Amelia Carolyn's Open Salon Blog

Book by Book: Reading the Tomes that Time . . . and I Forgot

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:12:38 -0500

I can't decide whether I should just call it as a blogger or attempt to make some kind of go of it.

So far, I have made very little progress in making such a decision.

Then again, this year I've made very little progress at anything but raising my blood pressure to dangerous limits for a non-smoking 27 year old and sharpening an admittedly sharp tongue on my loved ones. Ah, that first year of teaching . . . but that's a horror story for another time.

The winter break has provided me with some needed relief valves. Sleep. Eating more than half a meal a day. No children throwing things at me, cussing me out, grabbing me, or screaming in my face.

Perhaps the most important part of my return to some normalcy has been the ability to lay on my couch, pull a throw over me, sip a mug of Blood Pressure Tea, and read a book.

Yes. Read. A. Book.

Having just finished The Ronin's Mistress, the latest in the perenially well-done and I say entralling Sano Ichiro series by Laura Joh Rowland, I have eagerly dived into The Hare With The Amber Eyes, a Salon-recommended family memoir.

As I have only finished the prologue, I will have to keep my posts updated.

With this renewed relationship with books - the most enduring in my life - my eyes wander to my little sunroom. When I tear my eyes from the trees beyond the windows, I see the brimming book cases, stacks mounded on top of them. They sit, silent and a little forlorn.

There are the books that I have not gotten around to reading.

Some of them have been there for years.

They would accuse me but then what book in this age of iPad, iPod, iPhone, Kindle, Brindle, and Ember wants to piss off a potential reader?

Some were gifts, proudly presented in wrapping paper.

Others I picked up for a token sum at book fairs.

A few were even once on the Take-A-Book shelves of Metra Stations from my ill-spent year in West Chicagoland.

That's not to say many aren't well worn and well loved. Had they faces, they would smile and tell the unread stacks, "She's really quite lovely. She loves our stories and reads us again and again."

The unread stacks would mutter back, "We wouldn't know."

So, this year, to some the last year of the world (where have we heard that before, I wonder?) I will do my best to read and review five of my unread books a month. I've tried projects before and never quite succeeded.

To be fair, I didn't have as much escapist incentive before.

But, if this year of unrelenting work and worry has taught me nothing else, it is this: Escape while you can. The work and worry will always be waiting. A book will take you far away and always be there to take you again when you have to come back.

So, the five reads for January are:

1) The Hare With The Amber Eyes by Edmund DeWaal

2)Dear Theo by Vincent Van Gogh, edited by Irving Stone with Jean Stone

3)The People's Act of Love by : James Meek

4) The Sari Shop Widow b: Shobhan Bantwal

5) A Map of The World by: Jane Hamilton

Some of these may become well-loved friends. Others, well, there's a reason Paperbackswap.com exists.

Only time and the breadth of my commitment this month will tell.

Stay tuned . . .

Cliches Romance Novelists Should Avoid Ala the Plague

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:02:25 -0500

(Coughing to cue my fellow readers to stopping yapping over coffee . . .)

Hello. My name is Amelia.

And I'm a romance novel addict.

(Response, "Hi, Amelia.)

That wasn't so hard.

This next part is going to be more difficult.

As that celebration of coupled love - Valentine's Day - approaches, I felt there was no better time for this post.

Given some of my previous posts, it would be natural to assume that I am a discriminating reader. While I'd like to think of myself as a reader with tastes worthy of the NPR Book Blog, that would be a lie of unholy proportions.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am a romance novel addict.

And not just your upper-scale chick-lit.

I have owned several busty-fronted Harlequin covers and admit to having read them front to back multiple times.

There are indeed Nora Roberts epics, Sherryl Woods trilogies and Jennifer Cruise crumbles taking up space on my permanent bookshelves.

And many Valentine's past I could be found munching on Russell Stover's, sniffling, reading some tale of a prince that I was pretty well convinced wasn't ever going to come my way. Literally and figuratively.

No, I'm not sober yet, even now that I'm happily coupled.

But, as someone addicted to arguably some of the worst writing to leave a publishers' press, I think I'm in a position to give some advice.

Established authors of Her Heart's Desire and The Highland Hussy heed me!

Novice scribes churning out Brazenly Yours and The Beauty's Beau lend me your ears and preferably pens!

