Okay, it’s decided

Okay, it’s decided. I’m not voting for Mit.

I don’t usually like to talk politics (or religion) in polite company, but this is too important not to speak up. It has to do with “Glitterati” – a national movement trying to stand up against bigotry and anti-gay politics. Members of this group of protesters throw glitter on politicians who they feel are making  anti-gay statements or who they feel are bigots. So who are these Glitteratiers targeting? Well, currently the Republicans that are currently crossing our nation at lightening speed, though not fast enough for these stealthy glitter bombers.

This brings me to my decision not to vote for Mit (not that I would ever vote for Mit, but that’s not the point).

When Rick Santorum was hit with glitter last week he commented by saying: “This is an exciting time. I’m happy for a celebration. This is confetti. We just won Florida!”

When Newt and his wife were glitterized, his comment was appropriate when he said: “Nice to live in a free country.” (on a side note – Newt? Excuse me Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich but who names their kid Newt?!) Thought Newt did say that glitter bombing “is clearly an assault and should be treated as such.”

Gerald Herbert/AP (NPR)

This brings me to Mr. Romney. After Mit was glitter bombed last week by a Colorado college student, he was arrested and charged with causing a disturbance, an unlawful act on school property, and wait for this last one - throwing a missile. Really Mit?! If you happen to get into any office of power in your lifetime, please put someone else in charge of defending our country; glitter missiles are not a legitimate weapon. Or are they? Stay tuned on the fate of this missile throwing college student!

A Valintine Wish from Leo Tolstoy

complements of flickr.com

“Love is life.

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Everything is united by it alone.

Love is God,

 and to die means that I,

 a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

This was almost one of those books that was going to go in my “just had to put it down” category. As with the novel that Oprah loved so much, The Story of Edger Sawtelle, if I hadn’t been listening to it, I would have stopped. In Ms Vreeland’s defense, she picked a subject that would be hard for anyone to convey in writing: stained glass. Unfortunately, she tried to describe these artistic wonders a bit too often. The lovely variations in the color and the glass itself are just too hard to recreate in ones mind, as I like to do with my stories, so I got tired of trying.

The story is primarily about Clara Driscoll, apparently one of the top women designers in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s stained glass studio (not the jewelry Tiffany guy – that’s his father). There is some unknown here in real life, but it is thought, and the author supposes, that Clara came up with the idea and designed many of Tiffany’s famous stain glass lamps shades.

Unfortunately, there is not much that is particularly interesting in Clara’s life and certainly not worth the 13 CD’s worth in the audio version. It could have been pared down by quite a bit. (where was the editor in this story?) The author creates some interest when Clara becomes romantically involved with a man who suddenly disappears, and when the women at the glass shop have to cross a picket line to go to work, but there are many lulls in between. And there is an underlying theme as the title suggests, that there is something, at minimal artistic, going on between Clara and Mr. Tiffany, but as with many parts of the book, it lacks depth and just isn’t convincing.

It’s Jules Verne’s Birthday!

Who of any mature age, doesn’t know Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in 1870. I think I was introduced to it via the movie that starred Kirk Douglas as Ned Land and James Mason as Captain Nemo. Peter Lorre was in it to. I just found out it was released in 1954. I probably saw it on TV in the 60′s.  And who doesn’t know Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) or the ever popular and much copied Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). They had movies made of them as well, if I’m not mistaken (quite a few of the latter).  What an imagination he had!  I’m sure his submarine, the Nautilus, was much improved from the submarines of his day. (Ah – the joys of fiction!) They were all very creative stories, though I’m sorry to say, I don’t think I’ve read a single one! I’m going to put them on my “to read” list right now!

Looks like a pleasant fellow

Jules was born February 8th, 1828 in Nantes, France  as Jules Gabriel Verne and died from complications of diabetes in 1905 at the age of 77.  He had one son, Michel, and two step-daughters.  His stories were first published in French. I don’t know when they were translated to English.

