Bryce Moore's Blog, page 224

In Which I Sleep Poorly

It was a rough night last night. Rough enough that it reminded me how good I’ve had it for the last several years. There was a long spell in Utah–right around when my first child was born–that I had real trouble sleeping at night. I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until 3 or 4 in the morning sometimes. That can take a real toll on your body, and what’s worse is that you can get used to it to the point that you stop realizing how tired you are all the time.

Thankfully, things got better when I moved to Maine. I think some of it had been stress related, and some of it was due to the fact that my schedule as a Masters student made a regular sleep schedule unrealistic.

These days, I get a consistent 7 hours of sleep a night, and that’s usually enough to last me through until I get 8 or 9 every so often. Of course, what sinks that plan is early morning seminary. I do my best to get to sleep early the night before I have seminary, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Last night, I was in bed by 10, but I’d made the error of taking a nap earlier in the day, which meant I wasn’t really tired when I was trying to get to sleep.

Woe is me, I know.

Anyway. Long story short (too late, I’m sure), I’m tired today. Didn’t fall asleep until almost midnight, then woke up a few times in the night, worried that I was going to oversleep. (Hate that!) And this is just a very long, roundabout way of me saying I’m hard pressed to string two words together in a sentence, let alone come up with a creative blog post today.

Luckily, Disney made up an animated version of how my night felt last night, and I’ll leave that with you. Enjoy, and here’s hoping for a better night’s sleep tonight! (No naps!)

We Need Diverse Books Because

Some of you following my Facebook or Twitter feeds probably saw me post about the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign yesterday. I’ve been really pleased to see so many people retweeting the topic and spreading the word. As an author of a book published by Tu Books (an imprint of Lee and Low, one of the publishing leaders in diversity), I’ve watched the conversation about diverse books with no small amount of interest over the last few years. I’m not particularly good at coming up with pithy statements that can summed up in a photograph–lengthy blog posts are more my cuppa. So going on the “a picture is worth a thousand words” maxim, here’s my picture’s worth of words for the campaign.

I’m continually surprised and disappointed that campaigns like #WeNeedDiverseBooks need to exist in this day and age, though I suppose I shouldn’t be. It’s just too easy to sit back and let the status quo stay right where it is.

When Vodnik was published, I’ll admit I had high hopes. Not that it would smash records in the US (though what author wouldn’t like to give JK a run for her money?) but that it would get published where it needed to be: Europe. Americans read the story of a part-Roma boy who moves to Slovakia and encounters racism first hand, and they have an easier time dismissing it. The sad truth is that for many Americans “Gypsies” are characters in fantasy books, not people in real life, and “Roma” might possibly be people from Romania? Maybe? (Then they go looking for a map.)

Why do we need diverse books? Because there are still plenty of people out there who are unable or unwilling to realize that we’re all the same at heart. That we’ve got the same desires and aspirations. The same dreams and the same nightmares. It’s ironic that we need diversity in literature to prove to people that we’re the same–and I recognize that we’re not all the same. But this was an issue as far back as you can go. I’m continually reminded of Shakespeare when Shylock says:

He hath disgraced me

and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses,

mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my

bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies—

and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew

eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,

senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same

food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the

same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed

and cooled by the same winter and summer as a

Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If

you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do

we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not

revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will

resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what

is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a

Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian

example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I

will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better

the instruction.

It’s the same thing, played out again and again over the course of history. The Other is less. The Other is wrong. The Other is Other. But one of the wonderful things about literature–something that sets it apart from other arts like film or music or painting–is that it can throw us into the point of view of someone other than us. You can try to get the same effect in other ways, but books help us see the world through someone else’s eyes.

If books let down diversity, then what else do we have?

I was disappointed by the response to Vodnik. Not disappointed by readers. You’ve all be genuinely lovely. The book has garnered great reviews from established institutions, book bloggers, and Goodreads alike. It’s won awards, and many people have written me to tell me how much they enjoyed it. Kids have sought me out at signings, coming just to see me and to talk to me about writing the book. I couldn’t possibly be disappointed by that.

