Friday Forays in Fiction: NaNoWriMo 2012

Find me on nanowrimo.org as user joywrite

Twelve days until NoNoWriMo 2012 kickoff.  Halloween night as the clock ticks over to midnight where ever you happen to be.  for me that is USA Pacific Coast.

I've decided on my 2012 NaNo novel.  It's going to be a sequel to my 2008 NaNo novel tho that one is still unfinished and a massive mess.  But it makes sense to do it because that story was set during the summer and fall of the 2008 election season and now this one can be set in the 2012 election season and follow up with some of the characters' last four years.  The mobile home park setting is well established as is the theme which means a lot of prep work is already done.

The 2008 novel was called Mobile Hopes and featured a large cast of characters living in a mobile home park superficially like the one I live in, each of whom were dealing with personal crisis either created by or exasperated by the economic conditions that year.  This sequel, Occupy Hope, will continue to carry that theme..

Here is a snippet from Mobile Hopes.

Here is a snippet of my 2011 script for Script Frenzy based on that novel snippet.

They feature irascible Gerta aged 97.  She would be over 100 now.  But tho I never wrote the scenes in 2008, she was supposed to die before the end of that novel and keeping her alive for Occupy Hope would mess with the structure of Mobile Hopes. 

No worries.  There are at least 30 odd remaining characters to play with and surely there will have been babies born, new neighbors, marriages and divorces, high school grads moving on, vets returning from Iraq, and Afghanistan, addicts getting out of rehab, drug suppliers getting out of jail, evictions, a  new crop of migrant workers, other deaths from illness, old age, accident and murder.

Speaking of murder.  I'd been playing with this idea for over a week but could not close the deal in my mind until this evening when I heard what sounded like 3 successive gunshots very near by.  There was not following sound of sirens so if it really had been gunshots, surely someone else would have heard it and called the police.  Unless everyone is like us and doesn't want to get involved and maybe isn't quite sure what they heard and not sure what direction it came from.

At any rate my novelist imagination took off on all of the what ifs.  I made a special note of the time just in case it ever because an issue.  6:56pm.  One shot followed by 5 seconds or so of silence followed by 2 back to back shots.

But Gerta has come to symbolize that whole novel for me somehow.  I guess if I can't stand to do without her this time she can be a ghost.  There was a ghost in Mobile Hopes so there's precedent for it.

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Bloggiesta September 2012 Goals

JOIN IN

This time I hope to put my major focus on considering and implementing options for making daily posts less onerous to complete and cut back the average time spent daily from over 3 to under 2 hours.

Organization of tools and information would be the main players here I think and maybe some post backlogs..

 The urgent:

• write author interview questions for an upcoming blog tour
• create an embedded spreadsheet to keep track of my ROW80 goals for the next round to replace the obnoxiously long posts I have been using.  I created the spreadsheet in Google Docs but could not figure out how to embed it.
• create a ROW80 page.  
• check out all of the mini-challenges and complete at least one.
• read/write blogging related email
• prepare a backlog of posts to see me through the the next three busy months.  These could be Sunday Serenity posts, Quote posts, and book reviews.
• collect book cover images for likely book reviews
• prepare a list of themes and concepts for Friday Forays in Fiction posts and a place to collect info and images for them.
• learn and apply at least one new traffic gaining trick.
• clean up the sidebars again.
• add commitments for next several weeks to calendar
• visit Blogiesta participants and leave comments

Less urgent: 

• pare down labels and add labels to old posts from the years before labels were available.
• fix image and video size in old posts created before the template change two years ago that are too big for the current post column.
• change icons for social network links in sidebar and add the missing ones.  I would like smaller icons and if possible a consistent size.
• work on about page
• clean out inbox pushing 7K

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Spring Fling Finale

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

Today was the last day of the SITS Girls Spring Fling.  I spent a lot of time working on the assignments for Tuesday (About Page) Wednesday (Best Of Paage) and Thursday (Do Something New).

