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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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.
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Ode to Dewey by Joy Renee We Miss You Dewey |
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