But my agent’s taken Vodnik overseas. He’s gone to publishers in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Spain, France, England–and he’s been told the same thing. They see the reviews, they see the awards, and they get interested. Right up until they find out it’s about a Roma. Then the interest switches off, and that’s that.

“People won’t read a book about Roma,” is what they’re told. To which I say, “They won’t if no one will publish it.” That’s the only 100% foolproof way to make sure no one reads a book. Smother it. Stifle it. Never let it get out. Could I self-publish in Slovakia or Spain? Sure, if I could find someone to translate the book well. Publishing abroad is a fair bit more difficult than publishing here in America.

Vodnik might be a more extreme example than what you typically encounter in America, but I think that by going to that extreme, it illustrates the point more quickly and more effectively than it would by using some of the American examples. Because the same thing is certainly still happening in America. It might not be so blatant at times (or at times it is), but it’s still here. And that’s why campaigns like this are so important.

But do you know what’s even more important? Your pocketbook. I don’t mean to be crass, but it’s true. The publishing business is just that: a business. You vote with your wallet. Before JK came out with Harry Potter, common consensus was that school books were dead dead dead. People didn’t read them. And then came the Boy Who Lived, and suddenly you couldn’t print enough of them.

There are a ton of great books with diverse characters out there. A ton of fantastic authors from diverse backgrounds. But until we as a people start buying those books and sharing them with our friends, they’ll never be heard. Literature might have the power to equalize things, but it can’t do it if it isn’t read.

I’m not saying we all should read things just because it’s diverse or supports a cause. These books are awesome books. If you put one of them into a cage match with a “non-diverse” book, they’d totally go the full number of rounds. I’m a librarian. I don’t have time for bad books. But I also can’t afford to ignore good ones. Neither can you.

I’ve already gone above and beyond my thousand words, but I wanted to end on a positive note. A few months ago, I got a review on Goodreads that I really loved. It’s in Slovak, written by a Slovak, so I’ll just quote a snippet:

No jedna vec bola možno trochu moc. A možno to tak vnímam len ja. Rómska problematika bola podaná dosť drsne. Ja viem, že to je drsné, a viem, že ako našinec to inak vnímam, ale dve či tri scény boli fakt trošku moc. Otázka je, či by sa to tak mohlo stať aj naozaj. A najhoršie je, že by to nemuselo byť také neuveriteľné. A to ma dosť desí. A pre cudzincov to musí byť ešte horšie, keď netušia ako to tu je naozaj. (read the whole thing)

TRANSLATION: (Thanks to Google Translate. It’ll give you the general idea) But one thing was maybe a little too much. And maybe this is just me, I see. The Roma issue was made pretty rough. I know it’s rough, and I know how our people perceive it differently, but two or three scenes were really a bit much. The question is whether it could happen so i really. And the worst part is that it might not be so incredible. And it scares me enough. And for foreigners it must be even worse when they have no idea how it really is here.

Don’t get me wrong: my main goal isn’t to change the world. It’s to write a great book. One that entertains and captivates. But a review like that, by a Slovak, about a book like Vodnik?

It made the disappointment about the book not coming out in Europe a little easier to bear.

I’m Bryce Moore, and I believe #WeNeedDiverseBooks

The Wind of Change

Followers of ze blog know that my life has had a fair bit of upheaval lately. Whether it was lawn tractors spontaneously dying, roofs blowing off my house, teeth getting knocked out, or positions at work being eliminated, I’ve about had it with change at this point. I feel like what I could really use is a nice long spell of boring.

The good news is that some things are finally beginning to settle to a point where I might just maybe have an idea about when we may see a Return to Boring. The new lawn mower came yesterday, and I got it set up and tested it out. Works like a charm. So that’s something. But in much more important news, clarity is beginning to emerge at my workplace. I’m not ready to totally announce what that clarity is (mainly because I don’t completely understand what it is myself just yet), but it looks like it could be much less than horrible. Maybe even good.

