it is going to be a hat for my mother whether it wants to or not.  When it's a hat, I will find time to go to the yarn store and get some natural-fiber, warm, non-sheep yarn and do the hat over again.

Because my mother needs a hat and she is allergic to wool.  I take a deep breath at the end of each row of stiff stitches and give thanks that my mother has come through surgery with flying colors.  The road ahead is still bumpy, though, and she will need a hat.  Many hats.  As many hats in as many colors as she wants, as fast as I can knit them for her.  Because she's my mommy and I still need my mommy.

So....I am knitting a hat using a pattern I like out of a yarn I loathe because I am sitting in the waiting room of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit waiting to go back and see my mother because my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor less than a week ago and underwent brain surgery yesterday and she will need a hat when she goes home.