Community Book Review: The Hemingses of Monticello

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed

Thomas Jefferson: impregantor of his enslaved half sister-in-law and clingy extrovert. That is the portrayal that Annette Gordon-Reed concocts from the documentary material and the perspectives of the enslaved people in his life. The scanty lack of the former in the voice of the latter forces her into impressive acts of empathy and many such constructions as "He would have.." "She would not have..." But the work definitely earns its Pulitzer by doing so with such skill and illuminating a subject we kind of dimly know about but are missing a lot of important details. Chiefly the fact that this affair(?) between societal unequals lasted for decades, and followed the death of Martha Jefferson, Sally Hemings' half-sister.

Gordon-Reed manages to avoid either canonizing Hemings and her famiy or robbing them of all agency, leaving us to ponder the fact that her brother James committed suicide soon after freedom, or that either James or Sally could have had their freedom decades earlier during their brief time in Paris (Paris courts never refused a freedom suit.) Gordon-Reed does not argue in either of these or any other cases that this shows the beneficence of slavery or Jefferson, but she doesn't reduce her subjects to diversity month cutouts either. She points out other cases such as an enslaved woman who gets her white lover to buy her and live with her openly, and as a free woman. She makes the amazing observation that Jefferson would have had far less wealth if his father and law had to leave property to his enslaved sons, instead of just his white daughter. Similarly, Jefferson's daughters benefited materially from Jefferson taking Hemings as a "substitute for a wife" instead of marrying a woman who could have made any legal claim on him.

The best defense of Gordon-Reed's method, and the most lasting wisdom comes in her saying that the truth can be known by how it illuminates while lies are bound to obscure. This would seem to have application long beyond turn of the 19th century Virginia.

Reviewed by Jesse Bacon

Seven Unique Gifts For $10 and Under (at our indie bookstore!)

Think you can't find cool and unique gifts for $10 and under at your local, independent bookstore? Here's seven odds and ends at Big Blue Marble that include everything from meditation to West African fantasy to scout notebooks and more.



1)True Love:A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh. $6.99.(Random House) A cute lil' guide for cultivating loving kindness written by the master of mindfulness meditation. Perfect for an everyday spiritual check-in!



2)The Original Scout Book(3 Pocket Notebooks). $10.00. (Pinball Publishing) These notebooks are the perfect size to fit in your pocket. I have been carrying one around in my back pocket everyday for the last month to record writing ideas, as well as notes and sketches from various expeditions. I gave one to my sister Anna and she uses hers to keep notes when reading and the book is thin enough to double as a bookmark. The pages are gridded so they are great for writing and sketching. -Moseph


3)The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. $10.00, On Sale, Hardcover Non-Fiction. (HarperOne) I am in love with Van Jones. He is seriously my idol for many reasons, including coming up with the thesis of this book- rescuing our environment can rescue our economy, which can uplift many of our neighborhoods depressed by poverty and unemployment. This book is just one of the many hardcover non-fiction books on sale for the low, low price of $10.00. -Maleka


4)The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. $8.99. (Disney, Jump at the Sun)
"In West Africa, fourteen-year-old Ejii struggles to master her own magical powers." A young adult science fiction/fantasy book that has a young African girl as the main character? Get this for everyone.


5)Dead Until Dark: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel by Charlaine Harris. $7.99. (Penguin) Do you have family or friends in your life who are addicted to the Twilight series? Do they know about True Blood, the original HBO series based on these Sookie Stackhouse novels all about vampire detectives, werewolves, and a whole bunch of other fantastical folks? If you don't have enough money to shell out for the entire collection of Twilight, get these cheaper paperbacks instead, which are just as addictive. And if you've already finished all the Sookie Stackhouse novels, try Charlaine's other series involving Lily Bard or Aurora Teagarden. Woo-hoo!


6)First Puzzles by Galison/Mudpuppy. $10.00. Two words... how adorable. These little boxed puzzles have themes like construction, zoo babies, and Eric Carle books and come with four puzzles with four pieces each. Perfect holiday gift for the babies and toddlers in your life.



7)The Gashlycrumb Tinies, or, After the Outing by Edward Gorey. $9.00. (Harcourt) Looking for a classic gruesome alphabet book? You can't go wrong with this little book by the wonderful Edward Gorey, full of gothic illustration, little boys named Leo who swallow tacks, and little girls named Una who slip down drains.

PS Reads, and Gives You Writing Tips

Sunday night's event was a great close to a fabulous birthday weekend. The place was packed--standing room only. The seven readers represented a range of styles and genres. Perhaps the most exciting part though was the discussion afterward where the PS Reads authors and the audience (about half of whom identified themselves as writers of various genres) got into some meaty talk about writing and publishing. There was a heated debate about writing groups and workshops, which was an interesting continuation from some of the discussion that came up after Joanna Smith Rakoff's reading from the first reading of the weekend. It all started when Marc Schuster came out as a big advocate of writing groups, which he says are a great antidote to the stereotype of the solitary writer, locked away and banging on a typewriter. Then people shared some of their positive and negative experiences with writing groups, some tips on starting your own, and some opinions that they should be avoided altogether. Apparently, trust and honesty are important.

And because no matter what your opinion is on something, it is good to have a sense of humor. We learned that there are some great McSweeney's lists about writing groups. I didn't find the one that was referred to but there are a couple on there so check it out and if you find one that mentions space aliens lemme know.

We had some good open mike times, including a 93.6 year old woman who is now pursuing poetry in a new way. I didn't catch her name, but she said the whole thing, including middle names, so if you know it, lemme know.

Then there was some advice from both panel and audience members about submitting work for publication:
1. Study the people you are submitting to. If it is a literary magazine, read the kind of stuff they publish. You may be getting rejected because you don't fit the magazine, not because of the quality of your writing.
2. Read submission guidelines and follow them. It is like getting dressed for a job interview. You want to make a good impression.
3. Don't be discouraged. On average published work is rejected 23 times before publication.
4. Make multiple submissions, but if you get accepted somewhere tell the other mags ASAP. And maybe tell them about some new piece you wrote they might consider instead.
5. Also check out Duotrope's Digest, a free writer's resource listing over 2,700 current fiction and poetry publications.

by Moseph Speller

Bookstore Birthday Doggerel

The store is four!
Come have a tour!
Step through our door
to worlds galore:

Come, kids, explore!
With bear of lore
And tiny boar
And glum Eeyore.

