Fifty/Fifty check in: week 6 and 7

I missed week six’s Fifty/Fifty check in, so here’s two for one, both week six and week seven recap.

Still no movies. And now that we’ve added selling Girl Scout cookies to the schedule, I’m not sure when I actually will watch another movie. However, I’m not giving up on that part of the challenge. It’s just … delayed.

Books

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

This book has been described as a female version of Heart of Darkness–and I can see that. I don’t think I liked this one as much as I liked Bel Canto. However, I do love Ann Patchett’s writing, so this was well worth my while.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Unlike many readers, I already knew a great deal about the deportations and the forced labor camps of the Stalin years. (One of the side effects of majoring in Russian.) That didn’t make it any less powerful. I would highly recommend this one to young adult readers, especially those interested in this part of history.

The prose is spare by lyrical and the story and the history is presented in a way that’s very accessible. Last year, Andrew tackled One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and while he found it very interesting, there were events I had to explain to him. I don’t think younger readers will have that problem with this book.

Rita Book #4

Rita Book #5

And that’s it. Once I’m through with the Rita books, I’ll be able to talk about everything I’m reading.

100 years of Girl Scouting is keeping me busy

100 years of Girl Scouting can keep you pretty busy. So can epic Girl Scout cookie sales. And we’re doing both this month and next. As part of all this, we’re working on the Girl Scout Way badge, since we can knock out three requirements at the big anniversary celebration at the Mall of America (oh, my word, this looks to be like barely contained chaos).

The indoor amusement park will be open early–and just for the Girl Scouts. Is Kyra excited about this? Yes, yes she is.

Today at our meeting we learned about the woman who started it all Juliette Gordon Low:

You can view Part Two and Part Three as well. It’s a nicely done biography of her that runs a little more than thirty minutes total. Even though I was a Girl Scout for twelve years, I’m not really sure I knew much of Juliette’s story. It’s really quite fascinating.

Afterward we watched this, the girls made up a play about the first Girl Scout meeting. Even though I didn’t actually attend the first Girl Scout meeting, I think I’m safe in saying that the one the girls presented in no way resembled what actually happened.

And now it’s time to go sell some cookies … want a Thin Mint?

Fifty/Fifty check in: week 5

Week 5 Fifty/Fifty check in! Welcome to February!

I’m still experiencing the books vs. movies conundrum. I don’t think this is going to change until I finish the Rita reading. Then maybe I’ll double up on movies in March and April to catch up.

So all I have this week is books. No surprise there. I always have books.

Books

250 Things You Should Know About Writing by Chuck Wendig

This is not writing advice for the faint of heart. Trust me on this. When something is described as:

… a booze-soaked, profanity-brined, Zen-lacquered look at the craft and art of writing, one list of “25 Things” at a time.

One should not complain when it actually is (looking at you, one-star reviews). I read this book a bit at a time over the past two weeks or so, every morning, while I drank my Gatorade after exercising. Some people read devotionals in the morning. I chose this. Not sure what that says about me. Probably nothing flattering.

Rita Book #3

Finished this one yesterday afternoon while Kyra played with all the cleaning supplies (the mop got married to the broom–I think). Started Book #4 last night.

Bonus

Wait! I do have something else this week, although it’s not a book or a movie. My mom and I went to see Ragtime at the Park Square Theatre today! It was incredible. The Park Square has really been on fire this season.

Review: To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918

First book in my War Through the Generations WWI reading challenge. I really enjoyed this book and it was a great way to kick off the challenge. If you’re interested in the war, in particular from the British perspective, and also enjoy personal histories, this may be the book for you.

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild (Summary from Amazon):

World War I stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before.

He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain’s leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.

These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain’s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.

To the author’s credit, Adam Hochschild really does try to explain World War I, or at least, explain why it started. To do that, he takes us back beyond the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, into England, Europe, and the world several years before that event.

We see the British in the Sudan and get a comprehensive look at the Boer War. We meet the pairs we’ll follow from the war’s start to past its end, such as Field Marshall John French and his sister (and activist/suffragette) Charlotte Despard.   Despite the fact he was Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force and she was an outspoken opponent of the war, the two remained on good terms throughout the war. In fact, Charlotte seemed to have a soft spot for her younger brother, whom she called Jack. It was only later, over the question of Irish independence, that their relationship finally shattered.

