lists ect.

Sight Hound by Pam Huston

I discovered Pam Huston when I was just becoming a writing student. I was 18 and fresh to the craft. As first writing attempts go, I was relying heavily on first person narration. Like everyone else that sets out to write I found that my character’s voice got tangled in my own and my fiction quickly turned into a young woman’s reflections on being a young woman. I’m amazed at how my writing teachers and fellow class mates slugged through it all.

I came across Pam Huston’s collection of stories “Cowboy’s are My Weakness,” just as I thought I was discovering my “voice”. The women in her stories were the women that I wanted to write. They were witty, tough, and cynical women that loved hard and lived fully. They fell in love with the wrong men and they weren’t going to apologize for their mistakes. At 18 I loved it. I still do. Their voices are still a part of my vocabulary.

So I find myself disappointed to report that I was unimpressed with her novel “Sight Hound.” The story circles around the relationship between Rae, a slightly neurotic play write, and Dante, an enlightened Buddhist wolfhound.
Rae is just the kind of woman Pam Huston writes so well. She is loves her dog and her ranch house in Colorado. She’s successful and lives comfortably with 2 homes. And, like many women in “Cowboys,” Rae is always falling for the wrong men. Dante is her constant companion, whose been put in her life to teach her to love. As Rae learns to fall in love Dante is slowly dieing from cancer…Opera eat your heart out.

Dante and Rae tell their story along with 12 different first person narrators who have relationships with both Rae and Dante. The cast includes (but is not limited to) Rae’s boyfriend, her cat and her other dog, along with series friends and ex boyfriends.

While Huston does a good job of juggling the stories from 12 different people, she fails to keep their voices separate. Everyone sounds like every body else and in the end the characters are left behind and we’ve only got Pam Huston’s voice mimicking all the characters. The voices begin to loose their authenticity, especially Dante who’s chapters are defined by quotes from Buddha. The Zen dogma is overplayed and the true moments of grace are skipped over.

The story is set in Colorado and the time Huston spends setting up the country is time well spent. She knows how to create a sense of drama and scene. It’s to bad that she doesn’t spend more time exploring such a rich resource.

What the novel lacks the short stories make up for in spades. Skip the novel and get down and dirty with her short stories.

Here’s 10 new questions that have been added to the civics test to be come a naturalized US citizen.

I couldn’t remember the number of voting members in the House nor could I name a single author of the Federalist Papers…..lame.

take the test.

I just came across this “ultimate reading list” on teenreads.com. It’s awesome!  It beats the “100 best” list from the Modern Library.

And I’m not just saying that because I’ve read more on the teenreads.com list.

Here’s another reason we need to solve our current health care system.

Adding to the physical and emotional hardship of having a miscarriage, this woman’s insurance company denied her claim, stating that they didn’t cover “elective abortions.”

Christ.

Here’s the opening to an article in the New York Times, “Few books come steeped in an aura as rich as S. E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. At a time when the average young-adult novel was, in Hinton’s characterization, “Mary Jane went to the prom,” “The Outsiders” shocked readers with its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and rumbling.” (I immediately started humming the sound track to West Side Story!)

I read the Outsiders in middle school, 13? 14? I remember thinking that it was the first time that my school reading was as cool as what I was reading at home. I’d devoured books as a kid, and up to that point school reading was childish and simple. The characters were happy go-lucky their problems light and quickly resolved at the end of 150 pages. The Outsiders offered something more. I wouldn’t call it scary, but it was the first time a “school book” was moving. I remember my class having trouble moving past the dated language, but at 13 and in the middle of the mountains, knife fights were dangerous and pretty damn cool. I’m still impressed when an author manages to use violence to move rather than shock.

The author reminded me that there was more to the Outsiders than just being “cool” to my 13 year old mind. The author list references that totally slipped past me Moby-Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone with the Wind, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Who knew?

I think YA has the potential to move us and shape us as readers. Writing for teens about teens in a real way has the power to shape what and how we read as adults. Long Live Young Adult Lit!

(i don’t know why this went unpublished.  it was done on friday, but i just noticed that it didn’t get published…..so sorry!)

Krakatoa: the day the world exploded, august 27, 18883
– Simon Winchester

That’s right the WORLD EXPLODED, and I was totally clueless.

I’m not really a picky reader when it comes to fiction. I love it all, all shades and varieties. Non-fiction…. is another story. Perhaps it’s just that my brain is wired for fiction; I like a strong story line to follow and pull me through even the thickest books. Non fiction can require that extra bit of brain power to follow not only characters but long timelines, occasional leaps in geography, and unfamiliar political systems. No matter how well researched a story might not have the emotional thread my brain needs to focus. When the page is littered with footnotes, my brain can get a little foggy. I prefer non-fiction that manages to bridge the two…..it’s a great story that just happens to be true and well research. Enter Simon Winchester.