Hear lions roar,
And dinosaurs,
And babies shouting,
"More, more, more!"

Meet Santa Claus*
with Charles Santor(e)...
Read Gashleycrumb**
by Edward Gor(ey).

For YA crowd,
There's Edward Bloor,
And Annals of
The Western Shore.

Try Shadow Speaker
(Okorafor)
And Graceling
by Kristin Cashore.

The store is four!
With books du jour!
Step through our door
And find out more --

From omnivore
To locavore,
From soldier's tour
To anti-war.

A book based on
Colbert's Report.
Our Choice by Gore:
Our earth -- restore!

The store is four!
Events galore!
And don't we score
With our decor:

With golden roof
and bamboo floor
and runes of power
upon the door...***

The store is four!
For you, our core,
whom we adore,
We shout, "Amour!"

-- a staff member

*Disclaimer: This is poetic license, where "meet" means "come learn about": the December 6 reading will not necessarily include a visit from Santa.

**Parental discretion advised.

***with serious apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien.

YA Fusion, or Our Differences Unite Us

We continued our Young Adult author series Thursday night with a lovely visit from Delia Sherman and Catherine Gilbert Murdock. It was an excellent event full of wit and warm comments. Catherine read from her realistic YA novel Dairy Queen (first in the D.J. Schwenk trilogy), a dramatic scene near the end. Delia then read from her middle grade fantasy novel The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (sequel to Changeling), a dramatic scene near the middle. And the very different readings came together beautifully, on the parallel strengths of the characters' voices.

The topic of voice reveals one area these authors have in common: they are agreed on the tremendous value of reading all the dialogue aloud, and even on reading dialogue aloud while taking walks outside, sometimes with vigorous handwaving. (They do differ on precisely how public such demonstrations should be.) Delia spoke about the fun of making literary allusions with her characters' personae, and Catherine gave examples of vocabulary, educational level, and tone as ways to ensure the consistency of voice and to distinguish characters from one another. I was particularly intrigued to hear her policy of rewriting to see what various characters would do if it were their story.

When it came time to talk about the writing process in general, we learned that Catherine is an avid outliner who insists on having the end of her story (sometimes the final sentence) and the emotion she wants to leave with the reader completely worked out in her head before she commits any of her work to paper, while Delia, well-versed in the story structures of many kinds of folklore, starts with an unformed idea and just writes, watching the story unfold before her. She often doesn't know the end until she arrives there herself.

One of the most charming aspects of this author event was watching our two guests react (graciously, of course!) to each other's very different ways of doing things. All in all, a delightful discussion. It entertained us, and, even more, it highlighted the breadth of possibility in writing and in story.

Quote: Theodore Gray

I have been enthralled of late with a big coffee table book called The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which I think should be installed in every chemistry class. It's got amazing pictures, and I'm learning all sorts of cool random stuff. I'm learning to distinguish the colors of light from the different noble gases. I've learned that cesium explodes on contact with skin (and most other things). I've learned that oxygen is a beautiful blue liquid at -183° C. Who knew?

And the writing is lighthearted and entertaining.

    "If carbon (6) is the foundation of life, then oxygen is the fuel. Oxygen's ability to react with just about any organic compound is what drives the processes of life. Combustion with oxygen also drives your car, your furnace, and if you work for NASA, your rockets. (Actually, the term "fuel" usually refers to the thing that is burned by an "oxidizer," so I'm speaking metaphorically when I say oxygen is the fuel of life. Technically speaking, oxygen is the oxidizer of life.)"

More on cesium and its fellow alkali metals:

    "The other elements of the first column, not counting hydrogen, are called the alkali metals, and they are all fun to throw into a lake. Alkali metals react with water to release hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable. When you throw a large enough lump of sodium into a lake, the result is a huge explosion a few seconds later. Depending on whether you took the right precautions, this is either a thrilling and beautiful experience or the end of your life as you have known it when molten sodium sprays into your eyes, permanently blinding you.
    "Chemistry is a bit like that: powerful enough to do great things in the world, but also dangerous enough to do terrible things just as easily. If you don't respect it, chemistry bites."

At the end of the introduction, Gray sums up the universe:

    "This is all there is. From here to Timbuktu, and including Timbuktu, everything everywhere is made of one or more of these elements. The infinite variety of combinations and recombinations that we call chemistry starts and ends with this short and memorable list, the building blocks of the physical world.
    "Almost everything you see in this book is sitting somewhere in my office, except that one thing the FBI confiscated and a few historical objects. I had a great time collecting these examples of the vibrant diversity of the elements, and I hope you have as much fun reading about them."

Community Book Review: Chronic City

Chronic City Love Letter

Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City woke me up in the middle of the night, right out of a dead sleep. I realized something about the stranded-in-orbit astronaut, about the environmental sculptor, about the ghostwriter, about Malcolm Gladwell's quality-of-life police, about the acupuncturist, about the war-free edition of the New York Times. (Who would choose the other edition?) I lay there in the dark, as paranoid/inspired as Perkus Tooth, the ex-broadsider around whom the story revolves.

And now I am in love with Chronic City. (It almost spells synchronicity!) It's the kind of love where I cannot stop mentioning it even/especially to people who haven't read it. It's the kind of love that shifts your perceptions forever. Try reading this book and then driving into New York City past Liberty Park; it's like liberating a collective repressed memory, a catharsis, an admission.

It's fitting to be in love with Chronic City, because it is a love letter to writing and the beautiful/terrible role that writers play in the necessary lies and half-truths that keep any culture, but especially this one, intact.

-Reviewed by Jane Cassady

Jane Cassady is the booking maven for the Philadelphia Poetry Slam. She has appeared in The November 3rd Club, The Comstock Review, Valley of the Contemporary Poets, and others. She works at Emlen Elementary Afterschool Program in Northwest Philadelphia, spending lots of time with craft supplies and optimistic little faces.

Major Jackson and Philadelphia

Have you heard of the poet Major Jackson? He is originally from the city of Philadelphia and has won numerous awards and fellowships for his absolutely wonderful poetry. Check out this piece below about Philadelphia and then come in and get your hands on our last copy of Hoops, his second collection of poetry that features Philly throughout the entire book.


Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden


by Major Jackson
1
When you have forgotten (to bring into
Play that fragrant morsel of rhetoric,
Crisp as autumnal air), when you
Have forgotten, say, sunlit corners, brick
Full of skyline, rowhomes, smokestacks,
Billboards, littered rooftops & wondered
What bread wrappers reflect of our hunger,

2
When you have forgotten wide-brimmed hats,
Sunday back-seat leather rides & church,
The doorlock like a silver cane, the broad backs
Swaying or the great moan deep churning,
& the shimmer flick of flat sticks, the lurch
Forward, skip, hands up Aileyesque drop,
When you have forgotten the meaningful bop,

3
Hustlers and their care-what-may, blas�
Ballet and flight, when you have forgotten
Scruffy yards, miniature escapes, the way
Laundry lines strung up sag like shortened
Smiles, when you have forgotten the Fish Man
Barking his catch in inches up the street
“I’ve got porgies. I’ve got trout. Feeesh

4
Man,” or his scoop and chain scale,
His belief in shad and amberjack; when
You have forgotten Ajax and tin pails,
Blue crystals frothing on marble front
Steps Saturday mornings, or the garden
Of old men playing checkers, the curbs
White-washed like two lines out to the burbs,

5
Or the hopscotch squares painted new
In the street, the pitter-patter of feet
Landing on rhymes. “How do you
Like the weather, girls? All in together, girls,
January, February, March, April... ”
The jump ropes’ portentous looming,
Their great, aching love blooming.

6
When you have forgotten packs of grape-
Flavored Now & Laters, the squares
Of sugar flattening on the tongue, the elation
You felt reaching into the corner-store jar,
Grasping a handful of Blow Pops, candy bars
With names you didn’t recognize but came
To learn. All the turf battles. All the war games.

7
When you have forgotten popsicle stick
Races along the curb and hydrant fights,
Then, retrieve this letter from your stack
I’ve sent by clairvoyant post & read by light,
For it brought me as much longing and delight.
This week’s Father’s Day; I’ve a long ride to Philly.
I’ll give this to Gramps, then head to Black Lily.

A Sugarless World

A lovely reading tonight with author James Magruder, a playwright and award-winning translator who lives in Baltimore. Here's an excerpt from the novel:

I guess I had a "collect 'em all" personality. Every week in 1973 a four-inch president, from Washington in a blue and gold Continental Army uniform to Nixon in a gray suit and tie, went on sale for forty cents at the Jewel food store. On the shelf above the shelf with my miniature liquor bottles, the thirty-six chief executives lined up like beauty contestants on a set of molded Styrofoam risers, with four Greek columns notched into the back row for a more republican effect. I was the class shrimp in grade school, so Madison, the shortest president, was my favorite. Taft was the fattest, buried in a piano crate.

Check out more from the main character Rick Lahrem in Magruder's story which talks about coming out, coming-of-age, and coming-to Jesus.

Community Book Review: The Wasted Vigil

The Wasted Vigil By Nadeem Aslam.

For folks whom Kite Runner was not depressing or complex or poetic enough.

Wasted Vigil literally nails its symbolism to the ceiling in the form of a library. The books were put there by a woman driven mad by years of Afghan wars, but the method is crudely effective, the Taliban don't notice them. Other metaphors are similarly fraught, the house also features paintings devoted to the 6 senses covered over by mud, a giant Buddha's head that weeps tears, and a collection of inhabitants who range from Afghanistans' would-be occupiers (British, Russian, American) to its current inhabitants, themselves an Al-Qaeda former Bagram detainee and a female schoolteacher.
All of this weight threatens to overwhelm the storyline which is basically flashbacks, hanging out, and gathering menace.

The poetic language, historic sweep, and admirable dialectic of blame (between colonizers and colonized) more or less sustain things, and we enjoy our time spent with these shattered people. My only complaint is the women are either dead, disappeared, or going back to Russia which serves to make them a moew little two dimensional then the agonizing, suffering, and also dying men.


Reviewed by Jesse Bacon

A Measure of Truth About Liar

How exciting to have Justine Larbalestier round off her Liar tour with a visit to Philadelphia!

Justine admired the Big Blue Marble (in fact, her publicist declared intention to take up lodging on a comfy chair and not go back to New York), tried kiwi berries for the first time, and talked with us about the writing of her newest book, which was composed in small scenes and then shuffled around and retrofitted. She described the process as akin to working with a jigsaw puzzle -- if what one did when moving a jigsaw puzzle piece was to violently lop off the sticky-out bits and "grow new wings" to make it fit in the new place.

Throughout its writing, Liar grew in ways Justine hadn't foreseen. It turns out that her earliest ideas for the book involved its being a lighthearted comedy (which, to be fair, did make us laugh). She spoke about how hard she worked to make different interpretations equally probable, and she told us about being surprised by readers' interpretations that hadn't occurred to her at all. She spoke about race and gender issues, and she described her careful work to make sure her teen-aged New Yorker narrator didn't sound Australian -- and her chagrin that no one had noticed. (Which speaks to how well she succeeded, of course.)

There were a lot of interesting and insightful questions, and, curiously, no discussions of Justine's boots, just her books. Also, she writes on her blog of her Scott Westerfeld impressions, and they really are impressive: the one she did last night made it seem as though he was really there! Oh, wait -- he was really there.

I was particularly impressed with her answer to a question of Maleka's about writing characters who have significantly different backgrounds from the author. She said, as she has elsewhere, that you can't be afraid of people getting mad at you for misrepresentation, because anyone whose writing gets published will find readers getting mad at them for something. But she made it clear that she doesn't mean one should ignore the critics; she means that one should expect the critics, and then listen to the criticism and learn from it.

Justine Larbalestier blogs at justinelarbalestier.com/blog/.
Here is her website's Liar page.

Lise Funderburg Visits!

What a wonderful and warm visit by our neighbor and author of the memoir Pig Candy which was the Women of the World book club's selection of the month. We had a great discussion of the book with people asking Lise about her father's behaviors, journalism, whether they still had the farm and the fish pond, why she didn't put the death scene at the end of the book, and more. Lise mentioned thinking about doing a personal writing workshop in the Mt. Airy area, so be on the look out for more information. And if you haven't yet read this social history/memoir, get up on it. It's more than just succulent pig meat.

Your Children Are The Gurus.

This past Sunday morning we had the honor of hosting Lama Willa Miller, ordained in Tibetan Buddhism. She led a short meditation practice from her new book, Everyday Dharma: Seven Weeks To Finding the Buddha in You, read an allegory about looking within yourself, and led a discussion about staying in the present moment, the differences between Tibetan Buddhism and other Buddhist practices, and more. It was a wonderful presentation filled with knowledge that folks could really use every day.

