My Brain On Books XXXII

  

 

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My Read-a-Thon Nest
a Beanbag Atop a Mini-Tramp

Book as Art

1:44 AM - Book as Art

I just spent an exquisite hour with a tree book I think qualifies as a graphic novel tho I don't usually see graphic novels that exceed 500 pages.  The whole experience of handling the book from first picking it up was like that of handling an art object in a gallery or museum.  The pages are of a thickness I think meets the standard of card stock.  The pages are all framed in a black quarter inch edge.  I estimate it is 3/5 pictures with series of images that tell a story without words like the camera shots in a movie sandwiched between pages of text that tell a story with the flavor of fable.

This was given to me two years ago with the understanding that I would read it and pass it on to a child I believe would enjoy it.  What was holding me back was the small print used for the pages of text.  But I finally found a work-around and solving the problem for this book means I will be able to pick up more tree books in the future.  As my vision got less and less the frustration with print books grew and grew until I became very shy of them.  Tho I still love to have them around me and to handle them and browse through them.  I just can't read them longer then a few minutes and the need to get the lighting just right coming from just the right angle and the magnifying glasses just right for the size of print and the pages at just the right angle and just the right distance from my eyes and to hold all of that steady...well...it was a juggling act and very distracting from the content so it was impossible to get lost in the story.  This is how I solved it:

Tools for Tree Book Reading

The combination of a bright headlamp with 2.5X magnification glasses I was able to read and get lost in the story for over an hour.

As for the story: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.  It won a Caldecott Medal in 2008.  It is the story of a boy who lives inside the walls of the train station in Paris, France just before WWII.  He has secretly taken over his uncle's job of keeping the several dozen mechanical clocks in that sprawling building running.  And he has a secret mission to complete a project his father died trying to finish mostly at his request.  The story features clockwork automatons, stage magicians, a cavernous bookstore and a grumpy old mechanical toy seller as the young boy's nemesis.

I just wish I'd known what a success this would be and started it sooner.  Like before noon.  I could have easily finished it in 3 to 4 sessions of an hour each.  An hour is all I can take of having my forehead squeezed by the elastic bands of the headlamp but I think that will get easier.  As it is I will not be finishing a book this thon.  Especially one I started after kickoff.  But I accomplished a lot

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice

11:44 PM - 

Just spent about an hour reading a book on my Kindle.  The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century by Claire Prentice.  I've been working my way thru this one at the rate of about a chapter per day for a couple weeks.  I is a fascinating look into American history and culture interacting with an 'exotic' culture just over a century ago.  And it is a tossup as to which culture was the most savage.

It is giving me a new angle to view current events as well because this pre WWI slice of American history contains all the same elements of conmen, grifters, conspiracy both actual and rumored, paranoia, bigotry, bullying, self-righteousness and blatant calculating lies as our own current events and all of this without radio, TV or the Internet.

Again. Again and Again. : Awakening Into Awareness -- Essays and Stories
by Mathias B. Freese

8:44 PM - First tree book of the thon

I just spent over an hour with two short essays from Mathias B. Freese's Again. Again and Again. : Awakening Into Awareness -- Essays and Stories.  I usually like to put more time between two short piece and especially when written by someone whose every word is so precisely chosen for both meaning and impact and both fact and effect.  

These are the kind of writings that try and nearly succeed in catching thinking in the act.  Thinking about thinking is one of my favorite things to do but I have not mastered as has Mathias Freese the art of writing about thinking about thinking.

I don't think I'll be picking it up again before the thon is over as my thinker is nearly sunk by sleep depravation as once again I was too revved up to sleep last night and thus I hit 24 hours awake 12 hours ago and I have 8 hours to go. Tho I'm seriously starting to doubt I will make it..  But I kept my promise to myself to pick it up during the thon as it is an ARC I received months ago and I still owe the author a review and I want to deliver that before NaNoWriMo

Tomato Soup and Toasted Cheese Sandwiches

6:44 PM - readathon Finger Food

I decided to use some of the remaining battery on the Fusion5 to play an audiobook in my Libby library while I made and ate tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches.  It had to be the Fusion5 if I were to remain untethered as my laptop is not Bluetooth.  So I have been listening for just over an hour to Karen Armstrong reading her Art of Scripture.  Armstrong's writing has been one of my valued resources as I began to question and the make my own path to freedom out of the cult I was raised in.  It would not be an overstatement to think of her creating the first foundation of my comparative studies in sacred text, religion, mythology or the overarching comparative cosmology.  All of which or other words for Story.

I listened to the Intro and Chapter 1.  The latter covering the scriptures of Israel.  Chapter 2 will cover India but I'm ready to move on.  Besides I'll keep it all straight in my head easier if I don't introduce the stories and concepts of different cultures in one session.