When that’s how you describe your prospects, you know you’ve been going through a rough patch.

And really, I’ve had to force myself to cut myself some slack lately. I’m typically a very tough boss when it comes to what I require from myself. I write 1000 words a day. No. Matter. What. Except the last couple of days, I haven’t. It really bugs me, and I feel awful doing it, but I came to the point where I asked myself what advice I would give to someone who came to me in my situation and described what they were going through.

I’d tell them to lay off a bit and take a breather.

It’s easier to give advice than it is to take it, but I’m trying. I was to the point where I was really struggling to find much optimism or things to feel happy about, and that’s not a good point to be at.

Don’t worry, everyone. I’m not permanently stuck in the mud, and I’m not clinically depressed. I’m actually feeling quite optimistic at the moment. I’m the sort of person who hates not knowing what the future holds. I like to plan my life, and when those plans get blown up, I get seriously stressed out. So to have things begin to settle down again–it’s a very welcome change.

In any case, know that things are looking brighter for yours truly, and that I’ll have some good news to share in the not so distant future. (Not writing news, but we’ll take any good news we can get!)

(Also, big bonus points to anyone who can put the pieces together between the title to this post and the picture I used to accompany it. And because they’re now stuck in my head, here you go. I’m seriously thinking about changing my hairstyle to match that Kansas violinist.)

Obscure Netflix Recommendation: Populaire

I’m going to do something I rarely do on the blog: give an R rated movie a full endorsement for just about anybody. (Well, it’s not for kids, but in the same way “You’ve Got Mail” isn’t for kids.) Netflix had been pushing Populaire on me–saying I’d give it around four stars. i was more than a little skeptical. It’s a French romantic comedy about a guy who hires a secretary and trains her for the national speed typing competition. This was a movie I was going to love?

Really?

But when you’re looking for something to watch with the wife, and there’s this thing sitting in your queue . . . why not? I looked it up on IMDB first to see why it was R. One scene of sexuality. No language. No violence. One scene that’s all of thirty seconds. (This is French, remember–that practically makes it a family film by French standards.) So I told Denisa not to worry, and we started watching.

Loved it.

How would I describe it to you? An adaptation of My Fair Lady, where they took out the language training and inserted typing. Then add in a bit of Rocky and more than a fair share of Mad Men. If that doesn’t just fascinate you, then I don’t know what would. It’s not that the film is incredibly original in its plot. But it nails the execution, and is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Is it perfect? Well, no. But I think if I knew going into it that it was a film that could be trusted, I would have liked it even more. I kept waiting for things to go horribly wrong, and they don’t. So have no fear. This isn’t one of Those Sorts of Movies.

The scene of sexuality? Pretty random, and you can see it coming from a mile away. I think I’ve seen worse in Battlestar Galactica, honestly, but if it’s something that upsets you, then make a quick trip to the bathroom during it–or even just go get a glass of water. By the time you’re back, it’s done. Other than that, movies don’t really get much more squeaky clean than this one.

In any case, it was a very pleasant surprise. 7.5/10 for me. Good times.

Standing on the Shoulders of the Anonymous

Okay. I just read this article on CNN about how a slew of climbers hoping to get to the top of Mt. Everest are having to go away disappointed. Why? Because the Sherpas aren’t taking them to the top. There was a big accident a bit ago, and for various reasons, the Sherpas have individually decided not to go–whether it’s out of respect for the dead, fear for their own safety, or other reasons.

And I’m reading the article, and suddenly the ludicrousness of this whole situation became apparent to me. You hear about all these explorers who trek off to conquer Mt. Everest. How brave they are. How daring. And what happens when the Sherpas decide they personally don’t want to go on any of these expeditions?

Those brave, daring explorers pack up and go home. They realize that without the Sherpas, there’s not a chance in the world of them making it to the top of Mt. Everest.