I asked her about meditating within the context of living with three young children under the age of four. Where is the peace within the storm of preschool tantrums? Her response? Look to your children as gurus. They are the perfect teachers of patience, having an open heart, and just being in the present moment. She's so right. It just took that reminder to really have it sink in. And when you're not learning from them? Take a few minutes to steal away and create your own meditation. She says even two minutes will allow you to reboot yourself.

A Taste of Poetry Aloud and Alive

Missed Poetry Aloud and Alive tonight? (It's every fourth Friday of the month at 7:15pm.) Here's a taste of what went down by excellent local poet Steve Burke:


Doubting Thomas On The Bus

Cake-walking down the sidewalk, a zaftig young woman witnessing to whatever lyric is surging through her headphones,
carrying her away down Broad Street, where traffic thickly flows.
Music is a manifestation of something that can be believed in.
Revelation is something that's hard to keep to yourself. She is filled.
Maybe she is singing also, but for now I am deafened by glass
and she blinded by ecstasy-her left hand raised and pulled back,
raised again, the fingers of that hand opening then closing
as if breathing, or as if stretched up to a closet shelf, grasping for
something unseen, something lost, something that belongs to her.

-Steve Burke

Staff Book Review: Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities is basically a series of prose poems, each describing a different city. There are only two characters in the book; the explorer Marco Polo who collects stories about cities and the emperor Kublai Kahn demands to hear about the cities contained in his falling empire. Perhaps the best synopsis of the book is the statement offered by Marco Polo that “an invisible landscape conditions the visible one.” As a surrealist, I found the book especially captivating because on one level it deals in the fantastical—cities which seem to exist in other dimensions, gargoyles which come to life, and cities that sprawl so rapidly that you cannot escape them. On another level Calvino touches on profound truths about geography and imperialism as well as the social, political and environmental forces that shape cities. I found this book to be tremendously fun, my roommates will attest that it caused me to jump up and down with excitement more than once. At 165 pages it is a quick read but it also challenged me look closer at the world around me. I’ve always imagined myself as an urban explorer but I found myself looking up and down and imagining the routes of storm sewers and buried streams with a new sense of urgency.

- reviewed by Mo Speller

Big Blue Marble Bookstore is called a jewel!

Wow! It's nice to find unexpected little descriptions about us in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Check out this event listing.

Next step In her three-decade career, author Liz Rosenberg has found success as a poet (the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for The Fire Music) and a children's book writer (the Children's Choice Award-winning Monster Mama). Her first novel, Home Repair, is a finely crafted tale of loss and resilience, following a middle-aged mother as she deals with memories of one husband killed in an accident and another who just walked out. Rosenberg reads from her work at a Mount Airy jewel, the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter Lane, at 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free. Call 215-844-1870.

Big Blue Marble Baby Group is back!

Big Blue Marble Baby Group is back!

Yesterday at Toddler Story Time we had a small horde of squirmy little people. We had a good time! I mentioned to the adults in the crowd that we used to have a baby playgroup meet at the store and that we would love to have one again. All we would need was for someone to pick a time.

Actually, we've had 2 baby groups meet here. Each met until that cohort of kids got big enough for day care, then dissolved. And we were sad. Having a crowd of parents and kids here on a regular basis was fun.

After story time, two of the moms stepped up and said that Wednesdays at 11:30 AM would work for them. Hooray! I told them we would spread the word.

Big Blue Marble Babes: Wednesdays at 11:30 AM. Pass it on!

we've succumbed to microblogging

For those who have wondered where we have been, you might see more of us in the realm of microblogging:

http://twitter.com/bigbluemarblebk

or check out the Big Blue Marble Bookstore page on Facebook.

Quote: John Green

Most young adult books don't come with footnotes. When they do, you can expect entertaining randomness, as in this section, including awesome footnote, from An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (known also for his correspondence as one of the Vlog Brothers along with his brother Hank):

"Over the years, people had occasionally sought to employ Colin in a manner befitting his talents. But (a) summers were for smart-kid camp so that he could further his learning and (b) a real job would distract him from his real work, which was becoming an ever-larger repository of knowledge, and (c) Colin didn't really have any marketable skills. One rarely comes across, for instance, the following want ad:

"Prodigy
Huge, megalithic corporation seeks a talented, ambitious prodigy to join our exciting, dynamic Prodigy Division for summer job. Requirements include at least fourteen years' experience as a certified child prodigy, ability to anagram adeptly (and alliterate agilely), fluency in eleven languages. Job duties include reading, remembering encyclopedias, novels, and poetry; and memorizing the first ninety-nine digits of pi.³³
---
"³³Which Colin did when he was ten, by making up a 99-word sentence in which the first letter of each word corresponded to the digit of pi (a=1, b=2, etc.; j=0). The sentence, if you're curious: Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorify jolly, friendly garfish!"

- John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

Oh, except...shouldn't the first "garfish" begin with "f"? (Not an easy fix, though.)

Guest post from Stephanie Bond

How to Refill Your Creative Well

I’m coming off a crazy-hard writing year where I wrote 3 manuscripts for my BODY MOVERS humorous mystery series so they could be released back to back. I also wrote 3 manuscripts for Harlequin Blaze (romantic comedies), also for back to back release. And I wrote 2 manuscripts for novellas. The schedule tested me physically and mentally, and afterward, I confess, I was zapped. My brain was mush—I could barely remember the names of the characters I’d written, much less come up with something new. But I had more projects on the horizon (after a short break), so I knew I had to do something to recharge my batteries. Here are some tips to regain your creativity if you’re in a slump:

Adjust your Zzzzzzzs. Physically, you need to adjust your sleep patterns up or down to get 7-8 hours sleep. I got way too little sleep most of last year, so now I’m making an effort to go to bed an hour earlier. Conversely, though, too much sleep can leave you feeling lethargic, so if you’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping in, you might want to set your alarm to get up a little earlier and get a jump on the day.

Get moving. Exercise truly is a panacea for the mind and body. Try to break a sweat at least every other day and keep moving for 30 minutes. Cardio exercise delivers oxygen to the brain and makes you more alert. I jump rope for 5 minutes shortly after getting out of bed. For a quick pick-me-up during the day, I do jumping jacks.

Eat well. Don’t put garbage in your body. I’m not the most disciplined eater around, but I do avoid the drive-through and opt for salad occasionally. Be good to your body—feed it well if you expect it to deliver on command.