There’s a good reason this book has been nominated for a 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award. While I’ve read other books on World War I, and even listened to more than one lecture series on the subject, this is the first time I really got a comprehensive picture of the entire war.

True, the focus is on Britain. However, Hochschild gives the reader enough of the big picture, both in the war and what’s happening in other countries, that the pieces all come together. The technique he uses–giving us the overview and then drilling down and showing us the individual lives of the pairs he follows in the narrative–is both effective and riveting reading.

Put it away (or how Angry Birds can help your writing)

So, I found this article via Wired the other day:

How Do We Identify Good Ideas?

And it has so many amazing things that apply to writing (and really, any creative endeavor) that I wanted to highlighted here (in case you missed it).

Here’s the gist:

A new study led by Simone Ritter of the Radboud University in the Netherlands sheds some light on this mystery. In the first experiment, 112 university students were given two minutes to come up with creative ideas that might alleviate a mundane problem: improving the experience of waiting in line at a cash register. The subjects were then divided into two groups: Half of them went straight to work, while the others were first instructed to perform an unrelated task for two minutes. (They played a silly little videogame.) The purpose of this delay was to give the unconscious a chance to percolate, to let that subterranean supercomputer invent new concepts for the supermarket queue.

The outcome? Those who’d been distracted were twice as good at picking out their truly innovative ideas.

The article also quotes Zadie Smith. And the quote is so full of all kinds of wonderful, I need to share it here as well:

When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second — put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year or more is ideal — but even three months will do…. You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in twelve different versions.

This is my go-to writing advice. What do you do with a finished draft? Put it away. No, really. Do not look at it. Do not think about it. Mind you, hardly anyone ever follows this advice. In fact, it took me years to follow it myself. Now? It’s like my religion.

My drafting process goes a little something like this:

  • Workup/draft like crazy until I reach the end of the draft (this is important–get to the end)
  • Put it away for 4 – 6 weeks, at least
  • Do another draft.
  • Continue the process until it’s ready for someone else to read.

Sometimes I take something out too soon. How do I know this? Because it literally hurts my eyes and ears to read it. I loathe every. single. word. If I’m feeling the hate, I put it away until … well, I don’t feel the hate.

What to do in the meantime? Well, you could:

  • Write another novel (no, really, I’m serious about this)
  • Write a short story
  • Write an article for a trade magazine
  • Blog
  • Take a class in some form of writing you’ve never tried
  • Read

The list is endless. You don’t have to stop writing. The goal is to stop picking at your novel like it’s a scab on your knee.

Fifty/Fifty check in: week 4

Week 4 Fifty/Fifty check in! Can you believe that January is almost over?

This week, I’m again experiencing the books vs. movies conundrum. I read three books. I watched … zero movies. I’d planned to watch a movie last night, had it all picked out and everything. But then I weighed my options and realized the wiser decision was to finish Rita book #2.

And it was the wiser decision; it really was. If I keep pace at one book a week, then I’ll finish up before the deadline with a few days to spare. After I’m done, I’ll have to have a movie madness month to catch up on the challenge. Or maybe I could get the flu and watch an endless stream of them (she says optimistically).

So, here’s my check in for the week:

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild (War Through the Generations challenge book)

First book for the WWI War Through the Generations challenge and it was a good one. I won’t say much about it here, because I’ll be writing a longer review for the challenge, but I really enjoyed this.

iDrakula by Bekka Black

I picked this up at the library on a whim and read it while I was sitting poolside at Kyra’s swim lessons. It was cute, quick, and fun–a modern retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with text messages, emails, web pages, and so on. It was the perfect thing to read in between Rita book #2 and Rita book #3.

Rita Book #2

Finished this one last night. Onward with book #3.

YALSA 2012 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults: Get Your Geek On!

So excited to announce that The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading is a YALSA 2012 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults pick in the Get Your Geek On category!

In fact, I’m so excited, I keep checking the list–and then zooming past our listing. Then I’m all:

Oh, no! I just announced this to the world and look, we’re not there!

Then I check again. Yes, yes. We’re (still) there.

In the words of Darcy: I ❤ librarians.

We do. It’s true. Also true? There’s some good reading in those lists. Just from 2012, you can choose from:

  • Adventure Seekers
  • Forbidden Romance
  • Get Your Geek On
  • Sticks and Stones

But take a look at all the lists compiled through the years. If you’re doing the Fifty/Fifty challenge, you could build a major or a minor based on those categories.

