Sunday Salon: January wrap up and February Reading plans

I was good during the month of January and concentrated on reading dusty books and made a small dent in my book stack but the stack had babies in February so back to where I started.  Actually clearing the stacks by reading authors and titles in alphabetical order after starting the year with a historical mystery, then a Canadian mystery for the Continental Challenge for 52 Books. 

At the end of last year I downloaded the first book in a new to me romantic action series - the Black Knights Inc by Julie Ann Walker.  And since I'm a sucker for series, had to download the other two since the first one was so good.  A small cheat on my buying ban which has now gone by the wayside with the result of a Super Bowl buying binge.  It may look like a long list but 3 or 4 books were very short and ebooks just seem to go faster.   

Started out the year thinking I would try and review every single book - not sure if that's going to work out.  We'll see. I'll have to mix it up with a few mini reviews. The links are to my reviews. 

1. The Rossetti Letter - Christi Phillips (Venice, Italy - 438)
2. Neuromancer - William Gibson (Cyberspace - 288 eb)
3.Around the World with Auntie Mame - Patrick Dennis (multi - 317)
4. No #1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith (Africa - 235 eb)
5. Sick - Brett Battles (California - 296 eb)  
6. Across the Universe - Beth Revis  (Space -398)
7. Genesis - Bernard Becket  (Fictitious Academy - 150)
8. Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin # 7) - Jennifer Estep (Appalachian Mountains - 400 eb) 
9. Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1) - Julie Ann Walker (Chicago - 384 eb)
10. The Trial of Fallen Angels - James Kimmel (Shemaya fictional purgatory - 365) 
11. In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2) - Julie Ann Walker (Chicago - 320 eb)
12. Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3) - Julie Ann Walker (Chicago - 352 eb) 
13. The Bridge - Karen Kingsbury (Tennessee - 120 eb)
14. Pirate Latitudes - Michael Crichton (Jamaica -320)
15. Birthmarked - Caragh O'Brien (dystopian world - 384 eb) 
16. Black Order - James Rollins (Nepal, Germany, Africa - 622)
17. Killing Time (One Eyed Jacks #) - Cindy Gerard (Peru/Idaho - 400 eb)


For February, I am trying to read more non fiction books (writing craft wise and for 52 books inspiration challenge), plus Lent is coming up so...

I just completed my first non fiction read for inspiration challenge: Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton and the Vocation of Writing edited by Robert Inchausti.  It was comprised of essays from many of his books and interesting to see his thoughts over the years about writing and all the authors he corresponded with. Moving on to Pope Benedict's Jesus Of Nazareth: Holy Week from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection
and Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation

Besides the two books which are still in progress - Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey and Neubauer's Write Brain Exercise Workbook  I'll be reading James Scott Bell's The Art of War for Writers. I know it sounds like a lot, but spread out over a week's period of time, my morning study time moves rather quickly. Although James has been bugging me to get back into writing Green Cross.  I think I may have to have a couple unplugged days during the week during Lent. 

Fiction wise, I'm currently listening to the audio book of Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist in the car and reading the hardback of  Deborah Crombie's No Mark Upon Her.  As you can see, I've moved on the D's and waiting in the wings is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop and Robert Jordan's The Dragon Reborn. 

And last but not least, delving into  Yes, Your Teen is Crazy: Loving your Kid without Losing Your Mind by Michael Bradley, which was recommended to us and is a guide to how to deal with those tumultuous teenage years.   Speaking of teenagers, we are coming up on the deadline for spending the educational monies Visions gave us for the year. James seems to be like his father and prefers non fiction over fiction. Unless it's a comic book. I was coming up with a list of things to order and asked him what he'd like to read. He asked for - biography of Obama, Hitler, Queen Elizabeth, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Plus Commodore Perry in the land of the Shogun. My son has an interesting mind.  I'll let you know which one we end up reading first.   :)  

So - What are you reading?  

