Meredith Sue Willis

State of the Union

2012-01-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

I started late, but watched most of the State of the Union speech last night. I tried to keep up my cynical front, but in the end I was bowled over by President Obama’s confidence, his insistence on economic fairness, and also by the enthusiasm on the floor.
You forget, reading the papers, watching professional actors and models, how ordinary most of us are in appearance: chubby women (like me!) in red skirt suits, Gabby Giffords looking fragile, the people in Michelle Obama’s box: Giffords’ bald husband what’s-his-name the astronaut, Warren Buffet’s secretary, someone who represented people who got job help and was all happy and cheerful. Much of the audience, Democrats but some others too, seemed to enjoy getting caught up and carried away, feeling patriotic and virtuous. At some level, I guess that’s what they’re about, patriotism, sentimentality, along with the deal making and schmoozing and eating corn dogs and barbecue. I thought of my one-time NYU SCPS student who seems very decent, Steve Israel of Long Island who is moving up fast in the Democratic ranks in the House.
So there is some goodness out there, not all a hateful circus like the Republican debates– anyhow, I gave over for the moment, moved by the President's eloquence, by Congressman John Lewis’s good old battered face, by the three women Justice, by Olympia Snowe clapping more than a Republican was supposed to.
I felt included last night, in spite of Obama sounding a big supporter of fracking and boasting about what it was like being in the Situation Room when we finally got Osama bin Laden.
I felt like an American for a moment.

PIPA SOPA Blackouts and more

2012-01-19T07:19:00.000-08:00

I didn't black out my website yesterday, but I'm opposing SOPA and PIPA. If you haven't been following these proposed congressional bills that threaten to limit free speech on the Internet in the name of property rights, you might take a look at this NYTimes piece by Rebecca McKinnon or go to Wikipedia's explanation of their Black Out,

According to today's papers, a lot of congresspeople pulled way back on this-- not, of course, because of me, but because of Web terror. Probably because they saw the Googles and Wikipedias as Even Bigger Business than the Chamber of Commerce and Walt ("75 more years") Disney.

The question is, are they right? Or is this actually something bigger? Was it the New Corporations versus the Old Ones, or the millions of us who want the Web open?

At Last! My Name is Up In Lights!

2012-01-17T20:22:00.001-08:00

January, 2012, and my name is... in plastic letters, anyhow!

Workshops with eighth graders in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey...

and a talk at the Ethical Culture Society in Maplewood....

Books for Readers # 148

2012-01-16T17:37:00.001-08:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 148

January 16, 2012

It looks better online! Read it here.

Home

Elmore Leonard Wilkie Collins Archibald Grimké Angelina Weld Grimké Francis Grimké,

In this Issue:

Announcements and News

Phyllis Wilson Moore on Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend

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I'm just coming out of a month of family visits and cooking and digesting big meals. Our weather here in the garden state has been dry and cold with no snow, so while there are still greens and lettuce under plastic in the garden, it's hard to get them out of the frozen ground.

Anyhow, it's my favorite time for Victorian novels and other story-centric books. I read a newish Elmore Leonard called DJIBOUTI that I borrowed from the library for Kindle, and I read THE MOONSTONE by Wilkie Collins, free for the Kindle. THE MOONSTONE is often called the first modern mystery, and it has a detective and a lot of hokey scientific deducing and evidence collecting, but the mystery and detecting are the least of the fun.. Collins tells the story by having characters give their own versions of events then handing off to someone else in a series of reports plus and journal entries. The book has several interesting and quirky characters: Mr. Betteredge, an old family retainer, uses Robinson Crusoe as others use the Bible– he opens the book and lets his hand fall on an answer or prediction. Miss Clack, a spinster committee woman whose religion is not a bore because she is so absurdly self-righteous. Wherever she goes, she leaves a scattering of leaflets and religious tracts.

Miss Clack is a stereotype, but she also has a typical vigor that Collins gives to his women characters. All his women are active: The heroine Rachel kisses her beloved before he kisses her, and has to be warned to behave properly. Also, although the gentle folk have the lead roles, Collins seems admirably comfortable with intelligent working class people. Betteredge, for example, has the first point of view, so we get the "downstairs" perspective before the upstairs. His bright and lively daughter Penelope, who is not a point-of-view character, gives lots of opinions and hypotheses about the missing jewel, and even the ill-fated Rosanna Spearman, who was previously incarcerated for thievery, turns out to be capable of writing long, expressive letters. Collins manages to present her fate as moving and tragic without being sentimental, as Dickens certainly would have. The person who makes the final discoveries solving the mystery is a clever street kid. If you haven't read it, don't miss it.

I have a theory that Elmore Leonard came up with the idea for DJIBOUTI from a combination of headlines (piracy off the coast of east Africa) and a interview in which movie actor Morgan Freeman (image right) complained that he gets lots of work, but never gets to have sex in his movies. He has played Nelson Mandela, the corner man in MILLION DOLLAR BABY, not to mention God a couple of times- -all pretty much asexual. So my little scenario is that Leonard, who always has his eye on the movies, wrote the character of seventy-ish Xavier in DJIBOUTI for Freeman. Just a thought.

Leonard himself is now in his mid eighties, an inspiration to all of us for his continuing fecundity. This book has a pretty slow start (when you're in your eighties and totally bankable in publishing and the movies, you can fool around if you want to). There are a few too many long scenes where Xavier and his boss filmmaker Dara look at video rushes and comment on (a) action that was not dramatized in the main line of the novel and (b) how to make a movie of what's happening in the novel, which is what they're filming. The reviewer in THE GUARDIAN, Giles Fodens says, "Leonard's participle-rich prose style builds action round dialogue in an intriguing way, coming off like the bastard child of Hemingway and Virginia Woolf."

Well put, although Fodens seems to take the book's stylistic pretensions a little too seriously. In the second half, Leonard gets over his meta stuff, seems to catch a wave, and things move along briskly, especially the material following an American ex-con and ex-jihadist who is one of Leonard's entertaining stone cold killers. This character, Jama, doesn't seem to differentiate between his living and murdered relationships-- he misses a particular woman, hardly seems to remember why she isn't available to him anymore. A couple of other colorful characters are let drop a little too soon, but I figure Leonard will bring them back in his next book. Basically, once he goes back to following his own famous Ten Rules of Writing and puts his focus on killers, grifters, and a few goodish guys in an exotic setting, it was pretty good.

The final book I want to speak about-- and recommend highly-- is a nonfiction family history of the Grimkés, LIFT UP THY VOICE: THE GRIMKÉ FAMILY'S JOURNEY FROM SLAVEHOLDERS TO CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS by Mark Perry. The book starts by covering a lot of the same material as the biography of Sarah and Angelina by Catherine Birney that I wrote about in Issue $ 147 (http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive146-150.html#issue147). He adds some interesting conflicts: how Angelina Grimké's withdrawal from public view was probably a result of "female problems," that there was a likely unconsummated– of course!– love affair for the elder abolitionist sister Sarah Grimké.

Then Perry moves on to the story of the abolitionist sisters' nephews, Archibald and Francis, who were the enslaved sons of their brother– and the sisters never knew of their nephews' existence till after the Civil War, and which point they helped educated them. The book summarizes the Civil War as Archibald and Francis Grimké experienced it, then Reconstruction, and finally the long struggle after Reconstruction was undermined to create a civil rights movement. This part of the book is about a whole professional black class including the Grimké brothers and their contemporaries Booker T. Washington and W.E. B. Dubois. The book gives special attention to the Great Debate between those two latter, in which the Grimké brothers were deeply involved: should the Negro concentrate on industrial arts and agriculture or demand higher education and full civil rights?

Archibald Grimké at one point was the U.S. consul to the Dominican Republic; Francis Grimké was the minister of a major African-American church n Washington D.C. The final generation in the story is the daughter of Archibald Grimké and his estranged white wife. The daughter, Angelina Weld Grimké, was a poet known as a pre-cursor of the Harlem Renaissance. All of this is fascinating stuff: the old abolitionist movement through the war through reconstruction and the horrors of anti-black rioting and lynching that followed, plus the struggle over the direction of the Negro political movement and the founding of institutions like the NAACP. And the Grimkés were part if it all.

My heart especially went out to the less famous people: Angelina Weld Grimké the poet had several moments of fame, but ended in silence as a reported recluse in a little house in Brooklyn, no longer writing. The third Grimké brother, John, who did not get an education, rejected the help of the white aunts and others and went to Florida and essentially disappeared. A derelict? A drunk? Just a guy who didn't want any part of public life? Apparently unknown. The other silent ones were the mothers: Nancy Weston Grimké, the enslaved woman who was mother to the three Grimké men with her legal master, Henry Grimké, brother of Sarah and the first Angelina.

And finally, Sarah Stanley, a white woman, who married Archibald Grimké, gave birth to Angelina Weld Grimké, and eventually left her husband and eventually sent her daughter back to him. What was going on here– what racism? What pain?

I love history and biography. But it never satisfies the way imaginative writing can.

-- Meredith Sue Willis

LAURA BENTLEY ON THE HUNGER GAMES AND DISTRICT 12

The following note came from Laura Bentley after I mentioned reading THE HUNGER GAMES in Issue 147. In my brief mention of the popular novel, I forgot to comment on how the Dystopian world of the novel is organized is by "districts." The heroine is from a poor mining region – District 12– which is essentially coextensive with Appalachia.

Laura wrote, "I, too, read THE HUNGER GAMES and was very pleasantly surprised. Because it was a YA book and had received so much hype, I was prepared to dislike it, but it was a fascinating read and made me proud to be from District 12."

From PHYLLIS WILSON MOORE

A well done picture book, BELLE, THE LAST MULE AT GEE'S BEND, illustrated by Clarksburg, WV native John Holyfield and written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Sroud, is based on the true story of two mules from a little Alabama town named Gee's Ben and their role in history.

Martin Luther King had visited Gee's Bend to encouraged the residents to vote. Of course, trouble followed. They managed to vote anyway.

When the Benders (as they call themselves) took the ferry to vote, the county stopped the ferry from running. The guy in charge said, "We didn't stop the ferry because they are black. We stopped it because they forgot they are black." I think I have the quote right. Gee's Bend had about 300 residents and is on a portion of a piece of land jutting out into a river. At that time there was one dirt road in and off the jut. The only other route was to go up river and back down and many of them had no transportation. They did it anyway.

When King was murdered, the town was asked to supply two mules to pull a farm wagon carrying King's casket in the funeral procession. This met opposition from local law enforcement but the town prevailed and the mules became part of history. The state police tried to prevent the mules from crossing the Alabama state line and it took high level calls to the governors of Georgia and Alabama to achieve their trip's destination.

Somehow, I missed this fact when watching the funeral.

This book tells the story without being morbid, and the illustrations are warm and loving.

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

NancyKay Shapiro says: "Have you seen Lynda Barry's book about writing/creativity/letting it out? It's called WHAT IT IS. It's gorgeous, and magical and full of great stuff about her struggles to become an artist, and very hands-on encouragement to do art RIGHT NOW. Here's a link to it on amazon: http://amzn.to/yw6R6L "

ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

Here is a wonderful story about the beginning of a war and some of its unbloody but still painful repercussions: "We Are At War" by John Birch: http://www.johnbirchlive.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-at-war.html

Suzanne McConnell has a wonderful article on Kurt Vonnegut at http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/fiction/kurt-vonnegut-at-the-writers-workshop

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

Miles Klee's debut novel IVYLAND is just out from OR Press. Take a look at http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/ivyland/ . The NEW YORK OBSERVER says of the book, http://www.observer.com/2011/08/awl-pal-miles-klee-sells-novel/

Lots of good reviews for Leora Skolkin-Smith's new novel Hystera such as this one: "Leora Skolkin-Smith's new novel... provides a very vivid sense of being in the head of someone having a psychotic breakdown, and is a powerfully useful reference book for dealing with the mental-health system. It also pungently evokes the gritty New York of the '70s."
—Robert Whitcomb, reviewer "The Providence Journal;" excerpts featured recently at http://readysteadybook.com; and an interview at WBAI: http://www.catradiocafe.

Julia Kaminsky has a new story up at .decompmagazine.com .

Cheryl Denise has a new poetry CD. Preview it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/cheryldenise . She reads 13 of her own poems, and a musician friend plays some mandolin and guitar music in between. The poems are from her two collection, I SAW GOD DANCING and her upcoming February 2012 WHAT'S IN THE BLOOD, by Cascadia Publishing House.

Barbara Crooker did a two-part interview with Erika Funke at WVIA (public radio, Scranton), available at their website: http://www.wvia.org/radio/wvia-fm-programs/artscene . The broadcast dates were January 5 & 6, 2012.

DON'T FORGET...

... Poem-a-day – it's nice to get them in the email everyday, whether you read them or not. Sign up at http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php

Paperback Book Swap: get rid of your good quality paperback books and get new ones for the price of postage by swapping at The Paperback Book Swap: http://www.paperbackswap.com/home.php

Cool and Dry and Beautiful

2012-01-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

More cool, dry, sunny weather-- I love this weather-- no bugs, no sweating. You can see much farther than in summer, too, because the leaves are gone, trees are down to their beautiful bare stretches of branch. I don't really get going South for the winter. Okay, it's been an easy one so far, and yes, I get tired of shoveling snow, and yes I hate anxiety about travel.

But days like this, so pink and blue and multiple grays and blacks-- what a gift.

Scott's Pizza Tours!

2011-12-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

Back from the day in New York– Scott’s Pizza tour: this was super fun, holiday gift from Joel and Sarah. A cold sunny day with guide Scott Wiener who took us first to Lombardi’s, oldest Neopolitan/New York style pizza– (a margherita from the coal fired anthracite) ovens, then across town to a slice place, Joe’s on Bleecker and Sixth Avenue– a classic walk-in place with wonderful stretchy orange droopy tipped slices-- just what I remember from the street shops my first years in NYC, and finally John’s, also on Bleecker almost to Seventh with a long line to get in, and they brought it out to us, again coal fired, this time with whole milk mozzarella, great plain tomatoes and crust-- Sarah’s favorite, and I agree it was wonderful, but I’ll get a slice again at Joe’s when I'm in town to teach at NYU.

As to the tour and tour guide: this young guy Scott is a wild man: totally entertaining and personable and funny but also totally serious about pizza and beyond knowledgeable.

He provided little favor bags with notebooks and spices and candy to cleanse the palate between slices. He talked about history and the temperature of anthracite coal fires versus gas ovens, about the chemistry of wet and dry, part-skim and whole milk mozzarella. We got to look at Lombardi’s oven, and we visited a restaurant supply place on the Bowery that sells the gas ovens. We learned a lot. Joel and Sarah and Andy were all big winners on Scott’s questions. What a great tour.

That was Scott’s Pizza tour: but just be sure you get the genuine Scott. It's all built around his personality and his obsession.

Photos of Aunt Ninnie

2011-12-18T19:18:00.001-08:00

I scanned in some old pictures my mother gave me of my Aunt Virginia. The first one is a school picture, in 1929.

Next is when she was married to my much older Uncle Fred. They wanted to be country gentry, judging from the photo.

The next one is of her after Uncle Fred died, in 1953 taking the Queen Elizabeth to Europe.

Books for Readers # 147

2011-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 147

December 10, 2011

It looks better online!
Read at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html

This Issue:

Johnny Sundstrom's new novel

An Anthology recommended by Ed Davis

Phyllis Wilson Moore on Walter Dean Myers and Yankee at the Seder

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It looks better online! Read it here.

Dear Friends: It's holiday giving season– please consider for your last-minute gifts some of the small press books on my gift books page and/or some of the books mentioned below.

First up today, a stunning and powerful book from the small press Hamilton Stone Editions by Jane Lazarre (THE WHITENESS OF WHITE, SOME PLACE QUITE UNKNOWN). Lazarre's new novel, INHERITANCE, is a meditation on race and the racial and ethnic history of the United States. Its central, germinal story is what happened to a young white woman named Louise and her beloved Samuel in the years leading up to the Civil War. Samuel and his mother are enslaved, and Louisa discovers she is the sister of a slave and becomes the mother of a slave. What happens when her pregnancy is discovered, and then the color of the baby, is harrowing and horrible. The rest of the novel circles around and expands out of these events into many generations.

The mutilation-murder of Samuel is careful and respectfully narrated without any of the pornographic violence that a lot of American writers seem to delight in. Lazarre's focus is on transformation as people deepen their understanding of race and history. One of the most interesting parts is how Louisa survives mentally by changing her consciousness.

Characters in the framing stories have similarly complex deepening of their consciousnesses, especially women struggling with their whiteness and their relationships with people of color. All of the main point of view characters are articulate and exhibit many layered thinking. Among them are the teenaged daughter of a white Jewish mother and Black father (whose own mother is an Italian-American novelist). There is also an adult writer descended from Louisa and Samuel; there is early twentieth century Jewish Hannah (great grandmother of the teenager above) who falls into a passionate non-physical relationship with the third Samuel. All the characters have the sensibilities and intellectual seriousness of a writer or other artist.

The genealogies are complex and the issues of whiteness and Blackness are dealt with in detail. The story of the nineteenth century white girl's lonely effort to understand and survive is especially wonderful, as are the scenes on Long Island Sound, such as the one where the housewife Hannah Sokolow, unhappy in her marriage and life, eats an oyster pulled directly from the Sound and offered to her in friendship by the third Samuel--a transgression of the rabbinical laws as well as the formal and informal race laws of her day.

It is an ambitious and powerful book that teases out where we cannot reach across the abysses of race and history– and also where we can.

A book of poetry with a serious message from a small press is AZRAEL ON THE MOUNTAIN by Victor Depta. Betty Huff, managing editor of Blair Mountain Press, writes to say: "Ten years ago, in 2002, we at Blair Mountain Press published Dr. Victor Depta's AZRAEL ON THE MOUNTAIN, a book of poems protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. That method of coal extraction continues to this day, regardless of what the American public knows about global warming and what Appalachians suffer as a consequence of that mining practice. Azrael on the Mountain is the only Appalachian book in which every poem is a protest against Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. It has sold slowly but steadily in the past ten years, so much so that we have reprinted the book for the individual buyer and for the classroom...[order directly from] Blair Mountain Press ($10.00) or from Amazon." Blair Mountain Press is at 114 E Campbell St, Frankfort, KY 40601, phone 502-330-3707, or http://www.blairmtp.net .

A third small press book I want to mention is psychotherapist Penelope Young Andrade's brand-new, lively, and personable self-help book, EMOTIONAL MEDICINE RX. Her idea is that if we can learn to distinguish the stories we tell ourselves about our sufferings and unhappiness from our real emotions– if we can learn to experience fully and directly the big four– Mad, Sad, Scared, and Glad– we will begin to heal ourselves physically and mentally. The book is full of stories of how people have used her techniques to enrich their lives and heal their complaints. Learn more about Penelope, her strategies, and her book at http://www.emotionalmedicine.com.

Notes on recent Kindle reading:

I also have some notes on various other things I've been reading– the Kindle selections, in particular, have a lot of serendipity, as I've been borrowing what was available through the library's Kindle collection and from the vast pool of available free books, many of which I was unlikely to have read in the past.. For example, after finishing INHERITANCE, I "bought" two free books related to the Grimké Sisters, footnoted in Jane Lazarre's INHERITANCE. First, I read an old 1885 biography (that would almost certainly not have been available to me without an elaborate university library search) of the Grimké Sisters. I also read Angelina Grimké's first pamphlet publication, a powerful call to Southern women to turn against slavery. The dual biography by Caherine H. Birney is called THE GRIMKÉ SISTERS SARAH AND ANGELINA THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMEN ADVOCATES OF ABOLITION AND WOMAN"S RIGHTS. It is one of those old-fashioned hagiographic biographies that somehow manages (like Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë) to tell a really good story in spite of skipping a lot of the juicy parts.

This one also assumes that all the readers share a Protestant Christian world view, but it's still a good short book. I especially enjoyed the selections of diary entries and excerpts from letters. Angelina, the much-younger of the sisters, was apparently a wonderful public speaker, the first American woman to address "promiscuous" crowds– that is, mixed with men and women. In her thirties, she married Theodore Weld and set up housekeeping with him and Sarah, the older Grimké sister. Something happened, not specified in this book, that kept her out of the public eye, possibly a a breakdown or maybe just a lot of childbirth and babies. The sisters and Weld, however, continued to teach and write, and had that admirable Protestant sense that serving is equally important in public or in private, large or small.

Their final great drama was the discovery late in their lives that one of their beloved brothers, Henry, had taken an enslaved lover with whom he had three boys. He never freed his family, and his legitimate heir continued to enslave them. When they discovered this, after the war, Angelina and Sarah helped the young men in their careers: one became a well known Presbyterian minister and the other a Harvard educated lawyer whose daughter was a poet in the Harlem Renaissance.

A Kindle library borrowing was COMPOSED by Roseanne Cash– this just attracted me at the moment and was lots of fun with its scenes backstage in a musical celebrity family. Roseanne Cash's persona is likeable, and she is a highly accomplished song writer, musician and performer, but it cannot pass notice, either, that Roseanne got a LOT of help along the way– her father supporter her financially through a decade of experimentation, and gave her introductions and chances in the music business that no one else would ever have had. This is not said to denigrate Cash, but to remind us all that talent is precious but far from uncommon-- ask anyone who has ever worked with the arts with children. The next step, success, especially commercial success, requires a whole other set of skills and nurturing and luck. Imagine thus a potentially brilliant pianist who grows up undernourished and ends up a teenage addict and eventually in jail. This is the thesis of Virginia Woolf's famous essay about Shakespeare's imaginary sister Judith who had all the talent and none of the other requirements to succeed.

