Update on the Book

I spent about a year and a half writing the 80,000-word first draft of my novel, and another year revising.  The fact that I've had a full time job the past year helps me feel better about how long this is taking.  I know it's stronger for the changes I'm making, and I'm glad I didn't rush to send it out, eager for "professional" feedback (that feedback would have come as a series of form rejections!)

I've revised and edited about 54,000 of the 80,000 words.  So I'm more than halfway there.  Unfortunately, the second half of the book was the weaker half.  It's going to take more than minor tweaking to get it into the shape I want it.  But it should be easier to fix than it was to write it in the first place...

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had read Ayana Mathis' "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" -- it's a great book, each chapter telling the story of one of Hattie's twelve children, and it stands out to me primarily because of the writing.  Good plots and good characterization, but GREAT writing.  After I read that, I decided to do something completely different. I'm finally reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" books.  I read the first one in just a few days, and I'm a third of the way through the second one after just starting it yesterday.  My fiancé can't believe I'm reading it so quickly, but I tried to explain that when plot is the best thing in a book, it's easy to skim over large portions of paragraphs.  It isn't that I'm not reading everything, it's that I'm not reading everything very closely.   But these popular books remind me that, at least when I'm just trying to move the story forward, I can use plain language.  I can be straightforward.  Sometimes it's nice for the reader to just be able to relax and read quickly and not feel like she has to examine each sentence.

As Creepy As It Sounds

I read Neal Shusterman's young adult novel, "Unwind," over the past day and a half, and I highly recommend it. Like "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent," this story takes place in a dystopian future in which a second civil war has been fought between pro-lifers and pro-choice supporters. To end the fighting they settle on a "Bill of Life" that prohibits all abortion, but once a child becomes thirteen, he or she can be "retroactively" aborted ("unwound"). The child is taken apart, limb by limb, organ by organ, at a "harvesting center." Those body parts are then given to cure the sick.

It's as creepy as it sounds. The narrative shifts between a number of voices, from a teenage boy whose parents are having him unwound because he's always been trouble, to a teenage girl who was raised in a state home and is being unwound because her piano playing isn't exceptional, to another boy who has been raised his whole life to be sacrificed as a "tithe" because of his parents' religion.

I was reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" in which children are raised for the sole purpose of giving themselves up, as young healthy adults, for organ harvesting. Both books ask, what does it mean to be human? to have a soul?

Recommended Reading

A couple months ago a woman asked for reading suggestions. "I love to read," she said, "especially classics." Immediately I asked if she had read "Prodigal Summer," by Barbara Kingsolver.

"I can't stand Barbara Kingsolver," she said.

I was momentarily flummoxed. She loves to read, I thought, but she doesn't love what I love. If she couldn't stand one of my favorite authors, then I feared she would hate anything I recommended. I asked more questions, like what has she read more recently that she enjoyed, and who were some of her favorite authors. I eventually connected her with some titles and authors that, hopefully, she would appreciate.

The other day I received the biggest complement from a friend: she told me she reads books that I suggest on this blog almost exclusively. From the "Hunger Games" trilogy and "Divergent" to "Cutting for Stone" and "Rules of Civility" she's taken my suggestions and, often, has passed the books onto others.

For me, it's always slightly scary recommending a book. What if they don't like it? What if they judge me for liking it? But it's so rewarding when they like it as much as I do.

At the end of December I highlighted some of my favorites from 2011 for the library blog. I think I mentioned most of books here, but feel free to check them out.

My heart still bleeds...

Eeee! Crossed 60,000 words today!!! They're not all good--maybe none of them are, we shall see. I'm just proud of the accumulation of sentences. Word by word, sentence by sentence, I'm telling a story, one that's 80% finished!!! (Not counting revision and rewrites).

On an unrelated note, I just finished "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World," a book by Michael Lewis ("The Big Short," "The Blindside.") In this short non-fiction book, Lewis travels from Iceland to Greece to Ireland to Germany and finally to California (where he rides bikes with Arnold Schwarzenegger), examining the causes and effects of the worldwide financial crisis. He talks to bankers, politicians, and finance ministers to try to understand how they got into such a mess (in the cases of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, and California) and how they avoided it (in the case of Germany, with some exceptions).