4:44 PM - Readathon glitch

Right around 1:30 pm  I dozed off on the beanbag.  For just a few seconds.  But that was all it took for my Fusion5 10 inch tablet to slip from my hands and hit the floor right on the power plug and bent it off.  This is a Windows/Android fusion with limited storage so I don't keep my important irreplaceable files on the device but still I had to go read all the file titles to make sure.  I did find a half dozen photos taken with the device that could be positive were in the cloud.  And I found several free pdf downloaded off the browser via those giveaways associated with signing up for newsletters.  I suppose nothing I would have missed if I hadn't been reminded by seeing them.

Anyway that was a tedious two hour task taken out of my thon day.  Now I have to decide whether I'm going to use the remaining three hours of battery to continue reading from my Libby Library (Dietland and more) or switch to reading off my heavy awkward laptop screen.  I just synced the library to the laptop so I have that option but it is definitely not as relaxing a reading experience.

I used to have my Libby library on a Nexus android.  A 7 inch that was even lighter weight and easier to hold for hours than the Fusion but it crashed in early summer.  I need to replace it because Libby allows keeping the book file on the device for reading offline with Android device but with Windows devices you have to be online.  I also have the option of telling Libby that I prefer to read on my Kindle and they will send the books to my Kindle but I don't know how fussy a task that would be and I've already spent enough time fussing.  I want to get back to Dietland.  I had just passed the halfway mark and it was getting real intense.

But I have a headache and suspect it is because I need food as it has been over six hours since I ate.  I'm also jonesing for coffee but I've already had by allotted second thermos at 9am so I need to weigh the pros and cons of extra caffeine as in the risk of a caffeine headache vs the risk of not making it to 5am.  I know what Stella thinks I should do.  Sigh. Bless her heart.  

I'm sad over the demise of my little Windows tablet. It has been a huge part of my daily life for two years.  I used it mostly for entertainment and web browsing.  I watched videos, listened to music and podcasts, read ebooks and blogs and articles. I could have music playing on it while I read on another device or researched or wrote on the laptop.  And yes, I mean demise because it isn't worth taking it in to a shop and paying to have it repaired.  Windows has already given me one warning that certain features of Windows 11 are not compatible and I know from experience that a few months on from that warning they will issue a six month warning that they are discontinuing support.  It is maddening how they seem to design these things for obsolescence.

I now I've lost four hours of reading to this glitch!!!

8:22 AM - Started out with Dietland by Sarai Walker.  Just spent an hour lurking on social media scoping other readers.  Didn't engage yet as I'm anxious to get back to the story.

Who knew weight loss groups and glam girl mags are cults?  Breaking free can be murder.  Is staying free even possible?

4:44 AM - Intro Meme I'm setting this to go live at 4:44 AM but it may be well into hour 1 or even hour 2 before I check in again.  I'll be reading my first pick sitting in my beanbag chair nursing my first thermos of coffee and eating a protein bar....

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my forth thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thon in August 2021.  The second Fall one.  I completely spaced out the August Reverse Thon this year and was so sad when I realized it.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Again. Again and Again. : Awaking into Awareness -- Essays and Stories by Mathias Freese

Fiction: Dietland by Sarai Walker

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Tomato Soup and Toasted Cheese Sandwiches.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only several times a week now instead of constantly.  But September brought it back to several times a day.  September was his birthday and the anniversary of his Mom's and my Dad's deaths as well as his.  So it was still a rough patch two years out.
• Living alone for the first time ever.  Fifteen months now.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015
• Have a caregiver who comes in four days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone.
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 32nd thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried.  I am hoping and have planned accordingly that i get more than six hours sleep before my 4:44 am alarm goes off.  I've had a habit of such heightened anticipation that I sleep poorly or not at all before it starts and then struggle to do the full 24.  Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Also hope to a better job than in the past of staying hydrated and getting up to move regularly.

I am most looking forward to many sessions of sustained reading as I've just passed thru a dark couple of months in which I lost focus, concentration and enjoyment of reading but as of last week it is back tho I've had to curtail it as I had so many messes of many varieties to clean up reading was set aside for those hours when I was too fatigued to do it well or long.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

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Taming My Stella and Rising From Her Mudd

 500 Stellas Can Put Anyone In the Mud

In a discussion with my sister-friend Jamie several months ago, I was ragging on myself and refusing to see what Jamie saw as positives instead of just further proof of my failures and deficiencies. I kept insisting that what was done did not outweigh what was undone and even so it wasn't done right or wasn't done quickly enough or wasn't done often enough or wasn't done on time or wasn't done with a good attitude etc etc etc.