The new thing I'm doing is setting up Pages in Blogger.  I've known I had the capability for over a year but kept putting it off.

You ought to be seeing the About Page in the top section of the left sidebar.  I tried to get the links to show in tabs across the top but it wouldn't take for some reason and I think I actually like it this way better anyway as there are going to be over six total when I'm done.

I put a lot of time, thought and effort into it over the last several days and still have only the About Page ready to publish and even yet consider it still under construction.

I don't know if I'm going to have a Best Of Page as I am planning to have several others that serve a similar purpose only splitting the best posts into categories: Reading, Writing, Fiber Art etc.  Once I have them ready they will replace in function what the Portal Posts have been for:

Book Review Portal will become part of the Joyread Page
Poetry Portal will become part of the Joywrite Page
Fruits of the Spirit Story World Portal ditto

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Of Spring Flings, Sidebars & Social Networking

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

While working so hard to finish Mom's scarf/shawl before Moother's Day I dropped the ball on SITS Girls Spring Fling for Thursday and Friday assignments.  So my goal today was to catch up those two assignments and do today's which was to declutter our blog.  Thursday was share your Google+ link and Friday was share your Pinterest link.  Though I had a Google+ page I hadn't done a profile for it.  I didn't have a Pinterest account at all.

Earlier last week we shared our facebook and Twitter links.  Those I already had well establishes so those two assignments took only minutes.  Except for the visiting others part.  That always takes me a looooooong time.

But today I spent hours on Google+ and Pinterest.  Signing up for the latter and setting up profiles on both and following and pinning and liking and...


I was so bummed that both JoyRenee and Joystory and Joywrite were already taken as usernames.  I probably spent half an hour just staring at the sighup screen before I finally went with 'storyismyjoy'


Might as well round them all up here:

Joy Renee on Google+
Joy Renee on Pinterest
Joystory fanpage on facebook
Joy Renee on Twitter


For the declutter project I chose to begin with getting rid of all of the old buttons for events and challenges from the past.  But I didn't want to just delete them.  So I moved them into a footer at the bottom of the page in a section I named Once Upon a Time.  That was so easy I wondered if maybe I was about to loose my aversion to sidebar fiddling caused by a frustrating experience every single time I attempt it.

But then of course it happened again.  One of the buttons I wanted to leave in the sidebar above did not reappear after I'd removed the others and saved the widget.  I spent nearly two hours beating my brain over the problem.  If it had been any other button but Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon I might have given up and deleted it after fifteen minutes.  It wasn't until I did a character by character comparison of the code in the sidebar widget with the code in my last read-a-thon post that I discovered that somehow the url for the image had lost all its capitalization.  Once I'd copied the url again from the post and inserted it in place of the deformed one it worked again.  Now, tho, I'm left confuzzled as to how it happened.  All of the letters were still in place but had converted to lowercase.

So altogether today I must have put in seven hours on the Spring Flling.  Including a few comments left and reading some of the posts on SITS Girls about Google+ and Pinterest.  Some of that time in the last three hours has been about waiting for pages to load and tabs to unfreeze. It must be time for a browser restart or computer restart.  Or both.

My mind feels like a pretzel.

If tomorrow's assignment looks like it will take me more than thirty minutes I might have to pass so I can focus on getting caught up on a crochet project that has to be done a week from today.

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The SITS Girls Spring Fling Has Sprung

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

I signed up for this a couple of weeks ago knowing that it was to start on the day I was leaving home.  I was actually able to get Monday's task [link your blog at SITS and leave comments on two others] done before I had to shut down my netbook and pack it for the trip but there was too much getting unpacked and organized at this end not to mention rested yesterday to get Tuesday's task done so this evening I caught up on Tuesday's [link your Twitter at SITS and follow two others and send some tweets] and after I get this posted I'll be doing Wednesday's task [link you blog's fb page at SITS and fan two participants pages]

It's not too late to join in.  It last through next week.  Here are the links for signing up and doing the first three tasks:

Sign Up: Get on our email distribution list for this event

Blog link-up: Share your blog URL and get commenting

Using Twitter to Build Your Community

Facebook Fans Page

Tomorrow will be about using Google+ and Friday about Pinterest.  The only one I'm not already signed up for is Pinterest.  But Google+ is sitting dead in the water since I signed up a couple months ago.  I don't really know how to use it.  Hoping for help from the tutorials at SITS tomorrow.  Same for Pinterest.