Lewis is a great storyteller, taking something that might be boring and dry and turning it into a compelling narrative. He approached each country as a journalist should--trying to understand it not through a preconceived framework but based on the facts he discovers. And because I discovered the facts along with him, as he told the story, I feel like I have a much better understanding of what happened. He looked at the culture of each country, too, to see how it related to its financial circumstances. From the New York Times review:

[Lewis]weaves... stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today’s headlines about Europe’s growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world.

It's a fascinating book that left me viewing the world through a more conservative lens. Two common threads across the countries? First, greed. It's omnipresent. Second, people taking more than they've earned simply because they can. Adults mortgaging their children's future in order to maintain a higher standard of living. It's not that I don't blame the elite bankers, who gambled with pensions and 401k's and manipulated the public; it's not that I don't blame government regulators who turned a blind eye so long as their coffers were filled; it's that at the end of the day, each of us is responsible for our own actions, for becoming as financially educated as possible. And I felt for Slovakia as it was being asked to bail out Greece.

Don't worry, my heart still bleeds (universal health care for the win!) but I feel like I have a better handle on where some of the tea party rhetoric comes from. My hope is that tea party-ers realize they're part of the 99%, too. (See Connor Friedersdorf's "Why the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Should Cooperate")

Thanks for Reading

A week from Saturday will be the fifth annual Books by the Banks book festival in Cincinnati. Over one-hundred national, regional and local authors will appear downtown at the convention center to give talks, participate in panel discussions, and sign books. The "headliners" this year are Judy Collins, Dennis Lehane, and Chris Bohjalian, but I'm just as excited about less-familiar names, such as Martha Southgate, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Christopher Bollen, and Matt Kish.

Matt Kish has always loved Herman Melville's classic, "Moby-Dick." About a year ago he decided to draw one illustration for each page of the book, and he kept track of his progress on his blog, everypageofmobydick.blogspot.com. By the time he finished, he had a publishing deal. The book was released in the past week, and there's been a flurry of press (helpful for us as we promote Books by the Banks!) I saw the book, and it's gorgeous. A real objet d'art. The price reflects that: $26 for the paperback, and anywhere from $44-$70 for the hardback.

On a related note, I've sketched out my final five chapters. To keep on schedule, I need to write about sixteen-thousand words in just over two months. I'm excited to finish, to read my piece from beginning to end like it's an actual book; to hand it off to readers I trust to tell me what works and what doesn't work; and to get to work on my next project.

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. I'm certain that after the festival and especially after I've finished draft #1 I'll be here much more often. Maybe I'll participate in a blog challenge that will require daily posts. Who knows. But thanks for reading--life is good :)

Rules of Civility

My first thought after I finished Amor Towles' novel, "Rules of Civility": This is what a novel *should* be. It was that good. Set in 1938's NYC, the book chronicles a year in one young woman's life when she makes choices that will set the paths of her career and social circle. The narrative voice, dialogue, and descriptions perfectly capture that era. I'm shocked that a) Towles is male, because the narrator, Katherine Kontent, is so finely drawn and that b) this is Towles' first novel. I highly recommend it.

I have the next two days off from the library and hope to knock out a good chunk of writing. This is the first time I've gotten to sit at my desk for more than fifteen minutes since last Thursday, and I feel so happy to be here!

Building a House from the Inside Out

One of my favorite books from the past few years has been "The History of Love," by Nicole Krauss. I reviewed it for the library back in 2007, writing that the book

was one of those rare novels that captured me on page one then held me hostage from other activities—namely eating and sleeping—until I reached the final page. And once I was released, all I wanted to do was find someone else who'd read it and shared my experience.

The writing is exquisite, and the characters are fully-drawn. Consider the voice of one of the main characters, Leo Gursky: When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, “Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.”

Both "The History of Love" and her next novel, "Great House," have multiple story lines; as a reader, I was never quite sure how they were (or weren't) going to converge. I had assumed that the plots were as intricately-drawn as her sentences.

So it was wonderful to hear her speak this past Friday night at my favorite local bookstore. Krauss, speaking so softly that everyone in the audience strained their necks forward (she also had to compete with a loud child downstairs), read an excerpt from "Great House." An older man addresses his son whom he had never completely understood. Even in a very short passage, with little context, the writing has an emotional punch. After the reading, she took some questions from the audience, and most were about her writing process.