Beginners testing out that first sex scene with Jorge, the troubled but sensitive heir to some forgotten Spanish Throne and Zelphia, the quirky but uber-attractive librarian-turned-pirate queen, hear now!

These are a Romance Novel Addict's Cliches to Please God, Avoid!

1) Raoul, Sebastian, Chase or Eduardo.

Yes, we are living in the age of names like Apple, Suri, and Pax. But really? How man Raouls did you have growing up down the block from you? Maybe you had some. Good for you. But I think not.

I would have thought the exotically named but still approachable sex-pot went out with Tyrone Power (and look how well that turned out for the ladies. Gay guys, well their fantasties were a bit more realistic now that I think about it.) Give the weird names a rest.

2) Philadelphia, Desdemona, Cleopatra, and Ruby.

Similar argument to above. There are other ways to demonstrate your character's uniqueness than just giving them some outlandish moniker. That this comes from someone with the legal name "Amelia," take heed.

3) Eating things off one another during the heat of passion.

This one comes from my best friend - a woman far more incisive in sexual matters than yours truly. To sum up our epic critique of this love-game: Sticky, smelly and who wants to stop what you're doing to wash.

Smearing chocolate, cream, honey or any other substance all over another is probably a better idea in theory than in practice. And I remember one incredibly drawn-out scene that involved spaghetti sauce in the heroine's long black hair and oysters placed in spots no oyster should ever go. I don't want to imagine cleaning that up. Ick. Simple Ick.

4) "She came like a geyser."

That is an actual quotation from a romance novel that need not be named. I read that line to my boyfriend in the earlier days of our courtship. His response was, "Really? Seriously? Came like a geyser?" I don't know what sex that heroine was having. But "a geyser?"

My own inclination is to compare the joy of full-on canoodling to pigs enjoying a mud bath. Primal, unsophisticated, clumsy and a tad messy. I appreciate the need to dress up sex up. Who wants to read a scene that is "primal, unsophisticated, clumsy and a tad messy?"

Keep the expectations a little more real, my dear authors, lest you be laughed out of the room. If the writing even remotely smacks of the outlandish, back away from the orgasmic adjectives.

5) The heavy-handed hero who is secretly as sensitive as the Tim Gunn.

You can't have it both ways. I can't begin to recall how many times I've read a smut novel with a hero who in one scene hauls Brunhilda up on his shoulder to end an argument but who then turns into a straight Will Truman with Godiva and candles in the next.

Maybe women secretly do long for a man to take charge but then quote Keats. But that's about as real as the Easter Bunny dropping off gold bars and Microsoft stock options. Let your heroes be clods if needed! Let them be real, not ideal!

And, gentleman, rakes and scions of made-up industries, I'm really not interested in your "troubled pasts," that usually equal 1) a bitch done you wrong, 2) Daddy left or done you wrong, or 3) somebody screwed you over. Can we have a real problem like, "I'm getting laid off," "I'm caring for an aging parent," "My dog died?"

6) The stereotypical gay friend.

This character is also known - in the words of my best friend - "the gay guy who is only there to act as a bitching post."

This is the person who coaches our heroine into being a total sex-bomb or who comforts her ala a good "fairy" godmother when the hero doesn't get it. They even buy lingerie for her.

Please, people! We don't all live in an episode of Will and Grace or chapter of Bridget Jones' Diary. Gay guys are three-dimensional people too! And why not a lesbian best friend? Any takers?

7) The introverted bookworm who magically becomes a sex-pot is sooooooooooooo over.

Can I get you all a copy of The Feminine Mystique?

Maybe the transcripts from the Seneca Falls Convention?

The mousey heroine is usually a wall-flower, librarian, or other stereotypical frump who never went to prom and usually gets overlooked until her transformation. I often picture it when reading romance novels as something akin to sex reassignment surgery. Off comes the Frumpage and on goes the Hotness.

Not appealing, folks. Seems painful. And probably involves contorted underwear.

If we're trying to convince women to appreciate what the Divine being gave them, then lets use our descriptive powers to paint real, flawed but fantastic heroines. And the sexual prowess of what's between our legs isn't the be-all-end-all of attraction! Who's with me? (Crickets chirping ominously.)

8) The education of the naive female sexually by the virile hero.

Sooooooooooooo outdated.

And, ladies and gentleman of the romantic pen, patronizing.

Even if a woman isn't sexually experienced at an older age, that doesn't mean she doesn't read Cosmopolitan or (gasp) look at porn etc. to educate herself about sex. It's damned irritating to think women are so foolish as to need a "skilled" male tutor. Welcome to the 21st Century, folks!

