What There is to Say We Have Said: A Review

Not long after we started this blog I discovered an incredible tool for receiving free books. It goes like this:

Cannwin emails publishers, publishers send Cannwin books, Cannwin reviews the books, publishers are pleased and send Cannwin more books.

It's a very nice little system... except for one thing.... I haven't reviewed any of the books yet. That's what I call an epic fail.

Today, I'd like to start remedying that failure with a book called 'What There is to Say, We Have Said: The correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell' Edited by Suzanne Marrs.

Whew... say that ten times fast!

This book is exactly what it says it is... a series of letters between an author (Eudora) and her editor (William).

Now, although I typically love books of this sort (compilations of letters), I had a hard time with this one because I had no idea who either of these people were. An error that, evidently, reveals a lot about my reading habits since Eudora Welty is well known within the literary community.

Actually I had a friend who got all excited when she saw the book in my living room and told me all sorts of things about Welty that I clearly had never known before. I felt decidedly uneducated by the time she was done.

Yet, despite my enormous lack of knowledge on these two people I found the book to be an interesting insight into the lives of professional writers. I think that, in general, those of us who wish to be paid writers have an idea of what 'they' are like. An example, for me, of this would be the notion that the 'professional writer' type doesn't enjoy reading anymore for fun anymore.

This was clearly not the case for these two.

"I finished reading (while the lawn mower stood idle on the lawn) the first section of The Golden Apples, and was three pages along in June Recital, when Emmy came out on the porch..." -William Maxwell to Eudora Welty 1949

William Maxwell was an editor for the New Yorker, and spent his working days reading literature, and yet it was still possible to enthrall him in a book. How very human of him.

Eudora Welty, I also found, had an interest in odd namings:

"Some good names nobody would believe: in the paper a wreck happened, with Mr. Dill Pickle, white, colliding with Hercules Small,8, colored..." Eudora Welty to William Maxwell, 1952

"A place I just ordered some lilies from is out ther too somwhere--Boring, Ore. (Named by some strange, non-lily-loving people perhaps--or could there be some Borings, naming towns after themselves?)" Eudora Welty to William Maxwell, 1952

This is definitely a book for anyone who has read Welty or Maxwell or who enjoys the day to day intricacies of American life.

In this post:

Books:

What There is to Say We Have Said edited by Suzanne Marrs

The Golden Apple by Eudora Welty

June Recital by Eudora Welty

Scorch Trials Meets Brittany Spears!?

Last night I was poking through the world of MP3's looking for some new music when I stumbled onto Brittany Spears' new song "Till the World Ends."

Now I'm not exactly what you would call a Brittany fan, but I have to admit a definite inclination towards the hyped up beat of this one. So naturally I had to go watch the music video and then I discovered that the whole thing reminded me of a book I'd read.

Score! A blog post!

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner is the second book in a dystopian trilogy set in a post-apocolyptic world full of diseased crazed humans called Cranks.

Fun stuff. 

In this second installment of the story, the main character (Thomas) finds himself lost in an abandoned city full of these Cranks. Things aren't looking up for him. He's lost track of his friends, he's completely disoriented and he's just discovered a room full of psycho's who've decided they might as well party themselves into oblivion since that's where they're headed anyway.

Brittany's video is exactly how I imagined that party in my mind. Take a look:

I love music. 

In this post:

Book: Scorch Trials by James Dashner

Music: Till the World Ends by Brittany Spears

Pillars of the Earth: A Review

I just finished/put down/gave up on Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

Admittedly I was excited to try this book out for myself. It sounded good and had one of those reputations that makes me just itch to get my hands on it.

Then I read it.

Or tried to.

I'm guessing people might really enjoy this, but I'm not so into repeated explicit descriptions of rape.

How odd of me.

I'm also not into reading page after page after page of a person trying every single door on a cathedral only to discover, one at a time, that they are all locked.

Yet, if the author had taken the time cut out some of the more minute details, and had the grace to think of women when describing some of the more graphic scenes, it might have been a good book.

I can see that there is a good storyline in there, but I feel he failed me as the reader.

So, now I'm off to read something fluffly and safe, just to clear my head of all those horrid images.