For her, writing a novel is like building a house from the inside out. She starts by describing the doorknob. Then she needs a door. Then a room, then the rooms to which it is attached, and little by little she builds a house. She never knows exactly what the house is going to look like when it's finished.

In "Great House," she crafted four stories--set in New York, London, Israel, and Chile--without consciously knowing how the stories were related. She explained that because they all came from her mind, they must be connected, if only thematically.

Having my work-in-progress carefully plotted and outlined has freed me from some worry: I know where I'm going, and I know where my characters are going. But as a reader, I tend to prefer books driven more by character than by plot. I'll have to keep that in mind as I revise.

The Part Where Everything Comes Together

Some days I'm just tickled to be a writer. By "be a writer" I mean, having the opportunity to sit at my computer and make up stories for hours on end. How lucky can a person get?

In class Tuesday, we were asked to do a fast-write about what still needs to be written in our respective projects. I wrote,

The final act, Act III, the part where everything comes together. Mysteries are solved, situations resolved, and loose ends are tied. In other words, everything.

I know what happens in my story. I know what my characters will do. I'm just incredibly psyched to be writing it now. Who knows how good or mediocre my final product will be--I know I have good pieces, good chunks of pages, but I won't know how well everything works together until the end.

* * *

Tuesday I finished reading Paula McLain's "The Paris Wife," about Hemingway's first marriage told from the wife's point of view. I haven't read anything by Hemingway except some of his short stories; McLain's novel made me want to read more of him, including "A Moveable Feast." Wednesday I started Jay Asher's "13 Reasons Why," a novel about what led a teenager to kill herself. Two weeks after her suicide, one of her classmates receives a shoe box full of audiotapes in which the girl describes her reasons for killing herself. It's a haunting young-adult novel, and I'm already two-thirds finished. I highly recommend both books.

Confessions of a Former TV Addict

Some time around age nine, television supplanted books as my main diversion. I was finished with "The Babysitters' Club," "Sweet Valley High" and "The Secret Garden." In their place was "Thundercats," "Gummi Bears," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." During summers, I watched "Another World" and "Days of Our Lives" (only the latter soap opera is still on; it's amazing how little has changed).

We didn't have cable, so my options were limited to the five or six over-air channels, but I memorized the programming on each of those stations. I even knew what was playing in Dayton, which was usually staticky, but came in handy when a Reds game was preempting my shows (this was long before I was a hardcore baseball fan).

Through junior high and high school, I wasn't a social creature; rather than my classmates, I hung out with Brenda, Dylan, and the gang from Beverly Hills: 90210 on Wednesday nights. I could easily watch four hours a night, doing my homework during commercials.

Luckily, I weaned myself off of heavy television-viewing during college; now, I mostly watch it streaming, over Netflix (we're currently on the second season of 30 Rock), just a half-hour a day, or Sundays at my grandma's, where we watch the Reds, some cable news, and HGTV.

Sometimes I think about all those lost hours. I could have read a couple hundred novels--or perhaps written two.

Review: "A Visit from the Goon Squad"

I just finished Jennifer Egan's marvelous "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which won the 2011 Pulitzer prize for fiction. Like 2009 winner "Olive Kitteridge," Egan's book is made up of interconnected short stories that go backward and forward through time ("Time's a goon,"more than one character says.)

At the center of the novel are Bennie, a music producer, and his assistant Sasha. We see Bennie as a teenager during the height of San Francisco's punk scene, and later, as an old man, trying for one last success. We see Sasha, as a kleptomaniac 35-year old, as well as a nineteen-year old runaway. We also see, much more deeply than expected, the host of characters that populate their lives, that have influenced them and been influenced by them.

In fact, most of what we learn about Sasha and Bennie is indirect; these two characters are on the periphery as their friends, wives, and mentors tell the story. Each chapter is told in a different character's point of view (sometimes first person, third person, one in second-person, and another through power-point presentation slides).

As strong as the first chapter was, it took me a while to get drawn in to Egan's book. I didn't always feel compelled to move on to the next chapter. But once I began to see the connections between the characters and understand what Egan was doing, a momentum carried me straight to the end. The writing is sharp and the novel holds together less as a series of interrelated short stories and more as a complete novel with something to say about our lives.