But I liked the book– and I liked Roseanne Cash too for her honesty and directness.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: LOVE, TERROR, AND AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN HITLER'S BERLIN was recommended to me by a writer friend as an excellent example of an accurate and highly entertaining nonfiction book built out of letters and diaries. It is about the American ambassador to German and his adult daughter and their attempts to be upbeat about the brand new Chancellor Hitler and his regime and their gradual disillusionment and horror with the Nazis. Hitler et alia in he early years is interesting-- especially how the Nazi's squabbled with and killed each other-- but more interesting the cultural anti-Semitism and general ignorance of the Americans.

Finally, moving away from under-reported and under-read, I took a look at the wildly popular young adult novel HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. For this one I paid $4.69, which I absolutely think was worth it. I liked it a lot– a real trip. I admired how she managed to make the heroine at once believably tough and really disinclined to kill people,which is what she will have to do to triumph-- and survive-- the Games. In the end, she succeeds most by teaming up. Least interesting to me was the love stuff, not sure why. It felt whipped up to me. I would like to have seen it end cleaner. But this was partly done to lead into two more books of the Trilogy. I was not as totally into it as I was into Fire and Ice, but Fire and Ice is a much larger world.

And finally finally one non-Kindle actual hardcover novel, WHEREVER YOU GO, by Joan Leegant. This is highly recommended, full of interesting Israelis and Americans in Israel: a man who discovers Judaism, goes orthodox, then pulls out of it; strong-jawed, laconic Shin Bet operatives, a crazy American kid who decides to kill some Arabs and is given support by the crazy right-wing This Land Is Mine guys. It functions neatly as a primer on a whole set of attitudes and issues towards and in Israel. And I couldn't' stop reading.

More small press books below in the announcements section.

-- Meredith Sue Willis

ANTHOLOGY RECOMMENDATION FROM ED DAVIS

A book that men as well as women will enjoy is THE MOMENT I KNEW: REFLECTIONS FROM WOMEN ON LIFE'S DEFINING MOMENTS ($14.95 from www.sugatipublications.com), a collection of brief essays and poems by women from six countries. I found it so compelling I read most of it in a weekend.

My friend Cyndi Pauwels' essay, "Powerful Eyes of Love," appears along with twenty-nine others in the second "Reflections from Women" series, founded by editor and psychotherapist Terri Spahr Nelson, who hopes to provide writers as well as readers the chance for self-examination, expression and healing. Writers from Granville, Ohio to Reading, England tackle topics ranging from relationships to pregnancy, family and children.

In Cyndi's essay, present meets past on a recent icy day following an eight-inch snowfall. She re-lives, in the span of a few minutes, the years between ages seven and seventeen when her step-father abused her for everything that went wrong in the household—just the way everything seems to be going wrong on this day. But in a shattering climax, Cyndi discovers she is not that abused, fearful child anymore.

Editor Nelson designed the Reflections of Women series to be a collaborative process. Cyndi said she never felt forced to accept Nelson's proffered editing, and contributors were allowed to vote on the book's cover photo as well as which women's charities the book would benefit. (Purchasing online from Sugati guarantees a greater percentage to these worthy organizations.) Such a democratic process is rare in the small press publishing world. Interested writers should visit the website to see topic areas for upcoming books in the series, along with deadlines. An interview with Cyndi Pauwels appears on my website: http://authoreddavis.blogspot.com.

TWO REVIEWS BY PHYLLIS WILSON MOORE

THE YANKEE AT THE SEDER

Have you ever wondered about the role Jewish Americans played in the Civil War? Do you know what a seder is and how it is celebrated, or how Passover traditions relate, sort of, to the 4th of July? THE YANKEE AT THE SEDER, a unique children's picture book by Elka Weber with illustrations by Adam Gustavson from Tricycle Press in Berkeley, CA, is an enjoyable and educational way for both children and adults to learn about Passover and freedom.

A Virginia Confederate Jewish family, reeling from the Yankee occupation of their town and word of Lee's surrender, prepares for Passover. Ten year old Jacob is especially unhappy; he will not get to be a solider. When his mother invites a stranger, a Yankee Jewish solider, to their seder and to spend the night, he is angry. This fictional version of an actual event includes end notes revealing the facts of the two families involved, the Yankee soldier, of Philadelphia, and the "enemy" family who befriended him. It is a heartwarming story, sensitively illustrated, of freedom and acceptance.

Found: A BAD BOY in the Library

What attracted me to this memoir was the title, BAD BOY [by Walter Dean Myers], written in large red letters on the dust cover. As a former high school teacher, I detest labels slapped on children. "Bad boy" and "no good" cause me to bristle.

Myers, once a young extremely bright "bad boy," tells the story of his painful growth to manhood. So fond of reading and writing he hid his library books in a brown paper bag, he became a high school drop-out eager for a fight.

How he survived adoption, a speech impediment, being overly tall, having a passion for poetry and reading, racism, poverty, fighting neighborhood gangs, teen-hood, the army, and menial jobs, makes a story most teens will tap into. How he became one of the nation's most "awarded" and respected authors of children's and youth books is a gripping story.

Myers appreciates the important roles reading and writing play in his life as did finding a community respectful of his talents. This book by a former "bad boy," has substance, sadness, and humor. It is suitable for teens and adults and as good as a memoir can get.

Myers [photo at right], born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, grew up in Harlem, New York.

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

Joel Weinberger recommends THE BLIND SIDE, the book. "As is probably the case for many people, he writes, "I came to read THE BLIND SIDE after seeing the surprisingly good movie that was based on the book. When I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed the movie, he pointed out that it was only half the story. While certainly the central story of the book is around the offensive lineman Michael Oher's journey, the other half is around the evolution of the game of football, strategically and economically, around the offensive line. Much like the movie MONEYBALL ,as compared to the book, the movie only tells one half of Michael Lewis's story, leaving the more quantitative half for readers. (For the record, I very much enjoyed MONEYBALL the movie as well as the book.)

"All of this is to say that THE BLIND SIDE has two distinct, but tightly wound, focuses. One is the now well known, but still incredible, story of Michael Oher's journey from a homeless teenager to one of the most incredible forces to ever play college football (and now in the NFL). In several incredible strokes of luck, Michael Oher is brought from the street to an almost entirely white high school, eventually meeting the Tuohy family, who guide him through the wealthy, white world he has found himself in. The family helps him take advantage of his natural, physical gifts, and become the most recruited football player in high school, as well as increase his grades as necessary to play NCAA football, despite the assumptions surrounding him that he isn't intelligent enough.

"The other half of the story, which, as a quantitative man myself, I find even more fascinating, is the story of the evolution of football itself. The book explains *why* Michael Oher is so prized by college football programs and the NFL. Michael Lewis gives a brilliant account of the state of football in 1981, when Lawrence Taylor (L.T.), arguably the best linebacker of all time, makes his appearance in the league. L.T. completely alters the game of football, and especially the economics of how important it is to protect the quarterback. Michael Lewis discusses the implications of this defensive approach and how, in particular, it affected the offensive design of Bill Walsh, the coach of 49ers, who eventually led his teams to several Superbowl titles. In this context, Michael Lewis shows the transformation of the NFL from a place where many of the players are "interchangeable" and seen as equally important, to the rise of the importance of the left offensive tackle, who protects quarterbacks from linebackers. The economics that Michael Lewis brings to light are fascinating in a very similar way to MONEYBALL.

The book is not quite as deep as MONEY BALL, in many ways, and at times it seems Lewis has found himself drawn into his subject in such a way that it is not subjective (it terns out in the afterward that Sean Tuohy, one of the main subjects, is a childhood friend of Michael Lewis). For these reasons, I can't quite bring myself to give it a 5-star rating, but call it a sold 4.5. Without hesitation, I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the economics of sports, or just in for a touching story of a life saved.

ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

Laura Bentley and Marie Manilla interviewed on the radio: http://woub.org/2011/11/23/poetry-and-prose-talk-marie-manilla-and-laura-treacy-bentley

A successful self-publishing author: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html

Barbara Crooker on Your Daily Poem. See Barbara, right.

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

Johnny Sundstrom's novel DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT is now available: In 1849 a wagon train was moving slowly along the parched Oregon Trail in the empty desolation that was to become known as southern Wyoming. Martha Bradford was told she must discard either her cast-iron cook stove or her pianola to lighten the burden for the oxen. She has them both unloaded and then refuses to go on any further: "She declared that if the only things that made her life worth living were being left behind, they'd just as well leave both the stove and the pianola, and her with them."

This novel is based on the next six generations of her family and the first ranch settled in that part of the country. Here are real cowboys and cowgirls, Indians of the past and present, a faith-challenged evangelist, a militant suffragette, newspaper owner, and many others, linked together by their hard work, rowdy pleasures, their spiritual beliefs or non-beliefs, and stitched into a panoramic story-quilt representing the dream of the Morning Star and its hopeful annunciation of a new day rising in the Old West.

JOHNNY SUNDSTROM has lived most of his life in the American West. His book is a tribute to this great region, its people and places, its history and its future. He is part-owner and manager of a livestock and forestland operation in western Oregon, a natural resources consultant, and high school track coach. For nearly 40 years, he has spent part of every summer visiting his relations in Wyoming. He graduated from Williams College with a degree in English Literature and has written extensively over the years, as well as having been involved in professional and amateur theater.

Virginia Center for the Creative Arts anthology is now available-- click here. Poets include Kelly Cherry, Halvard Johnson, Barbara Crooker, J.C. Todd, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Neil Shepherd, B.J. Ward, Colette Inez, and many, many more.

Larissa Shmailo has new e-book from Jeffrey Side's press, Argotist Ebook. It is a free download, so check it out:

Ardian Gill has three images in the PAI show at the Office of Borough President Scott Stringer, 1 Centre Street 19th Floor. Please bring ID. Exhibit open 9-5 PM Monday thru Friday.

PM Press has some excellent new books out including a reprint of a Marge Piercy novel and On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S.edited by Sean Stewart.

Abby Slovin's new book Letters in Cardboard Boxes has been called "a novel that you will want to keep with you for the rest of your life. A book that will remind people why they love to read.”

Deb C. Gaisford has a new story online at THE FEAR OF MONKEYS: "Love Letters from Vietnam,"

Burt Kimmelman's The Way We Live is now available from Dos Madres Press (click here) and Amazon (click here)."Burt Kimmelman is a poet who trusts what is: the continuous autonomy of two people in a close marriage, the unalterable passage of time, the lies the mirror tells us, the comfort of "simply living / among the objects of the day." Yet, like the inimitable domestic scenes painted by Pierre Bonnard, Kimmelman's quiet poems contain the luminescence of perception, its lure, its beauty, its Zen of breath, tracing beauty in the pulse of the extant." - Star Black

Leora Skolkin-Smith's new novel Hystera is about to launch. Early Praise includes: "Hystera is a haunting, mesmerizing story of madness, longing and identity, set against one of the most fascinating times in NYC history. Skolkin-Smith's alchemy is to inhabit her characters even as she crafts a riveting story that is nothing short of brilliant."-- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of "Pictures of You", Reviewer.

Barry Wildorf's FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS won the Global E-Book award for best historical fiction!

A personal essay on witnessing the final space launch by Melanie Vickers appeared on July 28, 2011 at http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201107271141

Erik Corr's e-book THE WITCH AND THE SUNFLOWER GIRL is now available:
The subtitle is "A Halloween and Christmas Fairy Tale about Karma and Free Will," and the story only costs .99 cents! Also see Erik's Youtube about an open source novel he's writing: http://www.youtube.com/user/erikTT1

Mark De Foe's tenth chapbook of poems In the Tourist Cave is coming out this fall. Pre-publication orders are now being taken by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY. Order online at finishinglinepress.com and click on "new releases:"http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm Click on the "New Releases and Forthcoming titles" link.

Cat Pleska has a piece about the terrors of planes at Airplane Reading: essays about airplanes. Check out her "Rock and Roll" at http://airplanereading.org/ .

New book from Halvard Johnson: Sonnets from the Basque & Other Poems.

PAPERBACK BOOK SWAP

Don't forget – get rid of your good quality paperback books and get new ones for the price of postage by swapping at The Paperback Book Swap: http://www.paperbackswap.com/home.php

Pre-Solstice Haiku

2011-12-09T12:52:00.001-08:00

Mid-December day
Spills tremulous white-gold light,
Reaches for the dark

My Brother-in-Law: Jedi Master of the World Wide Web

2011-12-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

My brother-in-law's talk at Berkeley earlier this week got a nice write-up in the New York Times-- the writer calls it "How the Internet is Destroying Everything," which is just about exactly the opposite of David (Weinberger)'s outlook: he thinks the web is the future and it's a good thing.

He (David) also has the cover article for the current issue of Scientific American and a new book coming out called Too Big to Know:. We call him a computer guru, which is sort of what he does-- he thinks about the world wide web and presently has a job at Harvard working on Digitalizing All the Books or something like that.

He got a PhD in philosophy (Heidegger specialist) at a time when there were-- literally-- no jobs. He began doing some writing for a computer company, and ended up-- Jedi Master of the World Wide Web!

Genre and Literary

2011-11-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

Second go-through of a much-beloved genre novel is interestingly disappointing to me. My first reading, I could not slow down, I yearned to get back to it, woke in the morning thinking of it. This time, since I know how so much of the story comes out, the devices are more obvious, and sometimes creaky. Is it just that I know which characters will die? I notice interesting threads that seem to have been dropped.

This may be what it means to be a really tremendous writer of story and narrative: everything in the end is in service of momentum, so there is less available for the second reading. This, then, a tentative definition for literary: that there is still plenty there when you read it a second time.

Asbestos Bye-bye

2011-11-29T19:50:00.000-08:00

The asbestos is really gone! We found out shortly after the six days' power outage that we needed a new boiler-- and before the boiler, the asbestos had to go, and before the asbestos-- the basement had to be cleared of rubbish. All of which is one of those famous blessings in disguise. As of today, the rubbish is largely gone-- and now the asbestos too! Three or four guys (trucks say "Renovation") working all day, and I don't know how they do it because I saw nothing, having no intention of going down there-- warning signs on the basement door-- but they cleaned that place up beyond belief: and painted the pipes white-- apparently part of the abatement.

I am again amazed by how someone somewhere can do anything: all those enormous tasks like rolling boulders uphill in my mind-- can be done by trained workers. Hail, Labor! Why don't Americans respect it?

Beaautiful weather

2011-11-26T11:15:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and we're in a spate of really gorgeous weather-- up into the sixties Fahrenheit, and the sun absolutely glaring with most of the leaves gone. Had the trees been like this three weeks ago, there would have been no six days without power.

We had Thanksgiving at Andy's sister Ellen's in Clinton, Connecticut, also his brother David, wife Ann, and Leah, plus Ellen's boys Greg and Jonathan plus Bethany. Joel and Sara are still at her brother's wedding in Mexico; my mom in Ohio with her nephew's family.

I'm happy to be finishing off some projects-- a promised book review, a holiday letter. Everything low key, sunny, at least for another hour-- sunset will be coming at us very early

2011-11-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Celebrations and Change

2011-11-22T05:59:00.000-08:00

We're coming up fast on Thanksgiving, with various appointments aimed at getting the boiler fixed in the next two days. Meanwhile, Joel and Sarah made it safely to Mexico for her brother's "destination" wedding.
I had my Novel I class at NYU last night, and now I'm on the short vacation for five days.
I’m working on my holiday letter, short this year, having decided I’d rather use the space for some pictures– snowy branches the day before Halloween– the day the electricity went off! I’m still waking in the morning thrilled that we have heat (albeit, heat with the steam escaping through rust-vents in the aged boiler that we’re about to get replaced.
The good news about that particular debacle is that it has forced us to clear the basement and abate the asbestos.
And meanwhile, around the world: occupations, expressions of dissatisfaction and worse for the powers that rule us. Tahir Square again in Cairo, Berkeley and Davis. Change coming will he, nill he.

The Week That Is

2011-11-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

We have had quite a several days-- all the usual professional work, plus making preparations for a new boiler-- that is, before the boiler, getting rid of the asbestos on the pipes and before that, cleaning out the basement-- and then the world intrudes: our daughter-in-law was on the premises of her graduate school when a gun-wielding crazy appeared.

Everyone fine, except the gunman, who was shot, not killed. And then we heard that a young friend had just joined Occupy Wall Street in time to get arrested in the wee hours Tuesday.

Barbara Kingsolver Festival

2011-11-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

Emory & Henry College, left to right: Linda Wagner-Martin; MSW;
Barbara Kingsolver; Steve Fisher; Sandy Ballard

September 29 - 30, 2011 was the festival celebrating Barbara Kingsolver at the Emory & Henry College's 30th Literary Festival. I was honored to be invited to give a paper on Kingsolver's The Lacuna as a political novel.

Two First World War Poems For Veterans' Day,

2011-11-11T07:34:00.000-08:00

In Flanders Fields
By John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Joel's Marathon!

2011-11-07T10:22:00.001-08:00

November 7, 2011

The heat has been on for a couple of days, and Joel and Sarah are on their way home to Berkeley. He ran the New York Marathon yesterday, and I have pictures!

There's Joel on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn having a great time with all the smiling runners. Mile seven, he felt great, and was about to dodge off course to kiss Sarah!

This is after the race, and he feels terrible, and I'm hugging him.

Later than same evening, he feels pretty darn good, all things considered. Sarah on his right, holding the Finisher's medal.

Marathon Day!

2011-11-06T05:07:00.000-08:00

We're off to try and spot my son among the 47,000 running in the New York Marathon! We've got elaborate plans for where to watch, sent electronic messages to be flashed as he runs by-- Andy drove him to Giants Stadium at 5:30 a.m. to pick up a bus to Ft. Wadsworth in Staten Island (foot of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Big Day!

Back in the 21st Century-- Electricity!

2011-11-05T19:53:00.001-07:00

After 5 and 3/4 days-- we once again have electricity. A week ago today, the October snowstorm hit and trees and tree branches came down everywhere, including on the line that feeds houses on our street. No heat, huddling in the kitchen with gas flames and candles, listening to a crank radio, going to Andy's office or the library for Internet. Amazing.

But-- notice along with candles and unseen gas burners warming us up, I'm reading my Kindle, so we stayed in touch with our century at least a little bit.

My First Electronic Library Book

2011-10-22T19:00:00.001-07:00

I've been telling people that the big problem with Kindle--aside from how hard it is to take notes compared to an old dead tree book-- is that you can't share or borrow the overpriced newer (read in -copyright) books. It seems to me that e-books absolutely ought to be the cheapest form of books-- minimal materials, you can't lend it to a friend or resell it, etc. Amazon runs an in-house sharing site where I early on got one good book, the novel about Thomas Cromwell, but it has essentially turned into advertisements for new books for Kindle.

BUT NOW- it has finally happened. It is finally possible to borrow from the library. I had to go in person first to get my card renewed (and I ended up promising to present a program for the library in the spring!) and they were very helpful showing me the website for the regional pool of library e-books, many with waiting lists, but I made the experiment by using "advanced search" and skimming over available books, and found Sarah Waters' newest. I now have it on my Kindle, for two weeks, anyhow, and I'm thrilled. I don't know how this works region to region, but here you get up to 5 books, and there is no extension-- you go back on the waiting list if you didn't finish. Fine, who cares. To borrow a Kindle book, you get sent to Amazon, and I had a little to-do about which email was my sign in, and actually ended up calling and speaking to a human being, but the next phase is beginning to happen....

Big Pub Panics

2011-10-17T05:22:00.001-07:00

Today's New York Times has an article about the panic among conventional publishers over Amazon.com beginning to publish:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?ref=technology

In the Amazon business model, there's no advance, and often no agent, although some agents are beginning to participate as publishers. I have to say that my sympathy for the big commercial publishers (not that Amazon isn't or won't be one soon) is very limited. They dropped me unceremoniously 25 years ago-- well, not entirely true, that was Scribner's. My last big publisher was HarperCollins for the Marco kid books, and that was only fifteen years ago-- anyhow, the bottom line is, Conventional publishers dropped me and a lot of my friends-- mid-list and literary writers of high repute and great accomplishment-- and we've been scrambling ever since. I've used small presses, nonprofit presses, university presses, cooperative presses: I've published with all of these, as well as with Scribner's and HarperCollins, and had Sc & HC been more nurturing of me when I was not a best seller for them, I might be less ready to embrace the Great Change going on now with ebooks and self publishing. There are myriad problems including, at the very least, who are the gatekeepers, but also vast opportunities. And for me, a lot of fun too. The opportunities include simply being able to make books available to people who who might want to read them-- miniscule numbers beside what bestseller oriented publishers except, but human beings, readers, communication. I have been having a great time with my various ventures.

How I Spent Satuday...

2011-10-15T11:36:00.001-07:00

I didn't make it to Wall Street with the support march that my adjuncts' union made today, but I did dress up for my Saturday errands: I made a sort of poncho out of an ancient linen tablecloth with my message! I got thumbs ups and smiles, one person asked to take my picture, and a guy in the supermarket wanted to talk about the unfairness of the system. Making change? Probably not. Feeling chipper? Yes.

I Was There First!

2011-09-23T06:02:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times has an article about the new Africa exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum: "Heroic Africans," statues and busts based on historic figures but abstracted into ideal moral and leadership qualities. And I saw it first-- on Wednesday. It has wonderful big idealized portraits in wood and other materials of chiefs and other leaders, everything with great presence and dignity.

I love when this happens, when I wander into and exhibit and have my own reactions. I knew it was opening from the website, and I knew that was the first day, but I knew nothing about it, was surprised by how large it was, and very, very impressive. I apparently started at the wrong end, the direction the guard told me to go when I asked, and I definitely want to go back.

