NaNo Update

As you can see the month is almost over.  I might not die.  And I have over 40,000 words so I might actually do this thing.  Wow.  Just wow.

Now I have a couple of problems.   The first one is I’m afraid I am going to run out of story before I hit 50,000 words.  Then what do I do?

The second is I am having a hard time finding something to read.  I don’t want to read anything in the genre I am writing because I don’t want it to influence what I’m writing.  And I have a book in the genre I am working on sitting on my desk calling to me in an inviting fashion.  It’s such a tease.

Of course now I also want to re-read On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott.  But I’m afraid if I read any writing books right now it will interfere with my groove, if that’s what you want to call it.  They will have to wait until December.  That’s probably a good thing because December Is For Editing.  Although in my case I suspect any editing will have to wait until January.

I probably shouldn’t be talking about this like I’ve already finished it.  Disaster could still strike between now and next Monday.

Dracula the Un-Dead

Dracula the Un-Dead

It’s here!  It’s here!  It’s finally here!  I have been waiting for this book for ages.

Image from Amazon

You may or may not know that Dracula (the original by Bram Stoker) is one of my favorite books ever.  I probably read it once a year.

And now, here on the couch beside me is the sequel.  I know, I know, there have been many sequels written to Dracula over the years, but this one was written by Dacre Stoker.  Recognize anything?

Dacre Stoker is Bram Stoker’s great grandnephew.  And apparently he drew from Bram Stoker’s original notes to write it.  It looks like there are some author’s notes in the back from both Stoker and Ian Holt, his co-author, but I don’t want to read them until after I read the book, just in case it gives something away.  I hate spoilers.

I got the last copy at Borders this morning.  I am not sure if they only had one in stock, or if there was a huge run on them or something.  I couldn’t find it when I walked in, so I had to ask for help.  The woman at the information desk said they had 30 coming in, but only 1 in stock.  While she went to look for it, I contemplated whether or not I had time to run to the Big City to look in the bookshops down there.  Happily that was not necessary.

Now all I want to do is sit and read.  The quality of service in this place is about to go dramatically downhill.

Knitting needles and ear buds

Right now I am completely obsessed with knitting.  I have a lot of projects in the queue right now, so this is probably a good thing.  I blame the current round of obsession on the KnitPicks Christmas ornament kit.  I am knitting an elf right now and he is SO CUTE!  I can hardly stand it.  As soon as I finish him I will post a photo.

I also have a lot of books on my nightstand right now.  And then my sister and I had an epiphany.   Audio books.  Now I can read and knit at the same time.  Just get an audio book and put it on the old Ipod and you are good to go.  This is awesome.  This is multitasking at its finest because they are both things I want to do.

I have noticed something about audio books though.  They don’t have the same satisfaction that you get from reading an actual paper book.  Right now I am listening to The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.  I have read it before and it is very good.  For the last couple weeks the desire to read it yet again had been rattling around in the back of my head, so I got the audio book.  But I find I still want to read the paper one.  I wonder why that is.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to read a real book and knit Christmas elves at the same time.  It’s kind of too bad.

15 Books

So this is going around on Facebook.  The idea is to name 15 books that have really stuck with you.  You are only supposed to take 15 minutes to do it.

Here are mine:

1. Dracula – Bram Stoker
2. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
3. Asta’s Book – Barbara Vine (I think it’s Anna’s Book in the US)
4. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
5. Charms for the Easy Life – Kaye Gibbons
6. Water for Elephants – Sarah Gruen
7. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audry Niffenegger
6. Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
7. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
8. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
9. Tender at the Bone – Ruth Reichl
10. Stolen Season – David Lamb
11. Into Thin Air – John Krakauer
12. The Lake of Dead Languages – Carol Goodman
13. The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood -Rebecca Wells
14. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
15. Bel Canto – Ann Patchett

So what are your 15?

To read or not to read (Twilight that is)

I am reading Twilight again.  I know I know, I really need to get a life.  And I will, I promise, once I finish reading this for the second time.

This time I am vetting it for The Princess because she wants to read it.  She is 10, almost 11 going on 16 if you know what I mean.  When I read it initially I thought it was too sexy for a ten-year-old and when she asked if she could read it I told her that it was inappropriate for her and that no she could not read it.  And she seemed okay with that.

But now some of her friends are reading it, and I am second guessing myself.  Of course suddenly EVERYBODY in the whole world, yes every living soul on this planet has read Twilight except the Princess and it is all my fault.  So I told her I would read it again and see what I thought.

It’s not as sexy as I remember, but I’m only halfway through it.  There is a lot of unspecified and unresolved longing.  Maybe she wouldn’t read as much into that as I am.  But that escalates quite a bit as the series progresses.  Plus there is also a lot of lying to her dad and sneaking around and she probably doesn’t need any tips about that.

So I remain torn.  I know there is no book quite so appealing as the one you are not allowed to read.  And I don’t want to make more of this than necessary.  But I still don’t think I want her reading this book, at least not until she gets a little older.

What to do, what to do?  This mom thing is hard.  They should offer more on the job training.  Maybe some seminars in Las Vegas or perhaps Hawaii.

So long Harry

This must be some kind of milestone.  Last night we finished reading the Harry Potter series as a family.  We started reading it out loud at bedtime when Princess O was six years old.  She is 10 and a half now.  They are long books at at 5-10 pages a night, it takes a while.  Plus we have taken breaks from time to time.

