Sunday rambles

So far today:

I've spent far too much time hoping someone would post something funny on facebook.

I printed out Raley's coupons and went grocery shopping. With sales and coupons, I saved a lot of money, but still was well over $50, which is the cutoff for getting 50 cents off per gallon at their gas station. The Toddler behaved as she ran around in a Christmas sweater and charmed people.

We got two fairly large "ponkins" at $1 each (coupon!) and then paid whatever per pound for a smaller white one. I'll probably still take them to a pumpkin patch next week when they have half days due to conferences. Maybe even Apple Hill?

There's a neighbor across the way cutting with a chainsaw. I might take my computer and move someplace quieter, ie not right by the front window.

They are predicting a little rain for this afternoon. It looks, feels, and smells like it and there are already a few little sprinkles.

I'm getting excited for NaNoWriMo. I have an outline that I want to read over and add some things to. I'm also reading a book about Louis XIV and might even get to Mme de Sevigné's letters. Maybe. I got distracted yesterday by a contemporary romance by Jill Shalvis that I bought when it first came out about 3 weeks ago and which has been langushing, unread, until now. I also went through my library requests and put a freeze on everything that I could that's not a movie for the kids, etc. I'm already returning more books than I read these days.

We just had grilled cheese for lunch. "Grilled" in the sense of toasted under the broiler, because the Brits call that the grill. See? At least I amuse myself, right?

Peepee and poopoo in the potty sometimes seems like the biggest moment of the day, you know? Toddler's, not mine...

PICTURES

A friend wanted this out of her yard, since her baby is 8. So we paid her and went and took it apart and I put it together alone, which took more brains than brawn, which is why it took me an extra half hour or so.









DS2 mowing. $10 for the whole yard, including trimming. I might pay more, but I have to do a lot of supervising and nagging.



I got a box of books and stuff from a blog I read, Book Binge, which was giving away stuff. So my pink-clad girl got the sunglasses and hat, at least for a few minutes. If they had fit better and if she ever ever ever kept a hat on, I would consider letting her keep them. The books are MINE, though!

Kiss Me if You Can by Carly Phillips ( a review)

I got an ARC (Advance Reader Copy, aka Galley) of Kiss Me if You Can because I was the lucky blog reader whose name got pulled out of the hat. So I read it and figured I'd post a review for all five of my loyal readers, only one of whom reads romance novels.

Let me just say that I will probably pull a few punches because it was free and because the author comes across as genuinely nice.

It's OK. About 6/10. I liked it better than her "Lucky" books which were her series before this one.

The heroine seems so much more put together and balanced than what everyone says about her. I know some of that is meant to be that her family always treated her fairly shabbily because she wasn't as uptight and as much of an overachiever as her parents and sister, but it still came across as odd. She has a website business and is successful and travels a lot for the joy of it - doing some of her best work in Timbuktoo and Outer Mongolia and so on.

She always patterned herself instead on her wacky grandmother, but when Grandma ends up not having always had much of a moral code and the heroine (no, I can't remember her name) is thrown for a loop.

The hero feels like he failed at everything. He meant to be a cop, but had a shoulder injury and had to give it up. He was married to a stewardess who cheated on him and left him. He wants to be an author, not a journalist, but almost no one bought his first book and he has writer's block. His main problem with the heroine is that she likes to travel and sometimes goes on long trips, so he decides he shouldn't fall for her because she is therefore just like his ex. Neurotic much?

I mean, they almost break up because the heroine asks him to travel to Australia with her. Even if he doesn't want to quit his job so he can he becomes a fabulously rich author overnight (because surely we all know that's how it works!), surely he has some vacation time coming up? She usually travels for long periods of time, but even she should know she can take shorter trips and doesn't have to give up all travel forever.

When they have long conversations, the author pretty much says "they had a long conversation" instead of making it about anything, which would at least show us that they were sharing a bit about their interests.

They're brought together because he foils a jewelry robbery and the store owner's daughter offers him a reward, so he takes the ugliest, cheapest thing he sees, and it turns out to be a ring that was stolen in the 50's and it matches the ugly, horrid necklace that the heroine's grandmother only wears at home. He's also in the news and then featured on a blog of handsome, available bachelors (which subplot pretty much falls off the map about halfway through), and the jewelry store owner sees the ring and has to get it back so no one knows.

