I am almost halfway through Ella Minnow Pea. I'm pretty pleased with the progress, especially given that I do most of my reading in the evening, and it’s easy to get waylaid. The other night, for example, I went upstairs to kiss my daughter goodnight, and when I went into her room, I discovered large areas of bright blue all over the rug.
“What happened?! How did that happen?!” I demand.
"I don't know how that happened! I was very careful!" she tells me.
After a brief interrogation, I determine the paint is acrylic, this is followed by fifteen minutes spent researching “acrylic paint removal carpet” via Google. There are many answers to this question … I am looking for the right answer. You will have the easiest time removing the paint if it is not yet dry.
Race across the hall … could be damp? I’m guessing damp. It’s humid. It’s damp.
40 minutes are spent saturating the carpet, back and forth, slowly, with our massive carpet pseudo-steam cleaner. The stains fade gradually with each successive pass of the cleaner.
Finally, I am exhausted. It’s hot, I’m damp, and my eyes are so tired I can’t tell if the carpet is still splotched blue or if I’m just seeing red. Either way, the carpet is certainly damp now, so maybe I’ve bought some time and can figure it out in the morning.
Now, I'm just guessing here, but I think that when a young artist leaves her paint palette on the floor, it gets stepped on and paint gets tracked everywhere, which is why carpet is covered with blue acrylic paint even though she put down drop cloths before starting her latest masterpiece.
Today, the carpet is mostly clean, and I think it's funny. The other night, not so much. I've never been a Jackson Pollock fan, and particularly don’t care for his work when it’s reproduced on my carpets.
... for the literate flightless marine bird.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Lost in a Town of Books
Mind you, I love books and accumulate them constantly, with every intention of reading them. Over the course of the summer, I have aggressively cleaned my bookshelves at least twice, and hauled several large boxes over to Half Price Books (who generously paid me about $20 for easily 50 books or more). But even after that, I was able to pull 14 books that I have never read – only one of which was a gift – to add to my Project Reading Pile.
When I lived in Manhattan, I was within walking distance of the Strand Bookstore, whose proud tagline was “7 Miles of Books.” It’s a cavernous, un-air-conditioned warehouse that is crammed full of every imaginable type of used book. I loved the smell of the book dust, and the thrill of the wandering through the endless piles of books and letting something catch my fancy. It was a great way to spend a New York Sunday: go to a diner, have some cheap eggs and coffee, then wander aimlessly through a bookstore for hours. It wasn’t far from home, so towing home a few pounds of books wasn’t hard. $4 for an old hardcover GWTW; $1.98 for an early In Cold Blood; several biographies of Dorothy Parker, none more than a few dollars; cookbooks; coffee table books; and so on.
I had mountains of books when I lived in Manhattan, and when I left, they went into boxes and were hauled around the country with me (to Stratford, CT; Portland, OR; and then three different houses in Seattle, WA). In my recent cleaning, I discovered boxes of books that had never been read; still, it was hard to part with them – they all seemed like things I should want to read. I just don’t always have the time, so they keep sliding down the book list.
So I was intrigued when I ran across “Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books,” by Paul Collins. The author moved his family to the town on Hay-on-Wye, Wales, which has 1,500 inhabitants and 40 antiquarian bookstores. The book is wonderful – part travelogue, part ode to the joy of books. The author’s wit is delightful, and I enjoyed the book trivia: I had no idea anyone had ever re-written (and published) Robinson Crusoe in words of one syllable; or written a book of poetry titled “Current Coins, Picked Up at the Railway Station” (Come with my, my numismatic friend …); or published a hoax called “I Was Hitler’s Maid.”
I finished it in less than a week. Current Count: 10 books read, 40 more to go.
So far, so good. I'm pleased to be on track. My stepchildren are here this weekend but I hope to find some time to read; we'll see.
When I lived in Manhattan, I was within walking distance of the Strand Bookstore, whose proud tagline was “7 Miles of Books.” It’s a cavernous, un-air-conditioned warehouse that is crammed full of every imaginable type of used book. I loved the smell of the book dust, and the thrill of the wandering through the endless piles of books and letting something catch my fancy. It was a great way to spend a New York Sunday: go to a diner, have some cheap eggs and coffee, then wander aimlessly through a bookstore for hours. It wasn’t far from home, so towing home a few pounds of books wasn’t hard. $4 for an old hardcover GWTW; $1.98 for an early In Cold Blood; several biographies of Dorothy Parker, none more than a few dollars; cookbooks; coffee table books; and so on.
