Two and a half days

I am revising cover letters today and doing internet research on book stores and other possible places of employment.

The laundry is done.
The list of items that must be not left behind is made.
We have a plan of driving and where to stay.
Tomorrow I make phone calls.

Lists exist and are relevant.

My nerves are not buying it. This is not the normal move. There is usually this zen that follows the zany of finding a place to live and budgeting and finding a new job and meeting new people -
wait, what?
I don't have time to think about meeting new people, I've got way many other things to worry about!
And yet.

My zen tells me that it's on vacation and I need to find some other coping mechanism. Most of my best friends are also moving or going through massive life shifts. The cats do not let me too far out of sight most of the day. I keep reorganizing things and packing things and we are not in a place that has all of my/their/our stuff.

I keep channeling thoughts of my friend who is so excited about working with other scientists that she joyfully introduces herself at conferences and writes emails with enthusiasm and I believe I'm going to try it. I may not get any jobs out of it, but I may very well meet some people who are doing things that I want to be a part of.

My parents are off on a drive in their new town that has welcomed them gently and with ice cream.

It is time for a shower and then some more tea and then I will write.

My best to all.

Carravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew
1599-1600; Oil on canvas, 10' 7 1/2" X 11' 2"; Contarelli Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

The day that Steampunk changed my life

I am a huge fan of the internet. There are amazing and wonderful things to find there. LibraryThing is one of them. And one of the many interesting and wonderful things that you can be on LibraryThing is an Early Reviewer. An Early Reviewer is someone who signs up to request a copy of a book that is listed by one publisher or another through LibraryThing with the understanding that upon receipt and reading of that title, you will write a review of it on LibraryThing.

If you do not write reviews, you are less likely to get books. It’s a pretty simple formula, and one that I think works. The system is a good one and benefits the parties involved. At least, I believe that it does for now, as the list of titles grows every month, as does the list of publishers taking advantage of a little painless advertising and the potential for more word-of-web marketing. I’ve now received & reviewed 4 Early Reviewer titles. You’ll notice I don’t say books.

The Shadow Conspiracy II, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford & Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff and published by bookviewcafe.com (more on them later), is the very first eBook that I have ever read, and it was the title that I ‘won’ as an Early Reviewer. (I kind of like that you ‘win’ titles on ER. It is sort of like a game, really – you add your name to the seemingly endless list of names to request one or another or several different titles (you only get one title a month, so requesting a copy of any titles that you find interesting (in other words that you are likely to write on) is a good idea) and then you wait until the end of the month when you find out whether or not one will be sent your way. Fun!)

This collection of short stories in the Steampunk genre was also my first non-Mieville, non-graphic Steampunk reading. I’ve kind of avoided the literature. In the hands of Mieville, steam meets magic and world-building and that is intriguing, whereas a corset and a monocle and a few brass gears is pretty to look at, but not necessarily the stuff of good storytelling. I thought it would be a fun title, and a quick enough read (and, yes, I know, I read quickly as it is) and was happy to read that I’d won it.

Happily, I was completely blown away. I found the adventure and the technology and the social stuff and the storytelling (especially the storytelling) and the characters and the allusions entirely up my alley. The writing was energetic and lively. There is a lot of reference to historical persons and places and ideas (and I do intend to create a list of those allusions in this blog at some point) (Because I think it fun.) which may be off-putting to minds that are not so comfortable without all the facts to hand. I get it. I mean, I don’t experience it, but I comprehend and would then recommend keeping a list of names to check and stopping by here in a few days to read the list of allusions and follow the links to their own happy ends.

I was relieved to read not one romance. Not a single one. Adventure and rescue and flying ships and automata and Voudon and Lord Byron and The Nile, to be sure, but no idiotic seductions, no teenagers in love and not one piece of normalizing romantic advice. That alone would have been enough, but when you read of Galveston and of river travel and of airships and trains, well, you can imagine my delight.

Half of the stories follow male protagonists and half of them follow female protagonists. There is one story told through the words of three different people: a German girl, an English man and an African man raised in England from the age of 8, so that is the anomaly. It is called The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and is a story that left me (me!) absolutely silent for many minutes.

This is good episodic story telling. It is strong and specific and detailed and concise.

Not at all a surprise when you consider that the publisher of both volumes of The Shadow Conspiracy (and yes, the first one is now in my files) is BookViewCafe.com.

