Tagged.
Meme time. I’ve been tagged by Amy J., a fellow Central Texas blogger and mother to the uber-cute Logan. I can’t resist a tagging.
The rules:
- Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Check.
- Share seven random or weird facts about yourself.
- Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
- Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Okay here goes:
Quirky fact #1: I have to take a deep breath and really think before I say the word “seminar,” otherwise it comes out “senimars.” This developed sometime during high school, when I would talk fast (and often without thinking) and would frequently switch the “m” and the “n” and never know the difference.
Quirky fact #2: I’m an organization junkie. I’m not very organized, but I love anything related to it. I could browse The Container Store for hours. (Ditto for office supply stores).
Quirky fact #3: I get attached to specific types of pens and go through phases were I will only buy that kind of pen. In college and grad school, it was the Papermate stick pens, but for the last few years I’ve ditched those and pledged my loyalty to the Uni-Ball Jetstream ball point pen. This obsession is so intense that when we wandered in to an Office Max in San Francisco during our two week trip and I discovered they had a sale on this particular brand, I bought four packs and hauled them all the way to Alaska and back.
Quirky fact #4: On a similar note, I will only use composition notebooks for writing notebooks and I’m obsessed with how flimsy the cover is. I hate flimsy covers. I will reject notebooks based on the flimsiness of the cover.
Quirky fact #5: Snakes don’t really scare me. Neither do spiders, roaches, or bugs. However, I am totally freaked out by uncurtained windows at night.
Quirky fact #6: Despite being terrified of public speaking, I taught public speaking to college students and culinary students for three years. I do great in the classroom, but I’m very self-conscious in conversation because I tend to mispronounce words and I’m afraid people will hear that and think that I’m stupid.
Quirky fact #7: I’ve had to write this post standing up as my back has been spasming all day. UGH. As a result, it took most of the day and I have yet to do any number of the things I was going to do. Including write. 
Whew!
But as I have so much stuff to get done, I’m not going to tag anyone. Plus, I think I’m the last person in the blogosphere to do this meme. So I’m tagging anyone who hasn’t posted today, or who hasn’t ever posted their seven quirky facts yet.
Have a good weekend
Some Fun: Answers
How about some answers to last week’s quiz?
- 1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- Sybil Davidson has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys. Forever – Judy Blume
- Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it “and what use is a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
- Noon. London: my flat. Ugh. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
- This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
- You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
- When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story. The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
- (Bonus) When he says, “Skins or blankets?” it will take you a moment to realize that he’s asking which you want to sleep under. “How To Talk To a Hunter” by Pam Houston, from the collection Cowboys Are My Weakness
Some Fun: A Reading Meme
Welcome to my procrastination. I feel like I’ve seen this meme somewhere before, as I’m definitely not original enough to make it up. Below are the first lines of 10 of my favorite books. See if you can figure out who wrote them and where they came from. Leave your answers in the comments.
- 1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
- Sybil Davidson has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys.
- Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it “and what use is a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
- She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather.
- Noon. London: my flat. Ugh.
- This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
- You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
- The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east.
- When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
- Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story.
- (Bonus) When he says, “Skins or blankets?” it will take you a moment to realize that he’s asking which you want to sleep under.
I’ll post the answers later this week. Enjoy!
. . . And One More Thing
Just in case the Large Hadron Collider does not manage to suck the Earth into a micro black hole in the next month and we still need to pay attention to the election, I encourage you all to bookmark Factcheck.org. With this election being as heated as it is and all the spin coming off the campaigns, I find sites like this very useful. Please go forth and check facts.
This concludes any political speak on this blog. Writing talk will resume shortly.
Linkage: On Chick Lit
(As in the genre, not the username.)
I tend to get a little prickly when people dismiss books as being chick lit. For example, “Oh I’m not reading anything special, just some chick lit” or (from a guy) “I’m not going to read that, it’s chick lit.” It annoys me but I’ve never been able to articulate why it annoys me. When I’ve tried, it has turned into a thousand word rant on literary elitism and that damn MFA program. These sorts of outbursts are better left off the blog.