Jamie asked me whose voice was I hearing in my head when I took these thoughts to heart.  I said primarily my Mom's from childhood but also my Dad's, my brother's and my sister's and of course my husband's and my mother-in-law's.  Then she told me that another close friend of hers had a similar problem and she had found it helpful to name her haranguer so she could talk back to her.  I promised I would think about that and see if I could come up with a name meaningful to me.

After several days of contemplation I had zeroed in on the finger shaken at my face as was my Mom's practice.  And although her tone was much different it put me in mind of the Stella Mudd character from the classic Star Trek series.  My mom never yelled let alone screeched like Stella nor did she name-call.  She barely raised her voice.  But her words dripped with shame and disappointment.  Here are some of her favorite phrases that still haunt me today:

• Shame on you
• Mama's so disappointed
• How could you be so _______?
• Why can't Mama depend on you?
• Why can't you be more _____?
• When are you going to _____?
• How do you expect to ______ when you can't even ______?
• Are you ever going to finish that?
• Do I always have to remind you?
• No, no not that way, here let me show you (as she takes the tool out of my hands)
• That was nice but next time don't you think you could try______?
• How many times do I have to say _______?
• But don't you think a better way would be ______?
• But don't you think _______? (constantly on every topic under the sun and for which the only acceptable answer was 'yes' even if that was a lie)

Recently Jamie and I were talking about how it was working out for me talking back to Stella or telling her to shut up.  I was having minimal success and would often find myself experiencing waves of guilt and shame afterwards.  Jamie was insistent that i needed to get cross with her, defiant, even violent.  "Punch her out" she suggested.  Treat her like the bully she is.  But I am, by nature and training, very averse to violence and have never found that the response to a bully needs to be becoming a bully.  So I let it percolate for a bit and it wasn't long before I came up with a tactic that fit my personality and values.

I can't remember the source but not long ago I heard someone refer to the Southern Lady's FU and demonstrated with a honey-toned "Bless your heart"  Now that could work If I could get that refined tone of faux sincerity down.  And since one of my superpowers is story I was soon developing related lines along with gestures.  I see them as mini-movies in my head.

"Bless your heart." I say when Stella starts harping.  And if she doesn't hush immediately I reach out and smooth her hair back and say. "Don't fash yourself dear."  Or, "Hush now dear, you are overwrought."  Then if she is especially persistent I hold out a cup of hot chamomile tea saying, "There, there dear, I do believe someone needs a nap."  Or I will reach out and lay the back of my hand on her forehead and say, "Are you fevered dear?  How about a nice little chill pill?"

I've only been trying this for a bit under two weeks now but it does seem to be helping.

I wish I'd found it in time to help me thru the dark month of September that contained the death anniversaries of my dad, my husband and my MIL along with Ed's birthday and the second anniversary of the fire in Southern Oregon that burned out the trailer park we had lived in for over a decade near Phoenix.

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Book Review: Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

Evita and Me by Erika Rummel 

Publisher:  DX Varos 

Publishing (May 24, 2022) 

Category: Historical Fiction, Crime, Women's Literature 

Tour Dates June 21-July 22, 2022 

ISBN: 978-1955065320 

Available in Print and ebook, 

384 pages

Review by Joy Renee

Evita and Me is a historical novel, suspense thriller and coming of age story all rolled into one rollercoaster plot.  This story, narrated by two fictional characters who found themselves drawn into the intrigues of Evita’s inner circle in the late 1940s is a creative exploration into the historian’s question: What happened to Eva Peron’s jewelry?

The first forty percent of the novel is narrated by Toronto born Mona and covers her weeks long trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina as a teen that culminates in a whirlwind trip through Europe with First Lady Eva Peron.  Mona is telling the story from memory as a twenty-something college student traumatized by reading Evita’s obituary in the paper some five years after her life-changing adventure.  She relates how she had at first been reluctant but agreed in order to escape watching the soppy romancing of her mother by her latest boyfriend.  And as a chance to practice her Spanish.

She also decided on the day she left town that she was going to use the trip as an opportunity to remake herself, to ditch the rules and society norms of her hypocritic mother and her socialite ‘friends’.  She remade herself all right and sometimes she walked such a fine edge she could have toppled into unfixable harm–to herself or others.  But in the process she saw both sides of Argentina in the late 1940s–the seedy side of poverty and organized crime as well as the luxury among the mansion-living oligarchs like the family who had invited her.