9) The single dad with the scampering, precocious kids.

A fixture in romance novels from Regency bodice rippers to the Cheseapeke Shores Series of Sherryl Woods, this one. And one lacking in reality.

Children are not always charming. They don't usually scamper. They aren't generally precocious. The wonderful relationship is usually something that takes years to build for both the father character and the newly invested heroine.

If it ever happens.

There are plenty of kids who hate Step-Mama. Forever.

I just don't buy in a few short chapters that the new step-mama and papa overcome all that baggage to have this amazing relationship the little ones. Let's introduce some conflict - some major conflict!

(Are we picking up on my 'For the love of God, give your characters some texture theme yet?)(Same can be applied to single mom stories. Guys don't always fall in love with Junior either.)

10) The idyllic suburb or small town where the heroine abandons her ambition.

I have lived and worked in a large city, small dying but plucky town and the morass that is a Chicago suburb. No place is as nice as any place described in a romance novel. Ever. There are school district bus battles, beheaded lawn gnomes, and ugly battles over property line bushes.

Since the idyllic town or suburb usually leads to our heroine leaving a big, bad city and any ambition she had, I'm defintely not a fan.

My biggest complaint with this cliche' is that the heroine almost always bows out of her high-powered career when she decides to "follow her heart and stay in heaven" i.e. Rose Bay, Moonhaven, or whatever the name of the utopian small town or suburban location is.

At a time when women are advancing in most fields, outgunning men academically and slowing putting more cracks in the glass ceiling, why are our writers taking us back a step? Why can't we write about the woman who manages to be a kick-ass litigator, yoga master and mom? Why does she have to move to Lovers Bay to open a bakery with Mr. Right? Why can't Mr. Right move to Chicago while she becomes managing partner of her practice?

Maybe neither scenario is realistic but at least one is encouraging high-powered female achievement.

11) Throbbing Manhood. Throbbing or Pulsing Shaft. Turgid Shaft. Aching nipples. Honey pot. Dewy petals. Pouting nether lips. (Do I have to explain, really?)

Some are likely to take issue with my cliches. Cool.

It is my hope they encourage debate about what makes a good smut novel. And maybe helps in the writing of new ones to come.

We could use more of them. Good ones, that is.

I plan to pick up one after this list is posted to indulge in what I consider mind-booze.

But, even as I indulge, I keep in mind the words of a writing professor I had - a very angsty but astute Italian poet, paraphrased due to bad and lazy memory: "You have to think about, 'Is this honest.' You have to be willing to say, 'This is shit.'"

Happy reading and very "romantic writing" on this Valentine's Day.

A Dispatch from the Education War: The First Student

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:07:49 -0400

Shawna has a Tiger's eyes and an infatuation of anything Hello!Kitty.

She is capricious. Canny. Ever-changing.

This child has one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen.

One moment she will happily tell you about how she beat down another girl at school because she was "disrespecting me."

Then her face will change into a micro-burst storm cloud, the kind apt at throwing ball lightening before she sinks into herself refusing to look at you or to speak.

Shawna is my first student.

She is the reason I chose to leave the sidelines, put down my reporter's notebook, and enter the wars as a soldier.

But I am not entering our ranks to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq.

I have become a teacher.

---------------------

At first glance, there is nothing about Shawna that is inspiring. Nothing remarkable and everything that is all too ordinary in the measure of children found in my city's public school system.

Shawna is slender and growing taller.

At ten years old, she is a reed waiting to be plucked so she can vibrate.

She delights in bendy bracelets and girlish games on the computer.

Shawna crumples her homework assignments in her pockets and loathes our Hooked on Phonics book as only a child can - fiercely and resolutely.

My Shawna can hardly read beyond simple words. She struggles with "can't," and "jam."

To do basic math she resorts to her fingers or we work with crayons and number lines.

She copes as one has to.

And she is inclined to angry outbursts as frustration boils inside her.

It's not easy to be at the first grade level when you spend eight hours a day in a fourth grade classroom.

One might ask why a child such as Shawna is so behind. Is it a learning disability? Poverty? Inattentive and ineffective teachers? Lack of motivation? Lack of support at home?

I can tell you it is a combination of these things.

And it is a combination that morphs into a dogged hopelessness and understanding of the sheer pointlessness of learning.