Be a kid. To jumpstart your creativity, turn to something you used to do to have fun, like color in a coloring book. Or put together a puzzle. Or get out the Play-Doh and make funny shapes. Board games are also good to get your creative juices flowing, as are card games.

Get together with friends. Nothing refills your well like getting together with friends and having a good time. Let your friends buoy you with affection.
Try something new. Jar yourself out of a creative rut by trying something new. For me, that means taking a break from writing novels to write, say, a screenplay.

Set a deadline. Wow, if you’re burnt out, a deadline can sound ominous. But sometimes, you need a goal in order to get you moving again. Maybe it’s a self-imposed deadline, or maybe it’s simply making a to-do list for the next day before you go to bed.

Collaborate. Getting out of a rut is easier if you have a partner to pull/push you along. Working on a project with someone else will help motivate you to get moving, but allow you to share responsibility.

Working writers don’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to strike—sometimes we have to give our muse a nudge. Recognizing burnout and being proactive about refilling the creative well are crucial to maintaining your artistic edge!
______________________________
Stephanie Bond left a corporate computer programming job to write fiction full-time. To date, she’s sold almost 50 romance and mystery novels. Stephanie currently writes the BODY MOVERS humorous mystery series. Books 4, 5 and 6 in the Body Movers series will be released back to back April, May, and June 2009. (Books 1-3 are still available at all Internet bookstores.) For more information, go to www.stephaniebond.com.

For those who won't get to see today's window display.

Thanks, Claudia. People have been enjoying this window all day.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For: The Lives, Loves and Politics of Cult-Fav Characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice and Others, by Alison Bechdel, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Alas, Alison Bechdel has suspended her strip to work on her memoir about relationships. I forgive her, because Fun Home was awesome and I'm eager to see what comes next. But if you need to catch up on the latest antics of Mo and friends, they are newly published in this giant compendium of strips from 1988 onward.

I need it, for the sake of completeness and also the funny introduction (illustrated, of course). "Good God. I FORGOT TO GET A JOB," says Ms. Bechdel, musing on her 20+ years of documenting ordinary but imaginary lesbian lives. I think I speak for all her fans when I say that we're pretty pleased about that.

It is also worth checking out her essay in State by State, edited by Sean Wilsey, published by Ecco Press.

Books About Mexico

You know what I'm really into now? Books about Mexico- like the graphic novel La Perdida by Jessica Abel, the new memoir Mexican Enough by Stephanie Elizondo Griest, and more. These new personal stories about modern day Mexico really show an understanding of how immigration laws and immigration stories affect all the citizens of Mexico, the dynamic of traveling to a "Third World" country and everything that entails, and the outsider/insider perspective of folks who are ethnically Mexican but grew up in the States. I personally love following the stories of people who go "home" only to realize home is such a relative term in regards to your culture, background, how and where you were raised, and a multitude of other dynamics.

Quote: Tamora Pierce

    Suddenly I felt a shimmer in my magic, like sunlight glancing off water. This time I didn't care if Rosethorn rode on without me. "Mica!" I yelled and jumped off my horse. "There's sheet mica here!"
    Mica lay scattered over a heap of rocks that had tumbled from a cliff face. It lay to the right of the road in sheets of a single thickness, delicate amber-colored glass that would chip away at a breath, and in clumps of different sizes, some of a hundred sheets or more. I picked up a few thick clumps to keep.
    "You like this stuff?" Jayat had followed me. "What's it good for?"
    "Scrying, if you need to have a use for everything." I showed him glittering flakes that fell from my hand like snow. "But mostly it's just wonderful — so delicate, and yet it's stone."
    I flicked a tiny burst of magic up the slope. Flakes, sheets, and clumps of mica flashed, thousands of flat crystals in the sun. Everyone who rode by would now see the stone as I did, glittering in the light.
    "Beautiful." Jayat liked what I had done. "I never thought of it like that. It was always just glassy stuff, laying around."
    Luvo looked at Jayat. "That is what magic is for, Jayatin. To help us think of the world in new ways."

- Tamora Pierce, Melting Stones

Hurray, mica! Mica is particularly resonant for me, living in this city with the Wissahickon Valley and its miles of glimmering trails... This quote is from Tamora Pierce's newest book in the Circle of Magic world -- which is particularly noteworthy for having been released first in full cast audio format, a year before its release in print.

A State of Anticipation

How often would you expect to find Jhumpa Lahiri, Alison Bechdel, Louise Erdrich, Dave Eggers, and S.E. Hinton published together in the same book? Would you like to read their essays on (respectively) Rhode Island, Vermont, North Dakota, Illinois, and Oklahoma? These essays (and 45 others!) will be coming out in September in State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey.

It's meant to be based on the style of the Work Projects Administration writings about the country as part of the New Deal. I'm looking forward to it! Some links:
Publisher's Weekly Review
Alison Bechdel's blog post on the book, including a comment in which someone has pasted the complete list of authors by state.

Quote: Ursula K. Le Guin

The three passages below are from Ursula Le Guin's recent Annals of the Western Shore series. It's not actually one quotation from each book; two are from Voices (book 2), which I have now declared my very favorite of her books that I've read. The third is from the third book, Powers. The whole series, starting with the first book, Gifts, touches on questions of power: what it means, how to recognize it, and how to use (or not use) it. The books all have different main characters, in different places, but those characters are significant in the following books (rather like the Earthsea Cycle), letting it feel more like continuity than a loss of it.

"I'm sorry, now, for that girl of fifteen who wasn't as brave as the child of six, although she longed as much as ever for courage, strength, power against what she feared. Fear breeds silence, and then the silence breeds fear, and I let it rule me. Even there, in that room, the only place in the world where I knew who I was, I wouldn't let myself guess what I might become."

- Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

"I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for—so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted and gathered roots and cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn't say what their wives and children were living on in their city left ruined and desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house and honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege and under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I'd like to know what the food was and how the women managed it."

- Voices (Annals of the Western Shore, book 2)

"The first true leader I knew was this boy of seventeen, Yaven Altanter Arca, and I have judged others by him. By that standard, leadership means personal magnetism, active intelligence, unquestioning acceptance of responsibility, and something harder to define: a tension between justice and compassion, which is never truly satisfied by one without the other, and so can seldom be wholly satisfied."