Shortly after her arrival she caught the eye of First Lady Evita and was invited to be her English coach to help her prepare for an upcoming state tour of Europe and then was invited to join her on the tour. Meeting Evita was the second pivotal moment of her life.  Her determination to remake herself now had a model.  She wanted more than to be like her, she needed to be her.  This was quite reminiscent of Western culture teens' worship of musical celebrities.  Think Beyoncé and the Beatles.  

But in Mona’s case she did get more return on her emotional investment than most modern teens do from their idols.  Mona received from Evita some of the nurturing and validation she had never gotten from her own narcissistic and alcoholic mother.  Plus she experienced surviving the letdown when her idol slipped off the pedestal without losing what she’d gained in self-esteem.

This first section is the part that reads like a coming of age story and ends as Evita’s brother Juan Durate and her bodyguard Pierre put her on a plane back to Toronto after the three of them fulfill a task for Evita.  That of placing two cases into a Swiss bank vault–one of jewels and one of gold bars.  She carries with her one of the three keys that will be needed to open the vault with instructions to hold it until Evita’s personal lawyer contacts her.

I must admit that on my first pass I developed a distaste for Mona and her antics in this first section but on my second read through I realized that I was bringing into it the dregs of the judgmentalism from the prudish Puritinesque cult that I was raised in. She had grown on me by the time I finished the story the first time but by the time I reached the end of her travels the second time, I’d  discovered my usual talent for empathy which necessitates meeting a person where they are.

The rest of the novel goes back and forth between Pierre the bodyguard and Mona and their adventures after Evita dies having never retrieved the keys from them.  Pierre’s sections have flashbacks to his time in Europe under German occupation and tell the story of his leaving Evita’s service after marrying another Canadian.  So Mona and Pierre are both in Canada when the news breaks of Evita’s death and the now powerful Juan Duarte begins to use the long tentacles of his organized crime group embedded in the oligarchic power structure of Argentina to come after the two keys.  And this power-corrupted thug will stop at nothing to get what he wants.  There is a trail of broken people and dead bodies to prove it.

And yes, this story supports multiple reads.  Though it can be read for the plot alone there are plenty of extra gems to unpack in subsequent reads and in my opinion worth as much if not more than Evita’s jewels.

_________________________________________________

Below in the media kit find blurbs and an author bio that includes links to her web presence. Catch more reviews and excerpts via links to other participants in the tour. And don't forget to enter the giveaway.

From the Media Kit:

Description of Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

Evita Peron's jewels are missing. Only three people know that they are in a vault in the Swiss Alps; Evita's corrupt and brutal brother Juan, her bodyguard Pierre, and a teenaged girl Mona, her newest protegee. What happens if two of them team up? Like Eva herself, Mona comes from a broken family and has to make her own way. Perhaps that's why the two women feel close. Evita is at the pinnacle of success but already in the grip of a fatal illness. We see her life through the eyes of Mona and Pierre, two people she trusts -- and who betray her in the end. Or can theft and murder be justified? A story of love, adventure, and murder.

Praise For Erika Rummel's novels

This is a fast paced page turner.  A suspenseful, thrilling roller coaster ride with lots of twisty, loopy sections. Head Games is an apt title for this enthralling read. 

 Joy Renee, Joystory 

Identity's a big theme in this work, so if you've ever felt you were someone other than yourself, if you thought you might like to try living in someone else's skin, if you've wondered whether your friends and loved ones were not exactly who they claimed to be, then this psychological labyrinth might just be your winding road to a good read

Carole Giangrande, Words to Go 

This was a book that grabbed me from the start. I's a period in history that offered much to the world but also had some of man's darkest moments. Due to that it does provide rich material for a novelist and Ms. Rummel does an excellent job of taking her reader on a dangerous journey through the twists and turns of what many faced during the time. The characters are well developed and defined. The scenes are well described and I found myself feeling like I was actually walking the streets with the characters of the book.

Patty, Books Cooks Looks 

To live during such tumultuous times would be horrible. You would have to be careful of every word that came out of your mouth. That might be easy when you are alert, but what about when you are so tired that you can't even think? This book made me thankful that I was born in America in the 20th century. Any fan of riveting historical fiction will get lost in this book from page one.

Lisa, Lisa's Writopia

About Erika Rummel

Award winning author, Erika Rummel is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books and seven novels. Her seventh novel, Evita and Me is being published on May 24, 2022. She won the Random House Creative Writing Award (2011) for a chapter from The Effects of Isolation on the Brain and The Colorado Independent Publishers' Association's Award for Best Historical Novel, in 2018. She is the recipient of a Getty Fellowship and the Killam Award. Erika grew up in Vienna, emigrated to Canada and obtained a PhD from the University of Toronto. She taught at Wilfrid Laurier and U of Toronto.  She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. 