It was my ideal way to begin to get to know an exhibit (except that I was tired from visiting other things already): to wander in and around an exhibit, pretty innocent of critical apparatus, just let it capture me, whatever piece (for me Wednesday it was the magnificent and naturalistic terra cotta Yoruba heads. Then to go back with systematic reading of labels and/or audioguide, etc.

Cool to have been there before the Times gave its imprimatur!

Books for Readers #145

2011-09-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 145

September 18, 2011

(Click cover image for information from the publisher) Re-visions: Stories from Stories is a collection of spin-offs from myth, fiction, and the Bible. From a new look at Adam and Eve and why they left the Garden to a grown-up Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin to the confessions of Saint Augustine's concubine- each story offers a gloss on the original as well as insights into how we can live today.

This Issue:

Phyllis Moore on Jaimy Gordon

Recommendations from Reamy Jansen

Darnell Arnoult's Sufficient Grace

Bob Bender's Reading List

Mark Defoe's new collection: sample poem

The Witch and the Sunflower Girl

News and Announcements

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I've read a fair amount this summer, but my big announcement is that I finally finished probably the only book I ever laid aside because it was making me sick to my stomach. And, no, it was not gore or violence. The book was the putative American classic, THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams. When I tried to read it ten years ago, every time I picked it up– a small print paper back, as I remember, maybe a Penguin classic, with a long introduction– I felt like I was reading in the back seat of a swerving car. I hated this book. I was also humiliated that I, who pride myself on catholic taste in literature, had failed to get what everyone sees in Henry Adams.

It isn't a difficult book the way, say, Virginia Woolf's most seriously modernist books are (I'm thinking of THE WAVES and JACOB'S ROOM). It wasn't the content, I didn't think: I had once at thirteen skipped part of a Leon Uris novel because I knew I wasn't supposed to read what happened after he unzipped her skirt. And I did have trouble finishing NAKED LUNCH. This was something else.

Not wanting to invest too much in the book in case it all happened again, I downloaded a .99 cent version for the Kindle, and I'm happy to report that I kept down my lunch. On the other hand, I still don't like the book. Knowing some of Henry Adams' biography made me more open, or at least more interested. His wife committed suicide in mid life, which he never mentions in this version of his life story, and he was a noted socializer, and a great friend to many people. He also was burdened with the weight of expectations for a young man from a family in which the grandfather and great-grandfather had both been presidents of the United States.

He was, at bottom, a very smart, very neurotic, very limited member of the ruling class of the United States. Of course we are all limited by our class and our ethnic group and our time and place, but some of us manage to peer at least a little outside: Tolstoy could do it; Emily Dickinson could do it. So could all the great writers. Henry Adams, at least in this nonfiction book, seems totally unable to see outside his narrow little track.

The conceit of the book is that Adams' whole life has been a failure, specifically a failed education. The strained humorous tone when he writes about his youth sets my teeth on edge, and his view of the American Civil War (he was private secretary to his father, the ambassador to England) seems coolly distant at best and at worst nearly frivolous. Again, I need to offer a caveat: many people don't read it this way at all, and Adams himself deplores being so far from the center of the great event of his generation.

His voice gains authenticity as he closes in on his chronological age as he is writing, which is in his mid-sixties. The final quarter of the book– except for his crackpot theories of history– creates an atmosphere of genuine amazement and humility in the face of the material culture of the new century– and also a tone of increasing sadness. The book ends with the death of one of his best friends, Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of State, John Hay, who had also been Abraham Lincoln's private secretary.

I still don't know why I have reacted so strongly to this book. There is, of course, my own twenty-first century assumptions and expectations– of more personal revelation, for example. Also, I have had a lifelong preference (I admit it!) for narrative, which Adams essentially eschews. But I really am appalled by his assumptions: he assumes his readers have Latin, and that they went to Harvard. He assumes that they criticize Harvard, too, of course, and he assumes his readers are amused by immigrant Poles and Irish and Jews as the second element in various unflattering similes. He assumes that complimenting women's grace and kindness allows him to say anything he wants about them.

I also just reread UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, and it gave me an interesting comparison. Why is it that Harriet Beecher Stowe who was as thoroughly of her time and place as Adams, and probably a less talented writer, could occasionally hit the mark– leap out beyond her own prejudices? She has that ability to take the imaginative leap, not always, but occasionally, that makes a connection across time and race and class. Of course she's telling a story, and THE EDUCATION is nonfiction.

So I'm going to give Henry Adams another chance. I've downloaded free Gutenberg Project e-books of his two novels, DEMOCRACY and ESTHER.

– Meredith Sue Willis

MSW ON DARNELL ARNOULT'S SUFFICIENT GRACE

I want to recommend SUFFICIENT GRACE by Darnell Arnoult, a novel of imaginative, sophisticated writing in the form of a classical comedy– that is, with happy endings all around, the way Shakespeare's late comedies like THE TEMPEST are comedies in spite of some pretty rough going along the way.

So SUFFICIENT GRACE is a committedly upbeat novel, maybe even Christian humanist. It has a wonderful set up: a housewife paints pictures of Jesus all over the walls of her house, and walks out on her life. There is no mistaking that she is mentally unbalanced, but her breakdown is presented in a fascinatingly balanced way: yes, she's crazy, but no, she's not all that much more unhappy than anyone else. Part of the project of the books seems to be to imagine a creative and graceful, but not sentimental, mental breakdown.

The novel insists, explicitly, on closing all the circuits it opens up. This doesn't mean anything old fashioned like marriage rings, but rather some near-miraculous coincidences such as the itinerant woman preacher who arrives in town just in time to reconcile with her daughter and perform her marriage ceremony. The closing of the circuits also means satisfying outcomes for most of the characters– lovers for those who want them, artistic hobbies that turn into high art or ways to make a living. The husband who cooks because his wife has left him becomes a superb cook with a likely book contract. It's twenty-first century wish fulfillment: that we could really support ourselves doing what we love best, in community, across racial lines, with family dysfunction healed.

SUGGESTIONS FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE FROM REAMY JANSEN:

Reamy Jansen recommends Geraldine Brooks' CALEB'S CROSSING: "I think it's a wonderful novel of self fashioning by the acute and feelingful Bethia, who is the narrator. Like Aurora Leigh, Bathe is the matter of her book."

He goes on to say, "I've also been on something of a Elizabeth Gaskell jag: 'Lois the Witch,' longish short story and RUTH--terrific with some interesting narrative tricks, as is true of what I'm reading now, Charlotte Brontë's SHIRLEY (a character that doesn't appear until after page 200). One of the most striking things that I've been encountering is the emphasis on 'mind' by these women writers, including Elizabeth Barrett's Aurora Leigh. It seems a theme/motif basted into all these texts. The other little signifier is the mention of 'curls,' which suggest spirit and independence. One of my obsessive lists (of course, with all my annotations, it's takes me as long to write in the margins and set up keys on the inside cover as it took Brontë to write 400 words).

"I think how much this book, [SHIRLEY], would have seemed a great bore to a callow English major, although, one year later, I found myself utterly taken up by Dickens's last complete novel, and one of his greatest, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, as a senior, when in my Nineteenth Century European History course one of the final paper topics was 'The Novel as Mirror in the Roadway,' a quaint notion nowadays. Nevertheless, the novel absorbed me in a way I had not previously felt (much of this still holds true for most nineteenth century fiction that I regularly harvest).
"I read CRANFORD, as it was a gift from my favorite professor, William E(arlking) Michael, who told me the book was 'charming.' And charming it is, sort of, although a considerably deeper darkness and sense of threat is veined through the little book.

Now, however, I'm caught up in Brontë's SHIRLEY, part of which is major payback to her critics (including frequent asides to 'Reader,' which often comes across as slightly mocking).

"Anyway, here's dialogue on marriage from Ch XII, 'Shirley and Caroline: '...to tell you a secret, if I were convinced that they [men] are necessarily and universally different from us---fickle, soon petrifying, unsympathiziing--I would never marry. I should not like to find out that what I loved did not love me, that it was weary of me, and that whatever effort I might make to please would hereafter be worse than useless, since it was inevitably in its nature to change and become indifferent. That discovery once made, what should I long for? To go away--to remove from a presence where my society gave no pleasure.'

"Powerful stuff--and there's more. Plus, you've got to love the neutered pronoun, (this from the excellent Penguin Classic--excellent notes and a good intro).

"There's good stuff, by the way in Brontë's friend's, Elizabeth Gaskell, THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË and there's also 'The Miracle of Shirley' in Winifred Guerin's CHARLOTTE BRONTË, THE EVOLUTION OF GENIUS.

"Much of my reading in the theme of 'minds' by a variety of women novelists has been further enlightened by Deidre David's INTELLECTUAL WOMEN AND VICTORIAN PATRIARCHY, 1987. Much of this may have been superceded, but this is a nice place to start, and it has a lively introduction by the author, who was mistakenly addressed as 'David Deirdre.' Here endeth the lesson."

PHYLLIS MOORE ON JAIMY GORDON: The Strangeness Draws Me In

The 2010 National Book Award fiction winner, Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, a West Virginia resident in the late 1960s, takes place in a world many of us are unfamiliar with, an insulated world with a language and culture of its own: claiming races at a track in West Virginia.

Prior to the opening of the novel, Gordon gives readers a leg up by including a technical description of the rules for "claiming" a horse. From this point on a dictionary and "google" proved useful as Gordon incorporates Yiddish, French, and German phrases into a mix of folklore, religion, mythological creatures, conjuring, racing rules, theories, and jargon. And did I mention the novel comes complete with sex, drugs, violence, mental illness, and organized crime, not to mention a cast of interesting characters, both animal and human?

Maggie, the protagonist, is a young intelligent college graduate destined to give her affluent Jewish parents gray hairs. She is a risk taker, fascinated by drugs and violence and willing to try anything once, provided it isn't lethal. She is enthralled by a charismatic but volatile fellow college graduate who is "just not right in the soul, really." Maggie's career as a writer is on hold to help him develop his string of horses and be part of his schemes to win big and get out fast.

Like horses in a race, the story starts off slowly, picks up speed in the stretch, falters slightly, and then ends in a rush of excitement. There is an interesting mix of characters of different faiths, sexual preferences, and colors. Their stories unfold, sometimes in their own voices.

Prior to the National Book Award, Gordon was one of the famous authors readers hadn't read or heard about. A professor, scholar, and a fiction writer of note, she had a small faithful readership and a totally dedicated publisher.
Now readers will find interviews of Gordon, study guides for Lord of Misrule, and a superfluity of reviews of this work on the internet. That is all to the good. Lord of Misrule is a work to study and respect as well as to enjoy.

As the protagonist Maggie says of her charismatic but mentally ill lover Tommy, "The strangeness draws me in." Gordon's skills as a writer drew me into this strange and innovative story.

BOB BENDER'S SUMMER 2011 READING LIST

• Roger Horowitz, "Negro and White, Unite and Fight": A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90.
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Edited by Robert Kimbrough
• Jonathan Kaufman, Broken: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America
• Roger Keeran, The Communist Party and the Auto Workers' Unions
• Julie Grasso, Recipe for a Family
• Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Girl who Played with Fire
• The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
• Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
• Sue Grafton, M is for Malice
• Joyce Carol Oates, Wonderland
• South End Press, Between Labor and Capital , the Professional Managerial Class (Barbara and John Ehrenreich + others)
• Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, a story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa
• Ralph David Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
• Manning Marable, Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead
• Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future
• Jesse Redmon Faucet, Plum Bun
• Harry Fisher, Legacy
• Herman Melville, Billy Budd and Other Stories
• Michael Patrick MacDonld, All Souls, A Family Story from Southie
• Arthur Miller, Timebends (autobiography)
• Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

READERS WRITE

Dolly Withrow talks a little about some magazines: "Readers can sample excerpts and get other tidbits by accessing The Sun Magazine online. It is ad-free, which means the publisher often asks for donations. I think this is true of most 'little' magazines. Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine can also be accessed online, but there are no sample essays; however, there is contact information for anyone wishing to submit something. Creative Nonfiction magazine (that's how I Googled it) is also available. One can read samples, get writing guidelines, and access lots of other information online. The publisher also has contests and each magazine, like Now & Then has a theme. If you or anyone on your list has an opinion about Appalachian Heritage, I'd be most interested.....[they don't]..have themes."

FREE CRITIQUING

HarperCollins supports an online community of writers who upload work for others to critique. Things that get a a lot of attention from other users is sent to the "Editor's Desk," where it is given a close look by the actual publishing company: Take a look at http://www.authonomy.com.

READ ONLINE

Recommended by Amy Wright: Michael Martone's short short nonfiction piece on the recent weather disasters in Alabama: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev36/martone36.html

Take a look at Valerie Nieman reading a poem about a stapler:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2011/09/weekly-poem-duration.html

Laura Treacy Bentley interviews Marc Harshman WEST VIRGINIA LIVING:
http://www.wvliving.com/Fall-2011/Conversations-with-Marc-Harshman/

Barbara Crooker has new poems online– "The Bossy Letter R," "Live or Evil, Rats or Star," "The Paper Clip," and "The Last Painting" all appear in the new issue of The Innisfree Poetry Journal at http://authormark.com/artman2/publish/Innisfree_13_28BARBARA_CROOKER2.shtml

Norman Julian recommends this interesting interview with Scott Turow about his career and writing in general: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11248/1171973-129.stm

There's an enthusiastic review of the new collected works of my inimitable friend Carol Emswhiller, the avant garde and science fiction writer.

And finally, Salon has a nicely snarky piece on the worst novels that use 9-11 in some fashion:

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

A personal essay on witnessing the final space launch by Melanie Vickers appeared on July 28, 2011 at http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201107271141

Erik Corr's e-book THE WITCH AND THE SUNFLOWER GIRL is now available:
The subtitle is "A Halloween and Christmas Fairy Tale about Karma and Free Will," and the story only costs .99 cents! Also see Erik's Youtube about an open source novel he's writing: http://www.youtube.com/user/erikTT1

Mark DeFoe's tenth chapbook of poems In the Tourist Cave is coming out this fall. Pre-publication orders are now being taken by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY. Order online at finishinglinepress.com and click on "new releases:"http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm
Click on the "New Releases and Forthcoming titles" link.

Here's a sample poem from the collection: :

EVENING SHOWER: FRANK'S PORCH

Rest your bones, friend. See how the drenched
walks gleam, the spilling gutters flash and shine.
Take a load off—beer's in the frig. Look there—
every grass blade and leaf is rinsed, spangled.
Drink to these simple times, to life untangled.

Grab this rocker. Hear how the downspouts gush
softer now. The clouds ripple pearl and gray.
Across the lots, light strides its copper way,
while one departing shower shakes the pines.
We spin our voices past this last wet rush,

spieling yarns and god-awful jokes, how we wenched
away our youth, how if we ran the world today
it would be a damn sight saner. The women chime
their mocking laughter low. You men, they say.
We grin and nod. The beer's made us heady—

That and the rich scent of new-watered earth.
Oh, dead Indians topple—slow and steady.
Fireflies begin to spark above of the cooling lawn.
Our talk grows gentle. Here in the cool hush
our voices amble, mingle, murmur on.

Cat Pleska has a piece about the terrors of planes at Airplane Reading: essays about airplanes. Check out her "Rock and Roll" at http://airplanereading.org/ .

New from Halvard Johnson: Sonnets from the Basque & Other Poems.

Peter Brown's newest book for children is out: YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND in which Lucille Beatrice Bear wants to make a new friend. Lucy accidentally ruins the giraffe's breakfast, and the skunk doesn't want her help, and she's too big for the frog's pond. It looks hopeless. And then, when she least expects it, a funny thing happens...you'll never guess what it is....

Watch for Valerie Nieman reading from Blood Clay (see Books for Readhers #140 ) at a venue near you!
SEPT. 23 - Bring Your Own Lunch and Author Chat at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill
SEPT. 24 - "Peeking Behind the Mask" - poetry at Weatherspoon Gallery, Greensboro
OCT. 6 - Ex Libris Book Club
OCT. 13 - Fairmont State University, Fairmont, WV
OCT. 14 - West Virginia University
OCT. 15 - Mary H. Weir Public Library, Weirton, WV, Public Library
OCT. 17 - Alderson-Broaddus College, Philippi, WV
OCT. 18 - Taylor Books, Charleston, WV
OCT. 22 - Building Connections: Group Poetry for Residents in Assisted Living/Nursing Care, Queens University of Charlotte
OCT. 29-30 -Workshop and salon with Marjorie Hudson at Writershouse, Charlottesville, Va.
OCT. 30 - SWAG at the Shenandoah Arts Center in Waynesboro, Va.
NOV. 16 - The Burwell School, Hillsborough NC
FEB. 24 - Wonderland Book Club, Raleigh
FEB. 25 - Book'em, Lumberton
APRIL 10 - Carteret Writers Club
MAY 18-19 - Blue Ridge Bookfest in Flat Rock, NC

JUANITA TORRENCE-THOMPSON, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher/Owner of Internationally acclaimed MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE seeks a GROUP of poets and/or editors or COLLEGE, organization or business individual/s to purchase and publish her 29-year old non-profit print magazine starting 2011. www.mobiuspoetry.com Serious buyers ONLY
Eemail: mobiusmag@earthlink.net or poetrytown@earthlink.net.

Colleen Anderson announces a feature article about the Aurora Project, from the most recent issue of West Virginia Living Magazine: http://www.wvliving.com/Fall-2011/The-Aurora-Project/ The Aurora Project Fall Writers' Retreat is scheduled for October 20-23 this year. No classes or workshops, just time on your own, fabulous food, and good company in the evenings. This year, Anita Skeen is the special guest, and she'll give a reading on Saturday evening, October 22. For more information, see the webstie at http://www.auroraproject.org/.

ABOUT AMAZON.COM

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund. For a discussion about Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget your public library and your local independent bookstore.

To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder has a feature that tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com. More good sources for used and out-of-print books are Bookfinder at http://www.bookfinder.com/ and All Book Stores at http://www.allbookstores.com/ .

Take a look also at Paperback Book Swap , a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, get free books at the Gutenberg Project-- most classics, and other things as well.

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

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BACK ISSUES:

#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon;The Professor and the Madman; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow The River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; the Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, new and recommended small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110 Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99 Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98 Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97 Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96 Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95 Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94 Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93 Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92 Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91 Richard Powers discussion
#90 William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89 William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88 Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87 Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86 Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85 Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84 Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83 3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82 The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81 Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80 Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79 Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78 The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77 On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76 Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75 The Makioka Sisters
#74 In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73 Joyce Dyer
#72 Bill Robinson WWII story
#71 Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70 On Reading
#69 Nella Larsen, Romola
#68 P.D. James
#67 The Medici
#66 Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65 Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64 Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63 The Namesame
#62 Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61 Lauren's Line
#60 Prince of Providence
#59 The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58 AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57 Screaming with Cannibals
#56 Benita Eisler's Byron
#55 Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54 Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53 Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52 Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51 Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50 Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49 Caucasia
#48 Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47 Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46 Invitation to a Beheading
#45 The Princess of Cleves
#44 Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43 Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42 John Sanford
#41 Isabelle Allende
#40 Ed Myers on John Williams
#39 Faulkner
#38 Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37 James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36 Middlemarch
#35 Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34 Emshwiller
#33 Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32 More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31 Lesbian fiction
#30 Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29 More William Styron
#28 William Styron
#27 Daniel Gioseffi
#26 Phyllis Moore
#25 On Libraries....
#24 Tales of the City
#23 Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22 More on Why This Newsletter
#21 Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20 Jane Lazarre
#19 Artemisia Gentileschi
#18 Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17 Arthur Kinoy
#16 Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15 George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14 Small Presses
#13 Gap Creek, Crum
#12 Reading after 9-11
#11 Political Novels
#10 Summer Reading ideas
#9 Shelley Ettinger picks
#8 Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7 About this newsletter
#6 Maria Edgeworth
#5 Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4 Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3 J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2 Chick Lit
#1 About this newsletter

Tomato Crop-- and New Book!!

2011-09-16T05:44:00.001-07:00

Tomatoes, September 15, 2011

New Book of Short Stories by MSW
From Hamilton Stone Editions

Re-visions: Stories from Stories is a collection of spin-offs from myth, fiction, and the Bible. From a new look at Adam and Eve and why they left the Garden to a grown-up Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin to the confessions of Saint Augustine's concubine- each story offers a gloss on the original as well as insights into how we can live today.

"The stories were so vivid and natural that after a while I forgot of them as based on actual classic myths and felt them alive in my modern world, real as any other stories. My favorite was the one about Lazarus (for the wonderful imagery about fire and moths and desire) --but so many engaged and moved me."

-- Leora Skolkin-Smith

ISBN 978-0-9801786-6-1 $14.95
To read a sample story, click here.
To order Re-Visions by mail, click here .
To order from Barnes & Noble, click here.
To order fromAmazon.com, click here

Higher Ground is Now Available as a Kindle Book!

2011-09-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

I just checked, and yes! Higher Ground is now available on Kindle! The other Hamilton Stone books are under review, and I have to finish putting up Trespassers, so this is a new day for real. Since I broke down and decided to stop waiting for Smashwords.com, who, terrific as they’ve been, haven’t completed their deal with Amazon. It is a tedious kind of work, preparing books for transfer to electronic reading, but I often do it late at night when my reading attention sags. Repetition is reassuring.
It is a wonderful feeling to know that at this moment one of my novels, as well as books by other Hamilton Stone Writers, is available via all the common electronic media.