- Powers (Annals of the Western Shore, book 3)

Quote: Frances Hodgson Burnett

"And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles. In the robin's nest there were eggs and the robin's mate sat upon them, keeping them warm with her feathery little breast and careful wings. At first she was very nervous, and the robin himself was indignantly watchful. Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves -- nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them -- the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs. If there had been one person in that garden who had not known through all his or her innermost being that if an Egg were taken away or hurt the whole world would whirl round and crash through space and come to an end -- if there had been even one who did not feel it and act accordingly there could have been no happiness even in that golden springtime air. But they all knew it and felt it and the robin and his mate knew they knew it."

- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

About two weeks ago, Nif and I discovered a pair of cardinals nesting right outside our house! The female cardinal would arrive from elsewhere, hop around the branches, alight on a small clump of brush, and then go absolutely still. It's been very exciting. Sometimes when she takes breaks, the male cardinal comes and sits on a wire or a tree nearby, or hops from branch to branch in the same tree, singing and "cheer"ing. And then in the past two days we've been able to see, when she's off the nest, a little tiny head and mouth waving around!

A note about the quotation: if you're wondering why the robin's mate isn't also a robin...she is. It's just that the male robin has been a particular character in the story thus far, and his mate is a relative newcomer to the scene.

Quote: Trenton Lee Stewart

    The children nodded uneasily. All this talk of danger and emergencies, without explanation, was beginning to wear on them.
    "I'm sorry to put you ill at ease," Mr. Benedict said. "And I haven't much to say to comfort you. I can finally offer some answers to your questions, however. Who wishes to begin? Yes, Constance?"
    To the great exasperation of the others, Constance demanded to know why they couldn't have candy for breakfast.
    Mr. Benedict smiled. "A fine question. The short answer is that there is no candy presently in the house. Beyond that, the explanation involves a consideration of candy's excellent flavor but low nutritional value--that is to say, why it makes a wonderful treat but a poor meal--though I suspect you aren't interested in explanations but simply wished to express your frustration. Is that correct?"
    "Maybe," Constance said with a shrug. But she seemed satisfied.
    "Other questions?" said Mr. Benedict.

- Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

Speaking of orphans (or virtual orphans) who end up going on dramatic adventures... They get to practice Morse code, too! And through the tests they pass to join the "Society" -- and through working together -- they come to appreciate the many different ways there are to be "gifted".
.-    .-.. ... -    ... ..-.    ..-. ..- -. !

Quote: Lois Lowry

"METICULOUS means extremely precise and careful. Surgeons have to be meticulous. Some people think great cooks are meticulous, but they are wrong. Great cooks read a recipe, maybe, but then they ignore the instructions and add extra garlic if they feel like it. Surgeons can't do that."

- Lois Lowry, The Willoughbys (ARC edition)

Lois Lowry's newest book, The Willoughbys, comes out at the end of March. This excerpt is from the glossary at the back of the advance reading copy. You probably can't tell from this quote that the book is about a lovely "old-fashioned" family where the parents don't particularly like kids, and the kids think they would be better off as orphans. (This potentially disturbing premise is mitigated by the book's general silliness.)

Remember: No adding extra garlic during surgery!

Quote: George Washington

Here is an excerpt of a letter from George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, RI, in 1790:

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunity of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens....May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

- George Washington, cited by Susan Jacoby in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

I was really excited to see this; I think it's an excellent example of the ideals to which our nation should continue to aspire. Our "founding fathers" were full of contradictions (Washington was a slaveowner), but sometimes they did get it right.

Quotes: Jane Austen

I have been reading a lot of Jane Austen in the past few weeks -- some rereads, some new. Here are some excerpts:

"Fanny agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. 'Here's harmony!' said she; 'here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry can only attempt to describe! Here's what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.'"

- Mansfield Park (1814)

"Such an adventure as this, a fine young man and a lovely young woman thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them particularly interesting to each other? How much more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight? especially with such a groundwork of anticipation as her mind had already made."

- Emma (1816)

"They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm-in-arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and, if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel writers, of degrading, with their own contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding: joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?"

- Northanger Abbey (1818)

Quote: Michael Pollan

"For some reason the image that stuck with me from that day was that slender blade of grass in a too big, wind-whipped pasture, burning all those calories just to stand up straight and keep its chloroplasts aimed at the sun. I'd always thought of the trees and grasses as antagonists--another zero-sum deal in which the gain of the one entails the loss of the other. To a point, this is true: More grass means less forest; more forest less grass. But either-or is a construction more deeply woven into our culture than into nature, where even antagonists depend on one another and the liveliest places are the edges, the in-betweens or both-ands. So it is with the blade of grass and the adjacent forest as, indeed, with all the species sharing this most complicated farm. Relations are what matter most, and the health of the cultivated turns on the health of the wild."

- Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

The Omnivore's Dilemma is an amazing book. I'm two thirds of the way through at this point (Industrial/Corn and Pastoral/Grass, leaving only Personal/The Forest). In this chapter, Pollan has been visiting and working at Polyface farm, an incredibly sustainable "grass" farm where the end products of any one process are used to fuel the next and everything is interconnected. Farmer Joel Salatin has been explaining to him the importance of trees as windbreaks for the grass fields and how much energy is thereby saved for the actual growing of the plants.

A thicker picture book than usual...

Yesterday's American Library Association award announcements at the Philadelphia Convention Center included a bit of a surprise for the Caldecott: The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is over 500 pages long! It's an excellent book. We're also excited to see that Elijah of Buxton, which is one of my Staff Picks, won a Coretta Scott King Award (having also recently won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction)!

Further edification: On our Mt Airy and Beyond links page, we have links to the official web pages of a long list of book awards (including ALA), so you can always check there for current recommendations of outstanding books.

Quote: Rachel Naomi Remen

"In turmoil, I walked wearily along the water's edge, comparing myself to others my own age, people of seemingly boundless vitality. I came up wanting. I remember thinking that this disease had robbed me of my youth. I did not yet know what it had given me in exchange.

"In response to these painful thoughts, a wave of intense rage flooded me, the sort of feeling I had experienced many times before. But for some reason, this time I did not drown in it. Instead, I sort of noticed it go by and something inside me said, 'You have no vitality? Here's your vitality.'