From their website:

Book View Café came together in March of 2008 around a group of authors (click here to see our complete author list) with a simple aim: to use the Internet to bring their work directly to their readers. It was already clear that a revolution was coming to the publishing industry and these authors wanted to help shape its course.

Working with a shoe-string budget and volunteer labor, but drawing on a collective century’s worth of experience in the publishing industry, they created the Book View Café website. Rather than just another clearing house for books online, they created a space where readers could browse and discover new authors and titles alongside current favorites. Aware that the Internet demands variety, the authors made sure that fresh fiction appeared on their front page every day, a feat made possible by the extensive list of material available to over twenty professional authors.

The Book View Café site officially launched in November of 2008. Since then the site has experienced a steady growth in readers and in author-members.

Did you read the author list? Did you? I did. More importantly, I read the side-bars and went to the different pages on the site and have now bought an eBook and will likely buy more from them. I am deeply impressed at the thoughtfulness of this site as well as the range of titles and genres available.

Used to be that I was relatively ambivalent about eBooks, feeling that they were useful for ridding libraries of the need to keep 17 copies of anything cluttering up the shelves, and perhaps saving the real paper for Real Literature. Between this experience and learning just how much authors can make selling their own works as eBooks (therefore giving the big finger to middle managers and other RealWorld evils), I am now sold.

For my birthday, I would like a used Nook Color, please. Thank you.

Next time: Allusions in The Shadow Conspiracy-s

All our humble opinions

I finished a book yesterday, Books by Larry McMurtry, and did it knowing that I would write a review before sending the copy back to the home of a friend of mine, where it lives. I wrote the review, rated the book, and then delighted myself by reading other people's reviews. Most of them were from people who really didn't know what they were gong to get and found it insulting. I love those people. They make very easy targets for practice and very easily defined sets of ways Not-To-Be.

Reviews are one of my most favorite form of literature. I love literary criticism. Fuck that, I love criticism. So much. It is awful and pointless and pointed and relevant and self-serving. It is clear and specific and timely and vapid and wandering and uncertain. It makes me laugh and cry and throw things and want to bake a cake. For everyone. I read criticism and want to explode into anything but a thinking human being. I read criticism and bask in the glorious ability of human brains to find and pursue connections in the most unrelated entities, to find the poetry in anything, to make of a pile of shit something that might actually be fertilizer instead of just a fucking mess.

I don't write many of them, though. Well, not to share. Not written anyway.

As super-powers go, I'd really love to be able to purr. There are few other things that I find compelling or likely to not get out of hand somehow or make going out for a nice evening relatively impossible. I mean, really, laser vision? flying? power boobs? (Hovering, like a Star Wars Hovercraft? That would be cool. (In my dreams, I occasionally travel that way from room to room or down stairs or well - so I sometimes dream that I'm in a mall (why? who knows) and I get around by just sort of lifting up about 4 inches and floating with Segue-speed to my next destination. Sometimes when I wake up, I can still do it. Invisible Segue Power. That would rock.))

My actual super-power, as I've recently discovered, is that I can bore anyone. Really. It's a gift. My friends are really good at not being bored by me, but then again, I do tend to shut up when I'm around them. Usually because one of them has just interrupted me, but that's not the point! (Full disclosure: We interrupt each other. There are a few of us who are still in the middle of conversations we began 3 years ago and will never finish because it's way more fun to keep things going by butting in with something else really interesting and immediate. Also, we have to, otherwise we would all never quit yapping at each other.)

I. Can Talk. A Lot. Impressively. With no need to stop. Or make sense. Or even really know what I'm talking about sometimes, although that doesn't happen all that much anymore, I've read a lot of books, also, I revel in being right about stuff especially when I'm talking at someone because I want that person to stop talking to me and go away.

Boring people is an extremely useful skill. Being not-interesting can come in incredibly handy and allows me to not participate in any number of accepted social events ranging from oo-ing and coo-ing over 'boys' to relying entirely (and by entirely, I mean 100% entirely, not the occasional giggle-fest because someone said "I believe it is a matter of great doctrinal import!" Different things.) on movie or TV show quotes.