Five Posts for the Price of One Click!

I've started five posts today. Each got deleted because I didn't think I could adequately address the subject in two paragraphs.

The first one drew attention to an opinion piece about shyness in the NYTimes: "Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?"

The second pointed out one of my favorite columnists of late, Ta'Nehesi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. He blogs about everything from Jane Austen to immigration. And his posts have some of the most intelligent comments you'll find on the web.

The third was on the cheating scandal in Atlanta's Public Schools. The governor's report showed nearly 180 teachers engaged in some kind of cheating on standardized tests, from changing students' answers to facilitating cheating by giving students unauthorized assistance. Think Progress reports:

While uncovering this widespread cheating, the report also noted that these abuses were facilitated by a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” that faced APS teachers and administrators, who were pressured to raise test scores and feared for their jobs if they protested these policies or even reported cheating. One excerpt from the report found that a principal forced a teacher under a table during a meeting because her students’ test scores were deemed unsatisfactory.

The fourth was on a revelation about President Obama's father:

Before Barack Obama was born, his parents may have considered putting him up for adoption, according to documents obtained by a reporter for The Boston Globe.

Mr. Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., told immigration officials that Ann Dunham, whom he had recently married, would make “arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,” one document said. [Obama, Sr., had to reapply for his Visa yearly].

The article in the New York Times indicated that President Obama had not previously known about his father's statement. I just imagine the President, worried about the job numbers, worried about Libya and debt ceiling negotiations, coming across this information. When does he have time to process it? To think about it? How does this fit in his narrative about his father? His own life?

I'm trying to remember the fifth post. That was going to be the awesome one, I'm sure. The most interesting and original.

I continue to write and revise and add details to my made-up story. I borrowed another writing book from the library, "The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing." It is a collection of pieces that had been written for "The Writer's Digest," with contributions from popular authors like Orson Scott Card, Lawrence Block, and Tom Clancy. They give advice on everything from dialogue and plotting to revision and selecting genre. David Groff wrote a chapter, "The Ten Essentials of Popular Fiction," and discussed the characteristics of a successful commercial ("popular") novel. I figured my own work would never cross over into the commercial category (I consider it "literary fiction," that is, "unpopular"), and Groff's words supported my assumption:

While this may surprise you, commercial fiction is always morally conservative. It doesn't matter how many Dirks bed how many Ambers, or how many KGB agents kill off innocent Berliners on the way to find CIA operative Tim Sheahan. A literary novel may, like a piece of contemporary music, be atonal -- and leave the reader feeling discord; but in a commercial novel the narrative ends on the tonic note, with balance restored and order reigning. The good doctor marries the actress, even though she has had to sleep with half of the Screen Actors Guild. The renegade Miami cop manages to blow up the drug smuggler's trawler before it docks in Tampa. In every case, the values and balance of the civilization are reaffirmed, at least temporarily.

He argues that works of popular fiction "are by nature optimistic." I don't know that I can do that. I'm generally an optimistic person, I suppose, thinking the best of people, often against my better judgment. But I'm also very guarded. Very careful and even tentative at times. And perhaps subconsciously, I'm using my novel to show that that "guardedness" is warranted. Life is complicated and messy, and I couldn't write with honesty by pretending otherwise.

Friday Odds and Ends

I added a widget to the left from my goodreads account. It shows the twenty most recent books I've read, although I've added few reviews on the site. I'll have to rectify that. Most I've written about either here or for the library... and I can borrow my own content, right?

Anyway, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, where I can write without thinking so much. I crossed over 35,000 words today -- still behind my original schedule, but not bad considering the number of hours I've been working. I'm feeling better about the story after a couple weeks of self-doubt that probably came from not working on it much. It also helped to read a few books that were really well-written and think, "Hey! I can do that too!"

And my dad is back in the U.S. -- yay! I know how bittersweet it is for him to leave Kenya, but it's so nice having all my family in one state, at least for a little bit. We're a small but mighty bunch.

Here's to a great weekend... and to passing 40,000 words by the end of June!

Reading Spells

I go through spells where I read one book after the next, followed by long periods in which I read nothing but blogs and news articles. My book reading spells are correlated with greater happiness, but I don't know if I'm happy because I read books or if I read books because I'm happy. Either works for me.