When I think of these more famous Verne stories I also think of H.G. Wells  who was younger than Verne. Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 and died in 1946 and was English. I have a book of Wells’ that was my father’s. It was given to him by his good friend I.R. Howlett in 1955.  Howlett got it from a mutual friend by the name of Ray Hadwick when he enlisted as a radio technician in 1940. My father gave it to me in 1985 because he knew I would enjoy it. It was published in 1937 and is titled The Famous Short Stories of H.G. Wells. It has the Time Machine in it and 62 other short stories. Wow, Wells was prolific!

Does sex in writing sell?

Okay, I know this is a stupid question. Anyone who is going through or has gone through puberty knows that sex, in any form, sells. Always has and always will. What I really want to know is, does it have to be in a story to have it sell? I don’t think so, and it bugs the hell out of me when I see it in stories because the author (or perhaps it’s the editor or publisher who’s doing this) thinks it needs to be there.

I’m currently reading a Ken Follett novel titled Fall of Giants . Now you Follett fans might already know where I’m going with this because, apparently, this is not uncommon with his novels. This is my first Follett novel, so I checked with my husband, who, seeing me reading Follett and having read him before, got the idea to read him again because he has enjoyed his books in the past (my husband has a few of his novel on our bookshelves). So I posed the question to him, since I am a novice Follett reader: Does he always stick in sex scenes here and there, seemingly just for the sake of putting sex into his stories? It took him a day or so to answer me because it never occurred to him, but he came back with an answer in the affirmative. He is reading A Place Called Freedom, and after I pointed this fact out, he said that same thing was happening in his story: sex put in the story where it didn’t seem to fit.

In Fall of Giants, the first sex scene is expected; the typical sex between the lord of the household and one of his servants, but then he puts it in (twice!) with a lady in high society and a man of similar class, once in an opera box and once in a library. Now, obviously, things like that could and probably did happen. Class does not change the need or desire for sex. It was that in this story, it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit with the characters or their situations. It just seemed like it was put there for the sake of having a sex scene, with, I assume, the premise to keep the reader interested. And this is just a shame, at least in Mr. Folletts case, since his story telling is good enough that he had me interested in the characters and what happens to them easily in the first chapter. To me, these stray sex scenes just distract for his good story. Though I am starting to think Mr. Follett could take a little lesson from the novels that are obviously sold for their sex. You know the ones I mean. The paperbacks on the drugstore shelves that have a headless (instructions: put your own head here), voluptuous woman, holding onto the bare chest of a headless (instructions: put your husband’s or boyfriends head here) man who was born with a chest of steel. (No working out for these guys, they were just born this way!) When Follett gets to an actually scene that could and should be a wonderful sex scene he ends with “… and, at last, they made love.”  What a disappointment.

Now, not all writers of sex scenes have this problem. Example – Diane Gabaldon’s book Outlander. Her sex scenes are quite rich and intoxicating if you like the type of sex she is selling. I, unfortunately, do not. Again, I thought her story was good, very good, but I haven’t picked up another book in that series because I was so turned off by the over use of sex in the story (and in this case, very raw and combative sex). No matter what your taste is in that department, I think she over did it, and it distracted from the story, a very good story.

I have been working on a screenplay for my second novel, A Burnished Rose, and hopefully without giving away too much, I do have a sex scene in the book. Even though it really had to be there for the character and the story, I still debated putting it in, in part because of the debate I am discussing now: I didn’t want to put it in just because sex sells. Well, the person that is helping me take my novel and convert it into a screenplay suggested that maybe, in a scene quite a bit before the sex scene that takes place in the story, some sex should take place. (“Sex sells,” she reminded me!) It is a place in the story where this could very easily happen: the girl (Rose) is going off to war, and her long time boyfriend has taken her away for one last evening together. Perfect place for a sex scene, right? But I just can’t do it. It just isn’t in Rose’s or her boyfriend’s character to have sex at this moment, (and in the story, it is 1943. Some people did wait until they were married to sleep together, though not usually in novels or movies, so I might be making a mistake. But my gut tells me no. I tell myself: it adds to the tension. Right? Only time and a movie producer will answer that question).

This may be a one-sided debate. You can most assuredly give me many examples of wonderful, even great stories where sex scenes are not included (I just reviewed one lately – David Copperfield, and a little more on the subject – Pride and Prejudice). But I really wish authors (or publishers, or editors) would not put sex into a perfectly good story just because they think it sells. It demeans the people reading it, and for sure their fellow writers. I rest my case.

