Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 162
September 8, 2016
Mini Reviews, Vol. 5 ~ Poe & Kidd
The Unknown Poe, edited by Raymond Foye
I read this for #20BooksOfSummer rather than #RIPXI because I apparently have the philosophy of “Poe for any season.”
Two-thirds of this anthology is some of Poe’s lesser known poetry, some letters, and excerpts from a selection of Poe’s essays. Honestly, the poems were all included in The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe which I already owned, the letters were intriguing, but not enough of them, and the excerpts were tantalizing, but too short. Poe had a sort of unified theory of the universe which can be seen in his fiction, but was more clearly outlined in his letters and essays. The last third of the book is a collection of appreciations by contemporary French writers, most notably Baudelaire. Poe was very big in France, but mostly, it seemed to me, because he was underappreciated by boorish Americans.
I bought this slim little anthology a few years back with a gift card my sister sent me for my birthday/Christmas. It’s a nice addition to my library, but, man, now I really want a collection of Poe’s letters.
Descent into the Depths of the Earth by Paul Kidd
Descent is the second in a trilogy written by Kidd and set in the D&D world of Greyhawk. More specifically, this and a group of other novels that came out from Wizards of the Coast in 2000-2001-ish all contain elements from classic Greyhawk modules of the same names with some other plot built around them. I haven’t read any of the non-Kidd novels because, well, I don’t care all that much about the conceit. It’s the characters that make Kidd’s novels so much fun.
Instead of the usual band of adventurers, we have a grim sentient-hell-hound-wearing ranger, The Justicar, an only slightly larcenous fairy wizard, Escalla, a usually drunk teamster, and a young soldier is only a soldier because he lives in a war zone. There’s a lot humor and the majority of the plot revolves around the machination of the Seeley Court and a murder mystery. To, you know, balance out the dungeon delving.
September 5, 2016
#20BooksOfSummer Wrap-Up & It’s Monday! What Are You Reading
Last year, I tried for 10 Books of Summer and read 7. This year, I shot for 15 and read 12! The improvement was due mostly to sticking to the 20-ish books I’d selected. I’m not very good at sticking to lists and, boy, the last couple of weeks have been tough. I did end up deviating from the list with a weekend of short stories back in July and a nonfiction book the week before last. But all in all, a good summer! Many thanks to Cathy at 746 Books for hosting!
Finished
The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler’s Circle by Arthur J. Magida – REVIEWED
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (I signed up for a class…) – REVIEWED
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters – REVIEWED
Smoke and Mirrors by Mike Costa, Jon Armstrong & Ryan Browne – REVIEWED
Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin – REVIEWED
I Lie for Money: Candid, Outrageous Stories from a Magician’s Misadventures by Steve Spill – REVIEWED
Presto: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette (added 6/9) – REVIEWED
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt – REVIEWED
The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen – REVIEWED
Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle – READ
The Unknown Poe, edited by Raymond Foye – READ
Decent into the Depth of the Earth by Paul Kidd – READ
It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?
I’ll be starting on my RIP XI list in earnest this week with The Seance by Iain Lawrence, From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury, and from Jay’s List of Top 10 Ghost Stories “Smee” by A.M. Burrage. Plus a bit of Harlan Ellison and George R. R. Martin.
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!
September 4, 2016
#ROW80 ~ Sunday Update, 9/4
So, last Sunday night I admitted to Eric that I had no good idea what the “quest” portion of Wicked Witch, Retired should be. I knew there should be a rescue of some sort, but none of my ideas seemed interesting enough. Eric is very good at plot. Over the course of several laps around our neighborhood park, we hashed out character details, some world-building, and most importantly a quest appropriate for a witch who really doesn’t want to be involved. Of course, this meant that not all of the 3672 words in my manuscript still worked. Queue a rewrite. Ultimately, I didn’t really get as much done as I wanted. After the rewrite, I only managed to add about 1000 words. The manuscript is now at 4707.
It also became obvious this week that I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do. Since the Macroeconomics class doesn’t have a near future deadline, I’m going to do half a section a week until I finish the SQL class. That should help. This week frisbee league starts! Which means Tuesday nights are shot. Which means I need to shift to getting important things done (like writing) to earlier in the day.