I felt the stolen ring plot was a bit silly, with the grandmother and her best friend providing geriatric laughs and being a bit over the top.

The sex scenes were hot, but we all know that good sex does not a great relationship make, right?

So it was a light read and a bit of fluff. Fun, but a bit frustrating.

revision, revision, revision, books, kids, and other stuff

My class started yesterday!

I'm taking Lani Diane Rich's StoryWonk Revision class. She's an excellent writer and has been running these classes for a while - and I need all the help I can get with editing for plot, structure, and story.

So first week, we have to read the story without editing (hard to do, so I have made it a pdf and put it on my eReader) and write all the scenes on note cards, then identify the major turning points and where the Acts are (ideally 4 acts). It doesn't sound like too much, but, *ulp*

I'm still waiting for the critique of 10 pages that I won in the raffle at a day-long writer's conference I went to a couple of months ago. I need to email.

PLUS, I got a CC of the email to Joanna Bourne, whose 10 page critique I won in the Novak diabetes auction, informing her that I am the winner, so I need to get in touch with her and decide if I want the same 10 pages critiqued or a different 10.

And my laptop is ailing and is in the laptop hospital. I might just be dirty and overheating, might need a new video card. We should have news today, I hope. Definitely slowing me down on writing and revision, though...

And yesterday, I was reading one of the huge number of books I got at the library book sale (half price day on Saturday as I was helping at the sale and then I helped pack up the leftovers). I was wandering around the house with it and kept picking it up and thinking, "Hey, I already read this part. How in the world did I manage to put the bookmark in the wrong spot?" until I finally noticed that I had two of them - one from the sale and one from the library.

I did get some other doubles of things already on my shelf so wasted a whole - whoooo - $2.33 or something. I will either donate them back to the library for the next sale or else sell them at the used book store for more than I paid for them. (method to my madness).

DS1, my 10 year old, 4th grader, went to camp for the next two nights. My ickle baby boy! Strangely, there were nine kids out of the two classes (43 kids, according to ds1) who are not going along. One I know really didn't want to go and another his parents were worried about less-than-optimal supervision. I just remember having loads of fun at camp with my school (though sometimes being homesick) and I helped him pack and waved bye-bye. So we won't see him again until Wednesday, which isn't all that far away. And who knows? They're panning for gold up by Sutter's Mill, so he might end up making us all rich (hahahahaha).

DS2 got his thumb slammed in the hinge side of the bathroom door yesterday. DS1 was just closing the door - a bit too hard because DS2 was right there, so he's not completely blameless, but it wasn't one of their running and slamming times - and he somehow got his right thumb in the hinge. I really don't know how his right hand was in the hinge area, which is on the left side of the door, but there it was. I just heard the thump and the scream. So his thumb is swollen and achy and bruised around the knuckle, but he can move it, though not all the way, so I'm trying to decide if he needs an X-ray.

DD is potty training. It's going well. Mostly. Accident on the floor yesterday, but generally, if she has her diaper off, she remembers to use the potty without too much prompting. I'm not totally comfortable with her running around nakey-bop with older brothers, but that's more in my head than in theirs.

So that was our weekend :)

reading reading and reading

Not much writing around here this week. Tuesday, I got a big box o' books from B&N AND two other books from Amazon, which were a delayed birthday present. Oh boy.

So keep in mind that I actually have to faint from joy and/or drool all over a book to give it a perfect score. I am against grade inflation in colleges, too, can you tell?

And I'm not putting them in the order I read them, because I want you all to know about Rose Lerner.

Rose Lerner, In for a Penny. 8/10 stars - Wow. just wow. This is her first book (unless she formerly published under another pseudonym or something). It's the story of an early 19th-century wild-boy nobleman whose wild-boy father dies and leaves him in such deep debt that he marries a brewery heiress and gives up all his fun (drinking and gambling with his friends and going out with his scandalous mistress) and moves out to his estate, where everything's falling apart - not the house itself, but the lands and the people are all hungry and the other landowners and renters are right b*st*rds and so on.