Erika's Website: http://www.erikarummel.com/ 

Erika's Blog:  http://rummelsincrediblestories.blogspot.ca/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/historycracks

Buy Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

Amazon DX Varos Publishing

Giveaway Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

This giveaway is for 1 print copy and is open to Canada and the U.S. only. 

This giveaway ends on July 23, 2022 midnight, Pacific time.  

Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus June 21 Kickoff & Guest Post 

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Gracie Goodreads July 12 Review 

Bee BookPleasures.com July 13 Review & Interview 

Mindy Room Without Books is Empty July 14 Review 

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Joystory July 21 Review

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ROW80 Round 2 2022 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2022

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Since the last time I made a goal post many things have changed in my life circumstances.  I became a widow and then a few months later moved into my own apartment where I depend on the aid of caregivers for many daily chores and errands.  It was a big change and a steep learning curve which I'm still climbing.  But things are settling down enough now I feel able to make commitments again in this area.  

I'm thinking now that it might have been a mistake to think I needed to get past the move chaos first and instead look for a way to fold the writing into even that and add the move related goals to the list here to teach the living goals how to play nice with the writing goals and visa versa.

At any rate I'm back now and highly motivated again after a hugely successful Camp NaNo win that was about way more than reaching the word count goal.  I reached the much more important goal that the project had been designed to obtain and that was breakthrough in the psychological blocks keeping me from owning my truth which was also keeping me from completing any of my WIP because every time the stories began to touch upon the themes that triggered my anxieties I shied away.

Last Friday's post Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations describes the breakthrough and how it relates to my leaving the fundie cult I was raised in in 94 and then using the FOS storyworld to explore my thoughts and feelings about it tho only just so far...

Because I am in my own place now and no longer having my elderly mother's needs dominating my attention I have more autonomy over my schedule and so I've been able to double the time investment in many of the non-writing goals like reading and craft study. But even there I know myself well enough to know that setting my mind to any task for at least 20 minutes increases the probability that I will still be at it two hours later.  Even four hours or fourteen hours later.  That is an aspect of my autism spectrum that transitions between tasks or any mind state actually are very difficult but once the transition is accomplished I'm all in.  

Focus once it kicks in is my superpower but it can also be a super pain in the butt for myself and anyone forced to deal with me.  Thus one of the things I need to make an aspect of my goals is to keep a watch for when the problem isn't devoting too little time but devoting an unreasonable amount of time.  Unreasonable defined by how it impacts my health and wellbeing in other areas.

Because in order to keep this place as a viable writing haven I must keep myself healthy, the environment clean and clutter free, the bills paid and the errands ran.  That means keep a constant sleep schedule, set task alarms, answer the door when my caregivers ring, eat regular healthy meals, plan and execute the tasks required including prepare for HUD inspections, make appointments and keep them and continue to purge and organize the stuff I moved in as I bring more over from Mom's.  I may discuss some of these in the check-ins as they impact my writing goals but unless they become such a problem they start to threaten my health or my ability to hang onto my place then I may have to define a goal.

2022 Round 2 ROW80 goals:

Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  Used to be a challenge but I've kept it fairly steady for over two years now.  

Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- Swaying on the mini-tramp can include all three simultaneous.  There are a number of other ways I can do any one or combine two but it is essential that each one is included every day. The MOVE part is going to be the most challenging as I injured my knee during the move last summer and every time I increase activity I tend to tweak it again. But these have proven to provide a high yield return on investment as whenever I've practiced any of them it stimulates creativity, memory, and insight; lowers anxiety, and increases energy, stamina and a positive mood.

Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 30 min Daily MInimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream.

Read Fiction 60 min Daily Average

Read/Study Craft 60 min Daily Average 

Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  Plus this is preparing the ground for future promotion once I'm ready to publish

30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  It's been years since I've made clean copies of manuscripts in my portfolios and for most of the noveling writing challenges I've never printed hardcopy.  That is a lot of words to mine as between 2004 and 2015 I participated in more than one such challenge per year-- Nanowrimo, Junowrimo, Camp Nano, ROW80 and Sweating for Sven among them.  That is a lot of novella length WIP just gathering electron dust.  A conservative estimate is over 20.  This is an exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

Create and maintain a FOS Storyworld Bible as part of the file mining.  The aim is to collect in one place all the Character rosters, character sketches and monologs, family trees, timelines, themes, real world history that backdrops the story, landscapes and floor plans and other such story criteria that may be relevant between multiple stories in the storyworld.  This should also help me sort out which of the individual POV WIP really need to stand on their own and which need to be blended together.   Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  See Poems by Joy Renee Portal.  Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work. 

