A Very Nerdy Birthday

13 Dec

When I was a little girl, I always wanted my birthday party at the American Museum of Natural History.  (Well, that or The Rink — the roller rink in Bergenfield — where I’d feed quarters into the vending machines for neon friendship bracelets.)  I figured it was about time to bring the tradition back so the museum’s where I headed for my birthday earlier this month.

 


 

 

After the museum, I headed over to Momufuku’s Milk Bar.  What better birthday cake than crack pie and candybar pie??

 

 

 

And then it was on to The Dead Poet, where I got to drink for free because I share a birthday with Leo Tolstoy.  I ordered the Jack Kerouac, naturally.

 

 


So thankful to all the family and friends who made my birthday special!

 

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Captain America and Harry Potter Will Kill Your Darlings

12 Dec

I can picture Captain America as Jack Kerouac.  On the Road pretty much defines the phrase “great American novel” so we might as well call Kerouac Captain America.  And there’s also the matter that Kerouac was a rugged athlete type.

I’m not sure what to make of Harry Potter as Allen Ginsberg, though.  I mean, I kind of get the similarity between the two in the sense that of the nerdy boy with the glasses and books.  And maybe there’s some sort of correlation between Harry Potter’s incantations and Allen Ginsberg’s manic howling.

It’s just that James Franco did such an amazing job as Allen Ginsberg in Howl.  He completely exceeded my expectations.  And Daniel Radcliffe just seems so … young.  But he does like The Hold Steady, who’ve been known to quote Kerouac.  Maybe he can pull it off.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Chris Evans was cast as Jack Kerouac and Daniel Radcliffe was cast as Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings.

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Writing Wednesday: I Don’t Own a Book

7 Dec

Image via 24Symbols' Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/24symbols

 

“I don’t own a tv,” is the hipster’s constant refrain.  They’re too busy reading Luc Sante, holding smug conversations about sustainable design over Stellas in dive bars, contemplating getting owl tattoos, and arguing over which Radiohead song is the best, right?  Maybe sometimes.  But a lot of the time they’re watching tv; they’re just watching in on the Internet.  As in, they’re rewatching the entire season of Arrested Development on Hulu for the sixteenth time now that the series is coming back.

Meet the Hulu Plus of books: 24symbols.

For a paid subscription you can read as many books.  Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, reported about it in the article “A Bright Future for Scandinavian Digital Publishing” on Publishing Perspectives:

At present, users of 24Symbols can read books online for free, and 24Symbols splits the ad revenue with the publisher. Currently, according to Hidalgo, the service is mostly offering public domain content, with about 50% of the content Spanish language. The service has already attracted 50,000 registered users, a number which he expects to reach 100,000 within the next few months. In 2012, the service will launch the paid subscription portion, where customers will purchase paid monthly subscriptions to gain increased access to premium content from mainstream publishers. Hidalgo acknowledges the business isn’t profitable for participating publishers yet, but he expects this to change in 2012 as he scales the reach and participation of paid customers.

Sounds like it still has a way to go, as public domain content is pretty pervasive, but the concept is intriguing especially if you’re a voracious reader or a writer looking for inspiration.  I’d subscribe to 24Symbols if they had the books I’ve been wanting to read available.

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Make Reading Part of Your Christmas Tradition

5 Dec

The holidays seem to have crept up on us this year, the unseasonably warm weather masquerading the approach of December.  Yes, there’s lots to do, between gift shopping and making travel arrangements and attending holiday parties, but I’ve been slowly learning and relearning that it’s not the doing that matters most.  It’s the people we’re with and the moments we share.

Instead of rushing from mall to mall, pepperspraying each other, what if we slowed down and carved out quiet moments of reflection with the ones we love most?

I have so many great childhood memories associated with the holidays.  My parents really knew how to make the holidays special.  It wasn’t all toys and games.  We had special rituals, decorations, foods, and traditions.  One of my favorite was when my mom would read to my sister, brother, and me Barbara Helen Berger’s The Donkey’s Dream.

Later this special Christmas story tradition continued when I went to college.  I had a wonderful pastor who read us Angela Elwell Hunt’s The Tale of Three Trees: A Traditional Folktale.

There are so many great Christmas stories out there for people of all ages and interests, and I truly believe that staying in with a hot cup of cocoa and a good book is more memorable than rushing out to get the latest Tamagotchi, Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kid, Poggs, Wii, or whatever this generation of kids is into.

Here are my Christmas book recommendations:

For the little women in your life, there’s Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas Tales and Stories

For anyone who could use a good laugh, there’s Laurie Notaro’s An Idiot Girl’s Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List

For someone who loves twisted tales of holidays run amuck, there’s David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice

For anyone who loves a classic, there’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

For the nostalgic, there’s Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales

For those who love the South, there’s Truman Capote’s Christmas Memory

There are too many great children’s Christmas books to list.  What are your favorite Christmas books?

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Do the Brits Love Kerouac More than the Yankees?

3 Dec

 

Jack Kerouac is the Tupac of the literary world.  Even though he died in the infamous year of 1969, new works of Kerouac’s keep surfacing.  Recent years have seen the publication of Orpheus Emerged (2002) and When the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (2008), for which he collaborated with William S. Burroughs.  Around Thanksgiving The Sea Is My Brother came out.

Sort of.