This is what Shawna and I battle each week. One hour a week as an outlet from a life of increasing frustration that no child of ten years old in this nation should understand.

Shawna sees no point.

Her progress is so miniscule - the ability to read "the" or being able to add two plus two without fingers - that she must think, "Why waste my time? I could be playing dress-up on the computer."

Not so long ago, after nearly half an hour of silence and angry looks, I asked Shawna if she thought I would tell her that she was making progress when she wasn't. I asked if she thought I would lie to her about that.

The little girl looked at me, jaw set. Dark eyes smoldering.

"Yes."

I won't lie and claim that I have always kept hope at the end of such sessions.

There have - and I know there will be - times I believe the battle may be lost.

--------------------------

This story is all too common in the Education War. And make no mistake. 'War' is exactly what I mean.

It may become the truly defining struggle of our time - more so than any feat of arms, any battle against a foreign enemy.

Our enemy has closed in upon us and has broken through the gates.

That enemy is ignorance.

It bred by an education system stymied by unacknowledged class angst and a general apathy in our culture to education. It feeds on disputes between reformers. It is nurtured by bureaucracies more interested in their continued existence than the good they were established to perform.

Students like Shawna are too often condemned to learn the stunning, horrific truth that there is no 'Superman.'

There is nothing but the same cycle educational neglect and disappointment that leads our nation down a path of devolution not seen since before the invention of the printing press.

It is a grim future we face if all the universal learning gains we have come by since literacy spread beyond the cloister come to a screeching halt; or our ability to do math is reduced to dependence on a calculator; or the inability of our elected officials to correctly reference our nation's history in public statements shapes the political future.

This is a war and I cannot say yet if it is one that can be won.

That story remains to be fully written.

-----------------------------------

As for Shawna and for me, our stories in some ways are both ending and beginning.

For her, her time in one of my city's worst schools is coming to an end.

Through persistence and a great deal of will exercised by her family and other helping hands including mine, she has been accepted to one of the few charter schools where students are making the leaps needed to catch up and thrive academically. The school is targeted specifically at students like her.

At this school, it is my hope she will get the help and attention she needs.

She started her first day of summer school today.

Her path may not be certain and it may never be a Lifetime Movie of the Week.

But at least for the moment there is the hope of something brighter. The hope this one child may learn to write and read, may get the education circumstances beyond her control have denied her.

And it is a hope that has been delivered on, not just promised never to appear.

As for me, there is also an end and a beginning soon to come.

Next week marks my last week as a journalist.

Next month, I will stand in my first classroom with students not unlike my Shawna and take my place in the battle line.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned in this post.

The First 15 Windowsill Books I Need to Read . . .

Tue, 4 Jan 2011 15:01:53 -0500

The Semi-Writerly resolutions have gotten off well.

Well, excepting the relearning basic Danish.

Rosetta Stone's customer service folks and I need to have a word about why the thing won't fully install and now won't come off my computer.

But I digress . . .

So far had kept to semi-diet, have semi-exercised, have written each day as required and have fed soul this week by seeing Black Swan. (Soul was in the mood for the equivalent of a really strong Black Russian with a little bleeding maraschino cherry spike.)

My eyes are turning to the Windowsill Books as I'm going to call them.

I have trip to Chicago coming up.

That will mean about ten total hours of train time, plus or minus a talkative seat-mate.

The last time I rode the train I got no reading done as I listened to the life story of an ex-Israeli Army officer and biker who was trying to figure out a major life problem.

Again, I digress. That's a story for another day.

The Windowsill books are taking lessons from my Basset Hound in reproachful looks.

They tell me, "You promised to read us last year and you didn't. Are you going to keep breaking your promise to us?"

An old journalism professor noted that I have a problem with over-promising and under-delivering. I've been working on it, Books, so pipe the hell down.

My trip would seem to be an excellent time to start keeping that promise.

I may not keep it to all the books on the sill this year (Books moan and hiss behind me).

But, I'd like to make it farther than last year's tally of two. I'm still not certain how I made it through The Niebelung Saga and not the saintly The Life of Thomas More.

Maybe blood-thirsty queens who lop off heads are more interesting than saints who got their heads lopped off?

Wonder what that says about me?

But, a third time, I digress.