I'll also be looking into the tutorials on Twitter, and fb available at the links above.

As soon as I've done today's assignment I've got to get busy crocheting again.  Can you believe that I started a shawl for Mom for Mother's Day in the car on the trip up her Monday.  *shakes head*  *sighs* 

Look for pics of what I have so far by tomorrow afternoon on tomorrow's post.  Right now it is about 60 inches long and 2 inches wide. It takes me just under an hour to do two rows. Four rows equals and inch and I'm aiming for somewhere between 10 and 18 inches. I'm working a simple rectangle the long way so that I can stop wherever I reach by the wee hours of Sunday morning.  If it ends up being a scarf instead of a shawl, so be it.  I'm using the hand painted silk lace weight thread that I made my MIL's shawl with last year and using the same love knot stitch aka Solomon's knot.  Tho I won't be changing up the stitch size as I did before.  I'm making the knots about a third of an inch long which makes the mesh just right to stick my thumb through.

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Vasculitus Awareness Month 2012

In honor of this being the first day of May and the month designated as Vasculitus Awareness Month, I'm going to turn this post over to my sister Jamie for a guest post on her experience of living with one of the Vasculitus diseases.

Those of you who follow my blog might remember the month long vigil we held in her ICU room in the summer of 2010 when we almost lost her.  Or you can go here and here to read about it.

Vasculitis diseases are autoimmune disorders and they come in many flavors. Jamie was finally diagnosed with the flavor Wegener's which causes inflammation of blood vessels in the nose and throat and organs and causes inflammation in the joints which is quite painful.  She has developed scar tissue in her throat that necessitates dilation surgeries every 3 to 6 months.  Last year during one of those surgeries the doctors had to install a long term trach.

With that intro I now turn you over to Jamie but stay tuned at the end for an informative video about Vasulitus.

 I have always been relatively healthy, breathing, running, jumping, walking the three miles around lake Sacajawea in my home town of Longview, Washington. walking a mile to school and back daily.  But in the winter of 2008 that all changed for me. I woke up in pain, my knees hurt to where I couldn’t walk to the bathroom, so I called an ambulance and then called my brother.

Then getting the dreaded cortisone shot in my knee and then my breathing problem began. Everyone thought it was asthma, who would have thought I would be here and have a disease so rare? GPA (Wegener’s)!  That started me on a journey to discovering what strength, endurance; courage truly looks like when faced with a battle.  Especially when it is your own life you are saving.

I have experience thus far in a 3 year period, numerous surgeries, 2 near death experiences, loving support from family and friends from whom I never would have thought I would receive it, learning to communicate effectively with doctors, nurses, family, and friends in order to be heard, not having a voice to speak in order to get what I needed, having a care provider come in 5 days a week to help me to maintain my house, losing a friendship, gaining an old friend I thought I had lost, meeting new and amazing friends who too have Vasculitis disease, losing my ability to drive myself, gaining a furry friend who loves me unconditionally no matter what I look like, sound like, or what mood I am in. 

 And most importantly I have learned that I am stronger and can face obstacles with fear, but still can be calm and get through it anyway. 

I am not some woman that does not feel the tinges of anxiety or nervousness when faced with challenges. I do feel that way; I am just choosing to courageously face the challenges anyway. An example of this is focusing on what I can do and not what I cannot do. When I get news such as having to face yet another surgery and knowing my history of how those surgeries can end up causing more damage in the long run than good, I start looking at the reason I need another throat dilation surgery done: in order for me to breathe. 