Continue writing in the Camp NaNo True Joy memoir file 1000 words Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.  This has been an exercise in honoring my heart and mind to learn to stand in my truth and to explore the events in my life that either inspire or block the writing of the stories. The breakthrough I made during April Camp NaNo gives me hope that the words will soon flow again in the stories. They have already started to haunt my waking and sleeping dreams again.

Choose a story or POV character WIP to focus on for the month of June for JuNoWriMo.  This would be a rewrite more than an edit but there would be both editing and added words involved.  I already suspect which story it will be but I need to take a fresh look at it before I commit. It is even possible I might choose two.  One that needs mostly editing and another that needs significant words added.

Post one review of a book or a video every week.  See this week's review of M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore

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Book Review: A Gift Upon the Shore by M K Wren

 

A Gift Upon the Shore
by M K Wren

M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore was a gift to readers everywhere and everywhen back in the day before smartphones and internet.  It's a post-apocalyptic story about saving the books for future generations.  

I read it first time decades ago when it first came out in the early 90s and felt the need for a reread in this day when the book burners and banners are at it again.  

What might happen if they gained the upper hand?

The premise:

Civilization is gone.  Nuclear winter just set in.  Two women alone in a house on a bluff above the surf on the Oregon coast not yet knowing if there are any survivors in the local rural community and if so are they the friendly kind?  

The runup to the nuclear End had seen a  plague that killed millions in America alone, roving gangs of nihilists terrorizing those still civil, half of California fell into the sea taking 2 million more souls, the president had been assassinated by a bomb and those taking the power canceled the constitution and set up a Federal Information Broadcasting System.  

You saw that right: FIBS.

But even that was gone on the day the bombs fell as the EMP took out all electronics including car ignitions and digital clocks, home appliances and power tools  And then nuclear winter set in within days.

Is there hope?  And if so will they choose it?  

The only clue is in the author's choice of names for her protagonists: Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow.

This book came back into my life like a miracle.  I'd thought about it often over the years as memories of scenes haunted me as did the mission the women took upon themselves after the initial shock wore off and they had assured their basic survival needs by looting the abandoned buildings and vehicles within a day's travel on horseback.

Instinctively, part of their looting had included every book they encountered until the volumes they found together with those they'd already owned topped 10K not counting duplicates.  It was nearly a full year after the End when they had the time to contemplate a future for themselves and for humanity.  And that is when they devised the mission to preserve the books for the future.  

I had vivid memories of images of them wrapping the books in aluminum foil and then applying a waterproof sealer which I could not remember.  I remembered they had built a vault by digging a cave into the side of the bluff above the surf and lining it with stone and cedar planks.  I remembered that later in the story someone had tried to dynamite the vault.  And that that someone was related to the Christian cult they had encountered years after the End.  The first and only survivors they did encounter within the decades the story covers.

I had remembered that much but even that more vaguely than that summary implies.

I had lost my reading records in a move and could no longer remember either author or title.  But I did remember we had once owned a trilogy written by the same author and that it had been a sci/fant story involving another fundie cult and that the title of book one had the word Lamb in it.  That wasn't enough to find a viable search term for online resources.

But then one day while searching something else altogether (which I no longer remember what it was or the search terms) there in the results was one of the books from the trilogy and there was the author's name and from there it was just a click to find her list of titles and there it was.  A Gift Upon the Shore.

That happened no more than a month before Dewey's thon and I thought what a perfect read for Dewey's legacy.  So I made myself wait for the morning of the thon to start the book.

Reading this book was a slow slog due to eye issues (legally blind with RP) combined with emotional issues related to the events in my life in the late 90s that caused me to excommunicate myself from the cult I was raised in.  I wonder now what role this book played back then in helping me identify my own faith community as similarly toxic to the one featured in Wren's book.  

It must have had some impact if even unconscious as I read it when it was still a new hardback at the library in the early 90s and the first inkling I had of the doctrinal disputes that were about to implode our faith family was in 92.  Then in 94 I witnessed the disciplining of an infant for "inappropriate use of his voice" as the men in the room calmly discussed scripture and the women calmly handed out dessert plates and the small children calmly played their little games on the floor.

That scene became a tornado that devastated my soul. That picked me up out of my world and set me down in what might as well have been another planet. That turned me from a True Believer into a skeptic and set me on a mission to learn to think for myself.

There is a scene in this book where a 13 year old is whipped with a belt for blasphemy for asking in church why the begets for Jesus in the gospel don't agree with each other and both lead to Joseph and not Mary who was supposed to be a virgin.  Reading that scene again after spending the month of April writing my memoir of the events that catapulted me out of my faith community was so surrealistic I can't even...

It was like pouring salt on the wounds I just ripped the scabs off of.

