Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 21

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-12-05

If you watch the World Series of Poker…Why? I mean, seriously, I'm not trying to be all snobby. But WHY?? #
Sometimes you just have to greet a beautiful sunrise, fresh air, and chirping birds with a resounding BLEAARRGGH. #
Singing Praetorius with neighbours tonight. #
Wind in the trees behind my office sounds like a massive tidal wave sweeping towards me. Makes it a little hard to concentrate on the Yuan. #
This historian has just used the word "recrudescence" twice in the same chapter. It's a word you can only use once. If that. #
DS17 shopping for trashcans. The "Share//Trash" can, "inspired by social networks like Facebook," compares trash disposal w/friends. Huh?? #
"Bomb Proof Trash Can" designed for minimal damage if "a terrorist places a bomb in it." Presumably this terrorist lives in your room. #
"Hard Drive Trash Can" is a combination trash can and 250 GB backup hard drive. Because that's where you'd want to store your data. #
Final quote from trash can shopping site: "Nothing says sophistication like a Medieval Helmet Trash Can." #
Christmas parade plus Grand Illumination plus football game: there are a lot of people in town. Couldn't we spread this stuff out a bit? #
"Unlike the novel every part of the short story is short." For $35, you too can buy this paper online and turn it in as your own. #
SNOW!!! Not lots of it but SNOW!!!! #

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Best. Flash. Mob. Ever.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-28

Foggy morning; tops of orange-yellow trees jutting up above the white and glowing with early sun, #
Kids are jumping into six-foot leaf pile with shrieks of joy. #
Trying to finish up work so the holiday can start… #
Hello, holiday! #
At Staples Mill Amtrak station, waiting for Northeast 85. So is everyone else in Richmond, apparently. #
Heading to Williamsburg to take DS17 to work. Running the Turkey Trot while I'm there: http://btb5k.kalerunning.com. Say hi if you see me. #
Next year I really want one of those turkey hats to wear while I'm running. #
Have been called Auntie Sue all day. Makes me feel like aged Dust Bowl spinster with steel-grey curls and calico apron. #
This evening: Crayfish fritters with my brother at the Trellis, with Father Christmas outside in Merchants Square alarming small children. #
It came, a flower bright / Amid the cold of winter/ When half-spent was the night. #

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What I've been reading

Time for my periodic review of what I've been read over the last few weeks. As with my last (somewhat long ago) book review roundup, this one is weighted towards fiction; I've read fifteen or so tomes dealing with social media in the last month, but I don't feel like reviewing them here. If you'd like to know my reactions to their arguments (or lack thereof), you can alway download the audio of my Regent lectures in Vancouver.

So here are some short takes on my recent for-fun reading.

Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge



Grade: A

True, spare stories of regular people's lives, linked together by crises large and small. The aging of the title character is particularly vivid: visiting her grown son, Olive returns home and turns on her bedroom light to see that "in the mirror…across her blue cotton blouse was a long and prominent strip of sticky dark butterscotch sauce. A small feeling of distress took hold. They had seen this and not told her. She had become the old lady her Aunt Ora had been." I haven't read Strout's other books but intend to look them up.

Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps and Bones

Grade: B-

I collect books about professional cooking; I'm not sure why I find them so diverting, but maybe because (as I've written before) the restaurant business shares a few interesting parallels with the publishing world, while being very safely something I don't aspire to do. Bourdain's almost always entertaining (except when he goes off on one of his jags about how fascinating organized crime is; that I don't find diverting at all), and I got a few good bedtime sessions out of this book. Mostly, though, it's a collection of previously published essays, some of which are obviously dated. It left me feeling mildly diverted, and also wondering how much I could wring out of some of my previously published writings, were I too busy (or lazy) to write a brand new book.

Robert Goolric, A Reliable Wife

Grade: A-

Not as evocative and true as Olive Kittridge, but I admire a male author who can write about a woman's life with semi-accuracy. (No, Thomas Wolfe and Philip Roth, you don't qualify. Even a little bit. Sorry.)

This is a dark and despairing book, and the characters are less than likeable, but a very thin gleam of grace glimmers at the end.