And yet, I am somehow reluctant to put all of the thoughts I've had over the years about stereotyping in romantic comedies to why Brigadoon needs to be remade, but set in South Asia with better songs and huger dance numbers to my conviction that a really good study would be one that compares the Mrs. Collins's from the four major film productions of Pride & Prejudice to their contemporary cultures. I will talk about how silence in film is way too underused. I can go on about the delights of seeing a movie in a theatre on a huge ass screen with many other people who would really rather not hear me react to that movie.

Just not online. I will work to change that. Opinions do change, and I respect that. My opinions change less often than I'd like to admit, but I give them time. First responses are not always reliable. Particularly when it comes to movies. Books on the other hand, well, The Great Gatsby can still suck my lint and Les Miserables is easily the book that convinced me that I love cities.

You really don't want to be around for that conversation.

Really.

Next time: I will write y'all a review. Just for kicks.

The Cat prefers the knitted rug to the sun beams

It is a slow morning, now barely morphed into afternoon and I won't really notice the time shift until evening when the walk takes me to work again. I do not mind late nights or weird hours. They leave me a bit off-center with nothing but the number of hours between one duty and another and a list of possibilities in between to define what the day becomes.

Right now the world is silent in the house and muffled through the windows and I am jealous of its movement and crisp air and sunshine and errands. I have an errand to run and may turn it into more than one, just for the sake of the fresh and the fall.

I've been writing lots of letters and find that I crave the moments of silence and thought to think of what to say to this person or that person, to have a conversation, no matter how one sided, that is thoughtful and concise and specific, or maybe wandering and filled with words of moments long since passed.

I have been sleeping longer these last few days. Noticeably. I believe that the excitement of extended conversation with a beloved friend and the realization that I must do this more often with different people probably lead to a certain amount of that sleep. Well, that and the damn cricket that chirped all friggin' night long and inspired tremendously deep sleep the next night. Stupid loud mouth. Rather: loud legs.

Something begins to settle into the silent parts of my psyche. Deeply felt joy and self-expression, and something about Haircut Day at The Antiquarium. Of course we were there. Of course. It goes like this:

I met my friend Aubrey for the weekend in Brownville, NE. We stayed at the apartment of a mutual friend (thank you, Cin, you are awesome). We each had something very specific to talk about with the other, and we also had a (as in one) specific place in the area that we wanted to go and sightsee. There are requirements when you visit Brownville and those must be accomplished in and around all of this.

We talked libraries. We talked cave adventures. We found the graveyard and drank some wine. There was lunch and there was an apple and there were salami and cream cheese roll-ups and granola bars and fruit juice. I bought a cookbook with showy soup recipes and we sighed and gasped over the desk and the type left from the newspaper that was there when Southeast Nebraska was the place to be. We strolled. We followed a map, and stopped at the statue of Gov. Furnas and showed a bit of honor and then made the point that it may not have been the best idea to plant a bunch of trees on the prairie. Which is not a place of trees, but of scrub and yucca and wild rose and lead plant and bluestem and thistles and nighthawks and poppies and gut-sucking assassin bugs. And wind. Oh the blessed wind.

The parking area at The Antiquarium is kind of undetermined. The approach to the building allows you think that perhaps it is a lie, that it is closed, that it is really closed, that there is nothing in that almost nondescript brick face. That lasts about 5 seconds until the nose of the car reaches the top of the driveway and you see that there is, in fact, a party going on. Kind of all of the time. The cars are just lined up that way, like they are staying for a while and maybe you need to know someone to be here. And we do. They are the books.

The end of the story is a foregone conclusion: Aubrey bought a book about a library and I put on hold a book about cartographers. I will buy it next weekend when we take my niece to this place and warn her than the cat looks nice, and he is, and he bites.

The beginning of the story is a hug from the universe that we got as we walked in and looked around and saw a man sitting in a chair with a cape over his top half because another man was cutting his hair. Well, it was Haircut Day at The Antiquarium, you see. Tom's barber from Omaha comes down once a month and anyone who wants a haircut that day has to leave Omaha to get it. Nobody buys any books, but everyone gets their hair cut. Oh, and someone brought some wine. We stuck around long enough that it got opened. Shiraz. With conversation.

The cats roam around and I am soft and lightly pen-scratchy for a while longer. There are leftovers of pasta with prosciutto and books to be returned to their library from mine. Now I watch the sun beams and settle comfortably into my chair.