She really gets deep into the class issues and the fear that the H&H both have of offending each other and of losing each other and of how they have a hard time communicating. She repeats herself a bit and goes a bit far on the melodrama, but what a good book.

I'm not sure where I heard of it, since I read about 20 different romance book blogs, but more people need to read this book. Awesome! (EDIT TO ADD: I must have seen it on the B&N book blog, where Eloisa James writes a column. EDIT AGAIN: or else it was when she did a top ten favorite romance list for dear Author? Anyway, she's being noticed...)

And if you have a Nook or the patience to read on your computer screen, they have it for $2.56 as an ebook. I have a hard copy, because though I have an eReader, I am actually a Luddite and if it's a book I would like to keep, then I want a real book, darnit.

Julia Quinn, Ten things I love about you. 8/10 stars - cute and funny, but not as funny as the one before it, plus I felt there were subplots that were set up that never got resolved.

Sherry Thomas, His at Night. 8/10 stars - angsty, but not as heartrending as her first two books (Private Arrangements and, um, the one about the chef? Delicious?). Her writing is so, so good that even though the plot felt a bit contrived at times, I loved it. Does she publish her grocery lists? I'd buy them.

Joanna Bourne, Forbidden Rose. 9/10 stars - spies and French Revolution and ... I was about to give some huge spoilers, but I won't. And her writing is every bit as good as ever, though I didn't get as strong a feel as I did in her first book of the cadence of French in the dialogue. Ditto on the grocery lists.

Lisa Kleypas, Married by Morning. 7/10 stars - A fairly typical Kleypas, by which I mean quite good, but no drooling.

And then there was a an anthology with stories from Catherine Anderson, Loretta Chase, and Samantha James.... Whose description I should have read more carefully because these were old novellas, reprinted. I had read the Anderson and Chase ones and hadn't even liked the Anderson one, so skipped it this time. And the James one was a bit meh. So that was a waste of six or seven bucks, ya know?

Next up, Indigo Blue, which is a Catherine Anderson re-issue, then, um, what else do I have? A couple of Guhrke from the library because she writes late-19th century London which is what I am trying to do, and, uh, well, I have 20+ books out of the library to be honest.

a video of my kids

It's a bit long...

I didn't upload this so much for the comic, slapstick stylings of my kids as for how thoroughly I was ignoring them.

Jayne Ann Krentz's Burning Lamp is quite good.

whinging about a book this time

Since I like facebook, I tend to spend more time writing short status updates there and not rambling on over here.

The pollen is still hitting me hard, but the cold is easing away. or else it's all one or the other at this point. It's hard to tell.

I speed-read Dan Brown's Lost Symbol. Well, I started it a couple of weeks ago, but when my book group was postponed, I put it down and didn't think to pick it up again until a few days ago. Yeah, it was just exactly that un-put-down-able that I could put it down for two weeks. It's awkward, it's poorly written, and I had a hard time believing important plot points. Like that the CIA was involved in an investigation inside the US. They weren't willing to explain anything enough to get Robert Whatsis on their side and yet were perfectly happy to disturb a crime scene to the point that the CIA chick gave Robert Whatsis the ring from the dead hand because he said he'd give it back to his friend when he found him. Um... right.

So I can actually write a bestseller novel. Or at least I can write a couple of good novels and then coast at least as well as this one....

I liked the DaVinci Code. I know I'm not supposed to admit that, but it was interesting (if long-winded), and kept me involved in the story and suspending disbelief and thinking about it.

Well, I should save some of my words for book group this evening, right?

I need to go make some quesadillas for dinner. No cerveza or margaritas, because I'm going to drive tonight...

Written yesterday and never finished:

My head feels all funky today from all the pollen and lack of sleep and the chocolate I ate earlier and consequent insulin crash and so on. Three-fourths is pollen, though. So instead of doing any substantive work, i am going to ramble for a bit.

DS1, the fourth grader, has finally finished and done his report on the San Miguel Arcangel Mission, which is apparently a statewide curriculum requirement. I know more about it than I ever hoped to know, though I'm not sure if he does.