Breathing seems like a vital thing to me and even though I have a history of throat spasms during surgery I will face it anyway. I just learned to do some things ahead of time in preparation. Having an illness teaches me to prepare for all sorts of things. One preparation thing I have done is an advance directive in case I am not able to make health care choices or any type of decisions. My siblings have copies of this paperwork and that makes me feel secured. 

The weeks preceding surgery I do not read any horror books or watch horror movies so that in case I have another hallucination episode again I will not hallucinate something bad again like I did in July of 2010 when I read the Dean Koontz “Frankenstein” series before having throat surgery. I ended up having major hallucination around that book. I recommend no one reads or watches things that are scary before going under anesthesia. 

Putting my life in perspective these last three years I have been living with chronic illness, I've learned the value of acceptance: Having to accept that I am sick that I no longer can do many of the things that I use to and realizing that some of those things I used to do were not exactly healthy in the first place. 

I feel blessed that I am here, that I do now know what it is I suffer from. That there are support systems set in place from other suffers who are positive, who share what they are learning, and who are choosing to go on despite being in pain, having blisters on their bodies, brain issues, taking yucky drugs that cause lots of fall out issues more than the disease, and hearing their stories. 

The people with Vasculities are in pain and have chosen to face the challenge and not lay in bed whining about how miserable they are. These men and women are fighting to be able to function and live fulfilled lives. I may not be 100 percent at my best all the time, but I am learning to love me anyway. I am appreciating what it is I do have. I am learning how to stand up, facing the challenge and even if I have one moment where I want to crawl under the rock. I now know that feeling will only last a day and then I am up fighting again. 

I am worth fighting for and that is the biggest thing I have learned on my journey thus far.

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The SITS Girls Spring Fling Event

SITS Girls Spring Fling Event:
A Blog Improvement Challenge--
Build Your Community &
Improve Your Blog

I just signed up to participate in SITS Girls Spring Fling.  Seems to be similar to Bloggiesta--build you community and improve your blog--but lasts nearly two weeks instead of one long weekend and puts more emphasis on social networking as part of blogging.  Also instead of an intense marathon like pace where you try to cram as much blog improvement as possible into 72 hours this one seems to encourage doing a few small things each day.

I almost didn't sign up seeing as it starts the day I'm going to be on the road back to Longview and I'm expecting things to be a lot  busier while there this time so will have less time to hang out on the computer.  But if I manage to get even one useful tip or memorable experience out of it it would be worth it.  And since the whole social networking things is something I am still fumbling around with and still not really getting the point I should see what they have to say about it.  More than just see what they say but see how they work it.

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National Storytelling Day

Today, April 27, is National Storytelling Day.  I should say 'was' considering how close to midnight it is as I write this.  I discovered this quite late in the day with no time left to do up a proper post with musing about what storytelling means to me and links to resources or the history of the event.  So this post is sadly lacking in useful content but I couldn't let the day go by without mention.

So call this a celebration post.  Like the ones I sometimes put up for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and July 4rth.

Hope you had a happy Story Telling Day.

Did you encounter any stories today?  Did you tell any stories today?  What was your favorite story as a small child?  Which story(ies) had the greatest impact on your life?  What does story mean to you?

Obviously story is uber meaningful to me seeing as how this blog was created as a celebration of story.

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Words Matter Week 2012

Leave it to me to discover a week long event on the evening of its last day.  This is a yearly event for bloggers held the first full week of March each year.  Each day M-F a prompt is presented and anyone wishing to write on its theme may and then link back to the hub blog.  There are prizes too.

This year the prompts were:

Monday:  Writers craft words into memorable phrases, stories, poems and plays.  What writers make your heart sing?  Why?

Gabrielle Garcia Marquez because his stories are like waking dreams that seem to arise out of my own dreams or maybe it is truer to say that my dreams rise up to greet his stories as long lost companions.