See Friday's post, Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations, for a more in depth explanation of the roots of the emotions this novel is stirring up.

The read-a-thon was supposed to end at 5AM Sunday for me but I read on until 7:30 trying to finish this story. I was still just over 10% out when I had to give up. Then I woke up after only four hours of sleep and after coffee picked up the book again--and fell asleep over it waking at 9pm after another 4 hours of sleep.  I finally finished it after 10PM. 

This story is going to haunt me for the rest of my days.

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Sunday Serenity - More Story Joy

 

My DVD Shelves

The read-a-thon was supposed to end at 5am for me but I read on until 7:30 trying to finish that novel I spent more than twelve hours with during the thon.  I woke up after only four hours of sleep and after coffee picked up the book again--and fell asleep over it waking at 9pm after another 4 hours of sleep.  I finally finished it around 10:20 PM.  

That story is going to haunt me for many more years to come as it had haunted me since the first time I read it in the early 90s.  It was a miracle finding it again as it had gone out of print and I had lost my reading records and could not remember the title or author only snippets of plot and flickers of scenes and the fact it was about rescuing books for the future after a civilization ending event.  I've about talked myself into believing I need to post a review but meanwhile my thoughts on M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore as I read yesterday are part of yesterday's thon post.

But for right now I'm going to finally give myself the reward I promised myself for the dedication to writing my story for Camp NaNo thru April and the dedication to reading stories for the thon all day yesterday.  I'm going to watch DVD sitcoms until I fall asleep again.

My DVD Player

There's my DVE player and the little box of DVD taken from their cases.  I call it my line-up.  There 9 of them.  Eight sitcoms and The Twilight Zone. I watch on average one to four episodes per day, working my way through the line-up around six times until all episodes are watched and then switch out for the next-up disc in each series. Very occassionaly and usually because I'm sick, I'll watch through the entire line-up in a single day.

It takes me ten to fourteen days to work through the pile.  As one series finishes I add a new series into the mix.  That happened several times since Christmas but as it sits now it will be months before another series finishes.

The line up: 

• Twilight Zone
• MASH
• Gomer Pyle
• Green Acres
• Mork and Mindy
• Laverne and Shirly
• I Love Lucy
• Mary Tyler Moore
• All in the Family

The common theme: series from my youth that I was discouraged or forbidden to watch at the time.  

Series I finished since I began this foray into comedy and closing cultural gaps:

• Bewitched
• I Dream of Jeanie
• Keeping Up Appearances
• Petticoat Junction

Series waiting in the wings:

• The Big Bang Theory
• Seinfeld
• Beverly Hillbillies
• Third Rock From the Sun

That's just the comedies.  I leave the Dramas, Sci-fi/fantasy and such for another post and the movies and musicals from recent to classical I've just started collecting to yet another.

I used to favor the dramas and sci/fant--the hour long episodes and the movies.  But during the early acute phase of my grieving process after loosing Ed I was watching a MASH episode because it was something we used to do together and he had introduced me to the series after we married.  As I watched one episode I was surprised by laughter in spite of the fresh grief.  

Discussing it with my counselor she assured me it was normal and nothing to be ashamed of and encouraged me to continue exposing myself to the possibility of laughter so that I would not forget that it too was part of life.  It was the most valuable advice I got about how to endure and process grief.  And it became almost like a mission for me to explore these kinds of stories.  It has been an interesting experience and I hope to muse on it some more in future posts

But next up tonight: MTM and All in the Family.  And if I'm still awake the line-up starts over with the Twilight Zone...

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My Brain On Books XXXI

  

 

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My Read-a-Thon Nest

11:55 PM - Just passed 50% in the novel A Gift Upon the Shore.  I've been reading it steady since around 7pm. The reader app tells me I've read in it for nearly 9 hour and there are nearly 8 hours to go.  It says I'm averaging 137 wpm.  That is slow, even for me with my visual impairment.  My average for most fiction in ebooks with large fonts is around 200 wpm.  Which is a huge come down from my heydays in my teens and twenties before the RP started encroaching on my retinas.  Back then I was clocked at nearly 1K wpm.  Back then, in the 70s, I could have read this book in under four hours.  When I read it in the early 90s I read it in a single day but it probably took 6 or 8 hours with lots of pauses for eyestrain.  That was a treebook which by then would cause my eyes to ache after hours.  Ebooks don't cause the ache but they do cause them to start burning and to feel like sandpaper after hours.

But it isn't just the eye issues slowing down my reading.  It's the emotional ones.  The first time I read it I was still a True Believer in the doctrine of my church foamily and tho I recognized the fundies in this novel as a cult I was a few years away from recognizing my own community as a cult.  Reading this book again on the heals of spending an intense month writing my memoir about the events that tore me out of the fabric of my life is like pouring salt on the wounds I've just ripped the scabs off.