"Shocked, I recognized the connection between my anger and my will to live. My anger was my will to live turned inside out. My life force was just as intense, just as powerful as my anger, but for the first time I could experience it as different and feel it directly. In that first moment of surprise, I had a glimpse of something fundamental about who I am; that at the core of things I have an intense love of life, a wish to participate fully in life and to help others to do the same. Somehow this had grown large in me as a result of the very limitations that I had thought were thwarting it. Like the power of a dammed river. I had not known this before. I also knew that in its present form, as rage, this power was trapped. My anger had helped me to survive, to resist my disease, even to fight on, but in the form of anger I could not use my strength to build the kind of life I longed to live. And then I knew that I no longer needed to do it this way. I knew with absolute certainty that my pain was nobody's fault; that the world was not to blame for it. It was a moment of real freedom."

- Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal

Kitchen Table Wisom is a book of very very short essays drawn from Dr. Remen's clinical and personal experiences with chronic and terminal illness. It's the book I lend to friends going through hard times, because over and over it offers hopeful messages and new ways to look at the world.

Quote: Rick Riordan

    I didn't want to admit that I'd seen what the Sirens had promised her. I felt like a trespasser. But I figured I owed it to Annabeth.
    "I saw the way you rebuilt Manhattan," I told her. "And Luke and your parents."
    She blushed. "You saw that?"
    "What Luke told you back on the Princess Andromeda, about starting from scratch ... that really got to you, huh?"
    She pulled her blanket around her. "My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris."
    I blinked. "That brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?"
    She rolled her eyes. "No, Seaweed Brain. That's hummus. Hubris is worse."
    "What could be worse than hummus?"

- Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2)

Quote: Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde has just released a new Thursday Next book! Only in stores a week, and it's already on the Book Sense Bestseller list! I'm very much looking forward to reading it, since it is, after all, First Among Sequels. (Actually, it's fourth.)

Here, meanwhile, is a slice of a Jurisfiction meeting, from The Well of Lost Plots:

    "Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?"
    Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts.
    "Indeed. The use of had had and that that has to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the ImaginoTransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid."
    "Go on."
    "It's mostly an unlicensed usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem owing to its had had / that that ratio."
    "So what's the problem in Progress?"
    "That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked but not if the number exceeds that that that usage."
    "Hmm," said the Bellman. "I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?"
    "Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example," explained Lady Cavendish. "You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not."
    "So the problem with that other that that was that--?"
    "That that other-other that that had had approval."
    "Okay," said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, "let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?"
    There was a very long pause.

--Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next book 3)

Quote: J.K. Rowling (book 1)

    "A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign overhead said Hogwarts Express, eleven o'clock. Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it. He had done it.
    "Smoke from the engine drifted over the heads of the chattering crowd, while cats of every color wound here and there between their legs. Owls hooted to one another in a disgruntled sort of way over the babble and the scraping of the heavy trunks."

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Okay, so what I want to know is, where are all the cats? Toads are out of fashion, owls live in the owlery, but the only cats we ever see, besides here, are Crookshanks and Mrs. Norris. (Well, and Professor McGonagall.) Where are these students keeping their cats of every color? Did they all belong to 7th-years? Did Hagrid make a decree? Alas, I am betting that these burning questions will not be among those finally answered in book 7.

Quote: Ann Rinaldi

    "There are, as far as I can see, two kinds of lies in this world. There's the kind I tell Mama when she asks if I've been to see the hoodoo woman who lives on our plantation. And I say no. Though I have been. And now, like Sis Goose, I have a red flannel bag of my own that holds small animal bones, powdered snakeskin, horsehair, ashes, dried blood, and dirt from the graveyard. All to protect me from any evil I can imagine. And some that I can't.
    "Then there's the kind of lie you live with when you enter into a devil's agreement with yourself never to disclose a certain fact for fear of the results if you do.
    "There are planters in our neck of the woods who believe so much in the lie that the slaves are not free that they will shoot or hang anybody who says otherwise."

- Ann Rinaldi, Come Juneteenth

Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, and marks the day -- two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect -- that Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and officially announced that the slaves in Texas were free. Come Juneteenth is the story of a girl in Texas who has to live with the lie she has told her best friend -- legally a slave but raised as her sister -- that the rumors of freedom creeping across the land are not true.

Quote: William Butler Yeats

The following is from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is in the section entitled The Rose, 1893. I actually know a beautiful musical setting to this poem, composed by a group known as Kiltartan Road.

"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows shall I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

The Teahouse Fire wins Lambda Literary Award!

Ellis Avery's new novel, The Teahouse Fire, won a Lambda Literary Award in the lesbian debut fiction category. Ellis was here earlier this year to do a Japanese tea ceremony and reading from her book. It was a lovely evening in honor of a lovely new book. Congratulations, Ellis!

You can see all of the Lambda Literary Award Winners at www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/current_winners.html

Quotes: Kelly Link and Laurie J. Marks

Nif and I are back from Madison! The following quotations are from the writings of the Guests of Honor at this year's WisCon.

From the story "The Hortlak" in Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners (Harcourt, 2005)...

"Batu had spent a lot of time reorganizing the candy aisle according to chewiness and meltiness. The week before, he had arranged it so that if you took the first letter of every candy, reading across from left to right, and then down, it had spelled out the first sentence of To Kill a Mockingbird, and then also a line of Turkish poetry. Something about the moon."

And from Laurie J. Marks' Fire Logic (Tor, 2002)...

"Part 2: Fire Night

Without courage, there would be no will to know.
Without the will to know, there would be no knowledge.
Without knowledge, there would be no language.
Without language, there would be no community.
--MACKAPEE'S Principles of Community

Who is seen to speak to the enemy must be silenced. Who sympathizes with the enemy must lose their heart. Who dreams of peace must dream no more. Those who ravaged the land will be eliminated: without compromise, without mercy.
--MABIN'S Warfare

When I first met my enemy, she was a glyph, and it was I who chose to read her as my friend. When my enemy first met me, I was a glyph, and it was she who chose to read me as her friend. So all people are glyphs, and every understanding comes from choice.
--MEDRIC'S History of My Father's People"

Quote: Susan Palwick

This quote, another paean to spring growth, is from Susan Palwick's The Necessary Beggar, in which an entire family are exiled from their planet and arrive, with no preparation and no papers, in an immigrant refugee camp in Nevada in 2011. This is from one of the epic poems of their homeland.

"And when the shoots came up
She greeted each one by name
For she knew them all already as old friends:
Hello, sweet peas, hello carrots, hello parsnips!
Greetings my wonderful melons! Hail rutabaga!
Welcome if you are the spirits of my ancestors,
Welcome if you are the spirits of strangers,
Welcome if you contain no human spirit at all,
But only the souls of green growing things.
You shall feed my family, you shall feed the world,
Every year you shall die and come to life again
And you will give us life, and we will revere you.
-- from the Epic of Emeliafa"

What if the good guys won?