Which leads me to wonder . . . just how brave and awesome are these explorers? Because I’ll tell you one thing you’re not reading at all: any articles about Sherpas wanting to go to the top of Everest but not being able to because the brave explorers won’t let them.

What this seems to be to me is nothing more than a bunch of rich people giving poor people a pittance in return for giving the rich people a piggyback ride to something the rich people can brag about later.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure those rich people are very brave and daring and all that (in comparison to me, at the very least), but if we broke it down a bit, what is is they’re accomplishing. Say there’s a river that’s swift and hard to cross. And an explorer comes along and says, “I want to cross that river, because I’m brave and daring. Is there anyone who will carry me across?” And a bunch of locals–who’ve crossed the river plenty of times–roll their eyes and say fine, and they carry the explorer across . . .

What exactly does that explorer have to brag about after the fact? You know what it reminds me of? Brave Brave Sir Robin.

If people want to do brave things, maybe they ought to do things they can do themselves. And if someone wants to focus on a person’s brave exploits, maybe they ought to focus on the people who make those exploits possible.

Then again, isn’t this what we seem to do as a people in general? Focus on the flashy and ignore the elements that make that flashy possible? The quarterback gets a lot of credit on the field, but without the offensive line, that QB ain’t doing a thing. (I know–I’m a BYU fan.) Can anyone think of other examples of this? Today’s blog post is basically a knee-jerk observation. I’d be interested to hear what other people have to say on the matter.

Speak up!

Buying a Lawn Mower

Ever since my riding lawn mower gave up the ghost last fall, I’ve known that I needed to get something to replace it. I mean, the lawn ain’t just gonna mow itself, and we have enough field mice out there as it is without giving them that much more territory to plan frontal assaults on my house. This is a war, friends. And to win a war like this, we need superior firepower.

So I donned my librarian hat and delved into the interwebs to come up with the answer to the question: “What is the best lawn mower for Bryce?”

That’s actually a pretty complex question, when you get down to it. The best lawn mower for a specific person depends on a number of variables. I needed something that would cut a lot of grass. Grass the grows quick and thick, with some areas that are perpetually damp. Clogging could be a serious issue. Ideally, I’d like to mulch, but I knew from experience that wouldn’t always be an option. Sometimes it rains too much, you can’t mow for a long period of time, and then you’re stuck with long grass that needs to be bagged.

Money was definitely a limiting factor. This comes at the tail end of a bunch of things breaking in my house, and I have four tickets to buy to Utah in the next week or two–and those ticket prices just ain’t coming down. ($524! Really?) So another riding mower was likely out of the question.

But even limiting to push or self-propelled mowers, there are a slew of choices. First up: brand. After checking reviews online and on Consumer Reports and consumersearch.com, it seemed clear that I wanted a Honda. They’re long lasting, they’re reliable, and while they’re more expensive than some, I was already saving a ton by not going with a riding mower. I have a lot of lawn. I can’t afford to be too cheap.

So a Honda. But there are so many options and price points there. I kept searching and clicking and surfing, and I finally found this super chart. It sums up the current Honda mowers in a way that I could easily tell what would work best for me. Couple it with some info on Honda’s site, and I knew all I needed to know. (A trick to good research is knowing where to go. I could have checked out Amazon or Home Depot or other online retailers, but those weren’t giving me what I needed to know. Check out Honda, the manufacturer, and suddenly everything was right there. I should have gone there first, but I was too focused on trying to buy, not just research.

Anyway. After all of that, I settled on the HRX217VKA. Why? A number of reasons. At $600, it ain’t cheap. It doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles the absolute top of the line models have (electric start? cruise control? Please!), but it has the ability to bag and mulch at the same time. I love the idea, and from the user reviews I checked out, it actually works. That way, when the lawn gets too thick, I can still mulch what I can and not be forced to keep making trips to dump the clippings. It’s durable. has a range of speeds, and has a lot of versatility.