Next up is cleaning up the report and presentation for the science fair, which is coming soon. *sigh*

DS2 is reading so very very much better these days that I am thrilled to pieces. Still maybe not up to grade level, but getting close. He tends to know his spelling words until the test rolls around and then he spells them the same random way he did at the beginning of the week.

Neither of the boys is getting all of his school work done in class. They could be seriously good students if they would work faster and not get distracted all the time.

The Toddler is amazing. She's running and climbing and jumping so hard to keep up with her brothers. she's also talking more and more.

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And then today - good book group last night. It was a bit of a progressive party, because we tried to go to a place in El Dorado Hills that has usually been open on Monday evenings and it wasn't. so we went another place, where the guy announced that they were closing at 8, which gave us time to get drinks to go. We ended up in a supermarket coffee shop. but we talked a lot about the book (The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein) and about other stuff and stayed later than usual.

and it's raining, so it's wet and chilly, but the air is getting cleaner.

and i went and worked out already. my head wasn't in it, b ut my body did a decent job, considering it was on autopilot.

lots of things, incl movies, teeth, and books

The first Pink Panther movie really stinks.

We are watching "Josephine: Ange Gardien: enfin des vacances" for the 5th time. Melodrama and Deus (or Angel) ex machina. Yay. And every other line is, "Oh! Gaspard!" or "Eh! Gaspard!" or just plain "Gaspard!" It's the French version of that angel series with, um, Pa from Little House. With a dwarf, blonde woman as the angel.

DD is sharing her goldfish with her doll :)

Switching to "La Grande Vadrouille" which is better.

And yes, The Toddler watches far too many movies, generally on the computer next to mine and generally way above her comprehension level, and most often in French.

Maybe this kid will speak French? DS1 tries some, but DS2 is pretty stubborn about refusing to try to understand most of the time.

Change of plan. Back to Asterix et Obelix.

I have to go back and get my tooth fixed some more. When I bite down now, my lower teeth shove against the new crown and it aches.

I really want to work out today, too. Maybe this evening. I keep throwing out the spot in my back that pinches the nerve that makes it so I can hardly turn my head. I only went to Curves once last week because of scheduling, but also because my neck was killing me.

I need to get my partial and synopsis out to the agent I met a couple of weeks ago. One more run-through and then I swear I'm going to print it and ship it out. Fingers crossed...

I've been re-reading the second book that I finished a rough draft of. It's pretty good, though I need to work on the pacing and also on the placement of various flashbacks. Do I make the whole thing chronological? Or do I make them flashbacks? Or.... Well, I don't want to leave them out entirely, because the heroine is really badly marked by her childhood and without some knowledge of her past, she's just odd.

Anyway, I should go brush my teeth and get DH up (he stayed up late programming) so I can go to the dentist's.

scientific insight for the day

There was an interview on Fresh Air on public radio today as I came home after dropping the boys at school and doing the homework packets for DS2's class for next week. It was with Jonah Lehrer, who wrote a book called "How We Decide". I had heard part of the interview before when the book was out in hardback and now it's out in paperback.

Anyway, he talked about making a choice of cereal in the cereal aisle and how we can't hold more than 7 variables in our heads at a time and how we're primarily driven by emotions and people who have had an injury or whatever that takes away their emotions can't make decisions.

Anyway, at one point, he said that a study was done wherein some people were asked to memorize a two-digit number and others to memorize a seven-digit number. Then they were trotted down the hall and offered a snack (presumably before they were going to have to spout back the number). Twice as many two-digit people chose the healthy snack as compared with the seven-digit ones.

So.... is our inability to understand that eating at McDonald's every day will kill us due to too much Googling and too many decisions made already? Is eating due to depression because our brains are just too full of the sad thoughts and the emotions to make good choices?

I'm going to see if the library has this book...

Gimme an E! (book)

A charming little rhyme by that Smart Beyotch, Sarah:

Do you like this hardcover book?
You should buy it! Look look look!

I do not like a hardback book
I will not read it, not that book.
I want to read it, yes, I do,
but not that hardback, no, thank you.

Will you buy it here, or there?
You can buy it anywhere!
This hardback book is just for you.
The only kind we offer you.