I first came across Winchester when I read, The Professor and The Madman. (great story about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary) He is prose is well suited to non fiction, sentences full of SAT words and humor that is best delivered with a extra stiff upper lip.

Krakatoa was a volcano in the straights of Sumatra that erupted in 1883, killing over 30,000 people, send millions of tons of dust into the air, and in the process completely annihilating the island of Krakatoa. Really, the island doesn’t exist any more.

The first half of the book sets the scene for the explosion. Winchester has packed these chapters with so much information. Paragraph after paragraph of facts and footnotes started to make me feel woozy. But he also started to loose the tension, building up to the explosion. We know the volcano is gonna go, but the first half of the book could do a better job maintaining…..well….reader interest.

If you happen to be one of those people that can skip chapters, feel free to skip chapter three and four. Also, skim, breeze, or float through seven and eight. Chapter three focuses on the scientific history of plate tectonics. It’s a more than you got from you’re fifth grade science class, but whatever you remember about sea floor spreading and fault lines is probably enough to read the book. Go back to it when you’ve got the time. It’s a pretty cool look at how the scientific theory of plate tectonics began in the 1880s and isn’t proven until 1965. Chapter four? Well chapter four chronicles the rumored rumblings of Krakatoa before the 1883 explosion…..it’s a total yawn.

The going gets good once the volcano starts erupting….really good. Simon’s elaborate prose gets a chance to flex and show off. The wide spread destruction is just awe inspiring. I would be reading and my jaw would just drop. He’s done a great job giving you a sense of what the island of Sumatra was like and how people reacted to the event. Winchesters enthusiasm for geography and history can be a little contagious in these chapters. Where his earlier chapters fell short, these chapters have the best of both worlds: fully research background that supports a great story.

It’s a good read if you’re willing to skim about in search for the best bits.

I felt chills run down my spine as I was reading this article. And then, I started having flash backs to this article from truthdig.com. The article titled “Inside the Data Mine” was so packed with information that my head was spinning by the time I was done. I felt a little sick when I was done reading about the relationship between the White House and the telecommunications industry. I’m not one to fall for conspiracy theories… but here’s a couple doozies….

And this conversation that took place during the Senate Judiciary meeting on the Bell South/AT&T merger. This really sent me back to Catch 22…

Specter: Are you declining to answer my question, Mr. Whitacre?

Whitacre: We follow the law, Senator.

Specter: Does AT&T provide customer information to any law enforcement agency?

Whitacre: We follow the law, Senator.

Specter: That is not an answer, Mr. Whitacre. You know that.

Talk about the creeps….

This weekend Fred and I took a stroll through Carroll Gardens and discovered Pranga Bookstore on Court St. and President St — a book store with freak’n unbeatable prices.  When was the last time you spend under 5 bucks for a book?  Talk about kid in a candy store….I went a little nuts.  I dropped 10 bucks  and picked up a couple YA titles and a novel by Carrie Fisher. yeah!

Pranga Bookstore is tucked away from the main drag, just one block up from Smith St. The down stairs has an extensive children’s section and a clean well kept fiction shelves.  The YA section in the back is a little small, but you can’t beat 2 bucks for a book.  The real steals are upstairs.  The books are deeply discounted ($3-5), but the sections aren’t alphabetized. I got a little cross eyed, and eventually I just gave up. 

I usually rack up at least 3 buck in library fines…..you can bet I’ll be back.

Last night Fred and I caught the Found show at Union Hall in Park Slope….freakn’ awesome! Davy Rothbart read all time favorite finds from his Found Magazine and a personal essay about growing up with a deaf parent. His brother also made an appearance on stage to perform songs inspired by some of his favorite finds. (yeah!! the booty don’t’ stop!)

The crew of Found Magazine will be on tour for the next few months. They’ll be making a stop in my hometown, Asheville NC November 30 at the Grey Eagle. (check it out!) For other tour dates and more info about Found check out their website.

I can not recommend Found enough. It’s truly a testament to everyday stories that when only half told can contain more truth than entire novels. I can’t remember when I first picked up the first Found collection, but that first collection sent me to This American Life to the Booty Tape, to The Lone Surfer of Montana Kansas, and back again.

go to the show. order the book. go find a story.

ok, are you ready….self-chilling soda. that’s right follow this link….right now.