So, what are you waiting for? Get reading!

Skateboarding gals, won’t you come out tonight

So this week, Kyra completed her big project for the Junior aMUSE badge set. Previously, she created a girl, and gave her a goal and something that concerned her, and listed some of her favorite things . For you writers out there, if you think this sounds like the start of a character sketch, you’d be right.

The final requirement is completing a play, poem, story, comic, etc. about your girl. Kyra wanted to write a play, with a part for everyone in her troop (fortunately, we’re a small troop and that’s only six parts).

I could not dissuade her. It had to be a play and we’re going to do a read-through performance at the next meeting.

So, she wrote the draft by hand, and then last night, set to work on my computer typing the whole thing out.

The Skateboarding Gals  comes in at three pages and 457 words. The climax involves exploding garbage. I do not know why. I was not the creative consultant for that part of the project.

My favorite part is this:

Halley: I wish I could skateboard

Lilly Suzy and Sally: I’ll teach you

All exchange glances.

Lilly Suzy and Sally: We’ll teach you

Lilly: after the exploding garbage

Then they all ride off (on skateboards) into the sunset. After the exploding garbage, of course. What? You were doubting the happy ending?

I, for one, am looking forward to The Skateboarding Gals limited run in the library’s meeting room. It’s sure to be standing room only.

Fifty/Fifty check in: week 3

Ah, week three and I’m well on my way in reading and writing (the watching, not so much this week). How can you tell I’m working on a new project? The posts on my blog go way down. It’s like I have only one writing mode, and right now, that mode is fiction.

But I’m committed to updating at least once a week and to the Fifty/Fifty challenge.

Books

Understanding Anemia by Ed Uthman

I should probably state for the record that I read this for writing research purposes only (although I have actually been anemic, but never mind that). See the part above where I’m working on a project. This ties into that.

But even if it didn’t? It’s a really interesting and well written book. You don’t need more than high school level biology to understand it. Even if you don’t remember your high school biology, the author has included handy appendices on cell biology, the metric system, and so on.

Plus, he’s pretty funny to boot. When was the last time you read a text book that proclaimed:

The spleen, however, is not amused.

This is just one of many examples. So, if you need to understand anemia, this is a great place to start.

May B. by Caroline Starr Rose

May B. is a middle grade novel in verse about a girl trapped by herself in a tiny sod house during the winter. Kyra and I read this together, each of us taking turns reading a verse at a time.

We loved it. Of course, Kyra is already a fan of history and “old fashion girls” as she says. The writing is evocative and we could “see” the story play out before our eyes.

If you’re a fan of the Little House books (and old fashion girls in general), I highly recommend this one.

Rita Book #1

This is the main reason I didn’t watch a movie this week for the challenge (although I’m seriously thinking of changing that next week). I got my box of books for the Rita contest. I will pretty much be a reading fool for the next several weeks. And that’s all I can say about that.

Fifty/Fifty check in: week 2

A little late with the Fifty/Fifty check in this week, although I got my reading and watching done (and some writing, that’s why I’m late with the check in).

In books, I was all about self-help. In movie(s), it was all about the crying.

Books

The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less & Create Success by Sage Cohen.

This book is pretty much what it says it is. Tips and tools for writing more and finding what you want to write as well. One huge plus is the author presents the material as options, not as “must do’s.” If you don’t know where to start in organizing your writing life, this would be a good first stop.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

It must be the New Year! We’re all about productivity and success. This was my audio book for the weekly commute and I also enjoyed. I’m all revved up now to tackle the world–or at least my little corner of it.

Movies

War Horse (film)

War Horse: A recent movie! In a theater! I know. And one that involves crying in public. Even better. Especially when it involves crying with one’s daughter in public.

Yeah, I took Kyra (and Andrew–I wasn’t too worried about him). Initially, I wasn’t sure this would be a good idea. Especially when Kyra sat through the Titanic preview (now in 3D!) with both hands clamped over her mouth.

Two and a half hours later, we emerged, tear-stained and emotionally drained. But it was worth it. She did like the movie; she loved Joey the horse (she’s a horse girl). Plus, both kids like history, so this spurred all sorts of conversations afterward. Kyra wants to learn more about World War I. (And how many nine-year-olds say that?)

Visually, the film is stunning (sometimes hard to watch, but stunning all the same). It’s been a while since I’ve sen a movie in a theater and I don’t regret choosing this one.