I have to start somewhere so here are the first 15 Windowsill Books I intend to tackle in this newest of years:

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee and Walker Evans

Madam Secretary, Madeleine Albright

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

The Map of True Places, Brunonia Barry

Away, Amy Bloom

March, Geraldine Brooks

The Fruit of Her Hands, Michelle Cameron

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

The Best American Short Stories 2005, edited by Michael Chabon

Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran

The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

Hearts Grown Brutal, Roger Cohen

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

A lot of heavy reading. Many classics that were so wonderfully shortened in childhood text books and Great Illustrated Classics.

Perhaps some of my musings as I tackle the tomes could be on whether or not a Great Illustrated Classics series for adults.

Consider how reality TV directly destroys our ability to concentrate and think of matters beyond Snooki or Cookie or Sharpy's latest plastic surgery/new bi-sexual love affair/fashion dilemma, it probably couldn't hurt.

But then, as the books eye me hopefully, I can't help but wonder if I shouldn't count myself amongst those I just needled.

As the Basset Hound is busy consuming a bone on his sunroom dog bed - as opposed to the bedroom or living room bed - he won't advise me on the matter.

Oh well. On to reading dangerously and purposefully.

Windowsill Books Away!

A (Semi) Writer's Resolutions

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:12:31 -0500

The New York Times Review of Books must have read my mind.

Or, at least one of the writers featured in the Review's online features and I think alike. That would be Emma Donoghue, the author of Room.

We both have resolved in the coming year to complete the same resolution: reading all of the books we have stacked in our various dwellings for the purpose of "Read before death."

I wish Emma the best of luck.

I admit, I've been cheating, having started earlier this soon-to-be-past year by going through my bookshelves, culling all those I haven't read or can't remember reading, and placing said volumes on one of my sunroom's window sills in alphabetical order.

I have thus far made it through one and a half.

Those would be The Niebelung Saga and The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd.

I made it through the blood and guts of Kriemhild's war of wrath.

I could not make it through More's subsuming his lusts in scholarship in Ackroyd's tome. That will shortly join various Nora Roberts' books on Paperbackswap.com in order to hopefully leave my shelves.

By my count there are 70 books currently in my apartment that I have yet to touch.

Those tomes include The Disappearing Spoon, Blue Highways, and The Awakening amongst other volumes of varied topics.

Not exactly a task I look forward to. In times of need, I will happily thumb through the same books I've already read dozens of times, dog-eared pages bending one step closer to total surrender.

But, I must press on. I need to return to the militant self-discipline that led me to develop both a full life and stress condition in college.

As I spent the evening eating peanut butter crunch cookies, watching episodes of Psych and drawing charcoal portraits of the basset hound snoring on his lux new dog bed, that return will be a long time coming.

Forgive me, I'm kind of a lazy ass.

Among the other (semi) writer resolutions I have made for 2011, they are:

1) To write one hour each day for the pleasure of doing so. That 193 page NANOWRIMO novel won't finish itself. Nor will the half-written adaptation of "The Tale of Forty Thieves" or epic story of a fat girl in a fairy tale kingdom bent on perfection.

2) To abstain from Facebook stalking for the purpose of making self feel inferior to various college class mates, ex-friends and generally anyone who posts great pictures from world travels.

3) To do something cultural each week in order to nourish a currently starving soul. This must involve leaving apartment. (Basset hound looks dubious before returning to snoring)

4) To use all gift cards. Finding $60 in I-Tunes gift cards in an ornament box this year was ridiculous.

5) Walk the dog more often. Also, get increasingly heavy butt out to exercise. (Who doesn't have this one going in the Supersized US of A?)

6) Reorganize kitchen cabinets.

7) Install Rosetta Stone successfully on computer in order to brush up on Danish - and perhaps move beyond a three year-old speaking level

8) Visit the Scott Joplin House. It's five minutes away for crying out loud. Same goes for the Eugene Field House

9) Stop emotional eating. Step away from the cake. And pizza. And Gouda slices.

And, as mentioned above, reading my Before Death books.

Because, any writer who doesn't read is far more talented than I am. My creative life just isn't that in tune with the universal muse.

Perhaps next year I'll have to add trying to publish to my list. The closest I've ever been to that Holy Grail - outside of the newspaper realm - was a college literary magazine a friend started.

But the years since that have been dry and distracted.

And you have to write before you can publish. It's not exactly a chicken or egg scenario there.

Perhaps my resolutions aren't as interesting or sophisticated as those found in the Review's list.

But they'll give me something to do and something to amuse the dog.

And I have to think, what will all you other writers do?