Write Brain Wednesday: Natures washing machine

Thought I start sharing some meanderings created from the Write Brain workbook exercises. The task was:

Choose ONE word that appeals to you:  Trophy,  Bible,  Inhale,   Giraffe,  Weed,  Lava,  Crush,   Banana, Mask,  Fender,  Gas

Choose ONE setting that most appeals to you: At a circus,   During a war,   In a space station,  Under a full moon,  On a beach,  At a park

Choose ONE starting phrase that most appeals to you:  If I could stop,   I once asked,  The first day,  If you must know,  The hurricane neared


Start your story with the phrase and incorporate the setting and the word. I went with  

Bible    On a beach    If I could stop

Nature’s Washing Machine

          If I could stop the world for a day, a moment, a lifetime, I’d sit and contemplate. Contemplate what?  The real meaning of the bible perhaps?   A word.  A phrase.  A sentence.  Which one?  Which one speaks to you, leads you somewhere, answers a question. Do you take it literally or figuratively?  How do you know which one is right?  It doesn’t have to be right.  It’s what you make of it. 

          Sit down on a beach and count the grains of sand. Impossible….yes.  Now just let the sand sift through your fingers.  Feel the texture, the heat, the cold. Is it wet or dry?  Depends on the time of day doesn’t it.  Is the tide in or out?  Sand sifts through your fingers like the thoughts in your head.  Sliding through, past, dropping down to rejoin the bits on the ground. Some sticks to your hand, Adheres to the lines and wrinkles of your palm, between your fingers, under your fingernails -  sparkling, shiny bits of dust.  Sift through the sand on your palm.  All shapes and sizes: rough or smooth, large or small, hard or soft.  Your thoughts.  Just like your thoughts.  Hard edges,  soft moments.  You can hold on to them or brush them away like the sand.   Sand. Countless  grains of sand. Particles of life.   

          Is it possible to catch the thought of the person who sat here before you, running their hands across the sand, sifting it through their fingers?   So many grains of sand, so many thoughts left behind.  Where do they all go?  Tumbling out to sea in a wash of waves, being cleansed and returned - full of peace, full of quiet power.  Nature’s washing machine for the mind.

Wednesday Wonderings - Poetry

Waterdrop by Zen

I had one of those I get it moments today.  I've never been one for reading poetry.  I've tried my hand at it, mainly as cryptic clues for a couple of my stories. Fun to do.  I'm willing to read for a class and analyze, but reading for fun and enjoyment, not so much.  So when I came across the section on Poetry in Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing, I almost skipped it.  But then the thought crossed my brain and I forget where I heard it how as writers we should expose ourselves to all kinds of writing, genres, styles in an effort to learn more about the craft.  So decided to power through and this particular essay rang a bell with me.  You get as much out of poetry as you put it into it.  A surface reading will only garner a surface understanding unless you take the time to think about the words. You get out of it, what you put into it.

The Psalms are poems, and poems have a meaning---although the poet has no obligation to make his meaning immediately clear to anyone who does not want to make an effort to discover it.  But to say that poems have meaning is not to say that they must necessarily convey practical information or an explicit message.  In poetry, words are charged with meaning in a far different way than are the words in a piece of scientific prose.  The words of a poem are not merely the signs of concepts: they are also rich in affective and spiritual associations. 

The poet uses words not merely to make declarations, statements of fact.  That is usually the last thing that concerns him.  He seeks above all to put words together in such a way that they exercise a mysterious and vital reactivity among themselves, and so release their secret content of associations to produce in the reader an experience that enriches the depths of his spirit in a manner quite unique.  A good poem induces an experience that could not be produced by any other combination of words.  It is therefore an entity that stands by itself, graced with an individuality that marks it off from every other work of art.  Like all great works of art, true poems seem to live by a life entirely their own.

What we must seek in a poem is therefore not an accidental reference to something outside itself: we must seek this inner principle of individuality and of life which is its soul, or 'form.'  What the poem actually 'means' can only be summed up in the whole content of poetic experience which it is capable of producing in the reader.  This total poetic experience is what the poet is trying to communicate to the rest of the world (excerpted from Literary Essays "Poetry, Symbolism, and Typology, 1953) pg 84-85 

 Merton's writing is full of these gems and I'm currently on the chapter about other writers. He seems to have had a great fondness for Boris Pasternak and his writings and it's making me want to move Dr. Zhivago up in the stack and see if I appreciate his writing as much as Merton did.   Back to my literary wanderings. 