Maya Angelou because her poems and stories are the fruit cultivated in the soil of pain and despair fertilized with hope and courage.  Her words teach me the meaning of 'overcome'.

Flannery O'Conner because her stories confront me with the damaged aspects of my psyche and their propensity to commit terrible acts of violence against the spirit and body of self and other.  Forewarned is forearmed so many such acts can be avoided but her stories also speak of the power and hope in redemption for those occasions when failure to heed the warning leads to the inevitable gross acts of unkindness towards ones self and those lives interacting with our own.

Tuesday:  What word, said or unsaid, has or could change your life?  How?

Forgive.  Because whether it is I who has offended another or they who have offended me, the word forgive spoken from the heart has the power to mend fractured relationships and strengthen the fabric of family and community.  We all offend in many large and small ways every day and without the ability to forgive others and ourselves and to accept the forgiveness of others the weight of guilt, shame, resentment  and anger would crush out souls and smother our sanity.  Living with the habit of forgiveness makes living in joy and harmony possible.

Wednesday:  Communication breaks down when words are misused.  What is the funniest or worst breakdown you’ve ever observed?

The words were misheard rather than misused but just this evening I thought my mom asked me to turn the light out here in her bedroom and in a bit of a shocked tone I told her the light was already out and was about ask if she really couldn't tell as I wondered if this was what she meant when she complained the last few days that her eyes were going fast.

But before I could voice my jumbled thoughts she spoke again, enunciating carefully with her dentureless mouth through the apnea machine mask, saying that she meant it was OK for me to turn the light back on if I needed to while I cleared off my side of the bed.

That may not be the funniest instance I've ever observed just the most recent.

There have been a number of challenges to communication with my mom in the years since her stroke what with her issues with mild aphasia and both hers and my hearing loss and vision loss.  Some have been as amusing as this one.  Some not so much.

Thursday:  What Person in your life helped you understand the importance of choosing words carefully?  What would you say to them if you met them today?

My great aunt who had been a teacher and a teacher of teachers in her day once caught me with a thesaurus at the tender age of thirteen and she was dismayed.  She said one didn't have the right to use words one found in such lists of synonyms without knowing them already.  She stressed that it wasn't safe to just plug in any word in the entry as there were subtle and not so subtle differences in meaning and it was the writer's responsibility to know those subtleties and select the word best suited to the thought they are trying to convey.

I am totally paraphrasing as her actual words are vague in my memory.  Still vivid tho is her disapproval.  And even though I didn't really get all the subtleties of her points then it primed me for later understanding.  And over the several years she had left to influence my life she took every chance to share her love of words with me.  Playing Scrabble was one such way.  But she also introduced me to crossword puzzles and the stories of individual words in their etymology and history of use.

If she and I could speak today I'd tell her thank you, many thanks, much obliged, so appreciated, I'm so grateful, gramercy, thankee,  thank you kindly, merci, merci beaucoup, danke, danke schon, gracias, grazie, spasibo Auntie Rie.

Friday:  If you had to eliminate one word or phrase from the English language, what would it be?  Why?

Indifference.  Because, assuming as Orwell did in his novel 1984 that elimination of the word eliminates that which it references,  then indifference itself would be history.  And it is my belief that indifference is the root of all evil not the love of money.  For indifference is the polar opposite of love and passion.  It is worse than hate in that it cannot be moved and while hate is to be eschewed its presence bespeaks the capacity of its bearer for passion and thus also for compassion.  While indifference stands by as vile acts are perpetrated upon the innocent, weak and vulnerable, making no effort to alleviate distress since the distress of others cannot touch one who can't be stirred to care.

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Why I Write: A Celebration of the National Day on Writing - National Writing Project

thanx to earthunderheaven on flikr

Why I Write: A Celebration of the National Day on Writing - National Writing Project:

'via Blog this'

Why I Write

I write because otherwise
the words would collect in my throat
like moss in the shade choking off hope
and the stories that bloom from the soil of my soul would wither and rot their roots with despair. So

I write because it is the only way I know
to tell you who I am.