I had mountains of books when I lived in Manhattan, and when I left, they went into boxes and were hauled around the country with me (to Stratford, CT; Portland, OR; and then three different houses in Seattle, WA). In my recent cleaning, I discovered boxes of books that had never been read; still, it was hard to part with them – they all seemed like things I should want to read. I just don’t always have the time, so they keep sliding down the book list.
So I was intrigued when I ran across “Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books,” by Paul Collins. The author moved his family to the town on Hay-on-Wye, Wales, which has 1,500 inhabitants and 40 antiquarian bookstores. The book is wonderful – part travelogue, part ode to the joy of books. The author’s wit is delightful, and I enjoyed the book trivia: I had no idea anyone had ever re-written (and published) Robinson Crusoe in words of one syllable; or written a book of poetry titled “Current Coins, Picked Up at the Railway Station” (Come with my, my numismatic friend …); or published a hoax called “I Was Hitler’s Maid.”
I finished it in less than a week. Current Count: 10 books read, 40 more to go.
So far, so good. I'm pleased to be on track. My stepchildren are here this weekend but I hope to find some time to read; we'll see.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A Gauntlet Is Thrown
I posted about my project on Facebook, to see if I could get some good book title suggestions. Of course I did – my friends are nothing if not a bookish bunch – and my reading list grew, to about 40 books.
I received some supportive comments (“Fun Project!”) and then this comment from my friend Cindy: “That's less than a book a week. I'd go nuts if I had so little to read!”
Wait, what? I am daunted by the prospect of a book a week! I think the only time I ever read a book a week, I was in college and that was my job! It is all I can do to find time to read!
I reply to Cindy: “That sounds to me like a gauntlet being thrown. Want to up the ante? Are you challenging me to a duel?”
Her response: “I read Chains of Gold, A Fantasy Novel by Nancy Springer (230 pages) last night.”
Oh, crap. Reading duel = bad plan. One of the things I am hoping for is that I will find time to read by doing this. I do a lot of things – I am not a lazy person by any stretch. I have a cat and a dog (until recently, an aged second cat who needed much medical attention); my husband; my daughter and her constant array of activities (swimming, girl scouts, theater, piano); I work full time; I make dinner from scratch nearly every night; I was PTA treasurer for the two years; have two stepchildren to visit every so often; I try to keep up with Dr. Who and Mad Men when they’re on; and I do the occasional load of laundry when needed. Boy, that doesn’t seem like so much when you write it all out. It feels like a lot when you live it.
Could it be that Cindy has less to do than I do?
I adore Cindy, she’s a great friend and what’s more, I’ve never met her in person. Really. We met on an Ebay discussion board, of all things; she was a regular, high-volume seller, and I wanted to be, and she gave lots of great advice about that, and then about other things, and before I knew it, I was friends with someone I had never even seen a picture of. I heard her voice, though – one of her many great qualities is that she takes phone calls at sometimes quite odd hours from people she’s never met in real life. That sounds odd to say it, but trust me, it’s a godsend.
Things Cindy does (that I know of) – sells at very high volumes on Ebay and Amazon and her own website, gives lots of good advice on discussion boards and internet groups, and paints. Paints a lot, these days, and blogs about it. She also codes her own websites and usually when I talk with her, she’s got some freelance web project going on as well.
That feels like more than I do, probably because I am hopelessly incapable of doing most of those things - but for sake of argument, we’ll call it even. So, somehow, she has found the time to read them at a pretty brisk clip – proving, I think, that not only can it be done, but my goals are modest indeed.
I received some supportive comments (“Fun Project!”) and then this comment from my friend Cindy: “That's less than a book a week. I'd go nuts if I had so little to read!”
Wait, what? I am daunted by the prospect of a book a week! I think the only time I ever read a book a week, I was in college and that was my job! It is all I can do to find time to read!
I reply to Cindy: “That sounds to me like a gauntlet being thrown. Want to up the ante? Are you challenging me to a duel?”
Her response: “I read Chains of Gold, A Fantasy Novel by Nancy Springer (230 pages) last night.”