The past week’s progress is in blue.
Goals
Writing
Wicked Witch, Retired
“One Page” summary – Made some progress here.
First draft – Add 3000 words/week until the end of the round. – Rewrote, added 1000 words.
Personal Growth
Macroeconomic at edX:
Introduction and Basic Concepts
Measures of Economic Performance – Finished 2/4 “learning cycles”.
Real and Nominal Values
Classic & Keynesian Models
Managing Big Data with MySQL at Coursera:
Week 1
Week 3 – Finishing this will be what I’m doing with the rest of my Sunday morning.
Week 4
Week 5
September 3, 2016
Deal Me In, Week 35 ~ “Keeping His Promise”
Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis
What is Deal Me In?
“Keeping His Promise” by Algernon Blackwood
Card picked: Two of Spades – Wild Card!
From: Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, edited by Marvin Kaye
Thoughts: Marriott, a Fourth Year Man at Edinburgh University, needs to study like he’s never studied before. If he doesn’t pass his next exam, his father is going to pull him from University. End of the line. So what happens during the night of the most important cram session ever? An old friend shows up. Marriott hasn’t seen Fields in years, but his friend is obviously in trouble. Marriott does his best to help his thin, shabby, silent, very tired childhood chum by feeding him some snacks (cold scones, stale oatcake, a bit of whiskey) and lending him a bed for the night. Considering the amount of reading Marriott needs to do, he won’t be doing much sleeping. The night passes fairly peacefully. Marriott, only bothered by an occasional pain in his arm, gets his reading done, pausing only to listen to the deep-sleep breathing of his friends. When dawn breaks, Fields is gone. But the sound of his breathing remains. It’s only later that Marriott remembers the schoolboy pledge they made so many years ago…
Sometimes, participating in RIPXI feels a little like cheating. These are the genres I read most of the time. I picked this story last week without thinking about R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril, but this classic ghost story is a great way to kick off the event. And it’s available online too: “Keeping His Promise” by Algernon Blackwood @ Classic Reader!
September 1, 2016
R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril XI
Banner by Abigail Larson
09/01/16, Tempe, AZ – I just turned on the AC, but nevermind. I’ve already been eating chocolate-covered orange marshmallow pumpkins for a couple weeks now and the Spirit Halloween store is open at the mall. It’s September and it’s time for September things.
One of my favorite autumn traditions is R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril. Hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings, it is a blogging celebration of mystery, suspense, thrillers, the gothic, horror and dark fantasy.
Participation involves enjoying stories of every type (novels, short stories, TV, movies, even gaming) and sharing your experiences with others. Imbibe a little peril or a lot.
I’ve been thinking about my reading list for a good week already. I will include:
A more complete list can be found on Riffle. I’ll add links to reviews as time goes on.
August 31, 2016
August Reading Wrap-Up
I’ll have a 15 Books of Summer wrap-up on Friday, but it look like I’ll finish with 12 books read. Which is great! I’m pretty happy with that progress.
In the land of #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks, I felt like I had a better month than I did. I only read 2-ish books from my own shelves and DNFed one. (As a public domain book, I think I’ve acquired The Great God Pan a couple of times.) But! No additions! (Well, aside from Heaven’s Ditch which I won from the fabulous Doing Dewey, but haven’t received yet.)
Finished in August
The Sister Brothers by Patrick deWitt – #ReadMyOwnDamnBook, 15 Books of Summer
The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen – 15 Books of Summer
Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle – 15 Books of Summer
The Unknown Poe by Edgar Allan Poe – #ReadMyOwnDamnBook, 15 Books of Summer
The Bling Ring by Nancy Jo Sales – just a regular ol’ library book
Additions to my Library
None! …yet.
Notes
I am *so* looking forward to autumn books and autumn book challenges.
August 30, 2016
Review ~ The Bling Ring
Meet the Bling Ring: six club-hopping LA teenagers accused of stealing more than $3 million in clothing and jewelry from the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson and other young members of the Hollywood elite-allegedly the most audacious burglary gang in recent history.
