Tag: Bev the slacker

travel/love/life envy

I woke up worrying about how to pay the rent when I’m going to be gone (and therefore miss out on my primary job) for most of the pay period before July’s rent paycheck shows up.  But then my phone rang – before I was even out of bed – with someone saying they’d basically volunteered me for a part-time gig and did I want it before she committed me irrevocably? Sometimes I forget – The Universe provides.

I’ve been reading a lot of things lately that feature people traveling and doing the thing that they love.  People that get to travel because of the thing that they love.  People that found the thing they love by traveling, or found that they love to travel because of the thing they love. And they found the person that they love because of the thing they love, or vice versa. Or something like that. Sometimes they get a bit jumbled up in my head – so Julia is speaking in a gothic English accent about the proper way to bake French bread while driving an old pickup full of manure. Oh yeah, and they’re all writers – though writing is far from the only thing they do.

I want a life like that. To do the thing(s) that I love, and have that become the center of my life, and to find someone to love who wants to inhabit my life filled with that thing that I love and traveling.

I am only nominally making money by writing right now, but I do have a bit of a chaotic work existence, with a bunch of small avenues where revenue comes in the way that these (lucky!) folks have – in form, though definitely not in scale.  It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

Step 2: more writing.

reading roadblocks of my own making

I have a confession to make.

No, I’m not confessing that I was full of crap when I said I’d write every day – you can see that for yourself.

No, you also know I’m a big slacker and skip work whenever I think I can get away with it. And stay up past midnight when I swore I would start getting to bed earlier.

The real confession is this: I’ve been pissed off at a book for a week.

It’s childish and ridiculous, I know this.  It’s not the book’s fault I have to review it. Or that I hadn’t finished the review yet (didn’t even start until the day it was due). I chose the gig, I even chose the book. But I’m blaming the book anyway.

I am a procrastinator from waaaaaaay back.  Certainly when it comes to writing, some kind of pressure is necessary – and that pressure is rarely internal. So the deadline is my frienemy (frenemy?). I hate it, but can’t accomplish much without it. Much like having a job – don’t like it, can’t keep a roof over my head without it (anyone who has a solution to this one, please pass it along!).

For the first time, I received a review copy a month before the review was due.  I picked it up two weeks ago and lied told myself I’d read it, get it done early and for once not email the review just before midnight on the due date. No one is surprised that the story did not unfold in quite that manner.

I read 95% of it (short stories, so it wasn’t technically necessary for me to read every story to review it adequately) more than a week ago – and then just carried it around with me, not reading it. And since I hadn’t finished it – and hadn’t written the review – I really couldn’t read anything else. I’ve been busy this last week (luckily) and watched a lot of Hulu and DVDs. But each night as I went to bed, I would find myself grumbling (in my head – I haven’t gone so far as to actually yell at the book out loud) that I couldn’t read any of the dozen books sitting on the shelf. Each night, they looked better and more interesting than the night before. Torture, thy name is unread books.

Last night, after work, I read the last four stories, finished my review of Best European Fiction 2010, and emailed it – and the joy was quite out of proportion with the product, let me assure you. I practically danced to my two (!) stacks of unread books and grabbed The Madonnas of Leningrad and started reading – after midnight, naturally.

And it was wonderful. Finished it an hour ago. Granted, it was only 228 pages, and I did take the day off. Still – it’s good to be free!

Bad blogger! very bad!

You all know that I’ve been less than faithful about blogging regularly – and it should be clear that I am reading all the freakin’ time, even though I’m rarely blogging about it.  So maybe today’s embarrassment will come as no surprise to all two of you, but it was quite a slap in the face for me.

I looked at the list of books On The Shelf and discovered that I have read all of them, every single one.  Some of them months ago. One of them, twice already! Shameful and slacker-like and thoroughly unacceptable for a girl who says she wants to be writing more.

So, in the interest of kicking my own ass and maybe building better habits, I am going to write about at least one of those on-the-shelf books every day until I’ve written about all of them. Then try to get through the list of one/two/three dozen books I’ve read in addition to these (it’s been a slow month or two).

Today’s Book: The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt

This book was a first for me in a couple of ways. It was my first A.S. Byatt book (Booker-prize-winning author of 10+ books), and my very first (paid!) book review subject for BookBrowse.com. You can read some of that review at the link above (though you need a subscription to read all of it).

Thankfully, I liked the book.  But I didn’t love the book. It got rave reviews in lots of places, and I certainly am not here to rebut those claims – the book is fabulously written and really held my interest for most of it.  I was just let-down by the ending. And not so much what happened at the end, but the quality of the writing at the end.  And maybe I was expecting too much or missing what she was trying to do, but I don’t think so.

Most of the book focuses on the inner lives of several children in England, the generation that grew up to fight in WWI. And I loved all of it.  Then the kids grow up… and suddenly we see a lot less about what’s going on inside them, more plot-driven stuff instead.  So – in my mind – what could have been an incredible book became just a good book from that point on. It’s likely that most people wouldn’t be bothered by that at all – and many would see it as a step in the right direction. To each his own, I like to see what makes people tick.

For each book I review, I also have to do a write-up on something in the book that I found interesting, or wanted to know more about as a result of reading the book. And, since one of the main characters is a potter’s apprentice, doing ‘pottery as art’, I did a side-bar on the Studio Pottery movement of the time (the book is full of great historical references to all kinds of cool stuff).

I was completely stressed out about it. I wasn’t too worried about the review itself (I’ve been writing about books and getting As for quite some time), but everything about the side-bar worried me. Was it interesting to anyone else? Is my research thorough enough? I can’t find anything to say, are pictures good? What if they hate it and don’t ask me back for another review?

