Category Archives: Book Talk

Two Announcements

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Attention, shoppers.
Or…readers.
Or…y’all.

I have a couple of announcements.

No, I’m not suddenly going to share the details of my use of Orovo, because while it seems like an interesting product, I haven’t actually tried it.

First, to those who have left comments: the part of WordPress that is supposed to mail me your comments…isn’t. I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that all of a sudden I only see comments from UNAPPROVED readers.

Since the comments aren’t being emailed, it’s really difficult for me to respond.

I apologize. I’m not intentionally ignoring anyone. It’s a technical glitch.

And speaking of technology.
(Well, we weren’t but now we are)

I’ve succumbed! I’ve made my first podcast. Actually this is a mini-cast, only five minutes, but it’s a start. It’s rough, but I’ll improve.

The podcast is called Midnight Tea, and the blog it’s attached to is Midnight Teas. Go forth and enjoy.

Or, you know, mock and laugh.

Either way it involves giving it a listen, right?

Nostalgia with a Side of Butter

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When I was in college, I worked in the snack store, a fro-yo and candy store that also had one of those big commercial popcorn machines like the kind you see in movie theaters.

One of my favorite things to do on rainy weekends was to make a batch of popcorn, and sit there with a good book, letting the scent of buttery salty goodness entice passers-by. In that way, not only did I sell a lot of stuff, but I also got to meet a healthy cross-section of my campus-mates.

Last weekend, and again on Monday and Tuesday, I disconnected from the web, popped some popcorn (alas, the microwave kind) and curled up with the last two books in the Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy. The only passers-by were my husband and the dogs, but the combination of a great read (two actually), and a crunchy snack were all I needed to spend some blissful time away from the glare of the LCD screen.

Of course, now I have to review those novels for ATG, and prep the interview questions for Ms. Carey, and so I have to pull my head out of my virtual life in Terre d’Ange and back into that of a working writer.

I might need more popcorn for this.

Apartment Hunting

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There’s a line that I remember reading in one of the Anita Blake books, “Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.” I’ve been moved via self and via mover, but the line keeps running through my head in search of a connection, and today that connection is fictional dwellings.

Five of my favorites?

  1. Nero Wolfe’s brownstone: I could live without the orchid room, I guess, but I like brownstones, and always dreamed of living in one.
  2. V.I. Warshawki’s apartment: It’s not the largest on earth, of course, but there’s room for a piano AND she has a real tub. As in cast-iron and claw feet.
  3. Plumfield. We’re first introduced to it as the stately home of crabby old Aunt March in Little Women, but we get a better tour during it’s second incarnation, as a home and school for stray boys in Little Men. It always seemed like a place I’d love to visit.
  4. The Harper Hall from Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books. I’m not so fond of her work now as I was when I was thirteen and fourteen years old, and unaware of some of her social attitudes, but I’d have loved to study music at Harper Hall. In retrospect, the trilogy set at the Hall was very much a Pern-ish version of a classic boarding school story.
  5. The Murray House. I love the image of an old farmhouse where Mom is admonished for boiling stew in one beaker and conducting an experiment in another. Madeline L’Engle’s own home, Crosswicks, is very much in evidence in the Murray manse. I’d love to stay in either.

So, what are your favorite literary residences, from childhood, or from more recent reading?

Red Chairs and Work Shoes

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We caught the end of Ever After on television tonight, while eating dinner. Or drinking dinner, really, since my dinner was a smoothie from Jamba Juice. I always enjoy that movie, and not just because Dougray Scott looks great in tight pants (though that’s definitely a plus).

Tonight however, while watching the last snippet of this re-telling of “Cinderella,” I found myself drawn to a childhood memory, of sitting on my grandfather’s lap, my bare feet resting on top of his sturdy leather work shoes, his back resting against the back of the red leather wing chair that currently occupies a corner of my writing studio.

Together, we would read from one of the big red collections of fairy tales. I suspect they were Reader’s Digest offerings, but it doesn’t really matter. Those books were magic and I wish I’d stolen them away before he died and they disappeared.

In any case, I’d read a page, and then hold the magnifier so he could see better. Those page-sized magnifiers were used once in a while, but often a more traditional glass was the lens of choice.

I wish I still had one of those, too.