Sunday Salon: Life, love and happiness

Books, Books, Books: I finished reading Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes this weekend.  Have enjoyed  many of his books over the years including the Andromeda Strain and  Congo among others. I have yet to read Micro which was published posthumously in 2011 and finished by Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone.  Coincidentally a friend recently recommended Hot Zone which is a true tale of a biological outbreak.  Considering that I read Sick last week, which was a fictional tale of biological terrorism and could very well happen, decided to add it to my wishlist.  Then I listened to NPR's Science Friday Book Club discussing The Andromeda Strain, and who was their guest speaker - Richard Preston - talking about Crichton's writing. Synchronicity wise, I think the universe is telling me to read Preston's book.  The audiocast is interesting so grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit back and listen. It's about 25 minutes long. 

Publisher's Weekly is talking about the 10 Most Anticipated Book Adaptations for 2013 which includes Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale which I have in my stacks.  The cast includes Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Colin Farrell, and Jennifer Connelly which guarantees it's going to be an extraordinary movie (I hope).  The book has been calling my name more and more lately saying read me, read me now.  

Instead of reading James Rollin's chunkster Black Order, I took a side trip and read a short novel by Karen Kingsbury called The Bridge, a poignant love story surrounding a flooded out 4 decades old bookstore that had been Charlie Barton's dream and the life blood of the community. It's been years since I've read anything by Kingsbury and this was a great reintroduction to her writing and I'll be reading more of her stories in the future.  Then I jumped into the young adult dystopian world of Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien which of course is the first is a series and ended in such a way, I just have to read the rest of the series.  

Writing, writing, writing:  Craft wise, I am enjoying the heck out of the exercises in the Write - Brain workbook which is really helping my creativity. The exercise this morning involved what four textures came to mind when you think of a slinky and four textures when you think of a scarf. Then use those words in a story that begins with ---  Late night city streets were the perfect backdrop for....    Try it and see what you come up with. I'll be polishing up my story and thinking of posting it sometime this week.  

Still working my way through Writer's Journey and reading through the Stages of the Journey.  Slowly reading Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the vocation of writing which is compiled of essays from a variety of his books.  It is quite dense with lots of food for thought and his philosophical meanderings so only reading a few pages a day. It's also making me want to read his other books:  New Seeds of Contemplation (which I have and is waiting in the wings), The Asian Journal,  Literary Essays, and The Way of Chuang Tzu.  This may just turn into a life long study of Thomas Merton.   

Eyes in the Ashes has been on my mind as I read Writer's Journey and had some great ideas about changes to make, but I've yet to crack the notebook and reread the draft.  I'm in more of a right brained, creative, stream of conscious mode right now and guess I'm just not quite ready to get back into a left brain mode. Soon though....  Goal wise I'm going to keep plugging away.

Nobody trips over mountains.  It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.  Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.  ~Author Unknown

James and I have watched all the Star Wars movies (several times) and now we are going to delve into the books. He is into all things Star Wars these days and his Aunt K and Uncle G bought him the Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy written by Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore and Mathew Stover.  I thought it would be fun to read it together so diving in.  

Hubby received a wonderfully positive review of his latest micro amplifier which I was quite happy to see with all the hard work he has put into designing and building it. Nice to see him getting some kudos for a change.  

Have a great week and I hope it is filled with positive energy and lots of accomplishments, whether they are big or small.  

The Trial of Fallen Angels - James Kimmel Jr.

 Synopsis: "Brek Cuttler has it all: a husband she loves, a daughter she adores, a successful law practice. And then one day everything she has ever known disappears. Brek finds herself standing on a deserted train platform, covered in blood. As she tries to comprehend what is happening to her, a man from her past approaches and explains that she has been chosen to join the elite team of lawyers charged with prosecuting and defending souls at the Final Judgment.