I write to spark wonder and bask in its glow.
I write in order to not feel alone.

I write because my life depends on it.
I write in order to understand.

I write to discover what I know.

I write in order to empty my mind

I write because to write is to feel whole.

I write because story is my joy.

And Life IS story.

Join in on Twitter with hashtag  #whyiwrite
and'or post on facebook why do you write?

NWP on fb

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Litquake 2011 Kickoff This Weekend

Imagine a full stadium crowd roaring, lights flaring. For a game?  A concert? No.  For literature, for authors, for poets, for readers.  It's a festival for lovers of story!

Whether it’s poets reciting in a cathedral, authors discussing science versus religion in a library, or novelists reading in a beekeeping supply store, the goal remains the same: whet a broad range of literary appetites, present the literary fare in a variety of traditional and unlikely venues, and make it vivid, real, and entertaining. Now grown to the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast, Litquake continues its mission as a nine-day literary spectacle for booklovers, complete with cutting-edge panel discussions, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings.

I wish I'd known about this when I lived in the SF Bay Area.

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Banned Book Week Wrapup

Banned Book Week
Censorship Causes Blindness

For BBW this past week I will have posted ten times on the theme counting this one.  The other nine are listed and liked below.

There were seven book reviews, the last two brand new and the first five excerpts of previously posted reviews with commentary and quotes related to BBW.

I mused and occasionally ranted and rooted my aversion to censorship and the misguided overprotection of young adults in my personal experience as one who was kept so naive I was unable to function with competency once I became a legal adult.  And that in spite of my being able to make the President's List at college when I went back to school at age 27 the first semester and the Dean's List the second.

I'm not revealing that last in order to brag about my brightness as I discovered it to be fairly meaningless in the long run since what I had still not learned to do by age 27 was think for myself and was still so naive I continued to be continually traumatized by things I encountered in the real world which I had been so sheltered from all the way to age 21 when I got married and left home.

I was 35 before it dawned on me why this was and began my quest to learn to think for myself.  That was 20 years ago already and I'm still struggling.

When I wasn't preparing posts this week, I was reading.  In the first post and again in Monday's post I listed the titles of banned or challenged books that I currently had in my possession either owned or borrowed from friend, family or library or had access to online.  Of those books I listed I read in:

Aristophanes Lysistrata --the first several pages
East of Eden -- the first chapter
Twilight series -- the whole first books and some 40 odd pages into the second.
Milton's Areopagitica -- about 3 pages
Boccaccio's Decameron -- several pages
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales -- several pages
Whitman's Leaves of Grass -- several shorter poems and some browsing
I also reread many pages in both Speak and Nickel and Dimed while preparing the reviews.

I've kept my bookmarks in the classics and intend to keep plugging away a few pages at a time.  Except for East of Eden which is the only one I don't own and has a library due date and besides is modern enough in language I can read it at the same speed as Twilight without loosing comprehension.  Some of those others--Milton, Boccaccio, Chaucer--give me the sensation I'm reading algebra.  I had less trouble reading Russian by my second year of study.

My Banned Book Week Posts

Banned Books Week Begins

Book Banned Week: Review Repost of Lovely Bones
Sunday Serenity #247 The Soul of Books

Banned Book Week: Review Repost of Leaves of Grass

Banned Books Week: Review Repost of The Kite Runner

It's Monday! What are You Reading? #36 [Banned Book Week]

Banned Book Week Review Repost of The Bluest Eye

Banned Book Week: Review Repost of Impulse

Book Review: Nickel and Dimed [Banned Book Week]

Friday Forays in Fiction: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: A Review for Banned Books Week

Every one of my posts during BBW had several quotes opposing censorship following are some of what is left of the dozens I collected as the week began:

• Every burned book enlightens the world.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson
• To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.  ~John Aikin
• The populist authoritarianism that is the downside of political correctness means that anyone, sometimes it seems like everyone, can proclaim their grief and have it acknowledged.  The victim culture, every sufferer grasping for their own Holocaust, ensures that anyone who feels offended can call for moderation, for dilution, and in the end, as is all too often the case, for censorship.  And censorship, that by-product of fear - stemming as it does not from some positive agenda, but from the desire to escape our own terrors and superstitions by imposing them on others - must surely be resisted.  ~Jonathon Green, "Did You Say 'Offensive?'," as posted on wordwizard.com
• We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764
• Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.  ~Potter Stewart
• The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas. — Carl Sagan
• What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933
• Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.  ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935
• A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus
• To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging
• I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech.  ~Nancie J. Carmody
• It often requires more courage to read some books than it does to fight a battle. —Sutton Elbert Griggs

Here are a few bookish events going on for BBW:

Hosted by Bookjourney

Get on the BANNED WAGON!

Giveaways, a scavenger hunt and links to participating blog's BBW reviews are some of what's happening at Sheila's BookJourney this week.  Along with her own reviews of banned or challenged books and of course her daily Morning Meanerings post.

Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop

Banned Books Week Hop

Giveaways galore and lots of participating blog's to visit and comment on.

Banned Book Week Virtual Read Out

Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out

The annual BBW readout traditionally conducted in public at bookstores and libraries where individuals read aloud form a banned book has now gone digital. Now you can video record yourself reading a banned book and upload to a YouTube channel

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Banned Books Week Begins

One of my recurring nightmares.

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."
- William O. Douglas

Here are a few bookish events going on for BBW:

Hosted by Bookjourney

Get on the BANNED WAGON!

Giveaways, a scavenger hunt and links to participating blog's BBW reviews are some of what's happening at Sheila's BookJourney this week.  Along with her own reviews of banned or challenged books and of course her daily Morning Meanerings post.

Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop

Banned Books Week Hop

Giveaways galore and lots of participating blog's to visit and comment on.

Banned Book Week Virtual Read Out

Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out

The annual BBW readout traditionally conducted in public at bookstores and libraries where individuals read aloud form a banned book has now gone digital. Now you can video record yourself reading a banned book and upload to a YouTube channel


Books in my possession this week (including a couple online editions)

When I was gathering together possible reads for the Read Your Own Books read-a-thon last weekend, I already knew I wanted to participate in Banned Book Week this week so I made it a point to make a list of the titles of banned and challenged books that I knew I owned, currently had out of the library or could access online.  So this is the list from which I'll choose books to read from this week:

John Milton's Areopagitica is a classic that helped establish a free press both by cogent arguments in its favor but also by being published without permission (license) in defiance of the British laws at the time requiring official state sanction for every publication.
--included in my Britannica Great Books Set

Lysistrata - by Aristophanes
A Greek Tragedy written circa 400 BC there was a U.S. import ban until 1930
--included in my Britannica Great Books Set

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
frequently banned in schools for objectionable religious content ie references to crystal balls and witches
--I'm in possession of a copy my sister mailed to me several years ago after she had finished reading it to her son. This was one of my favorite novels as a preteen and L'Engle remains one of my favorite authors to this day

Ulysses - James Joyce
--I used to own a physical copy but currently have only an electronic one.

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
 1994 - restricted to sixth through eighth graders at Kyrene, Arizona elementary schools for “excessive violence,
negative portrayals of female characters, and anti-semitic references.”
--as part of my current myth/fable obsession I have the Modern Library edition checked out of my public library

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
2009 - a parent object to language and portrayal of sexuality resulting the removal from the summer reading list for the Pelham, Massachusetts school district.
--I have a copy being held for me at the library which will be picked up on Monday.  I watched the movie, Simon Birch, based on this novel just last night.

