Monday stuff

What I'm Reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore (it's quite good, but my reading time is minimal these days) and The Gunslinger by Stephen King (listening on iPod -- more time for this)

What I'm Working On: Wing dimensions. Don't ask.

Word count today: 810

Monday's are kind of silly sometimes. Don't you think? I thought I'd post the silliest thing for my Monday.

I tweet on twitter. Or, at least I have an account. I set it up as an experiment -- partly for work, partly for my own curiosity.

I say nothing on it. NOT. A. THING.

And yet, I have 29 followers.

What exactly are they following?

Hmmmmmmmmm

Waiting on Wednesday

What I’m Reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore and Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

What I’m Working On: A new time line – so to speak.

WAITING ON:
Soulless (Parasol Protectorate Series, Book 1)
By Gail Carriger
October 1st 2009 by Orbit

Synopsis:
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she is being rudely attacked by a vampire to whom she has not been properly introduced!

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire, and the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible.

Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? And who is the real enemy . . . and do they have treacle tart?

“Soulless” is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking…

Why:
Clever, clever, clever concept. I love the alternative Victorian London. And I can’t wait to find out what a soulless heroine will do.

We'll That's a Monday for Ya

What I'm Reading: Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas and Graceling by Kristin Cashore

What I'm Working On: I can't get this new idea out of my head. I'm sure it's just another form of procrastination.

New idea: Each Monday, I'm going to post the most bizarre part of my Monday. Monday's, as we all know, tend to be, well, very Mondayish. Tell me the most Mondayish part of your Monday.

Today, while administering an AP exam -- the first one of AP season -- I caught two kids (seniors) scalping graduation tickets during the break.

Scalping Graduation Tickets. Yes, that's right, to their impending high school graduation.

Last week all the seniors at my fav high school received 8 graduation tickets. We're outgrowing our space so for the past several years, seniors have been limited to 8 guests at graduation. Usually those students who don't need all 8 tickets, return the ones they don't need so that those who need more can pick them up.

This is the first time they've ever been scalped. All 8. $25.

I think he could have gotten more.

M

Waiting on Wednesday

What I'm Reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore and Many Stones by Carolyn Comen


What I'm Working On: I like distinct landmarks for "starting things". I'm getting new direction on my writing, and hitting it hard on May 1st.





Waiting On: The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: June 02, 2009

Synopsis:
A heart-stopping thriller-the first in a trilogy-about an invasion of vampires by one of Hollywood's most popular and imaginative storytellers, the creator of the Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth.

A Boeing 777 lands at JFK after a flight from Berlin and is on its way to the gate-when it suddenly goes dark. Just stops dead. The control tower loses contact with the pilot and all electrical activity shuts down. No movement or communication from inside. Nada. An emergency crew gathers, everyone watching the silent plane now bathed in floodlights. Then a sliver of black quietly appears on the fuselage. It's a door opening from within.

Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of the CDC's New York team, enters and finds a cabin looking like a winged graveyard where everyone appears to be dead. As he begins to remove bodies for transport to the morgue, four victims are discovered miraculously alive-and relatively unscathed apart from complaints of disorientation and a strange soreness.
But this is just the beginning

At the same time, Eldrich Palmer, director of the global Stoneheart Group, monitors the JFK scene on TV from his sickbed in Virginia. Pleased with what he sees, he sends for a helicopter for immediate transport to a Manhattan penthouse. In Queens, Eph's ex-wife Kelley and their 11-year-old son ready themselves with the rest of the Eastern United States for the first total lunar eclipse in more than four hundred years. In a pawn shop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps named Abraham Setrakian takes it all in. He knows that his time has come, that a war is about to begin, and that the Master is Here.

So begins anescalating battle of epic proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected the four survivors begins to ravage the city. Eph-guided by Setrakian, and joined by Vassily, a exterminator, Nora, Eph's CDC colleague, and Gus, a Harlem gangbanger-fights his way through the next horrifying days, determined to save his wife and son before the Master succeeds in his unholy mission.

Why:
I haven't read a vampire novel like this in a long time -- if ever. It seems a refreshing take on an over-written theme. WooHoo!

Monday Publishing News

What I'm Reading: The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter and Graceling by Kristin Cashore

What I'm Working On: Reading the draft so far and deciding what to do with it now.

Barnes & Noble Launches Audiobook Store
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 4/27/2009 7:35:00 AM
From: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6654459.html

Barnes & Noble has taken another step in deepening its role in the digital marketplace, launching its Audiobook MP3 Store on Barnes & Noble.com. The store will feature spokenword audiobook MP3s available for download and transfer to iPods, iPhones, MP3 players and other portable devices. The site is launching with more than 10,000 titles across all genres, priced between $10 and $20 per download.

"As the use of MP3 players, iPods, iPhones and other digital devices continues to increase, it is important for Barnes & Noble to continue to expand our audio selections," said Tom Burke, executive v-p, E-Commerce Barnes & Noble. Overdrive is managing the distribution of titles through the BN.com site. Later this year, B&N is expected to launch an e-bookstore, following its acquisition earlier this year of Fictionwise.