Feisty Old Ladies

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Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

The other day when I was at Borders, ostensibly shopping for the books I need for my Algonkian homework, but coming home $149 less solvent, the various Mother’s Day displays reminded me of Mrs. Pollifax.

If you don’t know who Mrs. P. is, she’s the fictional creation of Dorothy Gilman, and America’s version of Miss Marple, only with much more modern sensibilities. She wasn’t so fussy that she had to have the latest top wrinkle cream, but she did like hats and scarves, and while she preferred a notepad, she grew to understand computers.

I haven’t visited with Mrs. P since I was 18 or 19 years old and my mother and I spend a summer passing her novels back and forth, but I confess there’s a bit of guilt in my nostalgia, because while the books are lovely cozy mysteries, I always wished my own grandmother, who was feisty in her own way, was as fiercely independent as Mrs. P.

I’m going to have to revisit the series soon. Perhaps later this summer.

A Question: Can’t You See I’m Reading

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To those with spouses, partners and roommates who read:

Fuzzy is a generally sweet guy, but when he’s reading and I need to talk to him about something, he gets all glarey and grumbly and says, “Can’t you see I’m reading?”

Yet if I’m reading, and clearly absorbed in my book, magazine, or website, and he needs to discuss some burning issue like adding more laptop memory to his brand new computer, it is somehow okay for him to interrupt me, and not okay for me to shoot back his favorite response, “Can’t you see I’m reading?”

Does this imbalance exist in your relationship, as well?
If so, what do you do about it?

Crispy

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Sitting at Cracker Barrel with Fuzzy yesterday morning, each of us reading, I watched him eat bacon, and thought, “the bacon I made with the microwave bacon cooker was better than this.”

A few months ago, I received a totally enclosed microwave bacon cooker, and even though we don’t eat bacon all that often, I was incredibly happy to have it. You see, this unit, which looks like a cross between a sifter and a water filter pitcher, is the only such contraption that IS totally enclosed.

It’s also really easy to use. You drape the bacon over the internal blades, close and fasten the lid, and stick it in the microwave on “high” for about thirty second per slice (a little more or less depending on the desired end-result and the thickness of your bacon), then unlock, and pull the blades out, leaving all the nasty grease in the well at the bottom. You can then pour off the grease (into a safe container, never down the sink), and make more, or just use hot soapy water to clean the cooker again for next time.

I don’t often wax rhapsodic about appliances, but this microwave bacon cooker really is as wonderful as it sounds.

In fact, as I was reading this morning, and came across characters talking about bacon for breakfast, I thought, “Oh, I want to have some, too.”

And I did.

Lost in a Good Book

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I often find that if I’m really into a book, I come away from my reading time feeling disoriented if the weather or the mood doesn’t fit with whatever I just read.

Right now, for example, I’m halfway through Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Scion, the fourth in the Kushiel series, and there’s been some mention of an attendant who recently came from one of the houses in the Night Court, and while, for this person, the experience was something akin to attending one of our massage therapy schools, those familiar with these books will understand that such a place is more like a very elite brothel, though all arts are taught, not just sexual ones.

I mention this because when I put the book down, I was half expecting to see candlelight and fabric hangings instead of my very modern surroundings.

I’ll be reviewing this book over at All Things Girl, along with it’s immediate sequel, sometime in the next couple of months.

For now, though, I really want to fill the tub with water and bubbles, light candles, and read the other half.

Sometimes, I Write Stuff, Too

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Entry cross-posted from my main blog, MissMeliss: Escribition.

…or at least links to them

As I posted, I’ve become more active in my favorite e-zine All Things Girl, and they’ve given me the title of Sr. Editor. The mid-issue update will go live on April 1st (no, really) but in the meantime I’ve got some stuff in the March/April edition already:

Sun Hats and Fresh Tomatoes is a brief nostalgia trip to my grandfather’s garden.

and I also reviewed the book

Midori by Moonlight, by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga.

As well, today Pink Nighties, a new erotic e-zine is having it’s launch, and I have two pieces in that, as well as a “senior editor” credit:

Chai is the first part of a short story that will be serialized there over the next several issues, and there’s also a
Product Review (bear in mind it’s a sex-positive, erotic fiction zine when considering that piece).

Enjoy!