Twilight series by Stephenie H. Meyer
2009 banned in Austrailian primary and junior schools for sexual and religious content
--I have had all four volumes on my shelf for nearly a year loaned to me by my niece.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
--I have a copy thanks to my sister who picked one up at a yard sale for me

Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
banned for decades in the U.S. under the Comstock
Law of 1873, also known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, which banned the mailing of
“lewd,” “indecent,” “filthy,” or “obscene” materials.
--I had this checked out of the library awhile back and when I had to return it I searched out links for reading online.  This is another one I would like to download in a format I can read while off line.  Maybe this week?

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
frequently banned for objectionable sexual content
--included in my Britannica Great Books set

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
--I just recently watched the movie staring James Dean and then sent for the novel via my public library and currently have it at home.  I've been dying to start it but other books have earlier due dates.  Maybe BBW is a good excuse to move it up in line.


Books I'm planning to post or re-post reviews for in the next week:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
--I will repost my review later today.  And by repost here and for the next several, I mean I will post an excerpt from my review, linking to the original so that comments and discussion can be kept in one place.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
--I used to own a copy, a much loved paperback lost in our last move, but now resort to either library copies or online copies like the one the one linked above.  It is one I've long intended to download so I can read when not online.  Maybe I'll make that a task for this week.

I will be reposting my review Sunday

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
--I will be reposting my review Monday

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
--I will be reposting my review Tuesday

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
--I read this when my niece loaned me her copy.  I will be reposting my review Wednesday

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
2010 challenged but retained in a Easton, Pennsylvania school district after a parent complained it promoted "economic fallacies" and socialist ideas, advocated use of illegal drugs and belittled Christians
--I read this several years ago and if the economic realities she portrayed in here were 'fallacies' that makes my life since 1978 just a bad dream.  I had a review in progress at the time I had to return this to the library and I'm going to see if I can whip it into shape without having the book in hand bur if not a formal review I ought to have something to say about it on Thursday

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
--I just read this this month and am working on a review to post for Friday


Ooops! I guess not:



The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
2009 challenged in Saugus, California's William S. Hart Union High School's honor's English required summer reading for profanity, criticism of Christianity and depictions of sexual abuse and prostitution.
--This was on my list to read and hopefully review for this week as I was in queue at the library and thought my turn was coming in time for BBW but alas, I'll have to wait a bit longer.



Many Resources are gathered here at deltecencorship.org sponsored by Half Priced Books


Among them lists of banned and challenged books both modern and classic, a collection of quotes by notable people, articles and author interviews, and the following list of organizations who dedicate all or part of their resources to the cause of freedom of thought and speech.  Many sponsor Banned Books Week:

ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom
American Booksellers Association (ABA)
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE)
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
American Library Association (ALA)
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Amnesty International USA
Association of American Publishers
Freedom to Read Foundation
Freedom to Read Week (Canada)
First Amendment Center
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE)
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Censorship Center
People for the American Way

Read more...

BBAW 2011 Day 5: Blogging Tips and Tricks

BBAW 2011 Day 5

Today's topic share 3 tried and true practices and 1-3 things you've either recently implemented or would like to try

3 tried and true (sadly I often fall short)

1. consistent content reflecting your true heart
2. use images--for some reason the search engines love them especially if you've given them a file name or caption that is a likely search phrase and reflects the content of the post
3. network--visit, comment, reply, return visits, participate in events, challenges, memes, thons and read alongs

3 things I'd like to try

1. add a follow widget in sidebar--I've added a bunch of blogs to my reader as I passed by this week because of the ease of it
2. use social networks
3. host a meme or challenge

Read more...

BBAW 2011 in Full Swing

Book Bloggers Appreciation Week 2011

This is the week when book bloggers gather to sing each other's praises, thank each other for great read recommendations and revel in each other's company.

 Oh and there are prizes and awards.

This year's theme is 'community' and each day there is a topic reflecting that theme to post on.

Today's topic, unlike most of the others, isn't one you can just run with on your own.  You needed to have signed up for it weeks ago and been paired with another book blogger who you most likely didn't already know and then the two of you interview each other and post those interviews on this day and link them on this post.  <--so click there and start visiting those interviews and meet old and new blogging bibliophiles.

Read more...