Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Oh no, please. I would love to talk about it now but I'm trying to be considerate of the holiday stuff. I know how busy it can get this time of year for most people.

You gave me a ton of food for thought on the re-read!

Wow. The altered atlases are way cool too. Nice find, Dan.

Well, I'll try to catch all the devil references but I can't make any guarantees. My religious education is feeble at best and leans mostly toward the non-devil side of things...

Yeah, there is the caught up in the moment feeling to her actions, perhaps the lack of impulse control.

I can remember swooning over a boy who might quote a certain song or poem at a certain moment, and definitely shaking my head afterward, wondering what happened. Now I laugh at it - sing me some Dylan or read me some Byron and I'm yours? Wow. I hope I'm a teensy bit smarter than that now.

Her initial reaction to him was so spot on that I was thinking, why on earth are you even talking to this guy who just pulled up to your house like he's known you for years?! Jeeeez!

I thought that the buildup of sheer terror was - well, that's what kicked me in the gut.

I also wonder if men respond differently, or parents, to this story.

OK, sorry I'll save it for January... :)

Yeah... isn't there one about a book club and Jane Austen or something? I sometimes wonder if those add-on ideas don't come about much the same way rehashes of movies do - it's a "bankable" kind of thing, in other words.

Or I suppose the argument could be made that there's no original ideas so that's what we're left with? I think that's a cop-out.

Another paragraph - wow, her dad was something else...

These criticisms [her father's:], it seems, fell disproportionately on Louisa. Impetuous, high-spirited, and cursed with a sometimes ferocious temper, she resisted her father’s efforts to shape her into a model child. Bronson’s theories could account neither for her violent mood swings nor for the fact that her favorite pastimes included falling out of trees and running away from home. Never guessing that Louisa’s volcanic nature might signify a greater brilliance than his paradigms accounted for, Bronson denounced Louisa in his journals, calling her “unfaithful” and even a “devil.” Louisa tried to parry his critiques with humor, signing early letters to him as “your loving demon.” But Bronson’s faultfinding had deep effects. It took decades before Louisa felt sure of his love in all aspects of life.

I'm wondering why creative impulses and selfish impulses are separate.

But anyway.

I read Little Women countless times as a little girl and always, always thought I was like Jo.

"Teen girls have the power to shape the market because they don't have financial responsibilities, tend to be passionate about their interests, and share those interests socially. If a girl likes something, she's liable to recommend it to her friends; a shared enthusiasm for Edward, or the Jonas Brothers, or anything else, becomes part of their bond. Marketers prize teenage girls, even as the media scoff at them.

If we admit that girls are powerful consumers, then we admit that they have the ability to shape the culture. Once we do that, we might actually start listening to them. And I suspect a lot of contemporary girls have more to talk about than Edward Cullen."

You know, this kind of reminds me of the "revelation" that the women in households make what, 90 percent of buying decisions? And that suddenly we are a "prized" group of consumers? Sigh. I suppose it does no good to get upset.

Too late. I'm irritated. Let me stop before the feminist ranting begins.

I've never read a story that kicked me in the gut so hard. And I've read a ton of her stuff. Whoa.

Well. This Phoebe Zeit-Geist thing has peaked my curiosity. I can't find a single synopsis anywhere.

I know I know I know! I was so excited to see that in the table of contents!

I want to add it to our short story calendar. What fun.

I just started IJ again and I'm in tennis world. I love what he does with the sport.

It turns out that Edna Ferber's The Eldest is not available online, not anywhere I can find it, anyway.

Also, with the holidays coming up, I think it might be best to start up our short story group again in the second week of January. If people really want to get going sooner, I'm game - not much going on for me except maybe a move to a new home - but I'm trying to make sure we re-start at a time when people have more time in general to participate.

I will adjust the calendar accordingly. But I think this will be our first one. And it says it's "for Bob Dylan" -- so this should be fun.

http://www.usfca.edu/~southerr/works/...

Wrapped in a kilt, he's her holiday wish come true.

Priceless.

And not one, not two, but three writers?

You're right Dan...the lack of multi functionality makes it less appealing as a device.