The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin

The history in this historical fiction novel was a little too complicated to follow since it was set in a time (1863) and a place (Istanbul, Turkey) that I have such little knownledge of, it’s hard to understand some of what the author is talking about. You can tell he has studied this area extensively. The fiction part of the story was interesting enough (unexplained murders of soldier cadets), but lagged at times. I had to make myself finish it. It was okay, but not the riviting piece the back blurb would make you think it was. Sorry Jason.

Charles Dicken’s David

I have been trying to read or re-read classics lately, so I picked up Mr. Dicken’s David Copperfieldat the library a while back.  I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it. I listened to this book on audio and when I saw it had twenty some CD’s, I questioned my wisdom to try it. But Charles managed to keep me entertained through the whole thing! No easy feat for such a long novel. This book was first published 1849 and apparently is somewhat autobiographical. It follows young David’s life from being pulled from a loving mother who dies prematurely, through many tough and harrowing experience for such a young lad, only to have him land on his feet – mostly by his own devices. He ends up with a wonderful Aunt Betsey who has taken in a man everyone thinks is crazy because of a dead King who keeps trying to show up in his life, among other things.

The book takes him through more interest times as a young man and new people, good and bad that continue to come into his life. I just giggled at the way Mr. Dicken’s playfully mocks David’s first true love – Dora – a woman who you just cringe at because she’s so idiotic but who David can find no fault with, as all blind love can be. [That hasn't changed either.]

I’m happy to say that alls well that ends well (I won’t give away the ending for those who want to read or re-read it), and despite the length of the thing, Dicken’s leaves you with a warm feeling in your belly. I really enjoyed it, and I continue to marvel at how books written in the 1800s, such as the sullen though interesting Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, can still ring true today. People really haven’t fundamentally changed in all that time and Dicken’s David really brings that point home.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Well, I just had to read it. It was named the best new novel (or something like that) in 2011 by the people on Goodreads, so it’s got to be good, right? Well, it was okay. Now granted, I’m not a dystopia genre fan anyway, but my daughter read it and really liked it, so I thought I should read it too (in addition to the best first novel thing). I’ve read other dystopia YA novels like Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and liked them – mostly. (That is a dystopia series, right? I really am not sure about that genre.) But Divergent was not up to that caliber. Now, it is Ms Roth’s first novel, so I will cut her some deserved slack. It wasn’t a bad story it just didn’t do much for me. I think the main concept was interesting but the pacing was a bit off. The prep time for the main characters in their new environment went on too long, then all of a sudden it’s crunch time and the are immediately in danger with little build up to where it was going. You could almost tell the author was writing the book just to write a second. I’m not sure I’ll read the second one. I’ll let my daughter read it first and see what she says. Again, I don’t think it’s a bad story, just not worthy of the best new novel title the goodread audience gave it for 2011 (though as a writer, I am sincerely happy for Ms Roth. I’m sure book 2 will be better, and the great sales of this book allows her more room to write book 2). Good luck Veronica!

Donegal earthquake 2012: ah jaysus

Reblogged from Kevin Denny: Economics more-or-less:

I like this guys humor!

A Pooh Fan

Ernest H. Shepard illustration courtesy of carlemuseum.org

Anyone who has grown up in the last century has to be familiar with Pooh. And if you’re a fan, I don’t have to tell you who Pooh is: philosopher, thinker, and primarily a lover of honey. So as a tribute to A.A. Milne (Alan Alexander), who was born on this day in 1882 in England, I would like to quote a little Pooh.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same thing,” he said.

A. A. Milne had a son named Christopher Robin and his toy bear, pig, donkey, tiger, and Kangaroo where Milne’s inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh stories , which were first published in 1926. Ernest H. Shepard was the illustrator and also used Christopher Robin’s toys for his illustrations. (He also did the illustrations for the lovely The Wind in the Willows stories.) Winnie the Pooh has been published in 21 languages. Milne died in 1956.

Ernest H. Shepard illustration from whatsoeverthingsarelovely-coleenelizabeth.com