However, one of my favorite authors briefly tackled the subject on her blog and I think she summed it up very nicely:
. . . I did an interview the other day where I was asked what I thought of the label “chick lit” and how it’s applied to my books. It’s an interesting question. The truth is, I feel like the label “chick lit” is kind of lazy. It’s a way of grouping any book about a woman which has NOT been classified by the Powers That Be as Literary into one incredibly vast category. Personally, I love books about women, Literary and not, and I’ve read enough to them to know that one word cannot possibly define everything that is out there. Is Jennifer Weiner the same as Meg Cabot who is the same as Suzanne Finnamore who is the same as Jennifer Belle? No, no, no and no. It’s like saying that all YA books are the same because they are about teenagers. I think, personally, that it’s up to you as a reader to define what a book is to you. It’s different for everyone. Which is a great thing, and really what reading is all about, anyway.
Via Sarah Dessen.
Apologies
Apologies for not coming to the blog very much this month. There is a whilwind of craziness around our house right now that is, in effect, blowing up a lot of dust, but not producing much change. Here’s the quick rundown:
1) We might be trying to buy a house. The key word is might. We found one, we like it, but whether or not we pursue it depends on a bunch of factors coming together. If they do, great. If not, we’ll look again in a bit. But in the meantime we’re talking with our realtor and discovering how much work goes into preparing a house for going on the market. (By the way, if anyone in Austin needs an awesome Realtor, leave me a comment. Ours is fabulous.)
2) I am completely changing paths on the novel. After reviving my love affair with YA this summer, I’ve decided that I want to write about teenagers. And so, the other novel (which took a three page cut after we last spoke) is on hold. I hope this is the right thing to do.
3) We got cable. Or, not-cable, actually. Hubs signed us up for AT&T’s U-verse, which gives us more channels than we can possibly be interested in and a DVR to record them all. I didn’t have cable all last year and it didn’t help my productivity at all, so I’m not terribly worried that I’ll end up watching Date My Ex instead of writing. Now, watching Date My Ex instead of cooking dinner is a whole other story . . .
From the “I Wish I’d Written This” Department:
Margo Rabb’s “How to Tell a Story.”
Even though it’s not possible that Margo and I were in the same MFA program, this story feels so true to my experience (right down to the sentiment/sentimentality lecture) that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she was sitting right next to me all that time.
I discovered the story years ago, just before my third year in the program. I thought it was so dead on that I sent copies to classmates with the subject line, “OMG! Is she talking about us?!” In the years since, it has served as a reminder that I’m not the only person who had an F’ed up MFA experience. There are plenty more of us out there, and God Bless us all for surviving it.
Linkage: Free Books!
Hey y’all, free books are being given away over at Hey Lady! Whatcha Reading? Go enter the contest! I am, because obviously I need more books.
Linkage: What Makes Bad Fiction
Ward Six writer J. Robert Lennon recently posted a list of what makes fiction bad (in his opinion) and invited others to share their complaints. I tried coming up with my own list of complaints, but could only think of one:
Fiction that puts artiface or style over the story. There’s a book I started reading recently that had an unusual narrator. That part didn’t bother me, but this narrator was frequently interrupted by vague poetic observations that were usually written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. These observations were so intrusive, they kept pulling me out of the world of the story and reminding me that the author was trying something very clever. I hate that. I like to be lost in a story. I like to forget that a novel even has an author, so if the story is mainly a conduit for the style (instead of vice versa) it’s going to leave me cold.
Anyway, I encourage both readers and writers to check out the original list and the discussion that follows. I think we can all benefit from being able to talk about why we don’t like a novel or story instead of simply saying that we didn’t like it.
Another Book Meme
I don’t have a lot of time to write actual content today. My mother and I are heading to the deep East Texas woods to take care of some unfinished business with my grandmother’s estate. But rather than have an entry-less Monday, I’ve stolen this list from a forum post and turned it into a meme. Because we all like to show off how well-read we are, right?
Okay, maybe that’s just me.
Below is the list of Entertainment Weekly’s 100 “new classics.” Bold the ones you have read. Place an asterisk next to the ones you have loved. Italicize the ones you want to read. Strike the ones you hated with a fiery passion. And always, if you are so inclined, post this meme on your own blog and leave a link to your answers in the comments.
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991) *
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding *
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001) Note: not strike-worthy, but I didn’t love it
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005) *
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore *
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)*
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)*
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)*
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)*
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)*
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003) Note: there are not enough strikes in the world.
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)