I will not buy it, here or there.
I will not buy it anywhere.
I do not want a hardback book.
I want to buy a digital book.

Would you buy it in a store?
If you buy one, will you buy more?
You can buy it here, or there.
You can buy it anywhere!

We only have this hardback book.
There are no others, if you look.
This hardback paper is for you,
and if you buy one, you can buy two!

I will not buy it in a store.
I will not buy one, two, or more.
I will not buy it here, or there.
I will not buy it anywhere.

I will not buy a single one.
Our transaction might be done.
I do not want your hardback book.
I want to read my digi-book.

We do not sell digital books.
We only sell the hardback books.
If you want e, you have to wait.
Until the hardback sales abate.
This digital is just a fad,
and in our viewpoint, very bad.
The only books are ones like these:
Buy in hardback, won’t you please?

I will not buy them, don’t you know?
This is why your profits blow!
I want to read your books, right now!
I want to read them anyhow!

I want to put them on a Kindle,
or Nook or Sony, and not be swindled.
I will not buy a hardback book,
not now, not later, you backwards crook.

Your clueless thinking blows my mind.
E-sales are climbing! Are you blind?!
See this finger, nice and high?
You can kiss my sale goodbye.

I’ll go online and find my book,
scanned page by page by pirate crook,
and you have lost all sales from me,
both now and in the future. See,
I do not want your hardback book.
I want to read my digital book.

pondering shipping

I placed an order with Barnes and Noble and am waiting for my books.

So I went and checked and they said they turned it over to DHL in Reno on Oct 10th. So I check the link for shipping and they carried my books from 123 miles away from me to the East to 123 miles away to the South (according to google maps) and then handed them over to US Mail for delivery. They probably drove by 4 miles from my house on US 80. Maybe they flew over?

Now HOW does that save money? B&N has a good deal with DHL that beats USPS prices, but then DHL has a good deal with USPS that beats the price that B&N can get?

Very confused (and waiting for my books which would have likely been here already if they'd just dropped them in the mail in Reno a week ago)

UPDATE: they arrived not long after I posted this. yay for the mail-delivery-person!

A bit more about that book.

Interestingly enough, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was originally called Men who Hate Women. In Swedish, of course, but that's the title. The Girl who played with fire was called that in the original, and then the last one, The Girl who kicked the Hornet's Nest was The Air Castle that Blew Up, which maybe makes more sense in Swedish. Is that castles in the air? Or more literally those bouncy castle/bounce houses for kids?

I guess when they translated them, they sort of re-branded them with the emphasis on the girl in all the titles.

reading a good book!

I'm about halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire by ummm... that Swedish dude. Larsson? Nielssen? Stieg somebody. Stieg Larsson. It's the second book, after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

So far, I like this one better, because though nothing really happens for the first 150 pages, just like in the first one, there are hints that things are going to happen. Maybe I just think so because I know what happened in the last book, so I just assume something wild will happen in this one, too. There's a lot more sex in this one: like secondary characters whose sex lives have nothing to do with anything, as far as anyone can tell.

Apparently, there's a third book that will come out in the US next June, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. They already have it in the UK and yes, it's tempting... He turned all three manuscripts in to be published and then died.

talkie, stinky pits, and screamie

I'm not in a great mood this evening.

DS1 and DS2 were wriggling around all over when they were allegedly listening to me read from Harry Potter #4. I just don't feel respected you know? DS1 at least kept track of what was going on, but DS2 reverted to "who? who's Cedric? What are they champions of?" and chatting and talking to DD who was wandering around.

Last night, DS1 took a bath and I specifically told him to wash his hair because it gets greasy. So he came out and got his PJs on and then lay down on my bed as I was reading Junie B. Jones to DS2 and he put his hands behind his head and wheeeewwwwwww. His pits stink. Another sign of adolescence. And how does one take a bath and wash all over without washing one's armpits? Yeah well, he's going to have to remember from now on.

And screamie is DD, who has decided that it is the best way to get people to do what she wants. Tyranny, party of one, your table is OVER THERE IN THE CORNER AND NO I'M NOT LISTENING.