A Museum Day

2011-08-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in NYC today, one of my museum days, and the museum was more crowded than I've ever seen it-- vast lines on fifth avenue. I asked if members had to stand on line, and the guard said Yes, or go to the lower entrance. Duh. So I went in that way, but there was a big line for tickets there too, so I went to membership desk and asked if members had to stand on line, and the women said they weren't letting people in, too many (which wasn't true, ) and gave me a button anyhow
So I went in.
Most of them are lined up for the McQueen show, which I already saw and wouldn't stand in line for. I spend a while looking at sarcophagi in the Roman galleries, and then drifted into Americas and found this small show of Andes tunics-- 500 - @ 1450 CE. Essentially big squares of cloth with a head hole, but beautiful weaving, patterns, "camelid" hair (llamas and vicunas etc.) some of native cotton. Colors rich from dry conditions between mountains and coast. One pale cotton one with pelicans woven into the pattern, and two nice tie dyes, one of which was a real knock out, that made me feel I was seeing something absolutely new. Specially woven squares and step shapes then sewed together, colors blue and yellow and red, with the tie die pale spots and dark center, but what was so moving was that one side was regular blocks, beautiful and regular, and the other half in a step pattern, some colors, but as if the regularity had been broken up with lightning or earthquakes-- all the same and yet all different. And the back of the tunic, the same, but opposite sides. Some basic philosophical statement here.
Also saw a nice exhibit in Modern of living artists' work with or around masks. Two clever artists from Benin (jerrijug face masks); Lynda Benglis (what do I know about her?) and some beautiful glass constructions that I wouldn't have tagged as masks, but okay, and then Willie Cole-- a mask called Shine made of black shoes, mostly patent leather, this hilarious splendid grimacing threatening face with square heeled shoe ears and pointed toe squinty eyes and rugged roiled cheeks-- oh I loved this thing.
Also his others, like the tall African wooden head dresses with lots of space-- he meade his of a pink girl's bicycle frame.
Finally, a nice Franz Hals exhibit, and I bought the bulletin and the audioguide and am trying to learn something.
Bought a kraut and mustard hot dog and walked to the West side via the golden green summer park, down B'way to the subway, to Penn Station and home.

Books for Readers # 144

2011-08-04T17:26:00.001-07:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 144

August 3, 2011

MSW is doing a Two Day Q & A at Laura Bentley's "Open Mic" blog
the-- the Subject is Jump Start Your Novel.

News and Announcements

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I feel in some unsettled way that reading is not as central to my life as it once was. I know that for many years I have found some of the satisfaction that used only to come from reading in other parts of my life– friends, family, my low key social activism. I suppose this is a good thing, and it isn't that I want to return to being a child whose real life is in books

But another part of it has to do with being discriminating. When I was young, I read everything with equal attention and hunger. It could be well-written, poorly written, adventure, nonfiction, fantasy– I didn't care. I have more specific things I want now. I recoil from the badly written and the inauthentic. I spend so much time on student work that when I am reading strictly for myself, I am extremely choosy. Almost daily now I read poetry because of the attention to the language. When I read novels or narrative nonfiction, I want to take a trip. I have less and less patience for prose that shows off or tricks me or can't figure out how to end– and then has an explosion or a rape, like bored kids writing "And then they all died."

Here are a couple of books that, for various reasons, satisfied my needs, sometime with a trip to another world, sometimes with honest self-exposure. First, I read an abridged TALE OF GENJI by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler. I don't know what it is with me and Genji, but I own two full length translations (see a very early one of these newsletters ). I was sitting on my screened back porch one rainy summer Sunday and something about the mistiness just made me want Genji on my Kindle, so I could go into that strange foreign world whenever I chose. I meant to dip in, but got caught by the undercurrent, and away I went.

The Royall Tyler translation is very clear, and he does an especially good job with the frequent poems. On my first reading of Genji, I totally didn't get the poems, which were apparently an essential part of eleventh century Japanese court life and especially of court-ship in the court. Characters express their strongest emotions in their poems, and simultaneously show off and even compete with their artistry. There are a lot of sadly wet sleeves, usually in the form of dew covered flowers. When Genji is in exile by the sea, there are poems about the lonely salt water ocean waves.

I think my fascination with this ancient classic (written by a court lady circa 1000 Common Era) is that I feel with these people, and at the same time am amazed that I am feeling– every moment of their lives is governed by such different rules from mine. For example, fathers and mothers are constantly trying to give away their well-brought up and accomplished daughters to the emperor or other high status men as concubines. There is a political goal, of course– with a daughter in high places, perhaps even as Empress Mother, then the family's power is greatly enhanced.. That isn't so different from, say, Medieval Western king and queenship, although the Heian court is more upfront with training the girls to attract the emperor.

But then there is the subplot of how lovely sweet smelling high minded Genji essentially kidnaps a beautiful little girl and raises her to his own specifications and falls in love with her, and she with him. Meanwhile he has many other affairs, although in Genji's defense, he seems capable of loving and attending to all of them. He rarely abandons women. And there's the atmosphere: the secret fragrance in the night that tells you who is visiting your bedchamber, the curtains and blinds, handwriting that causes people to fall in love. This is a real trip into alternative reality (see below for an alternate reality book I didn't like).

The other two books I want to mention are of this present decade, also by women, and also with sexuality front and center. And both writers focus their books on homosexual men. Carter Seaton's AMO, AMAS, AMAT: AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY is also about Mary Cate, a thirty-something Southern Baptist country club woman with all kinds of casual, unchallenged prejudices– especially against homosexuals. She enjoys her life, but feels cheated by the lack of romantic love that she believes is essential to true happiness. She meets tennis pro Nick Hamilton, falls for him hard and fast, especially because he is so different from men in her past. They marry, and immediately, things begin to fall apart– most disastrously when she discovers Nick's sexual orientation in the most humiliating way possible.

Mary Cate starts a new life by moving from her narrow if affluent home town to Atlanta where she rehabs a house in a neighborhood that proves to be a favorite place for gays and Lesbians. Slowly, as Mary Cate realizes that more and more of her good friends are gay, she becomes a deeper, more interesting human being. She gives up the fantasy that she can't live without a man, and she makes a family of the friends around her. She helps a man with AIDS through some of the rough times at the end of his life, and even reconnects with Nick. This is a story with a happy ending– but the happiness is not at all what the Mary Cate of the beginning would have imagined.

The other two books I want to mention are of this present decade, also by women, and also with sexuality front and center. And both writers focus their books on homosexual men. Carter Seaton's AMO, AMAS, AMAT: AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY is also about Mary Cate, a thirty-something Southern Baptist country club woman with all kinds of casual, unchallenged prejudices– especially against homosexuals. She enjoys her life, but feels cheated by the lack of romantic love that she believes is essential to true happiness. She meets tennis pro Nick Hamilton, falls for him hard and fast, especially because he is so different from men in her past. They marry, and immediately, things begin to fall apart– most disastrously when she discovers Nick's sexual orientation in the most humiliating way possible.
Mary Cate starts a new life by moving from her narrow if affluent home town to Atlanta where she rehabs a house in a neighborhood that proves to be a favorite place for gays and Lesbians. Slowly, as Mary Cate realizes that more and more of her good friends are gay, she becomes a deeper, more interesting human being. She gives up the fantasy that she can't live without a man, and she makes a family of the friends around her. She helps a man with AIDS through some of the rough times at the end of his life, and even reconnects with Nick. This is a story with a happy ending– but the happiness is not at all what the Mary Cate of the beginning would have imagined.

Carter Seaton's book is full of gay and Lesbian characters, and some of the scenes are from their points of view, but the sex acts are not often dramatized. NancyKay Shapiro's novel WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU PEOPLE, on the other hand, begins with a tour de force of very physical, very graphic, and downright hot scenes of gay sex. She makes a music of sex in the first third of this novel, as two unlikely men fall in love. Jim is a rich New Yorker, older, and bereft after a great loss, and Sean is young, poor, edgy, a talented artist, just in from the Midwest. Their love story is almost equally a paean to New York City. Many scenes take place in cafés and restaurants, and in grungy and magnificent apartments and houses. There is an enthusiastic richness of physical detail– food, wine, buildings, streets, and bodies, of course. It is a wonderfully, enhanced, reality with all sensations heightened.

And part of what is really amazing about this book is that the happy ending doesn't last– and that, I suppose, is part of the reality of it. The second half of the novel brings in Sean's sister and Sean's background, and the story gets rougher as it moves from the riches of new love to the stark horrors of the siblings', but especially Sean's, past. Plot comes to the fore, and a kind of ugliness in the backwoods of the Midwest that makes New York City seem like heaven on earth.

And the very final part takes these two disparate sections and finds a way to bring them into– if not exactly harmony, then a believable balance.

Take a look at these novels– they deserve readers.

– Meredith Sue Willis

MORE SUGGESTIONS

Christine Willis suggests Montana, 1948: "Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, as it is told from a child's perspective with the benefit of the perspectives and guidance of an adult writer. The reader is exposed to the maltreatment of American Indians during the era but in a rather matter of fact way that does not elicit pity: it is simply the way things were. The story is in large part, however, built upon the different ways in which people do deal with prejudice against the American Indians, both the whites and the Indians. It is a short book that reads quickly because of high interest, straight forward language, and Watson's interesting turn of phrase."

Phyllis Moore liked this memoir: Beauty Before Comfort.

A COUPLE MORE FROM MSW

BUDDHISM: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION by Damien Keown is one of the handy little Oxford introductions to just about everything. I particularly like them for getting a few things straight about religions. Here, for example, I THINK I finally got the Mahayana tradition separated from Theraveda tradition. I like so much of what underlies Buddhism: that life is full of suffering– or at least dissatisfaction– so relax and deal with it via meditation, community, and compassion.

This next book is one I loved the idea of but managed to finish only by skimming. This was the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's 760 page alternative history of the world, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. I kept saying to myself, if I'm going to read long historical narrations of wars in the Himalayas and elsewhere, why not read the real thing? It was just too much narration and explaining between the good parts. It reminded me of the endless small world play some children do– enriching and fascinating to them, but not to the rest of us. Or the Brontë siblings entertaining themselves for years with their interlocking romantic tales of Gondal and Angria.. A blogger said of Robinson that he alternately adores and hates his books, and that this one he has read several times because he can't decide if he adores it or hates it. A real glutton for punishment.

Finally, one more hammock-at-the-lake Elmore Leonard: THE HOT KID. This one has for its hero a brash but effective young federal marshall of a racially mixed background. It's set in Oklahoma in the days of Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. It has the usual long strings of colorful dialog and doesn't get nasty until the spoiled bad boy son of a local rich guy starts plugging people just because they're in his way. This is the closest I've come to Leonard's western stories.

READ ONLINE

Recommended by Amy Wright: Michael Martone's short short nonfiction piece on the recent weather disasters in Alabama: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev36/martone36.html

Barbara Crooker's older poem on strawberries was featured at:
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=774 , and a new one "1950" appears in in Qarrtsiluni's issue on "imprisonment": http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/07/22/1950/

A personal essay on witnessing the final space launch by Melanie Vickers appeared on July 28, 2011 at http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201107271141

ANNOUNCEMENTS, CONTESTS, READINGS, ETC.

JUANITA TORRENCE-THOMPSON, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher/Owner of Internationally acclaimed MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE seeks a GROUP of poets and/or editors or COLLEGE, organization or business individual/s to purchase and publish her 29-year old non-profit print magazine starting 2011. www.mobiuspoetry.com Serious buyers ONLY email: mobiusmag@earthlink.net or poetrytown@earthlink.net. Contributors included: RITA DOVE, NIKKI GIOVANNI, SONIA SANCHEZ, MARGE PIERCY, ROBERT BLY, DIANE WAKOSKI, YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA. CORNELIUS EADY, NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, DANIELA GIOSEFFI, COLETTE INEZ, HAL SIROWITZ, STEPHEN STEPANCHEV, LOUIS REYES RIVERA, A.D. WINANS, SAMUEL MENASHE, DUANE NIATUM, MAURICE KENNY, JOSEPH BRUCHAC, LYN LIFSHIN, SIMON PERCHIK, LAURA BOSS, TAMMY NUZZO MORGAN, GEORGE WALLACE, MAXWELL WHEAT, JR., DANIEL THOMAS MORAN, THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI, EDWARD BUTSCHER, SUSAN TERRIS, ROCHELLE RATNER, THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI, ED GALING, SANDY McINTOSH, TAMMY NUZZO MORGAN, JULIO MARZAN, ESTHER LEIPER, ROXANNE HOFFMAN, ELLARAINE LOCKIE, GEORGIA BANKS MARTIN, SUSAN TERRIS, LINDA LERNER, etc. Her other website is: www.poetrytown.com

Dolly Withrow has a column from the DAILY MAIL ( http://www.dailymail.com) "A Soap-Opera Approach to Grammar" that is being picked up by Routledge Publishers to be excerpted in an upcoming book!

George Brosi recommends Patricia Harman's ARMS WIDE OPEN: A MIDWIFE'S JOURNEY. He says: "What a perfect title for an author who is so open to life and to people of all backgrounds....This book is a fascinating and heart-warming read that demonstrates people can grow and still be true to their basic values."

Mark DeFoe's tenth chapbook of poems coming out this fall. Pre-publication orders are now being taken by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY. Order online at finishinglinepress.com and click on "new releases." The collection is titled In the Tourist Cave.

Barry Wildorf's historical novel, THE FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS is now in print. This is a novel set in the 5th Century A.D. as it follows the desperate struggle of Hypatia, the last librarian of Alexandria and renowned mathematician, and Glenys, a Celtic healer, as they resist the misogyny of the newly-empowered Roman Catholic Church during the declining days of the Roman Empire. To purchase an autographed copy, go to http://flightofthesorceress.blogspot.com/ or get it directly from the publisher at Wild Child Publishing http://www.wildchildpublishing.com

Paul Maguire's novel PROFESSOR ATLAS AND THE SUMMONING DRAGON for 3rd - 8th graders is now available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Atlas-Summoning-Dagger-Maguire/dp/1457505096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312217858&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Atlas-Summoning-Dagger-Maguire/dp/1457505096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312217858&sr=8-1

Pamela Duncan recommends a new book by Erica Abrams Locklear, who teaches at UNC-Asheville. It's called Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women's Literacies. Learn more at http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Negotiating+a+Perilous+Empowerment

PROJECTOR, THE JOURNAL OF CREATIVE RESPONSE TO FILM, IS COMPILING ITS THIRD ISSUE. Deadline: August 31, 2011 Please submit stories, poems, and analytical inventions about movies to projectormagazine@yahoo.com . To see samples, go to http://www.projectormagazine.com

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: NYC: TALL TALES FROM THE CITY-- Deadline: September 21 They say, "We are publishing a Book of New York City Fiction. Looking for 1000-2500 word stories. You may submit by September 21. Check out the facebook event page for guidelines:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138408566235129"

2011-07-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a depressing little summer sonnet from poem-a-day at Poets.org

Midsummer
by William Cullen Bryant

A power is on the earth and in the air,
From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid,
And shelters him in nooks of deepest shade,
From the hot steam and from the fiery glare.
Look forth upon the earth—her thousand plants
Are smitten; even the dark sun-loving maize
Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze;
The herd beside the shaded fountain pants;
For life is driven from all the landscape brown;
The bird hath sought his tree, the snake his den,
The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men
Drop by the sunstroke in the populous town:
As if the Day of Fire had dawned, and sent
Its deadly breath into the firmament.

One More Tale of Genji…

2011-07-12T06:25:00.001-07:00

… by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler, this time. I have the full Waley translation and the Seidensticker. I used to turn up my nose at abridged versions, but I got in the mood again– a damp gray summer early evening on the back screened porch, and I just wanted to dip, and to taste Genji on the Kindle. The translation is good, with the poems laid out in a very readable way. So many sleeves made sopping wet– I mean dew covered, and during Genji’s exile, soaked by waves of salt water. Such a different ethos, all the fathers and mothers trying to give their well-brought up accomplished daughters to the emperor or other high status men as concubines. Then with political machinations, raising the daughter’s status to possible Empress Mother and the power of the family as well. And then there’s how Genji essentially kidnaps the little girl and eventually has sex with her and continues to keep her and make her his ideal woman, even while continuing his other affairs, although never failing in attention to the many women he loves and does not abandon them. As always, a fascinating excursion into an alternative reality. Dim, all those curtains and blinds, sex enhanced by handwriting.

And yes, it works on the Kindle, the grayness of the screen matches the weather, the spray of mountain waterfalls, the night time creeping in bedrooms, the dawn when you send your love note. And as to the lower classes–the people who clean the latrines and actually dye the fabrics and cook the meals and empty the chamberpots– they apparently do not exist at all.

Perils of Amazon Reader Revews

2011-06-29T18:48:00.001-07:00

I’ve just been through an interesting experience. I never paid a lot of attention to the reader reviews on Amazon.com till last week when an absolutely scathing review was posted about Marco’s Monster. Now this is a book that has been in print for more than fifteen years, with two publishers, and I often make school visits and talk to kids about it and use it as a way to start them writing. But this person said it was badly written, seemed unlike real children in the world, and she didn’t believe parents would let their children run the streets the way those kids do– anyhow, suddenly Marco has the lowest possible Amazon rating. I was about to send out an email blast to everyone I know asking for help, but had the sense to talk it over first with a writer friend who recommended sending the blast, but only to those who had some reason to know the books, which made a lot of sense. So I did, and I’ve been touched by the response– some family, like my sister and my niece and nephew, who were really good, plus a number of adult friends who wrote short complimentary statements, and above all raised the Amazon rating. What’s scary is that a book with good reviews from Library Journal, Hornbook, etc. etc. could suddenly be sitting there with a bad rating. The democratic possibilities of this digital world are considerable– but, as I guess we all know by now, so are the dangers. To see what people say about Marco,click here.

Tags: Amazon, reader reviews, reviews, writing, writing career

MSW's Books for Readers # 143

2011-06-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 143

June 23, 2011

News and Announcements

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Jane Austen Fan Fiction

I have three books to recommend for your summer reading: a brand new collection of short stories; a twentieth century classic; and Jared Diamond's stunning 1996 study of why the West won– that would be the West as in the culture that developed in the great Euro-Asian landmass. The book is GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, which answers the question posed to Diamond by a New Guinean friend who didn't understand why Europeans had come out on top in his world rather than vice versa. And Diamond , who deeply believes that people like his New Guinean friend are at least and maybe more intelligent than the average European, made this magisterial survey. There is no single answer, of course, but rather a coming together of many elements in the cultures with the technological advances that gave them the ability to engulf other people's lands, resources, languages, and gene pools.

One essential element turns out to be the availability of plants and animals that can be domesticated for food and other uses. Diamond distinguishes between animals that can be tamed, like my parakeet, and animals that can be domesticated and used for food, transportation, etc. Animals turn out to be not only essential tools of war and agriculture, but also vectors for the great epidemics that spread over the Asia-Europe land mass, killing off millions, but also leading to some immunity in the survivors-- and eventually to unconscious (at least at first) germ warfare against more isolated people like those of the Americas.

Diamond also discusses what he calls the axis of communication. The axis of Eurasia is east west, which meant that many crops and animals would be in same general latitude for eventual expansion. He compares this to the Americas with a north-sound axis and barriers of climate, latitude, and topography that meant the Aztecs and the Incas barely knew of each other, and that maize was probably domesticated more than once. Africa had the great barrier of the Sahara between north and south plus certain terrible diseases of the subsaharan rain forests that stopped horses and cattle from moving south

Diamond's knowledge and his relentless enthusiasm for sharing it are a real delight. It's a book with big, expansive ideas that make you feel, at least for a moment, that you're got some perspective on history and geography.

Next, I want to recommend LITTLE AMERICA by Diane Simmons. This is a 2011 short story collection of shapely, separate stories that are made stronger by being grouped together. First, truth in advertising: I blurbed this book, but in rereading it as a whole, I find it even better than my first look. It is a book of stories about Americans on the move, mostly on the road. These are people who run away or drift away, going on the road, leaving their lovers and families. It begins with a family of grifters and ends with some shrewdly dishonest drifters– who may or may not be going into more danger than they're escaping. The longest story, "Letters," is about the ideal of romantic love as a destructive force, especially for women in the 1950's.

There is plenty of humor and horror, lots of feisty characters and lost characters and American landscape. So the parts are excellent, but the collection really succeeds in its grand design. I am a deep admirer of shape– I feel that shaping our world is one of the major reasons we read and write fiction. Simmons creates the shape of her book with repetition and unexpected turns, especially with her excellent endings.

One story, "Suitcase," set mostly in Guatemala, has been called a modern "Heart of Darkness," which is nicely apt, except that Simmons' story is both more compact and more shocking– and more realistic– than Conrad's classic. You feel something bad coming, but you don't see the actual end. A story at the other extreme of weather has two young people going homesteading in the Yukon, and this one too has a satisfying surprise at the end. Simmons is wonderful at what you might call earned surprises. Endings tend to be a problem for contemporary writers, and maybe especially writers of short stories, but Simmons breaks new ground. The stories in LITTLE AMERICA don't end with gunshots or rape, but with genuine enlightenments: sometimes nasty, sometimes amusing, but almost always the thing you didn't expect, but which feels absolutely right. I'm not going to reveal any endings here, except to say that each story has a payoff, and the collection as a whole pulls you in and doesn't let you go.

Finally, I reread Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL (free for Kindle!). This is one of those books that blew me away thirty-five years ago, and I sometimes think of it or maybe the feeling it gave me (would that be "kafkaesque"?). But re-reading brought an entirely different experience from what I remembered. It is an unfinished book, with scholarly and biographical debate about what belongs in, the order of chapters, and, of course, if Kafka really meant it when he asked to have his work destroyed after his death.