Turns out, pictures are good, my research was fine, and the side-bar is not intended to be a torture device. Both Davina and Lucia (the brains and wits behind BookBrowse.com) are very nice people who don’t wield nasty red pens or detention slips.  And they did indeed ask me back (I’m starting my fifth book for them as soon as I finish this).  I relax a little bit more each time the dreaded side-bar question comes up.  Maybe someday I’ll consider myself a journalist.

Fangirl Post: Michael Chabon

First, I should probably apologize for letting almost A MONTH go by with no posts.  I have no excuse for ignoring all (two) of you fine people for that long.  I have, maybe, one-week’s worth of excuse – I wrote my first official book review for Bookbrowse.com two weeks ago!  I will blog about The Children’s Book after that review is published, and put a link up so you all can check it out.  With any luck, my bio on their site will encourage two more people to find me out here in the interwebs.  Won’t I be special then?  Now, to business.

Michael Chabon (pronounced Shay-bon, as I learned this week) is a crazy good writer.  I first saw the name after watching the film, Wonder Boys (starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, and the ever-fabulous Robert Downey, Jr.), which was based on his second (published) novel (which is about the experience of writing his second [unpublished] novel, which sucked hard-core).  I loved the movie and (as usual) went looking for more quality entertainment by the same guy.  His first novel (Mysteries of Pittsburgh) was good, but it was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay that made me a die-hard fan.  Not only great writing and superb story-telling, but a comic-book-history theme and the obligatory gay sub-plot!  But don’t take my word for it – he won a Pulitzer for that one.  I’ve since read all his novels and a few of his short stories, eagerly awaiting each new gem.

This is a writer who just gets better and better.  Some of his latest stuff (The Final Solution, Gentlemen of the Road) has been short novellas  with great story – but the language is better than great, it is extraordinary.  I just want to dive in and swim around in the words and phrases and sentences forever and ever.  And he’s only two years older than me (and apparently happily married <sigh>).  He should have a few more decades to be cranking this stuff out.

One of the dozens of reasons I moved to Portland was because there was so much cool stuff going on here.  Case in point – a reading by Michael Chabon! Free at Powell’s!  His new book!  Book-geek heaven hosts book-geek-idol extraordinaire! And did I mention it was free?  And less than five miles from my house? At the coolest bookstore on the planet? (sorry Title Wave,  but it’s true).   Of course, I was going.  But, I must admit I was worried. What if he was lame in person? What if he spoke like that guy on the Clear-Eyes commercials?  What if he was stiff and boring and ruined my future reading pleasure with his lameness?  I shudder to think.

Thankfully, he was everything I hoped he would be.  I’d seen photos, so I knew he was reasonably attractive (one worry down, dozens to go).   But he was funny and humble and sexy and teasing and witty, and human while being utterly adorable.  And he really did look a lot like Michael Douglas did in the film.  He read two essays from his new book which were marvelously written and slyly thought-provoking while making us laugh out loud (me and my 200 best book-geek friends).  All in all, a perfect first-run of the author visit circuit at Powell’s, and confirmation that my author-love is not misplaced.

This week – Barbara Ehrenreich comes to town.

A slow reading week…

I haven’t read much in the last week or two, and before that was not reading much that really excited me (other what I’ve already posted).  I have allowed myself to become addicted to a television show (Grey’s Anatomy) and have been watching it on DVD – between that, work and having a life, not much reading going on. Pretty unusual.

I saw the movie Watchmen when it was in the theater (the best friend is a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan, and I am a big comic book geek).  We were both horribly disappointed and irritated that we’d wasted money and time on such a bloody, violent, depressing and (most important to me) pointless flick. I can do without the blood and violence, but that wouldn’t be enough to turn me off of a movie.  And I am fine with depressing and meaningful, or pointless and fun.  But depressing and pointless – well, that’s a load of crap.  I had been meaning to read Watchmen because it was highly lauded by critics – surprising for a graphic novel.  After seeing the movie, I was compelled to read the book and find out what the movie had screwed up on.

Alan Moore’s graphic novel is much, much better than the movie based upon it (a movie that Moore refused to be affiliated with because he didn’t believe it would work).  But I still didn’t like it very much. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t seen the movie, I would have had a different reading of the book, but it’s too late for that now.  The book has three or four sub-plots that are completely missing from the movie and added much to the point Moore seemed to be trying to make – that you cannot do evil things and not become evil.  The comic book is as violent and bloody as the film, but in comic-book form, the impact of the violence is more cerebral and less disgusting.  The book was compelling (while the film dragged on) and while still be depressing, at least was not pointless.  There is a lot of irony and contrasting of stories that is completely missing in the movie.  The character of Dr. Manhattan is much more developed in the book, and there is some fascinating stuff about the nature of time and experience that adds much to the backbone of Moore’s concept.  All in all, the book was enjoyable, if not something I would highly recommend.

I also read Kaye Gibbon’s The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster – follow-up to her first hit novel Ellen Foster. Ellen is a girl who’s lost her mother and somehow manages to stay driven and positive in the face of abuse, crushing poverty and racism in the South.  Both books are written in the first person.  I remembered liking Ellen Foster, so I picked up the sequel (written a decade or two later) when I saw it for $3.  TLAAMbEF was not the powerhouse the first novel was, but those who loved Ellen from the first book would probably enjoy seeing what came next.

I recently got a gig reviewing books for a newsletter/website called BookBrowse.com – soon I’ll get paid (a tiny bit of money) to review new books!  My first book is The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt – and it’s due in two weeks, so I had better get back to reading soon!