As Brek struggles to find her way back to her husband and daughter, she will discover that her first client holds the shocking secret of her fate. That seemingly disparate events during her life have conspired to bring her to a single moment in time that will determine her eternity. And that every act of kindness and cruelty sets in motion things beyond our wildest imaginations."

Kimmel has created an imaginative story in The Trial of Fallen Angels.  A woman dies and ends up in a place called Shemaya which is the equivalent it seems of a fictitious court in heaven and is put in the position of representing her own murderer.  It's an interesting book going back forth in time periods covering what at first looks like individuals who all end up somehow being related activity and family wise.  It gets into philosophy, religion, good versus bad, forgiveness, Germany and Auschwitz. It is very intense. 

Released:  November 8, 2012
Pages:  372
Setting: Fictional Shemaya
Challenge: What's in a Name
Rating: 3.5
YTD: 5

Sunday Salon

I've been a part of Cherry Adair's Street Team for a few months and received a nice surprise in the mail yesterday. She sent everyone a beautiful coffee cup which I christened this morning with Earl Grey Tea.  I have enjoyed reading all her books and a couple years back won a stay at her guest house through Brenda Novak's Diabetes Auction.  Which is coming up again in May so be sure to mark it on your calendar.  It's been one of those weeks that it feels like nothing much is getting accomplished so receiving the cup made my day.

Reading wise, it's been great - I read three dusty books:  Sick by Brett Battles which was about an evil scientist unleashing a nasty virus in order to wipe out the majority of the world's population. Very scary thought and entirely possible.  Young Adult murder mystery Across the Universe by Beth Revis about a young girl frozen cryogenically with her parents and a group of people to populate a new planet and wakes 300 years later still on the ship. Plus a short but very dense fictional/  philosophical book  called Genesis by Bernard Beckett about a young woman  who wants to get into The Academy being questioned by 3 examiners.  Plus two ebooks - Widow's Web by Jennifer Estep (#7 in her Elemental Assassin paranormal romance) and the first book in the Black Knight series by Julie Walker Hell on Wheels.  No, I didn't watch any TV the past week.

What's on the nightstand for this week:  A Trial of Fallen Angels by James Kimmel and a chunkster by James Rollins - Black Order. 

I didn't get any writing or editing done and really have no excuse.  I let regular life interfere so my aim is to get up a few minutes earlier, take advantage of James study time and use it more wisely.  My goals remain the same for this week

1)  WIP: Review draft of Eyes in the Ashes, re-evaluate and detail what needs to be done. Have partial 3rd edit completed.
2)  Craft Study:  Read Chapter 2 while completing chapter 1 exercises of The Writer's Journey and apply them to main characters of Eyes.  
3)  ROW80 participants - visit all the two's.
4)  Morning pages:  continue with Jesus calling and Write Brain workbook.
5) Adding in exercise goals since my knee has recovered and aim to do the treadmill for at least 30 minutes 4 times this week.  I'll have to build back up to an hour again since taken so long a break from it. 

Over on 52 books, it's week 4 and highlighting book #5 in Susan Wise Bauer's Well Educated Mind -  Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist.  Since his birthday is February 7th, I'm declaring February Read a Dicken's month and will shoot for reading Oliver Twist again.  I failed last year and hope to be more successful this year. 

Off to plan lessons for this week.  Happy Reading! 

 

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Synopsis:  This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.


I've been hearing about Smith's Ladies Detective Agency series for years and finally had a chance to read the first book.  I was charmed by Precious and enjoyed learning about Africa and African customs.  When Precious's father dies and leaves her with a small inheritance, she decides that rather doing something safe like a butcher shop, she will open a detective agency in her town of Botswana.  She uses her wit and intelligence and womanly intuition to solve her cases and when any man questions her right to be a detective, she just has to say Agatha Christie and they straighten up.  It is a sweet and charming story as well as educational.  I'm looking forward to reading more books in the series and checking out the movie on HBO as well.
 
Released:  February 6, 2003
Pages:  235
Setting: Botswana
Challenge: Continental
Rating: 3.5
YTD: 4