One of the things I didn't remember is that it is a novel that is crowded with characters and funny and absurd passages, and also sex, as well as being famously off-kilter and disturbing. How odd, though, that my memory of the book was of loneliness, especially the execution at the end. In fact, though. the places of Josef K.'s life are crowded with people: his office, the rooming house where he lives, the various squalid apartment blocks where he findscourtrooms and officials' offices in a warren of working class flats. The novel starts with police (or something like police) pushing into K.'s bedroom as he's getting up, and ends with two fat executioners and someone watching perhaps sympathetically from a window. And my memory of the end was of a final scene (possibly from the movie?) in which a door opens and light falls on man on pallet, and he says Is it time? But the novel is weirder, and sillier, and more moving.

I ran across an article by John Banville about his rereading of the novel, (from the UK's Guardian as http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/15/john-banville-kafka-trial-rereading) . Banville suggests that the book used for its structure an event in Kafka's on-again off-again engagement when his fiancee brought him to a meeting with a friend and herself where she put him through a kind of trial over their relationship. Marriage, Banville thinks, was to Kafka a kind of capital sentence. If this sounds overly psychological or even diminishing to his accomplishment in the novel, I would say that great artists demonstrate their greatness not by the loftiness of their subjects but by how they take whatevermaterials are at hand and make a great thing out of them. Art moves even quotidian things to another level, makes a leap that allows us all to participate in something that may have begun as local or individual.

This brings me to a question: when you re-read the works that you met as a young person, do you find them very different: In what way? Do they hold up? Are they entirely different?

– Meredith Sue Willis

READERS RESPOND

Ardian Gill said of THE GOOD SOLDIER (discussed in Issue # 142), "I was surprised at your take on Ford (Heuffer)'s THE GOOD SOLDIER with its famous 'Saddest Story' (original title) opening line. I'm an old fan of Ford's, not least because his main character in the quartet (PARADE'S END), Tietjens, is an actuary. I'm going to forward Jane Smiley's review in the Guardian. BTW, Ford alleges that he taught Conrad English." [The excellent review/appreciation by Jane Smiley is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/may/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview27 ]

Debbie Carter writes, "THE GOOD SOLDIER is one of my favorite novels. I want to read it again soon for the way he captures longing for a beloved and how they will do anything, anything to be with that person, even if they suspect they're being lied to and don't want to know."

Debbie also recommends, just for fun, "an online questionnaire.... called "Which Vintage Classics Character Are You?" It's posted on Facebook by Random House Australia." Here's the link (you have to "like" them to get to take it)
http://www.facebook.com/randomhouseaustralia?sk=app_4949752878

Laura Bentley sends a link to this 1958 television interview of Pearl S. Buck by Mike Wallace: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/buck_pearl.html . It really takes you back to another time and place– Wallace is determined to pigeonhole Buck, and she is very ladylike, but very determined to be who she is!

Jonathan Greene recommends the movie version of NORTH AND SOUND, available on Netflix.

RECOMMENDATION OF A WRITER'S CONFERENCE

Suzanne Rahn writes about a writer's conference she attended in San Francisco. She says, " I enjoyed this conference very much. I stayed at the Fort Mason Hostel which was a 5 minute walk to the conference and 20 min walk to Fisherman's Wharf. I would recommend the hostel as an extremely affordable place to stay. There is even a small café in the building where you can overlook Alcatraz Island sipping a cup of chai tea. Very nice area.
http://fwwriters.algonkianconferences.com/

She goes on to say, "Michael Neff's credentials are listed on the website and his style is that of a literary "Simon Cowell" but not so heartless. His workshop is designed to help a writer improve, but he also won't sugar coat his opinion. His goal is to further a good story or help rescue a terrible story. I met several agents and publishers during the week and established a cordial friendship with Michael and the owners of the Larsen/Paloma agency. I would highly recommend this conference to any writer who wants to take a serious step towards firming up and pitching his or her novel."

VALERIE NIEMAN ON TOUR WITH HER NOVEL BLOOD CLAY (see issue #140)

JULY 10 - Meet the Author at Rosemary House, Pittsboro, NC
JULY 16 - Literary Bookpost, Salisbury, NC
JULY 30 - North Carolina Writers Conference in Asheville, NC
JULY 31 - Reading at Malaprop's, Asheville
AUG. 27 - Fiction workshop in Yadkinville, NC
SEPT. 10 - BookMarks in Winston-Salem, NC
SEPT. 30-OCT. 3 - Virginia tour TBA
OCT. 6 - Ex Libris Book Club
OCT. 13 - Fairmont State University, Fairmont, WV
OCT. 14 - West Virginia University
OCT. 15 - Weirton, WV, Public Library
OCT. 17 - Alderson-Broaddus College, Philippi, WV

FAN FICTION– A NEW GENRE??

A whole new world of writing is taking place online with Fan Fiction, in which fans write stories associated loosely or tightly with their favorite author, classic, or genre. Mindy Kesterman, along with her freshly-minted Princeton graduate daughter, provided this overview of Jane Austen fan fiction sites:

dwiggie.com
meryton.com/aha
austenunderground.com

Mindy writes: "You can post a chapter for commentary by other fans, or there are parts of the sites where you can ask for editing or a beta reader. A work in progress can be posted at say the rate of a chapter or two a week and fans return to read the serialized novel." There is also an is an index of all Austen fan fiction is available at jaffindex.com – but for this one, you have to have a membership in one of the Austen fan fiction sites.

READ ONLINE

An interview with writer and BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW Fiction Editor Suzanne McConnell is posted at http://www.thereviewreview.net/interviews . The interview focuses on the magazine and her own writing.

Leora Skolkin-Smith has an interesting piece on Grace Paley. She tries to correct Paley's position in the literary-spiritual-political arena– very thoughtful and worth considering, especially how Skolkin-Smith presents Milan Kundera and Grace Paley as the East and West voices of the Cold War era, striving in different but complementary ways to preserve the souls of people in the second half of the twentieth century. The piece is at
http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-legacy-of-grace-paley

Juanita Torrence-Thompson's half-hour radio show, with music, produced by Poets West called "QUEENS MEETS ASIA," can be heard online now. Click on the home page of www.poetswest.com and scroll down to Radio Programs. The programs are large mono.mp3 files and you need hi speed internet to listen. Juanita's program is #194.

Phyllis Wilson Moore has a review of Harvey Pekak's work at
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/wvbookfestival/2011/05/19/the-pungent-humor-of-harvey-pekar/

SAVE YOUR UNCORRECTED PROOFS!

Save your uncorrected proofs! Abebooks.com is selling them for thousands of dollars! Or at least, SOME uncorrected proofs:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/galley-advance-early-publisher/uncorrected-proofs.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-110618-h00-uncorreCA-_-01cta

ANNOUNCEMENTS, CONTESTS, READINGS, ETC.

Carter Seaton's second novel, amo, AMAS, AMAT…AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY is now available for Kindle readers, with other e-reader formats and a trade paperback print version coming soon. The novel, set in 1983, centers on Mary Cate Randolph who falls for tennis pro Nick Hamilton. He's charming and intelligent, but not sexually aggressive. Mary Cate, a naïve homophobic, is shocked to learn after they marry that Nick is a closeted homosexual. What follows is not what you'd expect.

Gerald Swick, who writes about the history of West Virginia, has an article in the new edition of Wonderful West Virginia magazine (http://www.wonderfulwv.com/) on the battle of Philippi. He says that he also "wrote a sidebar on the two cannons used at the battle. For decades they have been believed to be in Wellington, Kansas. Last autumn I went there, photographed them, and began a search to see if these were, indeed, the guns used at 'the first land battle of the Civil War.' The sidebar summarizes what I found."

THE WRITER'S ALMANAC featured one of of Jonathan Greene's poems on May 19, 2011. This is the third poem they have selected from his latest collection DISTILLATIONS AND SIPHONINGS.

Barbara Crooker has new poems up at the following sites:
http://www.stringpoet.com/2011/05/barbara-crooker/ ("Today" and "A Woman Is Her Mother")(There's music to go with this, too.) and http://www.decompmagazine.com/roominnewyork1932.htm ("Room in New York")(There's an audio clip of me reading the poem.)

Mary Lucille Deberry's collection BERTHA BUTCHER'S COAT was one of the winners of Writers' Digest's competiion for self-published books of poetry. Other winners included first place Charles James for LIFE LINES , Drew Dellinger's LOVE LETTER TO THE MILKY WAY, and Jerry Brown Schwartz's SO INSPIRED: PRELUDES & POEMS,

ANDERBO SEEKS NOVELIST (by September 21st, 2011) for its 2nd Bi-annual No-Fee Novel Contest The Mercer Street Books Fiction Prize. Anderbo.com wishes to post up to the first 36 manuscript pages of an unpublished novel on its website by December 21st, 2011 for at least the following six months. We will look at the FIRST 36 PAGES (up to 9,000 words) of your e-manuscript submitted to editors@anderbo.com and decide within 60 days of its arrival if we want to see more. You must submit your manuscript entry within the body of the e-mail—no attachments. There is no reading fee, and and all literary rights will remain with the author. This contest is not open to anyone previously published on anderbo.com at any time. There will be an honorarium of $500 paid by the sponsor of this contest, Mercer Street Books & Records, to the winning author upon publication on Anderbo. For more, go to anderbo.com

NEW JERSEY SPECIAL! Michael C. Gabriele's THE GOLDEN AGE OF BICYCLE RACING IN NEW JERSEY has just been published. Check it out at The History Press https://www.historypress.net/ along with lots of other history books.

MSW NEWS:

A podcast of an interview of MSW by Eric Frizius at http://podcast.wvwriters.org/2011_06_01_archive.html

Short short story called "Rescue" in Sleet Magazine.com here

Short story called "Decorations" in the in hard copy Spring 2011 issue of Slab

A radio review of Out of the Mountains by Roberta Schultz aired on an NPR affiliate in Cincinnati (WVXU 91.7 FM) on May 15, 2011. The program is available here.

ABOUT AMAZON.COM

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. An alternative way to reach their site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund. For a discussion about Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget your public library and your local independent bookstore.

To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder has a feature that tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com. More good sources for used and out-of-print books are Bookfinder at http://www.bookfinder.com/ and All Book Stores at http://www.allbookstores.com/ .

Take a look also at Paperback Book Swap , a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, get free books at the Gutenberg Project.

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

My New Pet

2011-06-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

Andy took a photo of the vulture on the dormer yesterday: it doesn't look as big as it really it. They are ENORMOUS. I run into them occasionally on the street.

Books for Readers #142

2011-05-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 142

May 15, 2011

I want to begin this issue with praise for an old novel in a new edition from Montemayor Press: LEAH by Seymour Epstein. First published in 1964, Epstein uses his point of view woman character, Leah, as a point for creating a rich portrait of a particular time and place. I perhaps most loved the details about young-to-middle aged New Yorkers eating in Automats, going to Broadway and off-Broadway shows, New York bars, subways, elevateds. It is the New York I saw the first time I visited, as a young teenager. It was a place when you could rent a decent apartment on an office manager's salary and eat most of your meals out. A place where craftspeople like Leah's wonderfully portrayed father Max, a furrier, were also intellectuals. This is a particularly Jewish postwar New York City, and while many of its touches on the experiences of gay people and black people feel hesitant now, the book as a whole is not dated, but rather a window into a particular past.

In this context, Leah's desire for a life in love, and her dilemma over having had a series of lovers, is sad, but it is also precisely the trap set for gentlewomen at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century– that not only their typical role but their calling is to find true love, then be fulfilled in house keeping, husband supporting, and motherhood. That Leah herself knows she's in a trap is played out delicately. It is only after she gets a little respect for her stolid mother (who, miraculously, turns out to have some talents of her own!)– and gets a little perspective on her adored father – that she is able to take on a love commitment.

The book has the dark gold color of an incandescent lamp: women wear furs, men wear hats, artists are considered heroes, women see themselves as receivers of confidence and neediness. In the end, Epstein chooses the mode of classical comedy– both Leah and her father compromise their principles (or else perhaps finally mature) and take mates.

Leah was old fashioned in all the right satisfying ways, and by contrast, I also read a thoroughly modern young adult novel called THE END: FIVE QUEER KIDS SAVE THE WORLD by Nora Olsen. This is one I wish had been a series– it's got these five terrific heros with semi-super powers, mostly gay or bisexual girls, and the only boy is 5,000 years old. They are good characters, overseen by some slapstick gods and goddesses who are causing very serious problems for human beings– like a killing insanity that makes people rip each other apart for no reason. The magic/super powers part is set up very carefully and focuses less on the poof of magic and more on how the kids learn mastery of it. The final quarter speeds up and takes on the sharp, simplified outlines of cartoons, but this is, in spite of people being dismembered and possibly dying of rabies, a good humored and uplifting novel.

Meanwhile, back at the Kindle, I've been enjoying myself immensely as well. First, I discovered a clearing house for the free borrowing of Kindle books. The problem with Kindle (one problem) is that once you buy a book, it's yours, but you can only lend it to a friend by lending the Kindle itself and thus your entire collection of e-books. Amazon is now, like Barnes & Noble, allowing some very limited borrowing. The new bottleneck is that the conventional (DUMB) publishers are not allowing borrowing. There are some opportunities, however, to borrow some popular books– once. That is, you are borrowing from an individual, who is only allowed to lend once. To learn more, take a look at the clearing house side at http://www.booklending.com/.

I lucked out the first time I tried it, and was able to borrow WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel. This was an extremely well-researched and thoughtful historical fiction– my only complaint is that I kept waiting for Thomas Cromwell's execution at the end, but as the distance to the end got smaller and smaller, I finally realized we were going to stop with Thomas More's execution instead– and the rest of Cromwell's life will be coming in a sequel.

Mantel's Thomas Cromwell is a working class man who rises very high and tries to move towards increased equality while being fully loyal to the king. The story is oddly plotless– it feels rather like a dark picaresque, which would be, I suppose because of its close hewing to the historical facts. For a long time I didn't think she really had Cromwell, that it would have been better to have created his character from the outside, maybe from his son's view or the point of view of one of his wards (I particularly liked his nephew Richard, his sister's child, who took the name Cromwell and was an ancestor of Oliver Cromwell). But in the end, Mantel won me over with her odd point of view, a close third person that rarely names Cromwell. It as if we had a view into his world, with blinders (or is that the dark tunnel effect I feel when I read on the Kindle?), seeing through his eyes but often not knowing what he is planning or thinking. People enter, there's a scene, there's not necessarily any particular drama, they're gone, we're elsewhere. Again, this comes from hewing to the facts, but it requires a little revision of your narrative expectations, of what to expect from a scene.

For the 2009 Christopher Benfey review in the November NEW YORK TIMES (he agrees with me about the quality of picaresque) see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/books/review/Benfey-t.html

Two more on the Kindle: THE ELEPHANT'S JOURNEY by José Saramago. This is also historical in its essential outlines– that the king of Portugal sends his elephant to Vienna as a gift, but the tone and story are quintessential Saramago– the best characters workers and soldiers and elephant handlers, and the animal itself: big personality and very wise, but fully an elephant, never a human being. Everything is told richly and simply – Solomon/Suleiman the elephant, his mahout, the Portuguese soldiers and their commanding officer, the crossing of the Alps, the Austrian soldiers and the archduke– the apotheosis of an elder writing in the fullness of his strength.

And– Kindle owners! A huge bargain: you can get an omnibus edition of 12 Saramago novels for less than $20! With an introduction by Ursula LeGuin! Saramago Collection .

I also reread Mrs. Gaskell's NORTH AND SOUTH, and oh what a delight, perfect for the forward linearity of the e-reader. Mrs. Gaskell's work is very deliberate and clear and straightforward– no need for flipping back and forth. One of my favorite things about her is that she addresses things most of the Old Victorians never touch, or at least don't humanize. The hard thing about her is certain limitations of imagination, in this novel an ideological commitment to the superiority of the educated liberal Christian and the danger of people in combinations such as unions. You have to lay that aside– but once you do, Mrs. G. manages to make her main character Margaret Hale strong, suffering, a little wild, yet a complete lady– and above all a woman with a complex moral conscience.

I also like NORTH AND SOUTH's Mr. Rochester effect, which is that the powerful, passionate man clearly meant to be Margaret's mate, must be brought down from his arrogant high horse before the match can be made. Gaskell doesn't blind her Mr. Thornton as her friend Charlotte Brontë did to her Mr. Rochester, but Gaskell does put him in dire financial straits, and then (take that, Mr. Captain of Industry!) she allows Margaret to inherit just enough wealth to help him. Only then can they meet as equals in marriage.

There's one wonderfully melodramatic but vivid scene when Margaret challenges Thornton to go face the crowd of angry strikers in person, and then, when the crowd gets nasty, she goes herself and stands between him and them. In fact, in her desire to protect him, she throws her arms around his neck. Thornton's reaction (this part feels so right) is actually physical pleasure and a conviction that the young woman obviously is in love with him if she would embrace him in public. He then fantasizes about her touch for weeks– it's pretty hot stuff for the nineteenth century and a novelist who is a pastor's wife.

Somewhat less satisfying, but not bad, is her portrait of a "good" union man, Nicholas Higgins, who teaches Thornton a few things, but also has to learn a few. Thornton, who is in fact a former worker who really did accumulate his own capital, sits down with Higgins, and they come up with some ways of working together. It rejects the all-worker union, but at least gives the privilege to a kind of mutuality.

One note about an element of all Mrs. Gaskell's work that 21st century readers may mistake for melodrama is how characters drop like flies– they die of consumption, of apoplexy, of heart disease and some unnamed female complaint, probably a cancer– but to Gaskell's mind, death of people in their fifties and sixties is perfectly normal, as is consumption taking a girl of nineteen or twenty. Think, in fact, of the Brontë siblings: two dead of Tuberculosis before 30, the brother of alcoholism (probably) even earlier, and Charlotte while pregnant at the age of 38.

And my final Kindle report: THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford. (You see the pattern– the free books are pre-second world war). This was actually a re-read, but my previous read feels like infinite years ago, and I don't think I got it at all. Or maybe I read it at the wrong time.

It is a beautifully revealed novel about really miserable people. It unpeels like the proverbial onion, starting out conventional to the point of boring, then picking up steam and complications as one character after another proves to be betraying, cruel, even vulgar, The narrator is a totally hopeless idiot who may be forty at the end and possibly still a virgin, whose purpose in life seems to be caretaker for women he thinks he loves– there are suicides, gambling debts, adultery and fornication, insanity, a wife who tries to manage her husband's mistresses, a husband who is repelled by his wife, a wife who refuses to have sex with her husband at all but has lovers under his nose.

Oh, and the serial adulterer is probably the only noble character in the novel. The book is in many ways over the top, but I couldn't stop reading. An astringently nasty novel.

-- Meredith Sue Willis

A SPECIAL REPORT FROM NEIL ARTHUR JAMES ON BLOG FICTION

I've been fiction blogging in some form since 2003. I've been writing Dandy Darkly for three years. Blog fiction is a creative writing form incorporating the use of popular blogging websites, such as Typepad and Blogspot, to present original, self-published works of fiction to a primarily online readership.

Although it represents a fringe corner of the blogosphere and is sometimes regarded as a fad among critical and academic circles, I think blog fiction is a growing medium that will eventually find literary recognition. The medium itself allows for a wide variety of creative formats. Online diaries, a serialized depiction of fictional characters or a collection of short stories are all represented by fiction blogs.

The online format also grants a multitude of options for a writer to go beyond merely typed words on a web page. These include the ability to hyperlink events in the text to real time news stories and other websites, which may be real or fake themselves. Search functions and categorization give readers quick access to characters and themes so they can catch up on details they may have missed.

Online social media such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to progress story lines outside the blog itself while also bringing in readership. Reader interaction can be encouraged through the use of comment boxes and web page sharing. Photos and illustrations can easily be uploaded. Embedded sounds effects or music can create an aural backdrop for visitors to listen to as they read. YouTube is available to present live action segments, be it public readings by the author, visual segments for reference by a reader or a fully staged, live-action scene culled and performed from the story itself.

It is the discretion of the writer how far these other sources of information remove their work from the traditional notion of fiction at its purest, that being solely words on a page. But with so many options at your fingertips, I feel blog fiction can keep true to that ideal while offering so many other avenues for the writer to express himself or herself. Blog fiction is in the process of finding its own shape.

Any literary project morphs and reveals itself the more you write, but this fact feels especially true of a fiction blog, particularly as new technology and social media trends go in and out of vogue. My fiction blog, Dandy Darkly, has shifted from what began as highly serialized, short stories to a longer format with many recurring characters and far reaching plot lines. The challenge has been in presenting short works that stand alone in both quality of writing and clarity of story while keeping true to a larger narrative arc and hinting at things to come. At times if feels like I'm improvising a novel in published chunks.

Another challenge is finding an audience. Hawking my blog is an exhausting task. Attention spans are short on the web. With an inundation of websites to browse, readership can be sparse for a fiction blog. Hence many of the "bells and whistles" listed above. Ideally a writer wants the strength of the words alone to draw in and keep readers, but on the web that simply isn't always the case. I have a fiction blog because I love the evolving format and I'm passionate about what I'm writing and performing. Ultimately I'm as along for the ride as my characters are. I recommend every writer play with the format. It's been a rewarding journey and I'm eager to see what will happen as technology evolves and more writers turn to fiction blogging to express themselves.
– Neil Arthur James

For the full issue, with announcements and reader responses, go to http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive141-145.html#issue142

The Last Day...

2011-05-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

... is beautiful after days and days of rain. I'm under the weather, but heading out soon for Saturday night events-- cut grass, planted some squash I forgot, more cilantro, got an article proposal off, and I'm feeling like it's a vacation day. Not that I'm doing nothing, but that I'm on the back porch (just cleaned yesterday!) hearing birds of various stripes chatting, sun and clouds, grass marvellously green-- the back needs cutting too. I am so glad to be out here, to be here, which is the best mood for whatever comes next.