Driven by celebrity worship, vanity, and the desire to look and dress like the rich and famous, the Bling Ring made headlines in 2009 for using readily available sources-like Google maps, Facebook and TMZ, to track the comings and goings of their targets. Seven teens were arrested for the crimes, and instantly became tabloid fodder. The world asked-how did the American obsession with celebrity get so out of hand? And why did a band of ostensibly privileged LA teens take such a risk? (via Goodreads)
I.
I am a late edge Gen X-er. I am young enough to have still been in high school when the label “Generation X” became prominent in the early 1990s. I was told that my generation was a cynical bunch of slackers that would never be as successful as our parents. Those were the shoes I was apparently destined to fill when I started college in 1993. Way to inspire optimism, adults!
It’s easy to look at a younger generation and purposefully not understand them. In retrospect, what was taken for laziness in Generation X was caution. We’d spent our childhoods in the mess that was the 70s: huge financial recession, the wake of a divisive war that wasn’t a war, and social changes that led to a rise in divorce rates. Even if your parents stayed together and managed to remain employed, there was still a pervasive tension. As Gen X hit adulthood, we didn’t jump into the world. We slowly and deliberately made our way, doing things our way.
II.
Between October 2008 and August 2009, a group of upper middle class teenagers from Calabasas, CA burglarized famous people. This wasn’t at all on my radar when it happened. I’ve never followed current fame culture. I do have an interest in heists though and I was intrigued when I learned that Sofia Coppola was making a movie based on events. Okay, not enough to see the movie, but I did bookmark the book at the digital library and decided to read it on a whim last week.
Alas, heist is a strong word for what these kids did. Pretty much, they used Google maps to scout the celeb’s houses and looked for easy entrance. Which they generally found. You’d think that really rich people would have kick-ass security systems. Instead they seemed to rely on the fact that their neighborhood (in some cases, gated community) is safe and crime-free. In many cases, the Bling Ring walked in and walked out. The better part of the story, for me, turned out to be the different versions of events that each Ring member told later. Whether misremembered or self-protecting lie, it’s a marvelous case of seven-way he-said she-said.
Nancy Jo Sales originally wrote a long-form article about the Burlar Bunch for Vanity Fair. The Bling Ring is part further story, in light of concluded criminal proceedings, and part explanatory theorizing. Why would these youngsters do this? In most cases, they didn’t need the money. Did they do it because they felt entitled to engage in these celebrity’s lives? Had reality TV made them envious of a certain lifestyle that they didn’t quite have? Did they do it to be famous too?
These are good questions. Unfortunately, Sales tinges her answers with a sort of cherry-picked nostalgia. In her eyes, current culture is to blame; this never happened in the past. I don’t have refuting details at my fingertips, but it seems that the more history I am exposed to, the more I realize that nothing is new.
III.
I try not to be too hard on Millennials. They spent childhood in an economic boom. Their parents, later Baby Boomers, had the resources to protect them and give them everything they could need. Millennials have been emboldened with the notion that they can be anything, do anything. In moderation, that’s a great thing! Unfortunately, the Millennials entered adulthood in the 2010s: huge financial recession, continually rising cost of education, and an increasingly connected social world that can be pretty damn hostile.
Having lived through the 70s, I feel like Gen X-ers spent the economic boom time like any good survivalist would. Expecting that the world would go to pot again eventually, we built figurative bunkers, well-stocked with fresh water and canned goods. We know the world sucks, but it’s a survivable level of suck. So Gen X-ers, if a Millennial comes knocking, share a can of green beans with them. Millennials, please accept a can of beans in friendship and know they’ll at least be French cut. I mean, we’re not savages.
Publishing info, my copy: OverDrive Read, HarperCollins, May 21, 2013
Acquired: Tempe OverDrive Digital Collection
Genre: nonficton, popular culture
As a good Gen X-er, I felt inspired to make a mixtape, er, playlist reflecting the struggles of every generation:
August 29, 2016
Magic Monday ~ Aug. 29, 2016
I like Mondays. I also like magic. I figured I’d combine the two and make a Monday feature that is truly me: a little bit of magic and a look at the week ahead.
Mac King returned to Fool Us last week. My husband hadn’t seen his first performance and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t shared it before!
It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?
I should be able to finish one last book from my 15-ish Books of Summer list. That book will be: Descent into the Depths of the Earth by Paul Kidd. It’s humorous fantasy. Which is what I’ve taken to writing. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta. … I also plan on getting a few short stories read by old friends Harlan Ellison and Edgar Allan Poe.