In the space of four days, I finished two books I really enjoyed. The first is "Wench," by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. "Wench" follows four mistresses and their slave masters in the 1840s and 50s. The story focuses on Lizzie, who loves her master and has two children with him. Each summer the masters take their mistresses off their respective plantations up to a "resort" in Southwest Ohio (between Dayton and Columbus and north of Cincinnati). For the first time in their lives, they meet other black people who are not enslaved. Despite her special status, Lizzie begins to realize the freedom that she and her children lack. The book moves quickly, and I think it could have gone on for another hundred pages.

The other book I finished is "Divergent," by Veronica Roth. If you liked "The Hunger Games" (which I loved), you'll really enjoy "Divergent." It's set in a future Chicago (the Sears Tower is now called "The Hub") and society is divided into five factions, each of which values a different virtue: Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity, Erudite, and Candor. Beatrice, the protagonist, has been raised in Abnegation; members of this faction value selflessness above all else. They dress in plain gray clothes, eat plain food. and leave the walls of their homes unadorned. They serve and defer to others. At age sixteen, based on an aptitude test, boys and girls must choose which faction they will join for the rest of their lives. Most stay with the one in which they were raised, but if they choose another, they are basically excommunicated from their families. Beatrice's choice affects everyone in unexpected ways. She is a strong young female character, and she guides us through the story in first-person present. Like "Wench," this a quick read. But this one ends in a cliffhanger. The sequel, "Insurgent," comes out next year, and I wish I didn't have to wait so long.

L is for Lahiri

One of my favorite authors is Jhumpa Lahiri. Born of Benghali immigrants in London, she moved with her family to the U.S. when she was just three. Her stories and novels are set mostly in the United States, focusing on first- and second-generation Americans. Her first story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize, while her first novel, The Namesake, was adapted into a movie. But it's her next collection, Unaccustomed Earth, that is my favorite of hers.

In an interview with The Atlantic Magazine, Lahiri is asked about her approach to short stories versus her approach to novels:

I don't make a huge distinction in terms of what they require because I think an idea is either working or it isn't. And it can work—or not—at long or short or medium length. It depends on what the story I want to tell needs. I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for The Namesake, I felt that it had to be a novel—it couldn't work as a story. With this new book [Unaccustomed Earth], as opposed to the first collection, I worked on many of the stories for years while they kept evolving and evolving and evolving. One difference is that in The Namesake each piece was contributing to a larger whole.

Lahiri's style doesn't seem to change from short story to novel. She creates interesting and complex characters and describes them in prose that is "un-self-conscious." She says,

I like [my writing] to be plain. It appeals to me more. There's form and there's function and I have never been a fan of just form. My husband and I always have this argument because we go shopping for furniture and he always looks at chairs that are spectacular and beautiful and unusual, and I never want to get a chair if it isn't comfortable. I don't want to sit around and have my language just be beautiful. If you read Nabokov, who I love, the language is beautiful but it also makes the story and is an integral part of the story. Even now in my own work, I just want to get it less—get it plainer. When I rework things I try to get it as simple as I can.

This statement is extremely appealing to me as a writer-in-training. I love the idea of plainness as a virtue. "Plain" is not a synonym for "boring" or "simple." Rather, I take it to mean (borrowing from William Zinsser) stripping the writing of superfluous adjectives and adverbs, those "adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence."

K is for Kingsolver

I fall in love with books the way others do with guys. Some I won't even look at--too popular, too slick. Spare me the Pattersons, the Graftons, the Coulters--give me Kingsolver and Krauss. Give me the Booker Prize winner, not the bestseller.

I start two or three books at the same time. I read a few pages, then move onto the next and give that a sample. While I enjoy reading both, I'm afraid to commit to either. There are so many great books available! Libraries, stores, dedicated to them!

But as I get to know one book better, I set the other aside. I can't put down my chosen book. I tell everyone about it. Read this! It's awesome!

Alas, by halfway through--maybe later--I see its faults. I note the sloppy characterization, the descriptions that go on far too long, and I'll second-guess my commitment. I still want to finish the book, but I also notice that other one I'd started. It nags at me like an ex-boyfriend inviting me to lunch.

Luckily, there's nothing wrong with two-timing a book.