Haiku Season

2011-04-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Palest green scumble,
Tan fluff and small maroon buds--
It's haiku season!

I have been composing haiku as I do my exercise with my Nordic walking sticks. Haiku works nicely because they are short (and I have to memorize what comes to me when I'm walking). Also, the syllable counting seems to go nicely with physical movement-- and, along with the 7-7-5 syllable format, the other standard requirements for haiku are nature (I'm out-of-doors) and a little surprise. So I recommend taking a walk, counting out a haiku for yourself and memorizing it to bring back to the pencil and paper or keyboard. Here are a couple of mine (no laughing--I'm primarily a novelist):

Realm of green below,
Yellow, purple, pink between–
Over head, it's red!

Biggest Bargain Books-- and Good Food!

2011-03-26T19:16:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about José Saramago, the late Nobel prize winning Portuguese socialist expatriate, so I went to the Kindle Store to see what his books were selling for, and I found the biggest bargain yet except for the totally free Victorians: an omnibus collection of twelve of his novels for $19.80. That’s right, 12 novels (as far as I can tell, all of his fiction except the newest, possibly posthumous Cain. )There is also an appreciation/introduction by Ursula LeGuin that I enjoyed a lot (and you can read in the “sample” format that is free). I did my shopping due diligence and made sure the translators were the same ones as my three hard copy Saramago’s have. And I’m now reading The Elephant with great if intermittent pleasure.

And I have a thought that his crazy wonderful breathless style with commas for periods and no quotation marks may be exactly right for the full speed ahead book tunnel of the e-reader. I’m happy as a clam.

Actually, I'm happy as a clam about going to dinner at Munchie's, too, the new South Orange Jamaican restaurant: spicy red snapper brown stew with rice and "peas," planatains, stewed cabbage. So glad we finally went over and tried it.

Such Fun Reading With Edith KoneckyLast Night!

2011-03-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

It was a lovely evening at the Teachers & Writers Collaborative event in New York last night with Carole Rosenthal emceeing for Edith Konecky and me. Edith read beautifully; it was a responsive, happy crowd, pretty much filling the Teachers & Writers reading space. Amy Swauger, director, made everyone welcome. People from the Writers Group and the Hamilton Stone collective-- old friends from Teachers & Writers Miguel Ortiz and Nancy Shaprio- well, I'm not going to start naming people, but need to say it was warm and beautiful, and there was a good microphone that allowed for subtlety in tone.

Photos include me above signing a book; clapping for Edith after she read below; and laughing audience.

2011-03-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

Unclad trees, sky lace,
Filagree and fastener,
Protect tiny green.

Technology Moving Fast for the Kindle...

2011-03-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

So I am suddenly expanding the Kindle. First, there are the sites for lending books with Amazon. They allow you one loan per book. Not much. As usual, I learned about this by plunging in. I just signed up at http://www.booklending.com/ after reading praise of it, and tried to think of a possible recent book I’d like to read but not buy– for example, the kind of thing I’d borrow from a library, if I were a regular library goer. I decided to try WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel, and the site said it was not available. Fine, so I forgot about it– and three days ago got an email saying it was waiting for me! Mercy. So now I’m hurriedly reading it before the 14 days are up. In order to be nice, I decided to loan the two books I’ve actually paid for– and found out that they are “nonlendable,” a decision the publisher makes.

There’s a lot of confusion right now among technology, profit taking, ownership, books as physical objects and books as reading experiences.

Next move, I read some more online and discoverd the existes of Calibre, an open source software that will translate e-pub or whatever for kindle (or just about anything to anything, actually). You are supposed to be able to have books emailed to your Kindle account, but why? It also loads directly to the device if attached to the computer, so I’ve translated my first book (just Calibre’s handbook) and downloaded. Cool.
This is all new and happening fast.

I Borrowed a book on the Kindle!

2011-03-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

I just borrowed Wolf Hall for the Kindle– I got an email saying it was available, and I said OK, and it was delivered to my account, then downloaded by wi-fi to the Kindle– and I have it for two weeks! I hope I have time to read it. This was done experimenting here, experimenting there– never thinking it would come so fast, but here it is. A little too easy, if you ask me….

More Ebook

2011-03-06T06:53:00.001-08:00

I’m still being going for with the Kindle, because there is a real tendency to hear of a book and go buy it– just what Amazon wants, of course! Last night I was exploring some of the free sites, especially Gutenberg, and I downloaded the major novels of Mrs. Gaskell, which I’ve read, but am ready to read again. I think downloading to the computer directly from Gutenberg (and then transfering by wire to the Kindle) may be easier than buying free from Amazon because it’s time consuming to figure out which edition you want on Amazon– some free, some 99 cents, some as much as $12.00.

I finished the final Palliser novel (The Duke’s Children), which was surprisingly cheerful after the heavily dysfunctional relationships of The Prime Minister. The Duke’s heir Silverbridge (“Silver”) grows on you: not overwhelmingly smart, with no real political convictions, making one error in life after another, but lovable and good hearted and once he was in love willing to stick to it! His sister also sticks to her choice in a love, and there’s another of Trollope’s pathetic woman of power, Mabel Glax, tramelled by sexism, the class system, and the disaster of turning great gifts to love alone.

It isn’t that I’m not reading contemporary books: I’m working on a new issue of my newsletter with one unpublished book and a couple from a couple of years ago. But the fact is, the brand new books are expensive and harder to get on the e-readers. Let me rephrase, not harder to get, but harder to get free. I have this feeling I should be able to borrow, as in the library, and there seems to be some of that developing– Amazon has some books you can borrow for two weeks, if the owners allow (I think I’m getting this right) but they can only be borrowed once. There’s something all wrong about this– I’m still having trouble with the ethics of all this and the logistics. The ethics of copyright is fascinating and annoying: I just read somewhere that the entire twentieth century’s output of books– at least after 1920– is going to be dead to e-books unless the publishers and authors get their heads straight and give up the infinite copyrights. Easy for me to say, with how little I make in royalties.

From ignorance to slightly less ignorance

2011-02-25T05:11:00.001-08:00

One of the things about the various demonstrations, revolutions, brutal crackdowns, and civila wars going on in the so-called Middle East is that I am finally emerging a tiny bit from the muck of absolute ignorance: I've begun to be able to separate not just the geographical countries from one another, but also the types of government, a sense of who is Sunni and who is Shiite, where there is a large technologically savvy population, who is less strict about women's veiling, etc. etc. We have been-- okay, I have been-- woefully ignorant, and now I'm beginning to distinguish a few things.

2011--1968--1848??

2011-02-20T17:09:00.000-08:00

Some interesting things online: Silas House's op-ed piece in the New York Times about why he sat-in at the governor's office about mountain top removal. Also an eyewitness account of the worst night in Tahrir Square in Cairo, when the Thugs Came by filmmaker Tom Hurvitz, another of our cohort who sat in at Columbia University in 1968.

It is a superb moment in many ways: possible one of those times when many fires are lit at once: the Mountaintop Removal Sit ins in Kentucky; the demos versus taking away the right to collective bargaining in Wisconsin; Cairo; Bahrain. Some of it going very badly, some seeming hopeless, but a moment like the fires lit on the mountaintops in 1848, in 1968.

Books for Readers # 139 February 10, 2011

2011-02-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

See this in color, with pictures and live links-- on my website here!

I got a Kindle for my holiday gift. For months I spent time agonizing over corporate misdeeds and which device had access to the most books. In the end, I was sold by the lightness and visual neutrality of its little gray self. It pops into my bag with almost no added weight. I can lie in bed and hold it over my head as I read (try that with a three pound hard cover novel). On the train, if I don't feel like using glasses, I can make the type larger. There are no colors, no music (although you can have the text read aloud if you really want it). I've now got a whole blog with my ongoing commentary of this new kind of reading and how the digital revolution feels to a literary person. It's called Literature and the Web .

The thing I want to focus on in this issue, what is absolutely stunning to me, is that I am gradually downloading for FREE all my favorite Victorians and more. A couple of nights ago I got the free versions of all the major Jane Austen novels. I've got all of George Eliot except Theophrastus Such. I have all six Trollope Palliser novels (that would be Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children.) and my favorite E.M. Forster (Howard's End and A Passage to India.). Indeed, a huge per centage of literature that is out of copyright is available to download free on the Kindle (or any other electronic reader).

Some of you are going to say, Well I have all of the Victorians in my local library, or I have an omnibus edition of George Eliot sitting on my shelf right now. To which I say, Great, so do I, but can you carry it all with you on the commuter train in to New York? In your suitcase for vacation?

The first book I read on the device– finished, not started– was Trollope's The Prime Minister. My first full book (also free) was P.G. Wodehouse's My Man Jeeves, short stories, followed by Right Ho, Jeeves, (novel), both as light as meringues, and just as delightful: eh what old chum?

The first (and so far only) book I purchased for money was a George R.R. Martin sword and sorcery, A FEAST FOR CROWS. I am now contemplating purchasing an early Cormac McCarthy, one of his novels set in Knoxville, Tennessee back when he was an Appalachian writer, before the border trilogy and BLOOD MERIDIAN (see review of BLOOD MERIDIAN below). You can, of course, buy many current books too for the Kindle, but they aren't cheap, and you can't pass them on. So far, I'd rather buy a used book or trade on at Paperbackswap.com.

So, here are a couple of official responses to old books, as experienced on the flat gray screen of the Kindle:

THE PRIME MINISTER, while not my favorite Trollope, is, as always with Uncle Tony, an interesting look at human beings in a different time and place. This novel is even more loosely connected with Parliament that the Phineas Finn books– this one is about how a good man can be a bad politician, and it is also about the vicissitudes of marriage. In particular, pride destroys lives here: Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, never wanted to be Prime Minister and now that he is and it's time to step down– he doesn't want to give it up. Not because he thrives on the role, but because of pride. It's his ever lively wife Glencora (Lady Glen, the Duchess), who should have been the Prime Minister. The other story line is about Emily Wharton Lopez, who makes a disastrous marriage and is too proud either to get down in the dirt where her handsome husband is striving to succeed (a man with no antecedents– probably Jewish or Portuguese or both) and far too proud to leave him. She is a really miserable case: blind and stupid pride insisting on marrying who she wants, in a time and place where she is by custom and in fact ignorant of who she is marrying– and then determined to embrace her suffering. I was hoping she'd remain a widow and live as a monument to her own stupidity, but Trollope likes his old English squires too much not to let them win in the end.

So it's essentially an unpleasant story, a study of marriage and money and the emotional underpinnings of parliamentary politics– the general themes of the whole series, particularly highlighted in this one. Glencora Palliser, the Duchess, continues to delight, but she is, au fond, pretty much without fond, i.e. shallow. She was wonderful in Can You Forgive Her, when she was young, with her fondness for impropriety.

All the Palliser novels play with outsiders: Trollope's Irish (Phineas Finn) and Jews (probably the redoubtable Mrs. Max now Finn) are worthy in as far as they remake themselves into English gentlemen and women. Politically, I far prefer George Eliot, who shares a lot of the general attitude– that English gentility is superior to most other ways of being– but she goes much farther in her efforts to understand the other. In DANIEL DERONDA, for example, the quintessential, heroic gentleman is not only Jewish, but becomes a Zionist activist.

Finally, A PASSAGE TO INDIA, E.M. Forster's highly praised last novel, was a reread for me, but as I started reading, I realized that I remembered just about nothing. I think I must have read it as a student, probably in a Great Novels of the Western Tradition context. I remembered the scene in the mosque at the beginning; I remembered the unpleasantness (and importance to the book) of the Malabar caves, and I knew Mrs. Moore died but had no memory at all of the last third of the book (the temple part). It was like reading a completely new book. Also, I was mistakenly looking for the famous Forster phrase "only connect," having associated it with Mrs. Moore when all along it was from HOWARD's END. It's as if all that was left of my previous reading was Mrs. Moore. I remember her not as more important than she was– because her compassion and her religious devolution are indeed central to the book– but I didn't remember what happened to the other people. I didn't remember that Dr. Aziz was actually the main character, the changes he went through, and mainly, I didn't remember the actual political study of the awfulness of the racist colonial British in India.

This really reminds us of the wonder of books that are works of art: that they are different to us at different times, that they are really experiences rather than objects, and this perhaps is why, for me, there is very little attachment to the book as object: it is the experience and re-experience that matters.

-- Meredith Sue Willis

JOEL WEINBERGER ON CORMAC MCCARTHY'S BLOOD MERIDIAN

A blood-soaked, epic tale of the West as a not-so glorious look at Americana and our history, not to mention the essence of humanity. The imagery is certainly off-putting, to understate it quite a bit. Between the blood, death, rape, pedophilia, the squeamish should think twice before picking this up. Even as a suitably desensitized Generation Y-er (thanks, T.V.!), the book was extraordinarily disturbing. Seriously; BLOOD MERIDIAN is probably the single most brutal piece of art (literary, theatrical, musical or otherwise). However, in the end, it was absolutely worth it.

The plot is not necessarily the essence of BLOOD MERIDIAN. It is a tale of an unnamed boy who travels the West in the 1800s with a group of scalpers, attacking and killing any Native Americans they can get their hands on. Along the way, he meets many characters, all of whom, it seems, partake in the gory episodes the book recounts. The plot mainly serves as a vehicle for presenting violence, which is what the book is truly about.

Now, no one is saying this book is accurate. I'm not referring to the historical nature of the novel (of which there is plenty: many of the characters are based of real people, and most of the events are tied to true historical ones); I'm referring to McCarthy's view of human nature, which is the essence of the book. His extremely disturbing view of human nature– and his gory description of the violence in which humans partake– is quite negative, only enhanced by one of the more prominent characters in the book who can only be described as satanic-like. But McCarthy's view is vivid and important, none the less. He makes you question the good in the world by focusing so much on the violence.

This book is a must-read, if you can take the blood, gore, and rape. A true American classic. You may not agree with McCarthy's ultimate points regarding human nature and violence, but he certainly raises a multitude of important questions. On top of all this, as usual, McCarthy's command of American English is superb and wonderful, his descriptions are unmatched, and the language is generally a joy to read.

MONEYBALL: THE ART OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME BY MICHAEL LEWIS REVIEWED BY JOEL WEINBERGER

While this book is certainly a "baseball book," and will be most appreciated by baseball fans, it should be appreciated by any sports fan in general. Lewis takes a deep look at the Oakland A's of the early 2000s and how they were able to win so many games with so little money.

Lewis mixes up what is effectively basic economics with sports excitement. He jumps between describing how the A's general manager (GM), Billy Beane, is able to exploit market inefficiencies in how players are evaluated to the excitement of a GM trying to pull a coup in a trade to the big moments in a baseball game. Lewis's writing style is blunt and to the point, but generally very gripping. He also ties in the historic aspects of how these new evaluation tools were created very nicely.

The message of the book gets strung out a little bit long. Yes, we get it, baseball teams were not properly evaluating on base percentage. We don't need a 20th story about this it understand it. For two-thirds of the book, this is the message, and it gets tedious. Eventually, towards the end, he starts to address pitchers' market inefficiencies, but this certainly gets the short end of Lewis's stick, probably because it was not the Oakland A's priority. However, overall, Lewis's book is fascinating, if for no other reason than how dumb most GMs in Major League Baseball seem to be.

TAINA WANTS TO SALSA BY JO ANNE VALLE REVIEWED BY MARGARET BACKMAN, PH.D.

Taina is a strong, curious girl, but sometimes life can be very difficult. She is young and inexperienced in the ways of life. Her parents are from Puerto Rico, the Spanish-speaking island in the Caribbean Sea. They live in New York City and their lives are a mixture of both PR culture and that of the mainland US where they now live.

Chapter by chapter, Taina deals with the complications of growing up: negotiating the ups and downs of her relationships with friends at school, struggling with the confusing feelings of a first love, Eddie the Cutie ("Is he looking at me?" "Does he like me?")--while all along being plagued by her parent's fretful marriage, her mother's seemingly unreasonable demands, and her father's absence.

The author, Jo Anne Valle, has a wonderful way of getting inside the heads of young people—gathering insights from her own experiences, as well as from the pupils she knew, when she was teaching school. Ms Valle holds a Masters Degree in Philosophy, and has Taina discovering philosophical principles that help her find her way.

MSW ON COLIN PRESTON ROCKED AND ROLLED

COLIN PRESTON ROCKED AND ROLLED by "Bert Murray" is a novel that does a wonderful job of capturing the voices and lives of a certain time and place. The use of music– both music contemporary to the characters and Colin's beloved Beatles (already, of course, at the time of the novel, classic)– works especially well. Instead of using words, Colin, when in the grip of a strong emotion, puts on an appropriate song. Overall, the compactness of the story and the ease with which one identifies with Colin and his situation create an inevitability about the events that has an almost tragic quality as well as a strong structure. I felt I experienced it all with Colin, and it was a pleasure to read.

MEREDITH SUE WILLIS ON MÖBIUS

The current, 28th anniversary, issue of MÖBIUS is, as always, a rich cornucopia of poems by people like Jane Stuart, Laura Boss, John McKernan, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Simon Perchik, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Marge Piercy, Rita Dove, Daniela Gioseffi– and of course the editor-in-chief and publisher, Juanita Torrence-Thompson. One interesting surprise among many was a group of Sonia Sanchez's striking haiku ("i see you Nubia/walking your Mississippi walk/God in your hands.") but also "Where I'm From" by fifteen year old Sydney-Elise Washington ("I am from pots overflowing with cachupa and pans of beef roti.") For information about buying the magazine, see Below or go to the website at http://www.mobiuspoetry.com.

RESPONSE TO LAST ISSUE

Dolly Withrow writes in response to Joel Weinberger's review of Peter Singer's ANIMAL LIBERATION in the last issue (http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive136-140.html#138): "With respect to our treatment of animals, it wouldn't take much to transform me into a vegetarian--not a vegan, if I have the terms correctly defined. I don't believe Elsie, the famous cow, would mind if I had a drink of her milk of a pat of her butter--that is, as long as she could be treated with kindness. My husband and I now live with one 26-pound cat (he's on a diet) and three dogs--all strays. I've written about Freddie Flealoader, but the other two have not as yet found fame."

One Writer's Experience with CreateSpace

Bert Murray on Working with CreateSpace: "Createspace...was a very good experience. They let you call them on the phone. You are assigned a team to work with and you can call a hundred times until all your questions are answered. They are polite, friendly and have an answer for all your questions. I've worked for a few fortune 500 publishing companies selling academic books to schools and public libraries during my business career. I guess I was expecting a self publishing company to be difficult to work with. I was wrong. Createspace is easy to work with and they do a great job helping you make your book. In my opinion, they are an option anyone who is considering self publishing should consider."

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, AND MORE

If You Are in Oakland, California, drop by Diesel Books on Sunday, February 13 at 3:00 PM for a celebration of Alan Senauke's book: THE BODHISATTVA'S EMBRACE —DISPATCHES FROM ENGAGED BUDDHISM'S FRONT LINES. The address is 5433 College Avenue at Kales (near Manila) in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland. Alan will read from and discuss his new collection of essays from Clear View Press. For information contact: alan@clearviewproject.org or look at the Clear View Blog: http://clearviewblog.org

Oritte Bendory has an essay in the brand new Simon & Schuster anthology LIVE AND LET LOVE a collection of essays written by women whose lives have been transformed by love. The book was featured on GOOD MORNING AMERICA on Feb 3, 2011.

MÖBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE is available for $15 each copy, which covers shipping & handling. Mail orders to MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE, P.O. BOX 671058, Flushing, NY 11367-1058. Print order form at: www.mobiuspoetry.com fill out and mail.

Egypt

2011-02-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

I am not a political commentator, although I am a political person. Today I've been online looking and listening to Aljazeera English and the BBC and some of the Meretz blog posts about how it all looks from Jerusalem. Andy and I watched Anderson Cooper and some others late last night, and picked up some of the frantic quality of t.v. news which we so rarely watch.

We discussed where we get our news at my writers' group last night, and I took my usual position that if you watch t.v. you get scared: better NPR, WBAI, newspapers, or the little cooler images as seen on the computer. Some defended MSNBC and to a lesser degree CNN, but after listening to Anderson Cooper (from an "undisclosed location") getting all excited about the way the thugs had been treating journalists (but I should add, Nicholas Kristoff was on voiceover a little later, and he was full of portentious feelings about the meaning of attacking journalists too-- to move them away from something planned for tomorrow?)

But now it is tomorrow, and the massive peaceful demonstration appears to have been supported, or at least protected, by the Egyptian army. Perhaps the journalists were too full of the importance of themmselves with their hints at a new Tianamen Square. So far today (and it's night in Cairo) the pro-Mubarak hired thugs seem to be gone.

Ice Storm Here, Demonstrating There!

2011-02-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

It's a strange moment, with the powerful weather continuing to cause problems across the Midwest and northeast in this country, sleet and ice outside my windows, and in Egypt, at this moment, they're waiting for a speech from the present president whose resignation hundreds of thousands are demanding. And that's what the world is: white lonely cold here, spritzing semi-solid moisture, and there, great masses crying for change. I think they call it freedom.

Blog Changes

2011-01-29T06:40:00.000-08:00

I'm making some changes in my blogs. This is becoming my regular spot for notes and newsletters. I am also continuing to keep Literature and the Web in its usual place-- latest post on "The Joy of George Eliot!"

I now have a page on my website here with links to very old blogs and family photos. I had a lot of fun with that blog, back when things were more computer based--earthbound rather than The Cloud! But the time has come to consolidate and update!

