Friday Forays in Fiction: And So It Goes...and Goes and Goes...

Well I am going to start a new practice here at Joystory--when it comes to non-fiction I'm not going to wait until I finish a book to talk about it in the formal review. I'm going to start talking about it whenever I have something to say about it.  I'll be doing this at least with non-fiction as it fits so well with the way I go about reading it but I'm also considering doing the same with fiction.  But we'll see how it goes with the NF first.

So what am I doing talking about non-fic in a meme post that's all about fiction?  Well the book I'm inaugurating the new practice with is a biography about a writer of fiction and that makes it a relevant topic.

I've already written an involved post about my early adventures with this review copy. of Charles Sheild's And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life so I won't repeat all of that here.  The gist being that I received my first copy--an Adobe Digital Editions ebook--in November which timed out on me just after New Year's Day.  What with NaNo, my birthday, the holidays, crocheting Xmas gifts, three blog tours, the flu, the move into our new place and preparing to travel north to spend a month at my mom's there had just been too much going on.  I did start reading it but I didn't get past his college days.

So while I was at Mom's I wrote my contact to apologize and she ended up sending me a tree copy.  But to my Phoenix OR home over 500 miles away.  No biggie I thot I would be home in early February but my original two week visit was extended and extended again and then yet again until I'd been there nearly 3 months.

And So It Goes
by Charles Shields

Meanwhile though, I tracked down a copy in the Vancouver WA library system and my sister picked it up for me while running errands in the area.  That was about the time I wrote that post mentioned above.

So I have been reading it off and on since early February.  But I had to start over.  Sort of.  I was able to speed read over the material I'd already read but once he was in college I had to slow down.  Because of its bulky size and small print necessitating a magnifying glass for me I was unable to carry it around the house with me at Mom's to take advantage of those odd waiting moment elsewhere than my desk but by picking it up during those times when I was waiting on web pages to load, or my browser to unfreeze, or a download to complete I managed to plod my way through his college years, his war years, his early marriage and fatherhood, his journalist job, his PR job with GE, and his several years following the war of sending out unrequited manuscripts.

It was in the car traveling home that I reached the page where he made his first sale of a short story to Collier's magazine.  If I hadn't known my copy was waiting for me in the house it would have been very hard pulling my bookmark out of the Vancouver library copy.  I had finally reached the part that makes my heart go pitter-patter.

I didn't get my bookmark placed into my copy until Sunday evening though and still have not advanced beyond the page I quit in the car on Saturday.  I started to today but when I reread the paragraph about the sale of his first short story I decided to see if it was contained in one of our copies of his story collections.

And so it was.  Thus I spent my reading time today reading The Report on the Barnhouse Effect .

But that was so fun I've decided to make that a part of the reading experience with the biography--to hunt down copies of which ever short story, novel or essay being discussed as I advance through it.

Oh, wait, I did read a few pages past that first manuscript sale since I put my bookmark in my own copy.  I had reached the point where just a few months after his first short story sale he QUIT HIS JOB to write full time.  Now the writer me is thinking Hooray but another part of me is thinking WHAT?  You got to be kidding!! You have a young wife at home with two small children. This is the 1950s man! What are you thinking?

I'm also aware, tho I've not reached that part yet, that he is soon to have three more children added to his family when he takes in his sister's suddenly orphaned children.

So now I'm very anxious to get back to Kurt's story to see if he manages to support that growing family with his writing only or will he have to make concessions...

I'm going to have to come up with a label for these not-reviews to reference them and keep track of them.  After all they will have as much if not more info about the book as a formal review and more of my personal reaction to the books in the moments of encounter.  I would think that anyone interested in book reviews would find something of interest in them.

I'm thinking.

How about As I read [title]by[author][#]

I'm open to suggestions though.