Julian Fellowes, Snobs

Grade: C+

Also fulfilled its purpose, which was an evening's entertainment, but I'm really not believing the cover copy which tells me that Snobs is "an insider's look at a contemporary England where class still matters." Well, yes, of course class still matters, but Fellowes seems to be channeling Jane Austen by way of Hello! magazine while considering how the dialogue will sound in the eventual movie adaptation.

His characters can't possibly exist in the real world. (And even if they do, he hasn't convinced me of it, so the book's still a failure.)

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Grade: A

This was a return visit to an old favorite, one I haven't read since college. I love it when a book holds up. I'm not sure why I latched onto this book in college, but Chesterton still knows something about the impulse to destroy, which is why I enjoyed it this time through.

That, and passages of description that still blot out the real world with their vividness.

Mary Renault, Funeral Games

Grade: A-

I'm a big fan of Renault's historical novels, but somehow I'd missed this one until recently. Not nearly as successful as the brilliant (and definitely NOT G-rated) The Persian Boy, Funeral Games still provides a wonderful imaginative door into the ancient world. When I write history I try to open one door to the past; I envy writers who have the key to the other passageway in.

Jane Green, Promises to Keep

Grade: C

Sometimes I like Green's chick-lit-grows-up novels, but this one proves a truism: a novel written out of deep personal conviction that the readers need to UNDERSTAND something is often a clunker. Green's tale of a mother with terminal cancer (that's not really a spoiler–you can figure it out by about the second chapter) was apparently written to honor a friend who died from the disease; this is, of course, admirable, but her main character is saintly, and doomed, and as unreal as any Victorian heroine.

Elizabeth George, Careless in Red

Grade: C-

Another disappointment. Over the last decade, George's prose style has been afflicted by middle-aged spread. What with listing every single fleeting thought that goes through every minor character's mind, describing in laborious detail every single physical motion each character takes, and indulging in arcane vocabulary, the book loses even the tiniest bit of forward momentum by Chapter 3. By mid-book, I didn't really care who'd done the murder–in fact, I couldn't clearly remember who'd been murdered–I just want her to GET ON WITH IT.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-21

John Michael Talbot has the TV series Leverage marked as a "Like" on Facebook. So do I. This totally made my day. #
Hoping this will be a normal week. Whatever that is. #
Audios from Regent Vancouver lectures up now: http://www.regentaudio.com/RGDL4022S. #
National Book Awards go to Kathryn Erskine, Terrance Hayes, Patti Smith, Jaimy Gordon (@nationalbook). Feel need to cite Ecclesiates 9:11. #
I. Am. Tired. OK, back to work. #
DS17 is now a licensed driver. Lock up your, um, selves. #
Does anyone in Charles City/Williamsburg OWN a black bow tie? (Because requiring nervous 14yo violinist to play in one makes PERFECT sense.) #

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November colors

Rain is coming tonight and the leaves will fall. But here's how the farm looks this morning….

the back of the farmhouse,

looking towards the old barn,

the sugar maples west of the house,

the old well,

three trees in the east field,

the top of the swingset.

Here's the path through the woods to the farm bed & breakfast (run for us by a wonderful hospitable couple who cook AMAZING food),

and a few scenes from the bed & breakfast itself.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-14

Lots of emails piled up from last week. If you're waiting to hear from me…you might wait a little longer… #
This morning it's me, Pandora, and middle-grade writing lessons. #
OK, enough writing and grammar for one day. Going to go ride my enormous cowardly draft horse while the kids are still having room time. #
Just helped Grammy replant two rows of strawberries, in November dusk under a fingernail moon. #
The German shepherd has just spent thirty-five solid minutes licking out the scrambled egg pan. #
Best explanation of semicolons ever: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon #
Last night I dreamed that we had two pet moose named Gleek & Freak who kept escaping on Sunday mornings during church. Care to deconstruct? #
I am writing this morning. But what I really want to do is buy shoes. #
Saw very old & dear friends today; far away but not distant, because whenever we meet it's clear we are still travelling on parallel paths. #
Regular deer season starts today. Run, Bambi. Run. #
DH heading off to play in the Charles City Ministers vs. Deacons basketball game. Holiness will undoubtedly be on view. #