Was I done?

Not quite. I had to buy the thing. So that meant research to find the best seller I could. After some work, I settled on Home Depot. Free shipping, and the lowest price I could find. So now was I done? Still not yet. I always finish off a search by checking to see if there are any coupons or discounts available at the seller. In this case, I found out Home Depot is offering $10 a purchase of $100 or more. It typically excludes Honda, but because sales tax was high, I still saved the full amount. Yes, it was only $10, but it took me all of five minutes’ worth of work to earn that $10.

Not too shabby.

So the lawn mower is on its way. Field mice and blades of grass be warned. And I can check another item off my to do list. Thank goodness–there’s way too much on there as-is.

All in a day’s work for a trained librarian.

Married for a Baker’s Dozen

I was so proud of myself yesterday. I wrote an entire blog post about buying a lawn mower yesterday, all queued up and ready to fire today. Then last night, I realized that today’s my thirteenth anniversary with Denisa, and that perhaps a post about buying a lawn mower wasn’t the most appropriate way to celebrate the momentous occasion. Then again, one of the drawbacks of having a long time blog is that when it comes to the yearly observances, it becomes harder and harder to write something “new” with each passing year. All you have to do is go back in my archives and you can see what I’ve written in days gone by.

So what do I have to add to what I’ve written this year? 13 years. The mile markers seem to come more frequently than they did the first five or ten years. I’m typing this, and I could swear that I just typed it a few months ago. (This does not bode well for my blog in the years to come.)

But while 13 years seems little different than 12, the fact that we’ve reached another anniversary and I’d still rather do things with Denisa than anyone else is important and significant. We spend an awful lot of time together, after all, and I’m not exactly a people person in general. She’ll be the first to attest that there are many times when I have to just be by myself for a while to recuperate from social situations. So the fact that I can have been with someone this long and still want to continually be around her is definitely a Thing.

I still remember the first date I went on with Denisa. November 4, 2000. I asked her out mainly because I already had tickets, and my first choice for a date had fallen through. (At the time, I’d had a goal to date 30 girls in one semester–you’ve probably heard this story before, but some of you might not have. I could go into further detail, but I won’t today.) Denisa was number . . . 17? It might have been 18. The exact number is getting fuzzy with age. But in any case, I’d been out with quite a few girls at that point.

I didn’t really know Denisa. She sat behind me in German Phonetics class, and we’d been in a study group together. I knew she was cute, and I knew she was from Slovakia. The Slovakia bit was the part that stuck out to me. I remember bragging to people the morning of our date that I was going out with a girl from Slovakia–said in a funny way.

Then she showed up at periodicals (where I worked) to get some research in before our date. She was wearing a beige sweater that looked great, and I remember suddenly thinking that I really ought to wash my car before our date.

Anyone who knows me knows that spontaneous thoughts of cleaning aren’t ones that leap to my mind on a regular occasion. But if this girl could look that good in a sweater, then maybe I ought to put every effort into getting as much out of what little I had in the looks department–and that included making sure my car was spiffed up.

The biggest thing I can say about that first date (Tanner Gift of Music) was that being with Denisa felt natural right off. We were joking and laughing from the moment I picked her up until the moment I got a flat tire on the way home. Like I said: I’d been on a lot of dates. I knew that chemistry like that just didn’t come along every day.

The problem? I was convinced before that date that I was going to marry someone else. At least, I had been before that date. I got home from the date at 2am, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

That was that. I rarely call audibles when it comes to my longterm plans, but when I do, you better believe it’s for the best of reasons. They don’t get any better than this one.

Now that I’ve been with Denisa for as long as I have, I’m still amazed that the two of us can get along so easily. We come from very different backgrounds, and culture and upbringing can have a huge effect on relationships. But we click just as much today as we did on that first date.

Do we always agree on everything? Nope. We’re both strong minded and strong willed, and that means there are times that we both think very different things. But we communicate well, we take time to listen to each other, and we make sure we’re looking out for each other’s best interests. It’s been a recipe that’s worked well for us.