The Sea Is My Brother was published in England on November 24, 2011, but it won’t come out in the States until March 6, 2012.  I know this because I’ve been stalking the BN.com product page and was confused when all of a sudden I started getting news that the novel had come out.  I thought maybe it had been released early.  Okay, for any of you who work in publishing, you know that I was really taking a wild leap with that one.  Pub dates shift out further.  Books rarely come in earlier than expected.  So what gives?  Why is a quintessential American author – the author that hitchhiked his way across the United States – being published overseas before in the States?

The good news is if you go to Penguin’s website, you can have the book shipped to you from the UK.  (The rights for the ebook are restricted to the UK.)  You just have pay a whole lot more than if you wait until spring.  Dear Santa….

Here’s the synopsis from Penguin:

Described by Kerouac as being about “man’s simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and self-inflicted agonies”, the 158-page handwritten manuscript was Kerouac’s first novel, but was not published during his lifetime. He wrote in his notes for the project that the characters were “the vanishing American, the big free by, the American Indian, the last of the pioneers, the last of the hoboes”. The novel follows the fortunes of Wesley Martin, a man who Kerouac said “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down.”

Jack began this work not long after his first tour as a Merchant Marine on the S.S. Dorchester in the late summer of 1942 during which he kept a journal detailing the gritty daily routine of life at sea. Inspired by the trip, which exemplified Jack’s love for adventure and the character traits of his fellow shipmates, the journals were spontaneous sketches of those experiences that were woven into a short novel soon after disembarking from the S.S. Dorchester in October of 1942.

The book also contains correspondence between Kerouac and his Greek childhood friend Sebastian Sampas, with whom he grew up with in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Sampas died while serving in World War II, and Kerouac married his friend’s sister, Stella Sampas.

The BBC’s interview with Dawn Ward quotes the editor as saying Kerouac “‘opens up and shows a side to him that we don’t normally see in his books.'”

The top image is from the hardcover edition published by Penguin the UK.  Below is the cover image being used by Da Capo, an imprint of Perseus Books, which is publishing the book in the States.

 

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Writing Wednesday: Story Clouds

30 Nov

Remember childhood days of laying out in the grass in cut-offs, staring up at the blue blue sky, and making up stories about cloud shapes?

When did having an imagination and making up stories become such hard work?  Maybe it’s time we lay out in the park and let the puffy white clouds inspire silly stories.  Maybe we need to think like a kid again.

Maybe we need a little wonder in our lives.

I took these photos from the rooftop of the Met.  What shapes do you see?

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Writing Wednesday: Your Taste Is Killer

23 Nov

For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good.  It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.  But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.  And your taste is why your work disappoints you. …It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. 

~ Ira Glass

via A Lovely Being

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Tasty Tuesday: Tzatziki in the Morning

22 Nov

One of my favorite bloggers, Joy of … wait for it … Oh Joy!, likes tzatziki sauce.  In a recent post, “My New Favorite Breakfast Sandwich…” she calls tzatziki sauce the “extra special ingredient” to the breakfast sandwich she’s been making and enjoying that includes egg and avocado slices on a toasted English muffin.

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Follow Friday

18 Nov

Happy Friday!  Do you have any special plans this weekend?  Here are a few links to keep you occupied.

Writing

5 Alternatives to a Creative Writing MFA via MediaBistro

Success Stories via Literary Kicks

Greece

Greece debt crisis: Who is Lucas Papademos? via the Christian Science Monitor

Vignettes of Modern Greece via GreeceInPrint

Amid Greece’s Challenges, Kalamata Basks in the Sun via CNN

Beat Generation

Jay Farrar channels Kerouac, reaches the heart of America via Good Times

St. Petersburg bar pays tribute to Beat author Jack Kerouac via St. Petersburg Times

The Woman behind Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” via Marin Independent Journal

Kate Linhardt on “Crazy Wisdom: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics” via IndieWire

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Writing Wednesday: Becoming a New Media Innovator

16 Nov

Success isn’t just about doing—it’s about innovating.  It’s about creating something new or doing something in a new way.  It’s not always mind-blowing.  Sometimes it’s so obvious that it’s surprising no one had done it before.  And yet, it’s the game changer.  It’s the concept that makes you rise above all the hi-ho, hi-ho dwarves.

The New York Times recently published an article called “21 New Media Innovators.”

The article shows how writers—mainly journalists—use Twitter, “the art of multipurposed multi-platforming,” aggregated data, video, ereaders, text messages, crowd-sourcing, message boards, citizen journalism, sponsored posts (aka advertorials), widgets, slideshows, and other technological mumbojumbo to bring stories to you in new and relevant ways.

So, what does this mean for writers?  How does a memoirist become a new media innovator?

For one, multi-platforming allows a memoirist to represent different facets of herself and her conversation.  Here on my blog, you get my personal stories as well as updates and tools for writers, but if you “friend” me on Facebook you are privy to the more day-to-day goings on in my life and you have more opportunity to interact with me through comments and even live chats.  I’ve also brought you audio via Broadcastr, as an experiment in whether voice allows for more connectivity.

What sort of new media do you think is particularly relevant for memoirists?  Most of the memoirists I know stick to blogging and Tweeting, and I’d love to hear about any memoirists that are utilizing new media in creative ways.

How would you like to see me use new media?

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