Oh, crap. Reading duel = bad plan. One of the things I am hoping for is that I will find time to read by doing this. I do a lot of things – I am not a lazy person by any stretch. I have a cat and a dog (until recently, an aged second cat who needed much medical attention); my husband; my daughter and her constant array of activities (swimming, girl scouts, theater, piano); I work full time; I make dinner from scratch nearly every night; I was PTA treasurer for the two years; have two stepchildren to visit every so often; I try to keep up with Dr. Who and Mad Men when they’re on; and I do the occasional load of laundry when needed. Boy, that doesn’t seem like so much when you write it all out. It feels like a lot when you live it.
Could it be that Cindy has less to do than I do?
I adore Cindy, she’s a great friend and what’s more, I’ve never met her in person. Really. We met on an Ebay discussion board, of all things; she was a regular, high-volume seller, and I wanted to be, and she gave lots of great advice about that, and then about other things, and before I knew it, I was friends with someone I had never even seen a picture of. I heard her voice, though – one of her many great qualities is that she takes phone calls at sometimes quite odd hours from people she’s never met in real life. That sounds odd to say it, but trust me, it’s a godsend.
Things Cindy does (that I know of) – sells at very high volumes on Ebay and Amazon and her own website, gives lots of good advice on discussion boards and internet groups, and paints. Paints a lot, these days, and blogs about it. She also codes her own websites and usually when I talk with her, she’s got some freelance web project going on as well.
That feels like more than I do, probably because I am hopelessly incapable of doing most of those things - but for sake of argument, we’ll call it even. So, somehow, she has found the time to read them at a pretty brisk clip – proving, I think, that not only can it be done, but my goals are modest indeed.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Begin at the Beginning, or Thereabouts
Looking through the discussion group that got me started, I realize that they’ve generally begun their challenge on January 1, with the goal of finishing 50 books by December 31 of the same year. Now, it’s August already, and though I’ve been reading a lot over the past couple of months, and I *know* I read several books while I was visiting my family in March (nothing says “don’t talk, just stick your head in a book” like a visit to mom) – have I really read enough that I might conceivably finish by December? I go check my book list on goodreads.com.
Not counting books I didn’t finish, or books of Emma’s that I reviewed, I have read 14 books since January. It feels like more, probably because I spent the month of July reading Gone With The Wind – a month well-spent, but in the context of counting books, not really productive, because all 900 or so pages only count as one book, when really, they’re the equivalent of two or three books (or more, depending what you read).
I briefly consider changing the rules to accommodate page count but just trying to figure that out seems like a waste of time that could be better spent reading, so I decide a book is a book. Anyway, GWTW isn’t really the problem, it’s more that for a couple of months I read literally nothing, or at least, didn’t make a note of it if I did (ok, I didn’t read anything except catalogs and Vanity Fair magazine).
Quick math: to finish by year-end 2009, I will need to read 36 more books, or approximately 9 books per month, or 2.25 books per week through the end of the year. A noble goal, but I feel rushed and stressed just thinking about it.
Looking over the list, I realize that nine of the books have been read since June 1. Since my personal goal is simply to continue reading regularly, I think – why not just pick June 1 as the start date, and read 50 books by June 1, 2010? That way, I have 9 months to read 41 more books, or about 4.5 books per month – or just about a book a week, which seems entirely manageable. Piece of cake.
Which reminds me, cookbooks don’t count.
My list of books read so far:
1. The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
2. Bitter is the New Black – Jen Lancaster
3. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
4. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
5. The Penny Pinchers Club – Sarah Strohmeyer
6. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
7. Julie & Julia – Julie Powell
8. My Life on a Plate – India Knight
9. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Currently Reading:
Sixpence House – Paul Collins
Not counting books I didn’t finish, or books of Emma’s that I reviewed, I have read 14 books since January. It feels like more, probably because I spent the month of July reading Gone With The Wind – a month well-spent, but in the context of counting books, not really productive, because all 900 or so pages only count as one book, when really, they’re the equivalent of two or three books (or more, depending what you read).
I briefly consider changing the rules to accommodate page count but just trying to figure that out seems like a waste of time that could be better spent reading, so I decide a book is a book. Anyway, GWTW isn’t really the problem, it’s more that for a couple of months I read literally nothing, or at least, didn’t make a note of it if I did (ok, I didn’t read anything except catalogs and Vanity Fair magazine).