Anyway. I can’t say that the sight of Denisa still makes me want to spontaneously clean my car–it’s our car now, and the two of us both know we’ve got many other things on our to do lists. But I can say that seeing her walk into a room still brightens my day, and coming home to her and the kiddos each afternoon after work can turn a bad day into a good one. She’s a talented, wonderful woman, wife, and mother, and I’m continually amazed I somehow managed to con her into thinking she should hitch herself up with me.

Happy Anniversary, Denisa!

Help Fight Mental Illness

I may live in Maine now, but I got my start in the writing world out in Utah, and I still have many friends in the writing community out there. Robison Wells, the brother of a good author friend of mine, is an excellent author in his own right. He wrote the fantastic Variant series, and I highly recommend them. But more than that, he suffers from crippling OCD. Not the OCD you hear people offhandedly dismiss (“I’m so OCD about my bathroom.”) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is much different than someone just liking things to be a certain way. In Rob’s case, he feels compelled to be constantly working. If he’s not working, he has to fight the urge to punch himself in the face. (Rob has written very openly on the topic. I encourage you to read it or another piece he wrote here. His brother Dan also recently wrote on the subject.)

Read those essays, and then ask yourself what it would be like to suffer from that. This isn’t something people make up. It’s not an excuse they come up with to get out of something. Mental illness is real, and the struggles people have with it are all too serious.

To make matters worse, the consequences of this illness for Rob have been severe, not just from a social standpoint, but from a financial one: he’s lost his job, and the medical bills have added up to a pile of debt he just can’t get out from underneath.

But that’s where that writing community I mentioned has stepped in. Brandon Sanderson suggested a bunch of them and like-minded authors get together and contribute to an anthology. He would pay all publishing costs for that anthology, and they could use it as a fundraiser to help Rob out. A veritable slew of authors signed up to contribute. (If I’d have known, I would have happily sent something in too.) The theme for the anthology was basically “deleted scenes and altered versions of some of your favorite authors’ books.” Stuff you wouldn’t see elsewhere, along with each author discussing their experiences with mental illness. Here’s a rundown of the authors and the pieces:

Ally Condie, the foreword

Dan Wells, the introduction

Annette Lyon, An unpublished chapter from her retelling of the Finnish fairy tale, THE KALEVALA

Aprilynne Pike, TBA

Brandon Mull, Deleted scenes from BEYONDERS 2

Brandon Sanderson, five completely rewritten chapters from THE WAY OF KINGS, where Kaladin makes the opposite choice of what he makes in the published novel

Bree Despain, an alternate ending to THE LOST SAINT, and an alternate beginning to THE SHADOW PRINCE

Brodi Ashton, the first chapter from her YA novel about an unwilling alien fighter who has to rescue the boy she loves

Claudia Gray, a deleted scene from A THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU

Dan Wells, the original John Cleaver free-write that inspired I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER

Erin Bowman, a deleted scene from TAKEN

Howard Tayler, a creative non-fiction story about life with mental illness

J Scott Savage, three original chapters that led to writing FARWORLD

Jennifer Moore, a deleted scene from BECOMING LADY LOCKWOOD

Jessica Day George, a deleted scene from PRINCESS OF GLASS, where the main character plays poker with a witch

Josi Kilpack, the original opening scene to TRES LECHES CUPCAKE

Kiersten White, an original short story, set in a dystopian, sci-fi world

Larry Correia, a deleted fight scene from SWORDS OF EXODUS

Lauren Oliver, two deleted scenes from PANDEMONIUM, plus a hilarious scene about the plotting process

Luisa Perkins, a short story, “Seeing Red”–a modern-day retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Mary Robinette Kowal, deleted scene from VALOUR AND VANITY (the scene was cut because readers thought the scene was trying to depict depression)