My opinion: I looked around the MP3 store at B&N a bit this weekend. I'm a B&N member at $25 per year -- money well spent since I have a book addiction. I found out about the MP3 store this weekend when I got my 50% off an MP3 coupon from B&N. (Great promo.) I spent some time comparing the site to Audible.com (HUGE AUDIBLE FAN here!). My take: Not bad. I'll probably use the coupon tonight to buy Little Brother by Corey Doctorow since it's not available at Audible. I'll let you know what I think.

M

Waiting on Wednesday

What I'm Reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

What I'm Working On: Whew, last day of book fair.

Waiting On: FUNNY HOW THINGS CHANGE by Melissa Wyatt

Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 27 Apr 2009

Synopsis:

Remy Walker has it all: he found the love of his life at home in crumbling little Dwyer, West Virginia, deep in his beloved Appalachian Mountains where his family settled more than one hundred and sixty years ago. But at seventeen, you’re not supposed to already be where you want to be, right? You’ve got a whole world to make your way through, and you start by leaving your dead-end town. Like his girlfriend, Lisa. Lisa’s going away to college. If Remy goes with her, it would be the start of everything they ever dreamed of. So when a fascinating young artist from out of state shows Remy his home through new eyes, why is he suddenly questioning his future?

The author vividly depicts a rich and beautiful place in this powerful novel about a young man who, over the course of a summer, learns how much he has to give up for a girl, and how much he needs to give up for a mountain.

Why?

I think life always throws you curves. When you think you know what you want, something happens to confuse you. I like stories about figuring out your path.

Monday Book and Publishing News

What I’m Reading: The Pagan Stone by Nora Roberts and Graceling by Kristin Cashore

What I’m Working On: The annual summer reading book club book fair!!! It’s this week at the bill paying job.

The Pulitzer Prize will be announced today. I love book awards of all kinds. There is no long or short list for the Pulitzer as there is for so many other book awards. However, there is alot of speculating.

Check out the following article before 3 pm eastern to see who the speculative favorites are:

Pulitzer Prognosticating by Omnivoracious (Click here to read the entire blog at its original site.)

Pulitzer Prognosticating
by Tom on April 17, 2009

The Pulitzer Prizes are announced on Monday at 3 pm Eastern time (noon our time)--as always, there are no shortlists or nominees given in advance, but despite that, the Fiction prize has actually become relatively easy to predict in recent years. It wasn't always the case, but in the past dozen years or so the Pulitzer, as the last major US award of the year, has often gone to what by then had become the consensus best book of the year. There have been a few surprises (Martin Dressler, Interpreter of Maladies), but for the most part the winners have been books like Kavalier & Clay, Middlesex, Gilead, and The Road, which, when the prize was announced, just made you say, "Yup, sounds right."

Having said that, I'm not sure what the consensus pick for '08 is (maybe when the Pulitzer makes their choice it'll be clear in retrospect, just as their pick of Oscar Wao over Tree of Smoke made it the novel of the year last year). The folks over at PPrize.com (the Pulitzer Prize First Edition Guide) have gone all Nate Silver over this and done a regression analysis based on previous Pulitzer winners and this year's previous award winners, newspaper best of the year lists, author track records, etc. (And make sure you scroll down to the comments section, for some thorough discussion of the contenders and their methods.) Their top 15 contenders:

Home by Marilynne Robinson
The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
Indignation by Philip Roth
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates
Lush Life by Richard Price
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff

Clearly, their model heavily weights late-career titans like Updike, Roth, and Oates (maybe thanks to some winners like The Old Man and the Sea, A Fable, and The Reivers in the award's earlier history), but I don't think any of those are contenders (much as I liked Indignation). And Robinson, Proulx, Lahiri, and Millhauser appear to be getting credit for being previous Pulitzer winners, while it looks to me like the Pulitzer (unlike, say, the PEN/Faulkner) has avoided multiple winners in recent years.

The ones on that list that best fit my "consensus" definition would be The Lazarus Project, Home, and Lush Life (all nominees for either or both of the NBA and the NBCC) and PEN/Faulkner winner and most-discussed-novel-of-the-year-until-2666, Netherland. And perhaps, after its Tournament of Books win, A Mercy. But maybe this will be the year for a dark-horse candidate like Olive Kitteridge. Tobias Wolff would also be a nice choice--I've been surprised that his collection, by one of our great masters of the short story, hasn't gotten much award or end-of-year attention (even from us), and it would fit in with earlier Pulitzer collected-stories picks like John Cheever, Jean Stafford, and Katherine Anne Porter. Or perhaps a lateish-career win for the prolific Erdrich.

Unlike last year, with Oscar, I don't really have a horse in this race--my favorite novels of '08 were British (A Northern Clemency and Pravda) or Spanish/Mexican/Chilean (2666). But here are my own top contenders, in order:

A Mercy
Netherland
Lush Life
The Lazarus Project
Our Story Begins
Olive Kitteridge
Serena by Ron Rash
The Plague of Doves

And for the other book Pulitzers? They have a more idiosyncratic history (especially the History picks), but I'll guess The Forever War (heavy favorite for General Nonfiction), White Heat (Biography/Memoir), This Republic of Suffering (History), and Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Poetry). And, based on their odd history of giving Special Citations to deceased jazz composers (Gershwin, Ellington, Monk, and Coltrane--all deserving but quite dead), I half-expect an award for Miles Davis this year too. We'll see on Monday. --Tom