And mostly, I'm tired of DH working away from home and instead of working during, oh, say, working hours, he goes in at noon and comes home at 9. Or, like tonight, he's still not home at almost 10. He doesn't do it every night, but it's often enough that I'm feeding the kids and putting them to bed by myself 3 or so times a week and I don't like it.

what's that book?

I just started reading Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase and am once again stymied.... I read another romance novel set in Egypt and now can't remember the author. I know that the first time I read Mr. Impossible, I thought it was this other book until I started it.... and now I don't know what it is.

The hero in it is dyslexic and, like Mr. I, the heroine's the one who's the hieroglyphics genius. And now I'm totally conflating it with Mr. I and don't know anything else for sure.

Help?

Duran and books and stuff

I really liked Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran. It didn't grab me and thrill me as much as her first book, Duke of Shadows, but it was pretty good.

I have also finally read Suzanne Brockmann's latest book, Hot Pursuit and it was OK. I wasn't thrilled. It was fairly short and had pretty large print and was hardback, so I would have been disappointed if I had bought it. She's only doing one more in the Troubleshooters series - "for now" she says and I think it's good that she'll take a hiatus and either start something new or come back to these with a fresh outlook.

I really don't want to read them and think, "whatta piece of c***," the way I have with the past 5 or 6 or more of Janet Evanovich's Plum mysteries (which I only ever get from the library now, because I got burned by buying a really awful one brand new on a whim).

I have a book to read for Monday's book group and should do that one next. By the woman who wrote Chocolat and it's something about oranges. Five quarters of the orange? Something like that.

And i have the next book for my other book blub. The loop? That's next week.

And speaking of loups, My next free choice book is the latest Patricia Briggs werewolf novel. Ooooh.

And I need to start reading my books on Victorian America. I want to have some background in mind when I start writing on Nov 1st.

the new books are here!

I'm starting Meredith Duran's 3rd book tonight, Written on Your Skin.

Just when I was despairing that freaking Borders and freaking FedEx were conspiring to never let me have one of my orders, it arrived, having been turned over to the USPS for delivery. And I say: "huh?"

But hey. Four books: I am eager to read all of them. Duran is at the top of the list.

I might be up late...

now, if i were a book

- say, for a hypothetical example, a book of Dorothy Sayers short stories - and someone had put me up high where a small child couldn't get me because she had already torn one of my almost-40-year-old pages, then where could I possibly be?

I've renewed it twice and it's an old hardback, so I might be paying through the nose for its replacement if I don't find it in the next month or so. Though they have it reprinted, but in paperback and I can get it $14.40 from B&N.

And then once I pay for it, I'll find it, right?

So geeeeeeeez where did I put it??

books and more books

I got 3 separate emails from Borders saying that my orders had shipped. It's more like one of the orders and then some pieces of the other order. One of the titles I didn't recognize, so I had to go back to the website and look it up. It's the newest Anne Gracie and there's no note on the fedex site saying they've actually received the package ans started it on its way. But hey, I like Anne Gracie. I've had this 3rd book in her current series on my wish list almost since they announced the publication date.

All that and all the other fabulous books I am waiting for.

I have been reading Dorothy Sayers lately - a parent-friend at the kids' school brought up Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey a few weeks ago so i got the Vane books out of the library and have recently read the last one. I have the last one she started and never finished - it was finished by someone else - yet to read.

I got books at the next door neighbors' garage sale today - a couple of Agatha Christie and a parenting book and a kids' dictionary and such.

And I have 7 books, including 2 I want to use for research on Victorian Era America, waiting at the library. And another 3 in transit. And another 15 or so on my request list.

And I already have 20-ish books out of the library ( a few ready to go back when I go to get those 7).

And I went to the used book store a couple of days ago and sold a stack of books (sold BACK many of them) and picked up 3 more.

And I have a couple of other paperbacks that I'm not even sure where I got them, but they're up on the to-be-read shelf.

Basically, I have enough books here and on their way here to last 2 months.

And in 2 months, it's November and NaNoWriMo. So I have a lot of books to read and a lot of editing to do on the books I've already written and then November is devoted to churning out more deadly pose.

I mean deathless. Yeah, deathless. Which term always seems ominous to me, but it's supposed to be a compliment, right?