I am very much looking forward to autumnal reading.
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!
August 28, 2016
ROW80 ~ Sunday Update, 8/28
So, in TweetDeck, I have a column for “nabity.” It ends up containing Tweets in Czech*, news about Nebraska running back Graham Nabity**, occasional sales retweets when I promo books, and tweets by actual people named Nabity***. This morning, one of those from the last category was a horoscope:
Sunday, August 28, 2016 – The secret to your success is setting your specific goals down on paper now. … Don’t take your eyes off the distant horizon, but you must simultaneously reassess your plans for the next few weeks. The more you can accomplish now, the easier it will be later on. Literary giant Samuel Johnson wrote, “The future is purchased by the present.” (Source: Twittascope)
I don’t believe in horoscopes****, but this is good advice and coincidentally timely for me. I’m probably past due in setting a solid goal for this new project. For the rest of this round (the next three weeks, I guess?), I’m going to add 3000 words to Wicked Witch, Retired. I’ve been trying to move away from word counts, but I think I need to use them while drafting. This is kind of a low-ball goal—500 words per day—but I’m still feeling my way through things. I should be able to use that excuse for the next three weeks at least.
*Presumably, since my last name is also a Czech word. The Google translation is “loaded.”
**I am quite excited that football starts up again next week. Football means fall. It means we’re that much closer to basketball, which means winter.
***All Nabitys are related though the family is much too big to know them all.
****I don’t believe in fortune cookies either, but… We’ve been eating a lot of General Tso’s chicken from Panda Express and one of my fortunes was: Forge Ahead With Your New Ideas. I kept that one and threw out the non-applicable ones.
The past week’s progress is in blue.
Goals
Writing
Wicked Witch, Retired, aka “It’s all Eric’s fault.”
“One Page” summary
First draft – Added about 1000 words. Current word count is 3672.
Publishing
Website
Change the header to be a SSI. Improve accessibility and validate.
update subpages
Fix /images /img
Update “Other Works” page.
Should I set up a One Ahead page? Cart before horse? (deferred)
Change blog links to drive traffic to website.
Personal Growth
Managing Big Data with MySQL at Coursera:
Week 1
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Macroeconomic at edX:
Introduction and Basic Concepts
Measures of Economic Performance
Real and Nominal Values
Classic & Keynesian Models
August 21, 2016
ROW80 ~ Sunday, 8/21
My bulleted list is getting pretty long so I created a page with my original goals for this round. It has everything I’ve added as well as the stuff I’m not currently working on.
This week was spent on my new project. It’s based on a flash fiction piece I wrote called “Wicked Witch for Hire.” The obvious title for it, which wasn’t all that obvious since Eric didn’t think of it until Friday, is Wicked Witch, Retired. That title might be too frivolous, but it’ll do for now. I have a few pages of notes and the manuscript is at 2500-ish words. My writing soundtrack has been the Star Trek movies, II – IV. Goal this week? Finish the scene I’m on (part II of the first scene), move on to the next. I know that’s not a solid goal, but I’m still leery of going back to word counts.
Coming up this week: Tonight is the draft for VOTS‘s big coed fall frisbee league. Games won’t start for another two weeks, but I’ll be updating the web with teams this week. Also the Bout of Books readathon starts Monday. I’ll be reading and doing a few challenges for that.
The past week’s progress is in blue.
Goals
Writing
Wicked Witch, Retired, aka “It’s all Eric’s fault.”
“One Page” summary – I have a little notebook. It has notes in it.
First draft – 2500 words, most of which I’ve already rewritten once.
Publishing
Website
Change the header to be a SSI. Improve accessibility and validate.
update subpages
Fix /images /img
Update “Other Works” page.
Should I set up a One Ahead page? Cart before horse?
Change blog links to drive traffic to website.
Investigate the mysteries of Mail Chimp’s popovers
Update Eric’s Blog to something more responsive
Personal Growth
Managing Big Data with MySQL at Coursera:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Macroeconomic at edX:
Introduction and Basic Concepts
Supply & Demand
Measures of Economic Performance
Real and Nominal Values
Classic & Keynesian Models
