Writing/Revising: I’m officially combining these categories for the remainder of my current project. The novel I’m working on was born out of a story, so I’d doing equal parts writing and revising. It’s only going okay this week. I’ve been distracted and most of my concentration has gone right out the window. I’m taking drastic steps to fix that this week. For instance, I’m kissing LJ reading and Twittering good-bye. I’m even cutting back on a lot of blog reading. My internet activity will mostly be reduced to this blog and my email.

The reason for this forced isolation is because I’ve spent a lot of last week and this week angry, sad, and upset. The fact that this coincides with the DNC and the GOP conventions is no surprise. Simply put, I can no longer tolerate the mean-spirited snark and trash talk that both sides seem to spew forth daily. There’s a lot of “we’re right, you’re wrong” out there. It’s odd, I thought the reason we were all so disillusioned with the current administration was because of this kind of black and white thinking. Shouldn’t the answer to it be to try to be open-minded? Isn’t unity about reaching out to others instead of alienating them? I whole heartedly believe that this is the intent of both Obama and McCain, I’m just not seeing it from either of their supporters.

Ugh. Okay, so political rant through. Point being, I’m closing down part of my internet access until November 6. (Yes, I’m aware that the election is Nov. 4 and this should all be over on Nov. 5, but with things as divisive as they are now, I expect the day-after commentary to be worse.) I will not be talking politics on this blog. PERIOD. Exclamation point.

I will, however, be talking about how much I am loving YA right now and how reluctant I am to return to literary fiction (though I really do want to read Joshua Henkin’s Matrimony and Andrew Sean Greer’s Story of a Marriage). And how adding a shitzu (no matter how temporarily) to a two-cat household is nothing short of chaos. And how our house hunt continues, though with less force than before. Oh, and writing. Hopefully, lots and lots of writing.

Happy weekend!

Novels
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
On a Night Like This by Ellen Sussman
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Freshman Lies by Linda A. Cooney
Freshman Guys by Linda A. Cooney
Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen
Alternatives to Sex by Stephen McCauley

Short Stories

Notable Nonfiction
Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride by Michael Wallis
The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz
“The Lion and the Mouse” by Jill Lepore

Hibernating
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

I have a couple of great novels to recommend this month. I really enjoyed On a Night Like This and Someone Like You. The latter is a YA book that made me wish that someone was writing YA like this when I was a teen. I think I would have read more.

On the other side of that coin, I tried Twilight and I simply could not finish it. It didn’t help that I kept playing Buffy DVDs as I was reading it. I really wanted to like it because I’ve been getting more into YA lately (more on that later) and I’m usually up for a good vampire tale, but this book lacked the character development that I need to really pull me into a story. And so, permanently hibernating it is.