See yesterday's post, Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations, for a more in depth explanation of the roots of the emotions this novel is stirring up.

I must be a masochist as I'm going straight back to it as soon as I've posted the update and get something to eat.  I'll probably stick with it until the end of thon but if I pass the 80% mark by then it will be hard to put down before I sleep.  Unless my eyes rebel.

27 Essential Principles of Story
by Daniel Joshua Rubin

5:55 PM = Another switch.  My cell is charged but I'm going to read one more NF chapter before switching back to the Wren novel.  This time it is going to be 27 Essential Principles of Story: Master the Secrets of Great Storytelling, from Shakespeare to South Park by Daniel Joshua Rubin.  As a writer myself, I've been gleaning a great deal of understanding of the construction of story from Rubin over the last several months.  I may need to own a copy someday as I can't seem to digest what I need in the 2 to 3 weeks of each loan period and I must not be the only one because I'm often waiting in line for another turn.

It is also time for food and another thermos of coffee.  I have fish sticks in my toaster oven and my water is hot...

As for Wolff's Reader, Come Home--I just read the chapter likening what happens in the brain to a 5 ring circus with performers akin to Cirque de Soleil.  A fantastical menagerie of speedy acrobats on high-wires and trapeze in a coordinated choreographed dance that engages five areas of the brain encompassing all the lobes and layers to integrate the circuits designed for hunting, foraging and socialization into a new thing we call reading.  It is not something that is genetically programed as is learning language.

4:44 PM = Switching again.  This time to Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolff.  I read her Proust and the Squid years back.  Or at least I had it out of the library several ties and advanced my bookmark though I can't be sure I finished it as my reading records were lost in a move.  Anyway Proust was her attempt to show how literacy literally changed the structure of our brains.  That book was published before smart phones and social media took over our lives and now she is back with a warning.  This new kind of reading is also changing our brains and meanwhile is forming the brains of those born into the new milieu in ways we may not be able to anticipate and ways we may not not relish once it is too late to undo.

As for the Tori Amos, I think I just found a soul sister.  A poet, song-writer who stresses about the same thing I do but has the courage to stand in her truth and speak her truth about the distressing things she has witnessed.  I hope her courage is contagious.

But I could only read a couple chapters.  Each chapter begins with the lyrics to one of her songs followed by the story of it's birth.  Poetry must be taking in sips not guzzled like a novel.  I will return many times over the next two weeks of my loan and probably at least one of those returns will be before the end of the thon.

3:33 PM - Time for a change of pace.  My cell on which I was reading A Gift Upon the Shore just dropped below 10% and must go on the charger.  I don't feel like being tethered so I'm switching to my Windows tablet on which I have my Libby library where I will read a chapter apiece in several NF while waiting for the cell to charge.

The first up will be Tori Amos's Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage.  Sounds like a possible antidote to the mood instilled by a post-apocalyptical novel.

Yet what a terrible place to be forced to set aside Wren's story. I just passed 30% and Civilization is gone.  Nuclear winter just set in.  Two women alone in a house on a bluff above the surf on the Oregon coast not yet knowing if there are any survivors in the local rural community and if so are they the friendly kind?  A plague that has killed millions, roving gangs of nihilists terrorize the still civil, and all electronics was fried by EMP...

Is there hope?  And if so will they choose it?  The only clue is in the author's choice of names for her protagonists: Mary Hope and Rachel Morrow.

A Gift Upon the Shore
by M K Wren

5:55 AM - Oops!  I sat down on the bed to wait for water to boil for coffee and fell back to sleep.  Getting started now with M K Wren's A Gift Upon the Shore which was a gift to readers everywhere and everywhen back in the day before computers and internet.  A post-apocalyptical story about saving the books for future generations.  I read it first time decades ago and felt the need for a reread in this day when the book burners are at it again.  What might happen if they gained the upper hand?

4:44 AM - Intro Meme I'm setting this to go live at 4:44 AM but it may be well into hour 1 or even hour 2 before I check in again.  I'll be reading my first pick sitting in my beanbag chair nursing my first thermos of coffee.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother since 2013.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Resistance by Tori Amos

Fiction: A Gift Upon the Shore by M K Wren

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Chips and guacamole.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

Widowed September 2020 

Living alone for the first time ever.  Nine months now.

Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision

Diagnosed with high functioning autism six years ago

Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone.

I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I'm going to be buddy reading with someone for the first time since the first year of Dewey's Thons and I'm hoping to interact with the community more this time than in the last several thons.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

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