It's Mrs. Pollifax's Life

Oh, the books I would find at my grandparents' houses! Westerns and mysteries over here, classics over there, and Jennifer sitting in the middle of it all, reading for all I was worth.

I still remember the day I found The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax. I was digging through Grandma's coat closet, where she kept toys and other interesting things (I especially loved her globe of the moon), and started browsing through a small collection of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Even as a kid, Dorothy Gilman's humor grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go. (I didn't read the unabridged version until I was an adult. Then I was sad at what I'd been missing in all those years of rereading my grandmother's condensed version.)

Sooo, there I am, driving along, listening to the radio (I get in the car, the radio goes on. Of course I get all my best ideas there - you were expecting the shower maybe?) and Bon Jovi comes on - "It's My Life" to be precise - and as I'm singing along, I think about Mrs. Pollifax and the day she decided to change her life.

In a precise voice she ticked off the list of charities to which she gave her time; it was a long and sensible list.

The doctor nodded. "Yes, but do you enjoy volunteer work?"

Mrs. Pollifax blinked at the unexpectedness of his question. "That's odd," she said, and suddenly smiled at him. "Actually I suppose I loathe it."

He could not help smiling back at her; there was something contagious about her smile, something conspiratorial and twinkling. "Then perhaps it's time you looked for more congenial outlets," he suggested

Mrs. Pollifax said slowly, with a little frown, "I enjoy meeting the people, you know, it's just that so often nothing more is needed for volunteer work than a good set of teeth."

"I beg your pardon?"

'Teeth - for smiling. There are rules, too. You can't imagine how regimented some of the volunteer work can be. It's very impersonal - not yours, somehow, because of all the restrictions."

"Do you feel you're a particularly creative person?"

Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "Goodness, I don't know. I'm just - me."

He ignored that, saying very seriously, "It's terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality."

"Yes," she said simply. "Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that, but what is one to do? After my husband died I set out to make a very sensible life for myself - I always intended to, you see - so that I would never be a nuisance to my children. It's just that -"

"It's too sensible, perhaps?" Caught by something in her eyes that did not match the light mockery of her voice, he said, "But isn't there something you've always longed to do, something you've never had either the time or the freedom for until now?"

Why yes, there is. Mrs. Pollifax has always wanted to be a spy. And so, deciding that it's time to go ahead and indulge herself, time to stop being quite so sensible, she walks into the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, and calmly applies to be a spy.

...Mrs. Pollifax wondered why, when she was being her most serious, people found her so amusing. She supposed that her tastes always had been somewhat peculiar. Her husband's favorite form of endearment for her had been "lovable little goose," which was his way of forgiving the odd bent in her that he didn't quite understand, and as they grew older the children, too, had acquired the habit of thinking her just a little absurd.

I am sure that she would have been humming Bon Jovi as she strode into her interview if they'd been around yet.

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
It's my life
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life

Mr. Mason looked shocked. "But Mrs. Politick," he protested, "this is simply not the way in which spies are recruited. Not at all. I appreciate the spirit in which you —"

"Then how?" asked Mrs. Pollifax reasonably. "Where do I present myself?"

"It's - well, it's not a matter of presenting oneself, it's a matter of your country looking for you."

Mrs. Pollifax's glance was gently reproving. "That's all very well," she said, "but how on earth could my country find me in New Brunswick, New Jersey? And have they tried?"

Now that's what you call a second career! I want to be Mrs. Pollifax when I grow up. Do you think, if I sign up to take karate with my kids and work very hard, that I might be able to save the world a few times when I hit my sixties?

MirrorMask

I found this and just fell in love. I wouldn't have thought of Coldplay's Viva La Vida in relation to Neil Gaiman's MirrorMask, but it works so well! (Not strictly a book, I know, but there is a children's edition, so is that close enough? And, y'know, it's Neil Gaiman. Does it really matter what media it's in if he's the writer?)

I keep thinking of this song in relation to something else, but I can't remember exactly what book the scene I'm thinking of is in. Drives me crazy when that happens...



Mirror Mask: When I Ruled the World (Coldplay: "Viva La Vida")

Confessions of a Zucchini Killer

The weather is absolutely perfect today, even better than it was yesterday. I have all the windows open and I'm listening to robins serenading their mates. The flowering cherry in the front yard should explode into white fluff sometime tomorrow, and the daffodils and tulips should be peeking out of their sepals just as quickly.