(Tongue fully in cheek;)

"To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place..."

"...You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can't really multitask reading a book. You're either reading a book or you're not. To me, the world of books is the quiet alternative, an even more desperately needed alternative."

~ Jonathan Franzen, via The Atlantic

I had actually written that quote--by hand!--when I first came across it a couple months ago. And it seems even more appropriate now that I've finished his latest novel, "Freedom." It took me about a week to finish the 500-page book, and I was reading during any and all free moments; it was a true gift to enter the "still place" of its world.

"May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor"

The past couple weeks I've torn through Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy. Classified as teen fiction, these three books are different from the character-driven pieces I usually read. Set in a dystopian future in which the United States no longer exist, replaced by a central government that controls and exploits twelve surrounding "districts," the books follow teenager Katniss Everdeen as she fights for survival. To remind the districts of its power, the Capitol stages yearly "Hunger Games" -- each district supplies one boy and one girl (ages 12-18) to compete for their lives, all while being televised. At the end of each Games, there is to be only one victor standing.

As sickening as that idea is, Collins said she came up with it while flipping through tv channels years ago. On one channel, "reality" tv. You know, like "Survivor," "The Bachelor," etc. On others were Iraq war footage:

The images blurred in her mind. She wondered whether other viewers could tell them apart.

"We have so much programming coming at us all the time," she says. "Is it too much? Are we becoming desensitized to the entire experience? ... I can't believe a certain amount of that isn't happening."

I highly recommend these books. They are immensely readable and take you away to another place while at the same time giving you pause about today's society. In the districts, as the people scrape for every ounce of food and those in the rich Capitol are ridiculed for being wasteful, even dying their skin shades of green and purple for the sake of fashion, you can't help but think of the disconnect between our own so-called leaders in Washington and the real-life struggles of most citizens.

"In the World, the Carrying Capacity of Humans is Limited..."

"...History holds all things in balance, including large hopes and short lives." (Adah, Book 5)

I mentioned yesterday that I was rereading "Poisonwood Bible" for book club tonight. I'd previously led the discussion for another of my favorites, "Unaccustomed Earth," by Jhumpa Lahiri; there were about eight of us that time. Apparently, my branch has tried to cancel their "second Thursday" book club during the summer for lack of attendance, but the members resisted. So we had it, and so it was that I led a conversation about "Poisonwood Bible" tonight with a lovely woman named Barb.

Luckily, Barb was a like-minded reader. The book angered her in the same ways it angered me (America?!?! How could you?!?!) and engaged her in similar ways. She had grown up with an older sister who was visually-impaired and was fascinated by the relationship between twin sisters Leah (able-bodied and brilliant) and Adah ("crippled" and brilliant). We both agreed that the end was perhaps more drawn out than it should have been.

I told Barb about the Lumumba movie and my shock over America's involvement, and she told me about living through the assassination and being vaguely aware of the official version of what had transpired. She'd said something to her dad, and he said she sounded like a Communist: "I wasn't offended," she told me.

While it would have been nice to have more voices, I enjoyed this book-talk. We'd only met the last time I did the book club, months ago, and after we'd discussed Kingsolver's book for a good forty minutes, we talked another fifteen about her children, my education, and our hope for the future.

A thought: Pundits talk about code words. Dog whistles. Things politicians can say that only reach a certain audience. They may refer to states' rights. Welfare queens. Tough on crime. But it's not just racist politicians who use them. We all do in our own way. We say something that would register only to those who share our world view, negotiating until we know we are in safe territory.

I realize I'm unsafe at school. Today, in a lesson about understanding visual information, I showed a picture of a couple, posing for a wedding picture. He was in his tux, she in her white wedding gown, bouquet in hand. In the background was storm, palm trees heavily bent by wind, heavy rain. On closer look, we see that the bride's bouquet is coming loose and her hair blowing. And still they smile. The text on the bottom: "Ignoring global warming won't make it go away."

One student thought the poster was suggesting that global warming caused the hurricane, and no one wants hurricanes to ruin a wedding. But clearly, the couple, obviously affected by their environment, are choosing to ignore it, just as we continue to ignore global warming. This same student argued that global warming is a hoax, and the poster is propaganda. How do you argue with that? On one side you have scientists, and on the other side you have non-scientists. As Bill Maher said on his show last week, this is not a debate! I did the smart thing and didn't engage myself. The last thing I want to do is diminish a student; besides, we're going to spend four more weeks on evaluating sources. The best thing I can do is give him the tools to find better information.