For the record, here are the links to old things:

Blog 2010
Blog 2009
Blog 2008
July-December 2007
Jan-June2007
Jan-June 2006
July-Dec 2006
Blog 2005
Blog 2004

Personal Photos

Photos of MSW for Publicity Purposes

College Graduation
Christmas 2006
Andy's Honoring

2011-01-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

Snowed in again! Andy is snowblowing after a scare when the machine didn't work for a while, I've been out shovelling steps for two porches, will go out later for the car. The sun just came out so it is extraordinarily beautiful, a little blue sky peeping, and this means we'll get a lot of melting and evaporating, but this wa at lot of snow.

The picture above, from my office window was from before it snowed again.

I've now got all (I think) of George Eliot's fiction on the Kindle. This probably says a lot about my prehistoric taste in literature. I just read "Brother Jacob" and "The Lifted Veil," probably the only fiction of hers I’d never read before. Often grouped together because of length (short) althought the lifted veil was written between Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss .

"The Lifted Veil" is a kind of Henry James-in-his-supernatural mode story with a touch of Poe, very overwrought and with a totally bizarre medical experiment in the end that causes a corpse to Tell All– still, there were parts that completely gripped me, the strnage passive narrator who sees too much and is involved in a truly rotten marriage-- which I'm beginning to think is the great Victorian subject-- being caught in a relationship with the wrong person and being unable to get out of it.

I’m reading a little in Haight’s bio of her, too, the parts I didn’t pay much attention to like her first time alone, in Geneva, in pensiones, a thirty year old mademoiselle, not beautiful (even the drawings of her barely manage to flatter– the big hooter, the half-blind eyes, the pendulous lower lip). Thank God for George Lewes making her happy and thus Middlemarch and The Mill and Adam and Daniel and Gwendolyn and all the rest.

"Brother Jacob" is a parable, unpleasant family thief found out by his enormous pitchfork toting retarded brother.

I LOVE getting these free and reading them in the calm gray linear environment of the Kindle.

Reading on the Kindle Notes

2011-01-02T06:55:00.001-08:00

I’ve finished my first book on my Christmas Kindle: Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister. I did not start the book on the Kindle, having read maybe a fifth of it in a Penguin paperback, but read most of the book on the e-reader, including early pages that I didn’t read well becaues of self-awareness and awareness of the device.

Once I got used to it, I liked it a lot. Here are some initial observations:

The lightness of the device (when it isn’t wearing its new protective cover), is amazing and much better for reading in bed than any book I’ve read since comix.

Something about the format, the relatively small screen, which is highly readable, changes my reading style with the intense focus on the present paragraphs. I find it hard to skim and modulate my speed, which I apparently never realized I did so much of. Since I will also be reading hard copy books, as well as the Kindle, I hope this simply turns into another way of reading, an addition to my reading repertoire.

What does look likely, and as I planned, is that I will gradually get all the free Victorian novels onto the Kindle and always travel with Geo. Eliot, Jane Austen, Uncle Tony, Charles Dickens, and all the rest of them. I’m not so sure about the Great Russians because of the issue of translations– the best translations are probably not going to be free. Do I really want Constance Garnett’s Tolstoy? Maybe I do. Anyhow, what I’m likely to carry with me is going to be out-of-copyright English language novels.

I haven’t tried poetry yet.

I haven’t bought a book for money yet. I was going to try the last of the Fire and Ice George R.R. Martin sword and sorcery books, but had already ordered a cheap used copy– a giant hard back. Too bad. I might still shell out six dollars to try it on the Kindle.

I’m not satisfied with how some of the books for Kindle look that are from sources other than the Amazon store (including the Smashwords books ): they have a double space between paragraphs, a combination of business letter and conventional narrative paragraphing that irritates me because it denies us novelists another means of expression– the double space.

More anon.

Yes, Yes, It's January 1, 2011

2011-01-01T07:33:00.001-08:00

January 1, 2011

A slow logy start to the new year. Banana waffles a la Andy, journal entries, bright and snowy uotside. It's a house bound few days for me followed by 4 days with Wayne 4th graders.

We saw a DVD of It's Complicated last night with Meryl Street and Alec Baldwin and a somewhat wasted Steve Martin (although knowing his comic genius makes his attractiveness to her believable– external to the movie, of course, except for one scene when high on pot and dancing, his zaniness busts out, his physical comedy) Streep is beautiful with her sixtyish face that occasionally collapses into crepey wrinkles, but comes back to beauty-- very realistic. Alec Baldwin is brilliant– fatuous, sleekly fat with his dense pelt of hair, smooth talking– steals the show, as does the actor who plays the older daughter's fiancé.

And then there is Southern California. When do we get a working class story in which the people look spectacularly attractive and have complex feelings and act generally ethically, or at least correc their errors? Hollywood, of course, doesn't believe this is possible.

There is something really obnoxious, too, about how these people live, that part of the plot hangs on Streep finally getting the kitchen she has always wanted– an extenstion for a house that is perfect as it is. Give me a break. As I have always said in these situations, sure it's fine to hear about the sufferings etc.– of the rich and beautiful, and the intrense interior struggles of straight white men– but only if we get the other side too! And the other side is not just symbolic suffering of the pathetic poor! Being working class isn't tragic.

But you won't get it from Hollywood, nor, apparently, from conventional novels.

Does this mean I ought to be adding a POV for Merlee to Safe Houses?

My New Kindle!

2010-12-29T10:26:00.001-08:00

I don’t know why I didn’t notice this on the first two days with my Kindle, but suddenly, last night, reading in bed, I started noticing a black “negative” of the page as it advanced to the next page. I thought at first it was some kind of lowered power level as the battery got used up, or maybe my tired eyes. But the battery was fine, and it was the same in the morning.

Well, I googled “kindle page turns negative,” and there was a site with a lot of commentary about this from people with identities like “Shangrilachica,” “Desertmama,” “Mccook666,” and a whole host of others who all agreed that there is something inherent in the e-ink technology (Nook, Sony, Kindle, all of them) that causes a black flash (what I called a negative) when you turn the page.

So it looks like get used to it or don’t use it. Which is fine, I’m willing.

What’s odd is why it took me so long to notice it. Was it that I was only beginning to get comfortable enough to sink into the story and be irritated by something pulling me out? Up to this point, I may have been less reading and more enjoying the awareness of Me Reading My Kindle.

But now I know: I have to suck it up until it becomes as invisible as my hand picking up the corner of a piece of paper and turning it.

Tags: e-readers, ebooks, kindle, technology

2010-12-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

The lightness and relative transparency of it delight me. I downloaded Trollope's The Prime Minister, which is what I've been reading in a paper back, and is something I like but am not totally caught up in or totally admiring of. The black words on gray are a complete pleasure, the lightness on my fingertips the size and shape please me. I lay in bed and held it up in the qir over my face. Easy. I like the two sided controls forward and back, although the left hand one, useful as it is,takes some getting used to -- intuitively, left should be back in my old brain. But that I see immediately is useful. Being a ble to make b igger letters to read temporarily sans glasses is good (I'll try that at night to read in bed).
The only thing that is disturbing me at the moment is the narrow focus on the present of the screen. I think (and I didn't know this) that I must , when I'm reading a conventional book, flip back and forth, unconsciously checking how much of the book is read, yet to read, taking a break from the simple focused reading. I check things, in other words, move back and forth a lot.
This electronic device is, for the moment, more linear than a book! Wow!

2010-12-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

Whatever Your Holiday,
Celebrate the Light
The Love the Warmth

Ellen and Greg on their way, Joel and Sarah flying from Puerto Vallarta in a few hours.

2010-12-22T18:03:00.001-08:00

December 22

Big news: I'm now legit with Dreamweaver (CS5, but really just Dreamweaver 11). I had no idea how stuck I was on that program till the flashing gremlins and grokking neutrons and other space trash zapped it and I couldn't cut and paste anymor. I use it A LOT, and that's without coming anywhere near using its full capabilities or even understanding much of it.

2010-12-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Today is the Winter Solstice.

From here on-- the Days get Longer!

The January online class, Strategies to Write Your Novel, is now closed. For information on future classes, click HERE

2010-12-17T06:53:00.001-08:00

Well, this day I woke all cozy with things I wanted to journal about, and then had to move the Christmas tree so the man from the oil burner company could get in and diagnose the problem with the heating system, and now we’ve got the Petro guy in the basement. Sigh.

Meanwhile, yesterday saw the Jan Gossart (Gossaret, Mabuse, etc.) exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum yesterday. Until I started to get tired, I had such a lovely sense of being right where all the power lines come together, which is to say I was having a really good time. The painter a new one for me, old Dutch master, moving from Medieval to Renaissance, contemporary (and mutual influence with) Durer. He went to Rome as a young man and then gradually participated in the invention of the more fully molded Renaissance humanist painting style in which the three-dimensional forms come into the viewer’s space, as the curators say.

There was a nice video at the end about cleaning the pictures, and I almost missed the portraits at the end that were most thoroughly Renaissance in their particularity and penetration into my space. Also lots of mildly scholarly observations in the documentation about the specific statues and images and possibly pieces of statues used for models for images. Especially something called the Spinario, or "Boy With Thorn," a kid a thorn out of his foot. Funny drawing of the back of a statue at a strange angle. I loved Gossart/Mabuse's monkey-blunt-faced Jesuses (two versions of "Christ on the Cold Stone"), one twisted in pain, one looking up at spiritual ease in spite of torture. Anyhow, a wonderful exhibition, leaving me with the ususal awareness of gaps in my knowledge but great delight that I can be in the same space with all that human history and accomplishment.

December 5, 2010

Two December Haiku

Sillver lining clouds,

Early December ev'ning.

Suddenly-- huge sky!

Saturate my hues--

Sharpen each newly bare twig

Breathe in deeply-- Me!

Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers # 137

2010-12-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 137

MSW Home

For a free e-mail subscription to this newsletter, click here .
Note: To create a link to this newsletter, use the permanent link .

Final call for my January Online Class “Strategies to Write Your Novel.” The class is almost full. For information, see http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html#information
Writers: Submissions for THE HAMILTON STONE REVIEW winter issue #23 are now open. See the details at http://www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr.html#submissions
For those of you doing last minute gift shopping, consider the wealth of small press books that may delight and interest people on your list. Take a look, for starters, at my Gift Books list at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/giftbooks.html

Featured This Issue:

Short Takes from High, Lazarre, & Sokolow
Joel Weinberger on EATING ANIMALS

New Books and Other News

Let me begin this issue with an excellent new novel, THE CHIEU HOI SALOON by Michael Harris. This is part of PM Press’s Switchblade series ( “a different slice of hard-boiled fiction where the dreamers and the schemers, the dispossessed and the damned, and the hobos and the rebels tango at the edge of society”). The setting is the seamy side of Long Beach, California, during year of the Rodney King beating and subsequent trials and riots. The protagonist is Harry Hudson, a chronic stutterer who works at a fictional newspaper called the CLARION as a copy editor. He is barely keeping his job, living in what he calls a “blur,” trying not to remember the death of an old villager when he was a soldier in Vietnam and the death of his small daughter much more recently. He does try to remember to send child support to his ex-wife and surviving child. When he is feeling particularly self-destructive, he goes to dives where people watch low quality pornographic movies and variously have sex with strangers and themselves. The good part of Harry’s life is Mama Thuy’s Chieu Hoi Saloon where he feels a modicum of belonging, and in his free time he tries to help a local prostitute with an extended dysfunctional and violent family.

Now here’s the thing: what I’ve described so far is how the book gets labeled noir, but Harry is at rock bottom, a lover and care-taker. It is Harry’s story, but Michael Harris gives the women in Harry’s life occasional point of view passages, notably the tough but tender Mama Thuy and Kelly the Kansas born African-American prostitute who always needs money. Even Harry’s religious zealot of a wife gets a passage that dips into her consciousness. All of these women, even his ex in her section, value, admire, and forgive Harry. If only Harry could forgive himself, which is the monumental task before him.

Harry’s adventures take place mostly on dark streets and in crummy rooms in rough neighborhoods and include being shot in a hold-up and taking a bizarre but bizarrely believable drive with an armed enemy in the back seat of his car. These elements– the scene, the slimy sex, the casual violence– are what makes the novel part of the Switchblade series, but while the story has hard edges, it isn’t really hard-boiled, not even heart-of-gold hard-boiled. Most of the evil (except for the plans of very distant, very rich newspaper owners) is as much situational and mistaken as it is intentional. Most of the people are in one degree or another understandable if not lovable, from the motley crew at the bar to Kelly and her incarcerated husband, her quarrelsome sister-in-law and niece, her ex-con brother, and her dangerous step-son.

Everyone uses Harry, but also appreciates him as a friend– this is true of Kelly, and also of Mama Thuy, who accepts his money to bring her family out of Vietnam to California. Harry wants to be loved and maybe married, but instead is a friend, maybe a more valuable relationship to most women than husband or lover. Above all, Harry is worth reading about and feeling for. It’s a good book, engrossing and– even if the end is not exactly upbeat– all the doors are open.

Next, I want to recommend a nonfiction book that wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but was still pretty darn fascinating: THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN: A TALE OF MURDER, INSANITY, AND THE MAKING OF THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY by Simon Winchester. There are a few too many instances of Winchester eating his narrative cake and having it too. For example, he tells an apocryphal tale of how Professor James Murray met Dr. W.C. Minor without knowing that he was in an institution for the criminally insane. In fact, Murray learned this in a much less dramatic way. Wincester tells the real, less thrilling version much later in the book. Unfortunately, if you only read the first part of the book, you’d go away with the wrong information.

Less egregious is his lurid narration of the murder that got W.C. Minor in the insane asylum in the first place. The London fog and darkness is well-described and evocative, but, again, it’s written for maximum dramatic effect. What I liked best was the lively description of how the OED was developed; what a monumental task it was– and how it was in some ways a proto-Wikipedia; for the story of poor Dr. Minor and his work on the OED and his insanity. It’s such a sad story: his crazy crime, his time as a Civil War surgeon (he was an American), his pathetic self-mutilation late in life. To see more of Winchester’s broad reach of nonfiction books, go to his website book page.

I also read with great pleasure (thank you Connie Brosi for the recommendation!) FOLLOW THE RIVER by James Alexander Thom. This is an historical novel of the amazing true adventure of Mary Draper Ingles, who was captured by Shawnees, escaped, and walked hundreds of miles home through the Appalachian mountains in early winter through incredible difficulties. She has a companion, too, a crazy, hungry Dutch woman, who adds a kind of twisted humor and interesting human relationship to the amazing physical challenges. Thom does the physical challenges extremely well. He treats Ingles as an ordinary human being bent on survival, and his respect for her has just the right tone. He writes of the horror from the white settlers’ point of view at the scalping and murder by the raiding Shawnees, but also presents the Shawnee villages as complex communities, and even allows Mary a moment of considering accepting her captor, known as Captain Wildcat, as a husband.

When Mary chooses to run away and go home, she has to leave three children behind. The afterword of the novel tells about how one of her sons is eventually returned to the white world, but has an ambivalent relationship with it, and often returns to the Shawnee world.

I hope to read more of Thom’s books (see his website ), and the work of his wife Dark Rain Thom, a voting member of the council of the East of the River Shawnee of Ohio.

Finally, to stick with the old fashioned delight of tales well told, I have a new guilty addiction: the George R.R. Martin swords and sorcery series, FIRE AND ICE, starting with GAME OF THRONES. Boy, was this fun, and now about to become a series on HBO. It isn’t the kind of serious fiction I aspire to write myself (although when I enjoy it so much, I sometimes ask myself why it isn’t), and I could never read only this kind of book with its portentous hints of dark deeds past and darker deeds to come, with its beheadings and sword play, but it is fun fun fun. Part of what makes it work for me is that Martin, like James Alexander Thom, is willing to grant his women agency and power. There’s one charming girl character who is even a fighter, and a couple of armored warriors who are women as well as leaders. Another really good character is a dwarf known as the Imp who is a member of the bad royal family, but clever and humorous, and probably the most consistently reasonable voice in the book. I like some of the point-of-view characters more than others– the Imp and the fighter girl are my favorites– and I admit to speeding up over the whack thwack and sickening crunch of the battle scenes. One thing Martin does so well is the sorcery element– the dragons and secret magic– which are dealt with sparingly, which is fine with me, as my complaint in novels with magic is always that the writers tend to use magic or the arrival of the good dragons from the sky to solve plot problems they couldn’t resolve otherwise. So far, Martin is doing it all right.

– Meredith Sue Willis

JOEL WEINBERGER ON JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S EATING ANIMALS.

Foer explicitly is "not trying to make you a vegetarian." He's lying; this is exactly what he's trying to do. In fairness, it is really about "better options" when eating animals, but by the end, it's quite clear what he thinks (and wants you to think) about "the best options" for eating meat. (Here's a hint: he's not in favor of them). Just to be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with this approach, you just should be aware of what you're getting yourself into.

The book itself is solid, albeit heavy handed at points and missing critical arguments at times. For example, Foer makes a great deal of not-so-subtle argument by adjective, referring to the "Frankenstein genetic makeup" of factory-farmed chickens. He also fails to fully address several important questions, like why we have factory farming in the first place. Waving it off as merely a result of a drive for profit, he fails to point out that it is part of a greater movement towards factory farming that has greatly increased the worlds' food stores and in large part staved off food shortages.

That having been said, Foer paints a powerful portrait of exactly what goes into your meat. He is most successful when he sticks to simply describing the facts of factory farming: for the animals involved, for the environment, and for us, the humans (Spoiler alert: it isn't good for any of them). If you have a strong sense of supporting moral and ethical behavior, this is an important read in understanding exactly what goes into that chicken wing you're about to eat.

The inevitable comparison is to Michael Pollan's magnificent "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Let's cut to the chase: "Eating Animals" is not as good. Pollan does a much better job of not trying to appeal to emotion, and he at least *tries* to give a half-hearted defense of why factory farming is here. That having been said, Foer takes many of Pollan's arguments and applies them more fully to animal farming. At the very least, Foer makes you wonder about your meat consumption.

If you have an interest in where your meat comes from, this is a must read. Just know what it is before you start reading it.

SHORT TAKES

Jane Lazarre says: “Not only was the Oz memoir (A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS see Issue # 136 ) one of the most wonderful books I have read, and I use it often for many reasons - writing and teaching, but the new novel by David Grossman TO THE END OF THE LAND is the best novel I have read in years - moving, beautiful, layered, complex. I also recommend FRIENDLY FIRE, and THE LIBERATED BRIDE, both by A.B. Yeshoshua, along with Oz and Grossman-- all three Israelis - very highly.”

Monique Raphel High writes, “Hallie Ephron has a new mystery novel: COME AND GET ME. Her first one, NEVER TELL A LIE, was so compelling and such a page-turner that we should all rush off to buy it! There was also a delightful piece by her sister Nora in the New Yorker a few weeks ago that mentioned Hallie and her sisters.”

Jeffrey Sokolow recommends A CURABLE ROMANTIC by Joseph Skibell (Algonquin Books, 2010). “In this sprawling and magical novel, which begins in Vienna in 1895 and ends in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, the protagonist has strange encounters with three well-known historic personages – Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis; Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (aka Doktor Esperanto), inventor of the ‘universal language’ Esperanto; and the Hasidic rebbe of Warsaw, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira – along with a love-sick but vindictive dybbuk (in Jewish folklore, the spirit of a dead person who possesses the body of the living) who has pursued the protagonist through an unending series of lifetimes and several not-quite-so-angelic angels. I couldn’t put it down, but was sorry to finish it because I wanted the story to keep going. It’s a great read.”

ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

Poetry online and on the air: Lawrence Joseph, D. Nurkse, Hugh Seidman, and Susan Wheeler on WBAI’s "The Next Hour" Sunday, 12/14, 11 AM, WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City.
WBAI 7-Day Archive: http://archive.wbai.org/ "Next Hour" Permanent Archive:

Read a sample of Barry S. Willdorf’s FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS . The book is available from Wild Child Publishing, the result of eight years of research, writing and editing. It represents an accurate portrayal of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century A.D. with appearances by several notable personages of that period including Hypatia of Alexandria, Pelagius the heretic, Pope Innocent, Saint Augustine and the Roman Prefect, Orestes. Further information about this unique historical novel, set in the fifth century A.D., can be found at: www.agauchepress.com and at the publisher’s website, www.wildchildpublishing.com.

Announcements and News

Louise T. Gantress’ new book BITTER TEA is praised by James Fallows of THE ATLANTIC:
“With Bitter Tea, Louise T. Gantress has produced a vivid, memorable and realistic portrait of Japan during the boom years of the 1980s. The oddities and delusions of those days made an indelible impression on those who witnessed them, and this book brings all the details back to life.”

THE CENTER FOR FICTION (formerly the Mercantile Library) in NYC: http://centerforfiction.org/ Events has rental space for writers.

Mike Topp has a new book called SASQUATCH STORIES from Publishing Genius Press, with a cover drawing by Tao Lin and a frontispiece drawing by former Silver Jew David Berman. Information here: http://www.publishinggenius.com/2010/11/sasquatch-stories-by-mike-topp.html or email Mike at toppmiketopp@gmail.com

EPIPHANY is proud to announce the arrival of its Fall/Winter 2010-2011 issue, PERSISTENT LABYRINTHS: ANALOGUE ANTIDOTES TO THE DIGITAL MORASS, vital new writings that, disparate as they are, all bring readers to engrossing and unexpected places in the mazes life perennially holds in store. The new EPIPHANY includes a richly comic story by Dale Peck ("Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore"); an excerpt from Lisa Dierbeck's hip new novel, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JENNY X, that strips the façade off the private life of a powerful senator's son; two further chapters from KEEP THIS FORTUNE, silver-spoon adoptee A.B. Meyer's witty and moving memoir of reuniting with her birth mother; and much more, including débuts by promising and original new writers you won't find anywhere else.