Grist has a review of Kim Stanley Robinson's Capitol Code trilogy: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting. Dealing with a near-future earth that is fighting global warming, these books present some compelling possibilities. (I was reading the first one just as hurricane Katrina hit!)
Check out the review at
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2007/04/05/higgins-freese/index.html?source=weekly

2006 Tiptree Award Winners are here!

Here at Big Blue Marble we like feminist science fiction, so we're very excited that the 2006 Tiptree Award Winners are here: Half Life by Shelley Jackson, and The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente. This year's jury also gave special recognition to Julie Philips' biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.

We also have these books from the Tiptree Honor List:
The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner (2006)
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell (2006)
A Brother's Price, by Wen Spencer (2005)

Check out http://www.tiptree.org/ for more Tiptree Winners and more information about the Tiptree Award. You can also find more information about this year's winners at http://www.wiscon.info/downloads/W31eCube9.html.

The Tiptree Awards will be presented on May 27, 2007 at WisCon; Jen and I will be there!

Nif

Quote: Barbara Kingsolver

My second quotation is from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the brand-new book from Barbara Kingsolver and her family. It's an extraordinary book, and I haven't read very far into it yet. My original quote idea was three paragraphs from chapter 1 that begin, "We'd surely do better, if only we knew any better." (Go read them; they're quite thought-provoking!) There's a question in there about what asparagus plants look like in August. I have my neighbor Rhoda to thank for the fact that I actually know the answer to this question!

Anyway, someone convinced me that the three paragraphs would be too long, so I went searching for another quote. This was not hard: practically any paragraph in the four chapters I've read would be an effective pull-quote. I've settled on the following, which takes asparagus (and its unusual growing cycle) and goes deeper:

"From the outlaw harvests of my childhood, I've measured my years by asparagus. I sweated to dig it into countless yards I was destined to leave behind, for no better reason than that I believe in vegetables in general, and this one in particular. Gardeners are widely known and mocked for this sort of fanaticism. But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely. If we gardeners can, in the same spirit, put our heels to the shovel, kneel before a trench holding tender roots, and then wait three years for an edible incarnation of the spring equinox, who's to make the call between ridiculous and reverent?"

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Fan Website!

Check out the new and improved Scholastic Harry Potter fan website: www.scholastic.com/harrypotter

It's got magnified cover art (look for clues!), printable posters, and a special challenge: review each Harry Potter book in exactly seven words!

Preorders!

The Big Blue Marble is now taking preorders for the seventh and final book in the series, due out July 21. The book will be sold at a 25% discount. Reserve yours today!

Release day events!

Thursday and Friday, July 19 and 20:
Ongoing reading of Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Want to take a turn? Just stop in and offer!

Friday, July 20, 7:07pm:
Starting at 7 minutes after 7, anyone in costume will be eligible for our homemade costume contest!

Midnight, July 21, 12:00am:
The Midnight Release Party! Books will be released from their cages, and we will have games, prizes, and refreshments. Starting at 12:01, there will be a reading of Chapter 1 (and Chapter 1 only) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Saturday, July 21, 10:00am:
Readings of The Deathly Hallows will continue during our regular store hours.

Quote: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Hi! Greetings from your new(ish) friendly neighborhood webmaven.

As I've been getting more familiar with the website, I have noted that our blog has been sadly neglected for some time. I'd like to rejuvenate the blog by posting quotations from books that we have in the store. I'll aim for weekly posts; we'll see how that goes.

For my first offering, a quote from a surprising source: It turns out that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who died this month at the age of 84, wrote the Afterword for the book Free to Be...You and Me (Running Press, 1974). I was surprised, at least, and I grew up with the record album!

"I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. And one thing I would really like to tell them about is cultural relativity. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

Nif's Recent Reads

I read really fast, so I thought it would be fun to keep a log of the books I read each week.

NIF’S RECENT READS

Young Adult

Getting It by Alex Sanchez, published by Simon and Schuster, $16.95 hardcover

Carlos is 15 and has never had a girlfriend or a hookup or anything. When he notices that Sal, who is gay, is comfortable talking with girls, he decides to ask Sal for some “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” type help. Sal agrees, but only if Carlos will help him start a gay-straight alliance at their school.

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I just discovered Adrian Fogelin, who writes moving, humorous stories about interracial friendship and young teens learning to be true to themselves. I read these two and am eager to read more.

Crossing Jordan, by Adrian Fogelin, published by Peachtree Press, $6.95 paperback
Cass’s dad builds a fence when he finds out that the new neighbors are black. But Cass and Jemmie both love to run, and they forge a friendship stronger than their parents’ disapproval.

The Big Nothing, by Adrian Fogelin, published by Peachtree Press, $6.95 paperback
Justin’s dad left home, his mom is depressed, and his brother is about to be shipped to Iraq. Learning to play the piano brings much needed solace, but also awakens a crush on a girl more popular than him.

Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction

Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett, published by Avon Tempest, $16.99 hardcover

I may have mentioned that I intend to read everything Terry Pratchett writes. This third book about Tiffany Aching is pure fun. If you’ve read Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith is a must-read. If you haven’t read any of them, what are you waiting for?

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At WisCon this year I was pleased to meet Scott Westerfield and his wife Justine Larbalestier. Both are writing fresh, exciting young adult SF&F from down under, and I was really excited to see these sequels come out.

Specials by Scott Westerfield, published by Simon Pulse, $15.95 hardcover

This is the conclusion of the trilogy that started with Uglies and Pretties. In Tally’s world, everyone gets cosmetic surgery when they turn 16…whether they want it or not. Tally and her friends are now Special, their rebellious natures subverted to make them part of the controlling elite of their society.

Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier, published by Razorbill, $16.99 hardcover

Only a few short weeks ago, fifteen-year-old Reason thought that magic didn’t exist. Now she knows that has to use magic, or else she’ll go crazy, but if she uses too much magic, she will die. Family and friends with similar powers are faced with the same hard choices. Reason is caught between two powerful grandparents with suspicious motives, pulled between Sydney and New York, and chased by a mysterious figure with magical powers unlike that of anyone else she knows. Who will help her? Who can she trust? The second book of the trilogy that began with Magic or Madness.

More to come...