Nancy Allen, bonus scene from BEAUTY AND THE CLOCKWORK BEAST

Robison Wells, an epilogue to FEEDBACK and the VARIANT duology

Sandra Tayler, a creative non-fiction piece called “Married To Depression”

Sara Zarr, a story featuring characters from one of Sara’s previously published novels

Sarah Eden, “Farewells” for LONGING FOR HOPE and HOPE SPRINGS

Seanan McGuire, The original opening for DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON

Shannon Hale, ”Ravenous,” a previously unpublished scifi short story

SJ Kincaid, the original first chapter of VORTEX, before it was entirely rewritten

It’s quite the list. They’ve had it up on Indiegogo for a few days, and they’re over a quarter of the way to their goal. All money raised will go to help Rob. Any money that’s over their goal will go to help other authors with similar problems.

How can you help? Well, besides buying the book, you can spread the word. They’ve set the goal at the amount Rob actually needs, and it’s an ambitious goal. So if you can, do what you can. It’s certainly a worthy cause.

We’ve Reached the Double Digits!

That’s right, folks: TRC is officially 10 years old, as hard as that is for me to believe. (Maybe the harder thing to believe for me is how far removed from 10 years old I am myself. I remember fourth grade. What friends I had. Teachers. Classes. What my school looked like. How is it that it’s so long ago?)

TRC is turning into a real partner in crime for me. He loves coming with me on any number of expotitions, whether it’s heading down for an author visit in Cape Elizabeth (where I snapped the above picture), going out for a few games of Magic, or just taking a trip to the grocery store to pick up some eggs.

He’s a huge fan of Minecraft. We went from me teaching him how to do basic things to him learning how to make complex machines (a dynamite launcher?) in the blink of an eye. It’s been fun to watch him devote himself to researching the topic–figuring out all he can about how he can improve his skills and find out new ways of gaming the system.

When he isn’t exploring the worlds of Minecraft, he can be found helping out around the house, where he’s taken on more significant duties–like bringing in the wood for the stove, doing some of the dishes, feeding the degus, and being an excellent all-around gopher.

How do I know he’s growing up? He’s becoming harder and harder to beat when I play games against him, and just the other day he started reading Mistborn. He’s halfway through and really enjoying it. The thought of being able to introduce him to so many new books and movies is just plain exciting. It’s one thing when it’s making recommendations to friends online. Getting to experience favorite books and films through the eyes of your son? Epic.

TRC is also a fantastic big brother. The kid looks out for his siblings and really cares about how they’re doing. He’s willing and ready to watch MC when we need him to–and he seems to genuinely enjoy himself when he’s doing it.

Overall, he’s a joy to have in the house. What more can I say?

Ten years. Who’d a thunk it?

Happy birthday, TRC!

 

Netflix Classic: Twelve O’Clock High

Here I am, back for another recommendation for you if you’re stumped about what to watch on Netflix Instant. This time, I wanted to highlight a stellar WWII flick: Twelve O’Clock High. As IMDB puts it, “A hard-as-nails general takes over a bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape.” This isn’t a movie that’s all about the glory of war or putting a sugar coating on anything: it delves into the psychological effects of combat, and it does it without becoming overly broody.

What’s to love in the movie? The cast is stellar, for one thing. Dean Jagger (the general from White Christmas) won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Gregory Peck was nominated for Best Actor. The film itself was nominated for Best Picture, losing to All the King’s Men. The film itself has been used by various military groups to illustrate styles of leadership. The story is engrossing, and many of the characters in the movie are based on real people.

This isn’t a war movie in your classic “war movie” archetype. It’s not The Dirty Dozen. It was made just a few years after the end of World War II, and you can clearly see the memory of the war is fresh in the minds of the movie’s creators. Watching the transformation Gregory Peck goes through over the course of the story was engrossing and captivating. If you’re looking for a solid film that’s both thought provoking and entertaining, watch this one ASAP.

8/10 for me.

Anyone else out there already seen it? Let me know what you thought!