THE WRITING LIFE WORKSHOP with Ellen Bass January 28-30, 2011, Esalen, Big Sur .
This workshop will offer an inspiring environment in which to write, share our work, and receive supportive feedback. We'll help each other become clearer, go deeper, express our feelings and ideas more powerfully. From beginners to experienced, all writers are welcome. Whether you are interested in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or journal writing, this workshop will provide an opportunity to explore and expand your writing world. Esalen fees cover tuition, food and lodging and vary according to accommodations--ranging from $360 to $695 (and more for premium rooms). The sleeping bag space is an incredible bargain and usually goes fast, as do some of the less expensive rooms, so it's good to register early. All arrangements and registration must be made directly with Esalen (Esalen at 831-667-3005 or at www.esalen.org), but if you have questions about the content of the workshop, please call Ellen Bass at 831-426-8006. Ellen Bass’s most recent book of poems is THE HUMAN LINE, was published by Copper Canyon Press

THE BODHISATTVA’S EMBRACE: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism's Front Lines by Alan Senauke. See website at http://www.clearviewproject.org/.

Johnny Sundstrom’s new novel DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT is set in the desolation that became known as southern Wyoming. Martha Bradford, traveling on the Oregon Trail, is told she must discard either her cast-iron cook stove or her pianola. She has them both taken off the wagon and then refuses to go on any further For information, email the author at siwash@pioneer.net .

And Now,For Something Completely Different...

Take a look at Theresa Basile's fictional blog "Confessions of a Superhero's Girlfriend" at http://lucywestfield.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/hello-world/.

ABOUT AMAZON.COM

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. An alternative way to reach their site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund. For a discussion about Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget your public library and your local independent bookstore.

To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com. More good sources for used and out-of-print books are Advanced Book Exchange at http://www.abebooks.com and All Book Stores at http://www.allbookstores.com/ . Both Bookfinder and All Book Stores both have a special feature that tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

My latest favorite way to get used books is through Paperback Book Swap , a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

LICENSE

Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com. To subscribe and unsubscribe, use the form below.

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Two December Haiku

2010-12-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

Silver lining clouds
Early December evening
Suddenly-- huge sky!

Saturate my hues,
Sharpen all my new bare twigs!
Vividly, I breathe.

To a Young Woman Wearing Flip Flops on the PATH train in Late Fall

2010-11-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

I grant you this train is too warm
That we all have seats
But soon you’ll be on the street.

Okay, feet are tough--
The parakeet’s scaly
Gray and pink claws
Hardly feel the cold
As far as I can tell,

But what about spike heeled boots
Dr. Martens and wooden soled clogs?
What about huge basketball sneakers?

How do your blue-nailed toes
Dance safely among them?

Do you trust those other feet?
Are you so confident that
You simply stride
Or glide or slip and slide
On congealed spit
and concrete?

Oh mysterious Young Woman
Who can wear flip flops
On the PATH train.

Back from Kentucky Book Fair 2010

2010-11-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

I'm just back from the 2010 Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort, Kentucky. A tremendous amount of driving-- four days straight, stopping in Shinnston and picking up my mother to come back for the winter. So it was strenuous, but lots of fun.

Kentucky, beyond the eastern mountains, where I've been before, was more beautiful than I realized-- in my general and extensive ignorance, I hadn't known that Frankfort is in the center of the blue grass, with horse paddocks and horses, deep cuts through crumbly gray limestone in low hills covered mostly with bare trees but lovely blasts of deep red probably some kind of maples.

The book fair itself had a couple hundred authors at tables, and it had that quality I like of all the people together, self-publishers (juried, so nothing really amateurish) but also pros like Bobbie Ann Mason sitting at a table with Frank X. Walker, the poet inventor of Affrilachian writing. They were busier than I was, but everyone was accessible. Nice equality among the writers-- lots of civil war and other history, art books at my table. Headliners included Kitty Kelly (who canceled at the last minute) and David Baldacci. I saw Connie and George Brosi, Marianne Worthington and George Ella Lyon, Alice Hale Adams. Others. One man came up to me and bought a copy of Out of the Mountains, but also had a stack of my old books he wanted signed! That was so nice.

Previous night, a reception for the authors with Kentucky bourbon, and I met some new people, collected a lot of calling cards-- I didn't have high expectations, but it was very nice, always good and stimulating to be in new places with new people.

Books for Readers # 136

2010-11-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

Latest MSW Books:

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers #136

November 7, 2010

MSW Home

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The Hamilton Stone Review # 22 Is Available Online

Featured This Issue:

Shelley Ettinger on Books for LGBT Young People

Anna Smucker on Agents and Keeping Books in Print
Joanne Greenberg's latest

New Books and Other News

I’ve read several excellent books lately– a powerful memoir, a family epic, and a family epic in stories– plus a nonfiction book that finally helps me begin to understand some of the issues involved in copyright and so-called intellectual property rights.

James Boyle’s THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: ENCLOSING THE COMMONS OF THE MIND was recommended to me by David Weinberger (EVERYTHING IS MISCELLANEOUS; THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO), and once again David serves as an excellent digital age guru. Boyle asserts that copyright was never meant to be– at least in US constitutional law– about rewarding the hardworking artist. Rather, he quotes Thomas Jefferson telling us that there should be as few copyright and patent protections as possible, just enough to encourage innovation for the good of the whole. Thus, copyright law is supposed to be about about community, not about property.

One of the essential points Boyle makes is how different physical property is from intellectual property: if I take your bracelet, you don’t have it anymore, whereas if I use some pages of your writing, you still have them. You are not deprived of your ideas the way you would be deprived of your beloved charm bracelet. The case is made, of course, that someone is being deprived of the income from selling their writing, but there has always been the concept of fair use, which immediately puts creative work in a different category from bracelets as I don’t have fair use of even one shiny charm from your bracelet just because I happen to want it.

There is also of course the possibility that if someone likes the two pages of the and then goes adn buys it. This actually happened with me and the Boyle book under discussion: I downloaded some of the free version (see below) and then decided I wanted a regular dead trees papber book. Again, very, very different from the bracelet.

There is also the argument that when we write or otherwise create, we are increasing the cultural wealth of everyone, and thus your book becomes mine even as I read it. In any case, copyright was never meant to be extended retrospectively (the famous repeated extensions of the length of copyright when Mickey Mouse comes up for public doman), not even for our entertainment and pharmaceutical corporations.

Boyle is emphatically not against copyright, however, but rather wants us to begin thinking of these issues in terms of what actually helps innovation and creativity. Apparently, in many cases, a certain amount of legal protection for creators and innovators is a good thing, but too many rules can stifle the very same innovation and creativity. Software code, for example, needs to be available to everyone to build on, and he makes the case that music has always been about mash-ups-- building on other music. He has lots of detailed legal case histories, lots to think about, learn from, and chew over– highly recommended.

And, by the way, if you want to read some of it for free-- or even all of it-- it is available by Creative Commons License here.

The memoir I read was A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS by Amos Oz , recommended on this newsletter last issue. The book is extremely moving with its powerful story of the beautiful mother who killed herself, the scholarly father, the son who becomes the famous writer. The personal story would be strong enough alone, but it is embedded in an intimate look at the lives of Jews living in Jerusalem just before and during the 1948 war. But that’s far too simple– it is also about the lives of people forced from their homes in central Europe, including many who didn’t particularly want to come to Israel. The book excavated a new place in my understanding of specific suffering.

Technically, Oz does something wonderful with his mother’s death, which he mentions often, circling around it, then at a certain point, skipping over it to write of his teen years on a kibbutz, so that the death is suddenly seen in retrospective. There was a moment when I thought, Is it possible he won’t tell the actual suicide? But then, at the very end of the book, he finally narrates his mother’s last months, weeks, finally days and hours. Part of the satisfaction of the book is that while this suicide clearly shaped everything in the writer’s life, it is also by no means the only thing or perhaps even the main thing.

Speaking of family stories: Paola Corso's CATINA’S HAIRCUT is a collection of short stories that manages in just over a hundred pages to create a family epic, two countries, and several eras. It moves from Calabria, Italy at the very turn of the twentieth century to Pittsburgh in the industrial steel mill mid- twentieth century, and into the twenty first century as well. Destructive drought and deadly flood waters alternate as Corso’s characters try to live in their old world and their new one. She’s especially good at the play between tales and fables and a brilliantly solid, earthbound realism: a literary rendering of a family’s story and its soul.

CATINA’S HAIRCUT is short, but Monique Raphel High’s THE FOUR WINDS OF HEAVEN is very long and highly dramatic. This novel was the first book by my former literary agent and college classmate, and it is a highly professional and richly entertaining historical novel– lots of family, lots of love, lots of violence, lots of historical context, and a happy ending for at least some of the people we care about-- especially the woman who was Monique’s own grandmother. There is drama and danger, but all based on real events in the lives of a group of rich Russian Jews who were newly minted barons and baronesses. Some of them, like the main character’s father David, are admirable. He works tirelessly to save the poor Jews of Russia and to make change from within the tsarist government. Others are not admirable at all. But whatever their ethics and ideas, they become affianced to the wrong people, they suffer in marriage, they lose all their material goods in the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian revolution. This is a fast moving 682 mass market pages, alive and gripping all the way through.

It also makes you thankful to live in not-so-interesting times!

– Meredith Sue Willis

FROM SHELLEY ETTINGER’S BLOG: BOOKS FOR LGBT YOUTH

See Shelley's blog for more: http://readwritered.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-pro-lgbt-ya-books-to-start-with.html

Writes Shelley: “First there's this list of Young Adult books that feature gay and lesbian characters of color courtesy of the blog THE HAPPY NAPPY BOOKSELLER Turns out I've read a couple of them--THE NECESSARY HUNGER by Nina Revoyr, all of whose books I've loved, and A MAP OF HOME by Randa Jarrar. One or two others I've heard of, the rest are new titles to add to my to-read list.

“Then there's the blog I'M HERE, I'M QUEER, WHAT THE HELL DO I READ? , whose whole purpose is to provide book information ‘for teens (queer or not), for librarians, for teachers, for booksellers, for people with teens in their lives and for anyone interested in YA books with GLBTQ characters and themes.

“I also remembered a children's book that Teresa and I gave as a gift to a 2-year-old a few years ago. THE SISSY DUCKLING by actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein. This is a sweet, lovely book with a delicious story and wonderful message. I don't remember if the 2-year-old liked it much, but we sure did.”

SHORT TAKE

Joanne Greenberg’s MIRI WHO CHARMS is a novel that feels as real as a memoir. The heart of this story is a relationship between two girls who become women in the story. One of them is the type of person who draws the rest of us toward them, who “charm, “ as Greenberg would have it. In my life, I have tended to keep a distance from them; but the narrator here, Rachel, is so deep in Miri’s life that she seems to live for her and her daughter rather than for herself.

Miri is totally believable as a charmer, but she is also a monster of selflishness, and her precocious, hot house flower of a daughter has some of the same qualities. The story is largely about the narrator's struggle in this relationship, but also about the relationships of both women to the community they have rejected: the Orthodox Jews of Colorado. It’s a lovely, worthwhile story– and you have to wonder: why isn’t Greenberg’s work being reviewed and read more widely?

A WORD ABOUT AGENTS AND STAYING IN PRINT FROM AUTHOR ANNA SMUCKER

Anna Smucker writes: “When you asked if I'd sold my books thru an agent and I said that I had sold them on my own, I probably should have added that I could paper several rooms of my house with rejection letters. If nothing else, I'm stubbornly persistent. Also, in thinking of how my books are still in print, I really had to fight to keep three of the six in print, going as far as writing a personal plea to the publishing director at Knopf for NO STAR NIGHTS, and rounding up several key people to speak to the WV Humanities Council in support of keeping my WV history book in print.

“No doubt about it, keeping our books in print isn't easy, and that's after all the hard work of writing them, finding a publisher, and doing school visits, appearances, and writing workshops to try to pay the bills. The appearances, etc. are also necessary to keep our books in the public eye and thus also help to keep them in print!! Being a writer is definitely not a career for those who are easily discouraged. But with all that said, holding a newly published book (and our beloved old ones) in our hands, somehow makes it all more than worthwhile. “

And Now,For Something Completely Different...

Take a look at Theresa Basile's fictional blog "Confessions of a Superhero's Girlfriend" at http://lucywestfield.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/hello-world/.

West Virginia Encyclopedia is Now Online!

The WV Encyclopedia website shows the state's history, culture and people with pictures, videos and maps and other features about the history of West Virginia. Visit http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/

Announcements and News

Iris Schwartz’s poem “My Dead Father Takes Your Dead Mother on a Blind Date” is available at OCTOBER BABIES online.

PENCIL MEMORY, a chapbook of poems by Llewellyn McKernan, will be published December 3, 2010. This is a limited edition collection, and the number of pre- publication sales will determine the size of the press run, so please reserve your copy now. Learn more at www.finishinglinepress.com . And here's a sample!

CAT PENCIL

You swallow a syllable,
hiss and howl, claws of meaning
pile up on the page, phrase
after phrase unravels its yarn,
a catwalk of sorts: on it

thought stalks, twitching
its long-haired tail, emotion creeps
knee-deep in catnip and cream,
and nouns with big paws
sit and dream of nine lives, glad
each dark end abides
in words, kneading
the paper.

Marina Budhos has a nice utube video introducing her young adult novel TELL US WE’RE HOME about three girls whose mothers are nannies. Her web site is http://www.marinabudhos.com/ .

FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS by Barry S. Willdorf is now available from Wild Child Publishing. This book is the result of eight years of research, writing and editing. It represents an accurate portrayal of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century A.D. with appearances by several notable personages of that period including Hypatia of Alexandria, Pelagius the heretic, Pope Innocent, Saint Augustine and the Roman Prefect, Orestes. Further information about this unique historical novel, set in the fifth century A.D., can be found at: www.agauchepress.com and at the publisher’s website, www.wildchildpublishing.com.

Halvard Johnson’s latest book of poetry is MAINLY BLACK from Vida Loca Books.

Just Out: THE BODHISATTVA’S EMBRACE: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism's Front Lines by Alan Senauke. See website at http://www.clearviewproject.org/

Johnny Sundstrom’s new novel DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT is set in the desolation that became known as southern Wyoming, when Martha Bradford, traveling on the Oregon Trail. is told she must discard either her cast-iron cook stove or her pianola. She has them both taken off the wagon and then refuses to go on any further. Her brother-in-law continues west with the wagon train. Her husband rides off in anger, leaving her stranded in this big emptiness with the freed slave who came with them from Missouri. Late in the day, when Carlton Bradford returns to his wife, he has found a place to try to settle. Thus begins this six-generation saga of the Bradford family, the first “Americans” to try to make a home in that part of the West. The novel addresses the cultural evolution of the “Old West” through these pioneering characters and their descendants as they struggle to survive bad weather, death, isolation, emergencies, and sometimes near-insanity, even as they enjoy the deep satisfaction of an honorable and remote way of life with all of its rewards and usual celebrations. For information, email the author at siwash@pioneer.net .

Jim Minick’s THE BLUEBERRY YEARS is available from online vendors such as Better World Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Borders, or support your local bookseller. For a list of independent bookstores, visit www.indiebound.org. Upcoming Readings include
11/13/10 Malaprop's, Asheville, 2:00; 11/13/10 City Lights, Sylva, NC, 7:00 with Dana Wildsmith; 11/14/10 French Broad Institute, Marshall, NC, 4:00; 11/16/10 “Over the Top Blueberry Shindig” Roanoke Public Library, Roanoke, VA, 6:30 reading w/ Thorpe Moeckel; 12/13/10 Ram’s Head Bookstore, Roanoke, 1-3, signing w/ Ralph Berrier.

Free between now and December 7th, Kal Wagenheim’s serio-comic novel, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MOTT in PDF format. Send an email to kalwagenheim@cs.com.

About Amazon.com

The largest unionized bookstore in America is Powells Books. An alternative way to reach their site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund. For a discussion about Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

Where To Find Books Mentioned in This Newsletter

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget your public library and your local independent bookstore. To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com. More good sources for used and out-of-print books are Advanced Book Exchange at http://www.abebooks.com and All Book Stores at http://www.allbookstores.com/ . Both Bookfinder and All Book Stores both have a special feature that tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

For more comparison shopping, you might want to take a look at CampusBooks.com , another free comparison shopping website for textbooks that says they search over two dozen bookstores to find the lowest prices in textbooks and more.

Other ways to get books: I have used and liked the paid lending library Booksfree.com and Paperback Book Swap at http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php , a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

Meredith Sue Willis

State of the Union

PIPA SOPA Blackouts and more

At Last! My Name is Up In Lights!

Books for Readers # 148

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 148

January 16, 2012

It looks better online! Read it here.

Elmore Leonard Wilkie Collins Archibald Grimké Angelina Weld Grimké Francis Grimké,

In this Issue:

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For Back Issues, click here.

LAURA BENTLEY ON THE HUNGER GAMES AND DISTRICT 12

From PHYLLIS WILSON MOORE

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

DON'T FORGET...

Cool and Dry and Beautiful

Scott's Pizza Tours!

Photos of Aunt Ninnie

Books for Readers # 147

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 147

December 10, 2011

It looks better online! Read at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html

This Issue:

Johnny Sundstrom's new novel

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It looks better online! Read it here.

Notes on recent Kindle reading:

ANTHOLOGY RECOMMENDATION FROM ED DAVIS

TWO REVIEWS BY PHYLLIS WILSON MOORE

THE YANKEE AT THE SEDER

Found: A BAD BOY in the Library

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

Laura Bentley and Marie Manilla interviewed on the radio: http://woub.org/2011/11/23/poetry-and-prose-talk-marie-manilla-and-laura-treacy-bentley

A successful self-publishing author: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html Barbara Crooker on Your Daily Poem. See Barbara, right.

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

Virginia Center for the Creative Arts anthology is now available-- click here. Poets include Kelly Cherry, Halvard Johnson, Barbara Crooker, J.C. Todd, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Neil Shepherd, B.J. Ward, Colette Inez, and many, many more.

Larissa Shmailo has new e-book from Jeffrey Side's press, Argotist Ebook. It is a free download, so check it out:

Abby Slovin's new book Letters in Cardboard Boxes has been called "a novel that you will want to keep with you for the rest of your life. A book that will remind people why they love to read.”

Deb C. Gaisford has a new story online at THE FEAR OF MONKEYS: "Love Letters from Vietnam,"

Barry Wildorf's FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS won the Global E-Book award for best historical fiction!

A personal essay on witnessing the final space launch by Melanie Vickers appeared on July 28, 2011 at http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201107271141

Erik Corr's e-book THE WITCH AND THE SUNFLOWER GIRL is now available: The subtitle is "A Halloween and Christmas Fairy Tale about Karma and Free Will," and the story only costs .99 cents! Also see Erik's Youtube about an open source novel he's writing: http://www.youtube.com/user/erikTT1

Cat Pleska has a piece about the terrors of planes at Airplane Reading: essays about airplanes. Check out her "Rock and Roll" at http://airplanereading.org/ .

New book from Halvard Johnson: Sonnets from the Basque & Other Poems.

PAPERBACK BOOK SWAP

Pre-Solstice Haiku

My Brother-in-Law: Jedi Master of the World Wide Web

Genre and Literary

Asbestos Bye-bye

Beaautiful weather

Celebrations and Change

The Week That Is

Barbara Kingsolver Festival

Emory & Henry College, left to right: Linda Wagner-Martin; MSW;Barbara Kingsolver; Steve Fisher; Sandy Ballard

September 29 - 30, 2011 was the festival celebrating Barbara Kingsolver at the Emory & Henry College's 30th Literary Festival. I was honored to be invited to give a paper on Kingsolver's The Lacuna as a political novel.

Two First World War Poems For Veterans' Day,

Joel's Marathon!

Marathon Day!

Back in the 21st Century-- Electricity!

My First Electronic Library Book

Big Pub Panics

How I Spent Satuday...

I Was There First!

Books for Readers #145

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 145

September 18, 2011

This Issue:

Phyllis Moore on Jaimy Gordon

Recommendations from Reamy Jansen

Bob Bender's Reading List

Mark Defoe's new collection: sample poem

It looks better online!
Read at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html

A successful self-publishing author: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html

Barbara Crooker on Your Daily Poem. See Barbara, right.

Erik Corr's e-book THE WITCH AND THE SUNFLOWER GIRL is now available:
The subtitle is "A Halloween and Christmas Fairy Tale about Karma and Free Will," and the story only costs .99 cents! Also see Erik's Youtube about an open source novel he's writing: http://www.youtube.com/user/erikTT1

Emory & Henry College, left to right: Linda Wagner-Martin; MSW;
Barbara Kingsolver; Steve Fisher; Sandy Ballard

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To create a link to this newsletter, use the permanent link .

Take a look at Valerie Nieman reading a poem about a stapler:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2011/09/weekly-poem-duration.html

Laura Treacy Bentley interviews Marc Harshman WEST VIRGINIA LIVING:
http://www.wvliving.com/Fall-2011/Conversations-with-Marc-Harshman/

Here's a sample poem from the collection: :

EVENING SHOWER: FRANK'S PORCH

Rest your bones, friend. See how the drenched
walks gleam, the spilling gutters flash and shine.
Take a load off—beer's in the frig. Look there—
every grass blade and leaf is rinsed, spangled.
Drink to these simple times, to life untangled.

Grab this rocker. Hear how the downspouts gush
softer now. The clouds ripple pearl and gray.
Across the lots, light strides its copper way,
while one departing shower shakes the pines.
We spin our voices past this last wet rush,