Quick math: to finish by year-end 2009, I will need to read 36 more books, or approximately 9 books per month, or 2.25 books per week through the end of the year. A noble goal, but I feel rushed and stressed just thinking about it.
Looking over the list, I realize that nine of the books have been read since June 1. Since my personal goal is simply to continue reading regularly, I think – why not just pick June 1 as the start date, and read 50 books by June 1, 2010? That way, I have 9 months to read 41 more books, or about 4.5 books per month – or just about a book a week, which seems entirely manageable. Piece of cake.
Which reminds me, cookbooks don’t count.
My list of books read so far:
1. The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
2. Bitter is the New Black – Jen Lancaster
3. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
4. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
5. The Penny Pinchers Club – Sarah Strohmeyer
6. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
7. Julie & Julia – Julie Powell
8. My Life on a Plate – India Knight
9. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Currently Reading:
Sixpence House – Paul Collins
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Rules: What Counts?
This is not a good way to start. I can’t see a blessed thing. I went to the eye doctor and got my pupils dilated and now the world’s a blur.
Good news: New glasses prescription will make reading easier and I will look cooler while I do it, with new frames.
Bad news: I couldn’t see well enough to choose new frames. Or to read the printout of the health insurance benefits to see if I could even afford the new frames.
So, spending the rest of the day reading is clearly out – which bring up the question – do audiobooks count? What counts and what doesn’t?
I think I will fine-tune this as I go along, but here are the general outlines I came up with:
1 – Any type of book is fine (fiction, non-fiction, etc).
2 – book must be longer than 100 pages to count
3 – audiobooks count, as long as the original print book is longer than 100 pages
4 – stuff I read for work doesn’t count, even if it’s printed (since I read “reports” and not “books”)
5 – must finish the book to count it.
My husband and I tossed this last one around for a bit. He says he has been known to read more than 100 pages of a book, then put it aside and not finish it. Does that count? He wants to know.
I mull this. I find this incredibly patient, which I have always known he must be, but now I have more evidence. I don’t think I have ever gotten more than 25 pages into a book that I disliked, unless it was assigned reading for school, and even then I mostly faked it with Cliff Notes and a few choice passages. In college, I once got an A on an oral report I gave on James Joyce’s Ulysses, of which I read the first four chapters. It is possible to pull a detailed set of examples supporting your thesis from the first four chapters of Ulysses … and the book is so long that nearly any thesis will work, although the four suggestions at the back of the cliff notes work fine too. One of my classmates said afterwards, “I knew you hadn’t read the book, and you made me believe you had. Amazing.” It’s a memory of great pride and shame, coupled with relief that I will never have to actually finish reading Ulysses. It’s a great work of literature, and I admire it immensely, but that’s as far as it goes.
But for purposes of this project, I think “faking it” is sort of self-defeating; and anyway, the project is really about motivating myself, and since I will know I haven’t read the book, I am thinking I must have finished it to add it to the list. So, excluded from the count will be books for which I: read the plot summary on Wikipedia (Harry Potter 7); only see the movie (Harry Potter 3-6); skip ahead to the end because I don’t really like the book but I want to know how it turns out (most mysteries, and the aforementioned Ulysses).
If I read up to 100 pages, I tell my husband, I imagine I’m committed to it. Usually I can decide far before that.
“What if you can’t?” he wants to know.
“Well, I guess I’ll decide when it happens.”
Further guidelines will be decided as needed. My husband and 9-year-old daughter will cast the deciding votes over dinner, so there's no cheating.
Good news: New glasses prescription will make reading easier and I will look cooler while I do it, with new frames.
Bad news: I couldn’t see well enough to choose new frames. Or to read the printout of the health insurance benefits to see if I could even afford the new frames.
So, spending the rest of the day reading is clearly out – which bring up the question – do audiobooks count? What counts and what doesn’t?
I think I will fine-tune this as I go along, but here are the general outlines I came up with:
1 – Any type of book is fine (fiction, non-fiction, etc).
2 – book must be longer than 100 pages to count
3 – audiobooks count, as long as the original print book is longer than 100 pages
4 – stuff I read for work doesn’t count, even if it’s printed (since I read “reports” and not “books”)
5 – must finish the book to count it.
My husband and I tossed this last one around for a bit. He says he has been known to read more than 100 pages of a book, then put it aside and not finish it. Does that count? He wants to know.