I think what will end up happening is that we will all carry around something that looks like one of those little netbooks and all of our data will come from a cloud, so no need to lug a heavy computer around, and we we will switch our netbooks to book reading mode for reading, which will change the screen.

The reason it has to be a different kind of device has to do with refresh rate and contrast on the screen itself. To look at a screen for a long time, as we all know, messes with your eyes. That's why the Kindle has the screen it has, and the argument that it should go to color is ironically a really bad one.

I was thinking about how my kids use my Kindle more than I do.

The main benefit I can see to having kids use them is really related to their backs.

No, seriously. My ten year old lugs home a ridiculously heavy backpack. That thing weighs about a quarter of what she does.

From Wired:

Comic Book Artists Illustrate Sci-Fi Legends...

Very fun and cool illustrations of writers from Osamu Tezuka to Hunter S. Thompson to Neil Gaiman... and more...

I can't find the other e-Book thread so I'm starting a new one.

As a Kindle owner, book reader, and early tech adapter (to some degree) I agree with him.

I read this today in Wired Magazine, of all places ---

Ode to Books, or why E-Book Readers Will Never Replace Them

The meat of the article (since I know it takes a lot of energy to click, read, and then click back) is as follows -- nothing I haven't heard before, but maybe some of us have some new thoughts...?

Myself, I’m waiting for an affordable one that can display color .pdf files. I could really use one in my day to day life. I think these tablets are an incredible development, and are finally realizing the vision that my old boss had for a flat panel display back in the mid 1990s. I even used to work at netLibrary, making books into e-books. I think e-readers are great for travel, commuting, education and many other aspects of life. They allow you to search for something in a book, much faster than with a conventional book. You can take notes directly in the book, without permanently defacing it. Even your bookmark won’t fall out.

But books. I love books! I’ve always loved books. I love being around them, holding them, turning their pages. As a child, my house was always filled with books of every kind. We also had plenty of kids’ books of our own, which my mom has held on to, fortunately. The smell of books is enticing. Being in a bookstore, whether a used or new one, is so exciting. Around every end cap is another thing to learn, another project to make. Libraries are the same way. They are all filled with potential discoveries. Being around all that knowledge in a physical way just doesn’t happen with electronic versions, though. Browsing and scanning electronic files can make you feel one big step removed from their content.

I think the love of physical books is a genetic thing. Both my parents have it. I have it. My son has it. But adding another book to a digital book reader just doesn’t have the same effect as buying one or checking one out from the library. To hold the paper, the different covers, hard back, paperback, matte, shiny, thick pages, smooth thin pages, different sizes… I love the variety and can’t fully put it into words what I love about books. I just know that they feed my soul.

I think we should send this guy an invite to our neck of the woods.

Protocol? Whussat?

Welcome to the group, Robert.

There are some big Pynchon fans here. I like him, but I'm not what you'd call an uncritical disciple.

I read The Gulag Archipelago about a year ago and it was unlike anything I've read before or since.

Such a strange mix of history and surrealism...

It gave me insight into contemporary Russian fiction... and really, any fiction that seeks to describe what it's like to live in a terribly oppressed society.

There's something to be said for the idea that a lot of colonial, post-colonial and behind-the-Wall Cold War lit has to be written using a surreal approach because otherwise it wouldn't be comprehensible to anyone.

So, what's on your list this year of books you would like to find under your... tree, menorah, kwanzaa bush?

And do you find yourself reading more in the winter time? I do. It's a long winter here in Chicago. So I settle into an indoor gym and several books, with some outdoor stuff with the kids - but most of the season is spent escaping the cold.

My wish list - well, actually I don't have a big list for fiction. I have a ton of books I've not read yet just waiting for me; I just donated 300 books to the library and it was a very ... cleansing feeling.

Right now I am snapping up guidebooks on astronomy because my big gift to myself this year is a professional grade telescope.

So what do you want? I would make some kind of Santa Baby song reference but since not everyone appreciates my dorky love of Christmas music, I'll refrain.

RA, you mean F. Scott is overwrought?

Yeah, I guess I can see that. When we read Gatsby over on MySpace I can recall thinking at times, this guy is really working hard on this whole green light thing.

So much so that at times the characters seemed archetypal.