The Princess and I have long since finished reading them ourselves, but this was the first time through for the C-man.  I’m not sure if he will ever read them on his own or not.  I suspect he will eventually.

I have read Harry Potter in emergency rooms, hospital rooms, our bedroom, the children’s bedrooms, the living room, airports, airplanes, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and Italy.  I have read it, Tom has read it, babysitters, grandparents and uncles have read it. Do you think that is some kind of record?

There is at least one passage in every book that I can barely get through without crying.  In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone it’s the bit where Hagrid gives Harry the photo album filled with pictures of his parents.  In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows it’s the part where (spoiler alert) Harry is walking into the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice himself to Voldemort.  I remember when I read it the first time, I was lying on the couch under a scratchy wool blanket in our rented Sydney house.  It was about two in the morning (it was that kind of book) and I was sobbing so hard I could barely read.  And it was all so silly because I had been convinced since the sixth book that Harry had to die.  I have never been so happy to be wrong in my life (end spoiler alert).

So you can imagine how hard it was to keep my composure reading that out loud.  I managed but only just.  And last night when we read the last pages I was all verklempt.  I can’t believe we finished them.  What on earth are we going to read now?

Book Review – The Associate

Well, I finished The Associate by John Grisham a couple of days ago.  See, I told you it wouldn’t take me very long.

I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give anything away for people who want to read it.  So, to start let me just say that if you are one of those people who think if you’ve read one Grisham novel you have read all of them, you will find plenty of fuel for that fire.

I agree that all the lawyer books are pretty similar, but when you hit on a good formula, why mess with it?  And he does occasionally branch out and write a non-lawyer book.

So to quote the promo copy from Amazon.com:

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential. 

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

Vintage Grisham, no?  He as usual does a great job describing the horrid life of a first year lawyer in a big bad New York firm, and creates some truly creepy bad guys.

But it wasn’t one of my favorites.   When I was about 100 pages from the end I was wondering how he was going to tie everything up.  But our protagonist Kyle McAvoy finally figured out how to extricate himself from this big mess.  And I was left wondering, “why didn’t he do that in the first place”  Well, because then Grisham would have had to write his novel about something else, that’s why.  I was really enjoying the book up until then. 

If you like Grisham you will probably like this, if you don’t you aren’t going to read it anyway so never mind.  

The library

The new John Grisham book The Associate was published today.  I’m a big fan.  Imagine how happy I was to discover that a copy was already waiting for me at the local library.  I had completely forgotten that I had even put it on hold.  I raced over there this morning and picked it up.  I will probably be able to write a review of it in the next couple of days.  Grisham is usually a pretty quick read.

I love the library.  And I seem to love it more and more all the time.  We have a very good library for a town of our size, and between the kids and myself we usually have at least 20 things checked out at any given time.

So what is so great about the library?  Well, if you check a book out of the library, read 50 pages and decide it is stupid and boring and not worth your time, you don’t feel guilty about not finishing it.  I knowI am more willing to try new authors and new kinds of books knowing that I can just take it back guilt free if it isn’t for me.  You can’t really do that if you buy it at Borders or some other bookstore.

But, really the best thing about library books is that when you are finished reading them, you don’t have to figure out where to put them.  As someone who already has more books than shelving, this is a huge bonus.  Instead of trying to decide which teetering pile to place your latest acquisition on, you can just chuck it back into the library bag.  Once it goes back, it’s not your problem anymore.  Hooray.

Dracula

I was reading my brother’s blog today, and he had a list of books he has purchased at Stacey’s in San Francisco since it is going out of business and everything is on sale.  For those of you who do not know, Stacey’s is probably one of the last of a breed, a general interest independent bookstore.  It’s the kind of place that looks like it could be a Border’s or a Barnes & Noble but it isn’t.

It’s a shame that it’s closing, but really I can’t get too worked up about it.  It’s just one of those things, and like I said, independent bookstores have been on the endangered species list for quite some time.  And most of the ones that have survived have done so by carving out a niche and carrying a deep selection of a small category, something the Killer B’s can’t do.

Anyway, I mentioned all that because I got distracted.  And also because one of the books he bought was:

The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker, and Leslie S. Klinger, Janet Byrne and Neil Gaiman.  This is so unbelievably cool.  I only heard about it because my brother bought one at Stacey’s.  I just bought one from a certain online book retailer that is probably part of the reason stores like Stacey’s are going out of business. 

I love Dracula.  It is one of my favorite books ever.  I still have the paperback I bought for a class in college.  I probably read it about once a year.  So I am very excited to have a complete annotated edition, so I can see what other people think about it. 

And here’s another cool thing I learned about Dracula from my brother’s blog.  There is going to be a sequel!  Here’s a story from the Guardian in London.

I know, I know, these sequels written by another author so long after the original are generally not a good idea.  But, this one was written by Stoker’s great grand-nephew, and he used Stokers notes for the original story to write it, so I am cautiously optimistic.  It won’t be published until October though, so I have plenty of time to wait.  Plenty of time to wait and study my New Annotated Dracula.  Woo hoo!  

I am such a geek.

The Raven

I have been watching a lot of football this weekend.  I was very pleased when the Ravens won yesterday.  I like the Ravens because I like the whole Edgar Allen Poe connection.  He died in Baltimore you know.    

The Raven is one of my favorites:

But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only


That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.


Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered;


Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before;


On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”


Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

It’s so handy that Poe’s work has passed into the public domain.  I found The Raven at Fall of Usher.  That (The Fall of the House of Usher) is another good story but The Cask of Amontillado is my favorite.