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Hello, Father Time, let me introduce myself

We all live our lives in overlapping circles, like living Venn diagrams. I've seen this best summed up in a few words by a couple of British writers: P. D. James, in Innocent Blood, describing one of her male characters as "like a hexagon; people only need to touch one side to feel an illusion of closeness"; Dorothy Sayers, in Gaudy Night, remarking that Harriet Vane "admired the strange nexus of interests that unites the male half of mankind into a close honeycomb of cells, each touching the other on one side only, and yet constituting a tough and closely adhering fabric."

Both, you'll notice, referring to men. But women, particularly women who are married, and have children, and have jobs, surely feel this as strongly…if not more so. Or so I assume. After all, when I'm dealing with my publisher/distributor in New York, I am one person; when I'm speaking to home educators, one person; when I'm with my kids, one person; when I am in my husband's circle, one person; when I'm speaking to academics, one person. Not "a different person," you'll note. I have no sense of being divided…only that, possibly, the people I meet in one circle might not, quite, comprehend exactly who I am when I'm in another.

Or maybe they do. Two nights a week, I haul a kid to an evening meeting and wait in town until they're done. Generally I go eat something at one of my favorite local restaurants and work on whatever I'm currently writing until pickup time arrives.

I've always imagined that, when I'm doing this, I'm in the world where I'm the Somewhat Important Professional Writer Considering the Perfect Word For That Sentence Over an Apertif. Apparently not. You see, my second son has recently started working at one of those favorite local restaurants–the very one where I had my Professional Writer Dinner tonight.

With the result that my Mom Circle and my Professional Writer Having Dinner Circle seem to have collided. As witness my check.

Yep, that's right. I'm Ben's Mom. Hi, there. Nice to meet you.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-11-07

Getting ready to travel to Vancouver. Always have to remind myself that yes, different COUNTRY than Seattle, take passport. #
Losing a baby at 6 months is not a miscarriage (http://tinyurl.com/2apaurt). There's a birth certificate, explanations, and a grave. I know. #
Packing for the Laing Lectures: http://tinyurl.com/2779xxc. #
On my way to Dulles. Filled with usual pre-trip certainty that I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT. #
I have not forgotten something. I have not forgotten something. I have not forgotten something… #
It's 7:30 AM and PITCH BLACK in Vancouver. Guess I'll wait a bit longer to go for a run… #
OOH! I can see English Bay! #
OK, I did forget something. Actually, quite a few things. I brought the "all" but forgot the "sundries." Might make dressing tricky. #
OK, Vancouverites, I'm getting a free morning on Friday. What's the one place I should visit and the one restaurant I should eat at? #
Last night's lecture seemed to go over well; Lecture #2 at 11:30 today. #
Today's lectures finished. Great crowd: welcoming, responsive, attentive. Great city. Good week. #
In the United lounge at O'Hare. Halfway home! #
I. HATE. PEOPLE-MOVERS. Doesn't matter how much time you save flying into Dulles, the people-mover will EAT it. #
Home and semi-awake. Love the extra hour (now that the kids are older, anyway). #
Arrgghh. Vancouver may have killed me <><><> #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-31

Happy 14th birthday to Dan! #
Tonight: DS14: "Man, Napoleon got PONED at Waterloo–" DD10, shrieking: "Don't tell me what happens before I read it! You'll ruin the end!" #
I just want to thank you ALL for teaching me to spelling "pwned." I'm sure I will use it often. As in, "Timur PWNED Isfahan in 1387!" #
I'm going to blame all misspellings this week on the enormous BANDAGE on my finger. Am sure my copyeditor at Norton might differ… #
If a doctor's office tells you to arrive at 6:30, the doctor himself should arrive before 8:30. Just saying. #
New Well-Trained Mind blog post: College admissions: is early decision a good idea? http://tinyurl.com/24f49el. #
Feeding seagulls on the Jamestown-Scotland ferry. #

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