I mull this. I find this incredibly patient, which I have always known he must be, but now I have more evidence. I don’t think I have ever gotten more than 25 pages into a book that I disliked, unless it was assigned reading for school, and even then I mostly faked it with Cliff Notes and a few choice passages. In college, I once got an A on an oral report I gave on James Joyce’s Ulysses, of which I read the first four chapters. It is possible to pull a detailed set of examples supporting your thesis from the first four chapters of Ulysses … and the book is so long that nearly any thesis will work, although the four suggestions at the back of the cliff notes work fine too. One of my classmates said afterwards, “I knew you hadn’t read the book, and you made me believe you had. Amazing.” It’s a memory of great pride and shame, coupled with relief that I will never have to actually finish reading Ulysses. It’s a great work of literature, and I admire it immensely, but that’s as far as it goes.
But for purposes of this project, I think “faking it” is sort of self-defeating; and anyway, the project is really about motivating myself, and since I will know I haven’t read the book, I am thinking I must have finished it to add it to the list. So, excluded from the count will be books for which I: read the plot summary on Wikipedia (Harry Potter 7); only see the movie (Harry Potter 3-6); skip ahead to the end because I don’t really like the book but I want to know how it turns out (most mysteries, and the aforementioned Ulysses).
If I read up to 100 pages, I tell my husband, I imagine I’m committed to it. Usually I can decide far before that.
“What if you can’t?” he wants to know.
“Well, I guess I’ll decide when it happens.”
Further guidelines will be decided as needed. My husband and 9-year-old daughter will cast the deciding votes over dinner, so there's no cheating.
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Challenge: Read 50 Books in One Year
The past couple months I find I have been reading more – probably due to lack the anything even attempting to pass for entertainment on the TV. Of course, with fall coming, it occurs to me that I will soon, once again, be sucked into a near-vegetative state, as the usual array of just-good-enough-to-not-change-the-channel programming resumes.
So, I asked myself, what is the best way to keep myself motivated? The library doesn’t offer me a reward for reading 1000 minutes over the summer, like it does my kids. I belonged to a reading group for a while, but could never manage to make it to the meetings, and to be honest, I didn’t really care for the choice of books – everyone trying to choose a book more profound than the last, to prove what interesting people they really are.
I used to allow my stepson Shane one half hour of TV time for every hour he spent reading, which he found incredibly motivating … but for me, I’d probably just pass on the TV and go play on Facebook or Webkinz (I have almost as many as my daughter … let it go) or something.
I guess the goal, more than just simply reading, is: how do I pull myself away from the endless passive distractions to spend my time more rewardingly? When I do it, I find myself energized … but there are so many distractions – so much unwatched stuff on the TiVo, so many computer games to play, news websites to peruse, online shopping to do, stock tickers to check, and has everyone played their latest turn at Scramble on Facebook?
I thought maybe an online discussion group would help, so while I was rating my vacation reads on goodreads.com, I looked around for a group that might be fun and have good book suggestions as well. And almost immediately, I ran across the following: “50 Books a Year.”
Wow, that doesn’t seem that hard. So I signed up.
So, I asked myself, what is the best way to keep myself motivated? The library doesn’t offer me a reward for reading 1000 minutes over the summer, like it does my kids. I belonged to a reading group for a while, but could never manage to make it to the meetings, and to be honest, I didn’t really care for the choice of books – everyone trying to choose a book more profound than the last, to prove what interesting people they really are.
I used to allow my stepson Shane one half hour of TV time for every hour he spent reading, which he found incredibly motivating … but for me, I’d probably just pass on the TV and go play on Facebook or Webkinz (I have almost as many as my daughter … let it go) or something.
I guess the goal, more than just simply reading, is: how do I pull myself away from the endless passive distractions to spend my time more rewardingly? When I do it, I find myself energized … but there are so many distractions – so much unwatched stuff on the TiVo, so many computer games to play, news websites to peruse, online shopping to do, stock tickers to check, and has everyone played their latest turn at Scramble on Facebook?
I thought maybe an online discussion group would help, so while I was rating my vacation reads on goodreads.com, I looked around for a group that might be fun and have good book suggestions as well. And almost immediately, I ran across the following: “50 Books a Year.”
Wow, that doesn’t seem that hard. So I signed up.
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