As has been noted by better poets than I, spring is truly a wonderful time of year. Charles Dudley Warner's words perfectly fit my attitude toward spring. "Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well."

Which is why I can plant a garden every year with great anticipation, even though I know it will probably fail. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you see here in this corner the world's worst gardener! Possessor of the most potent herbicidal thumb known to humanity! Killer of zucchini for years beyond reckoning!

Do you know that there isn't very much advice out there on how to grown zucchini? Because, y'know, it's so freaking EASY. If you're trying to find out why your zucchini plants refuse to grow and only produce a handful of blossoms you're out of luck. Instead you find advice like this:

Zucchini is easy to grow and it is extremely prolific.

Plant a couple of seeds and you will have zucchini coming out of your ears.

There's a reason that the cliche of a gardener leaving bushels of zucchini on the doorsteps of unsuspecting neighbors is so prevalent. 

Speaking of which, no-one ever leaves bushels of zucchini on my doorstep. Have I failed to make it clear to my neighbors how much I adore zucchini?

Needless to say, I haven't been reading much fiction lately. I've been admiring the weather, poring over my garden books, and plotting out just where in my vegetable garden I'm going to fail to grow zucchini again.

Some of my favorite gardening books (none of which have much advice for hapless zucchini murderers):

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey - Love, love, love this book. What limited gardening success I have is mainly attributable to these wonderful women. I bought it when we were renting. Several free pots later (courtesy of Freecycle) and I was happily trying to grow tomatoes and peppers. I highly recommend it.

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew - Another excellent resource. One that I turn to every year when figuring out where to plant what - and my favorite book for garden fantasizing in the middle of winter. My copy is the original; I haven't checked out the All New Square Foot Gardening yet, but I assume it is just as good. (And with a pretty cover!)

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting by Louise Riotte - This is a wishlist item. My parents had this when I was a kid. I need to get my own copy. I'm getting tired of looking this information up online all the time. I need another book to drool over in the winter, anyway!

Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens by Patricia Lanza - One more for the wishlist! Because I really do love the idea of never double-digging again.

A Strange Craving For Chocolate

Soooooo...

Cannwin is in the middle of selling her house and getting ready to move her little family to another state. She is also participating in a several week long crafting contest.

Yes, I think she's crazy, too.

Something has to give! And that something will be The Literary Soundtrack. She isn't gone forever, but we won't be seeing her for a few weeks, and maybe even a few months, depending on how things go. Sorry, guys, you are going to be stuck with just my point of view for a while. If any of you are interested in doing a guest post, now's the time to jump up and yell, "ME, ME, PICK ME!!!" You can contact me through our very convenient contact form, if you are interested.

I am still getting my feet under me with this change, so bear with me for a while. Post frequency should pick up again pretty soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to share this video that I saw on Ilona Andrews' website. Very  funny, especially to fans of her Kate Daniels' series. There is music, which puts me kind of vaguely on topic with this post. Oh! and subliminal chocolate!

Magic Slays Parody Trailer

Parnell Hall

I currently have a very sick and miserable child who needs lots of snuggling with Mommy, so today's post will be short.

Parnell Hall is the author of the Puzzle Lady mysteries, as well as the Stanley Hastings, and Steve Winslow series. My favorite is the Puzzle Lady series, since I am hugely addicted to puzzles. (It's my grandparents' fault - I spent a summer with them when I was 13. They spent a great deal of time doing crosswords and other puzzles and it wasn't long before I found out that a fondness for torturing your brain is apparently hereditary.)

It isn't the puzzles I'm writing about today (too bad, huh?) but the fact that Hall has made several music videos as part of his self-promotional efforts. I love them - they are whimsical, with a real sense of fun about them. Hall does the singing; I assume he does the writing, but I couldn't find anywhere that stated that.

This is one of my favorites of his videos. Warning: there are several clips of murders shown here. If you are sensitive to violence, you might not want to watch it. If you don't mind that, though, it's hilarious.

Kill 'em


Makes you want to go read a good mystery, doesn't it?

You can find the rest of his videos at his YouTube channel, lmh1234.

Back to snuggling a certain small feverish person...

Books and Music: Parnell Hall