Telling the Truth, Slant

This is new for me - I've finished a goal I set for myself with time to spare. Instead of procrastinating, instead of calling up my mom or a friend to meet for lunch, instead of catching up on the finale of "Grey's Anatomy," I chose to finish the task I'd assigned for myself. Now, this should be impressive to no one except myself; grownups do this every day, right? They don't need a supervisor breathing down their backs or some instantaneous positive feedback.

Practice and repetition makes habit, and I'd like to develop good habits. Clearly, all this talk of multitasking has me hyper-focused on how I conduct myself. Ultimately, of course, I want to apply these good habits--discipline--toward writing. Can I move forward with my plans given my current schedule? Is there room if I just become more disciplined? Or do I have to cut something out?

Tomorrow I'm leading a library book club discussion of one of my absolute favorites, The Poisonwood Bible (read about George Rede's experience with the book here). Kingsolver is the kind of writer I'd like to emulate - a distinct and informed voice, an engaging story that is at once personal and universal. The story follows a baptist minister, his wife, and their four daughters as they travel to the Belgian Congo to spread Christianity. The first time I read it, I had just completed a course called "Africa on Film." We watched Raoul Peck's "Lumumba" about that nation's first democratically elected leader; Patrice Lumumba was imprisoned and murdered, and evidence suggests the complicity of the United States. His election, capture, and death--and the politics behind these events--provided the backdrop of the Prices' stories. Having learned about it made Kingsolver's story all the more interesting to me. (Click here to watch a short "preview" for it; the embed feature doesn't seem to be working).

Rereading the book, almost ten years later, I'm able to make a different sort of connection. The female Prices learn (some more quickly than others) that their knowledge and experiences in Georgia don't mean a thing in the Congo. The seeds they planted, the food they cooked, and the way they treated one another do not easily translate. The girls and mother are able to adapt, whereas the father remains steadfast in his belief in a certain kind of God and in his ideas of what is right and wrong. I compare his unwillingness to change and his inability to learn about and love the community in which he finds himself to my dad's journey in Kenya. Instead of imposing change on a group of people, my dad became friends with them, immersed himself in the customs, the values, and the needs, which are as varied there as they are here. They work together to meet those needs. After almost three years of living there more than here, Africa is a part of him.

Linguistic Change Doesn't Equal Linguistic Decay (Necessarily)

I've started reading a fascinating book, The Lexicographer's Dilemma, with the catchy subtitle, The Evolution of 'Proper English,' from Shakespeare to South Park. Click here for an excerpt, though I encourage lovers of the English language to buy your own copy or, better yet, borrow one from the library.

The writer, Jack Lynch, poses the question: How is it "wrong" if everyone speaks that way? Going back centuries, every generation has bemoaned the degradation of the English language. Kids these days, they don't know how to talk or write. But language necessarily evolves; the rules, he suggests, are less important than usage. We can't capture and crystallize the English language and say that this is the only way to speak it correctly. Technology changes, and the way we communicate changes; thus, focusing on what is "correct" puts undue anxiety on speakers and writers alike. Bad grammar, he says, can result in good writing, just as good grammar can result in bad writing.

As an English teacher, I read this book with great interest. I recognize the arbitrariness of the rules, the way language is used to impose and enforce a power structure. But I also recognize the power of language as a means of communication. I see the need for clarity and unambiguity in certain contexts. I see the importance of learning how to writing and speak "Standard English" because of the way our society works. Again, it's a fascinating book.

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Nana is doing much better. She's still in the hospital but much closer to her old self. I've spent most days this week with her, and I'm lucky that my jobs afford me the flexibility to do that. I'll share a quote from my brother's godfather that my dad quoted on his own blog:

Loss, and the grief that comes from it, is one of the greatest occasions of deep and sad feeling, and it’s one that is socially acceptable. When we lose a beloved friend, wife, husband, child, parent, or maybe a possession or a job, we feel it’s okay to feel deeply. But we must broaden that. We’ve got to find a passion that is also experienced when we have it, not just when we’re losing it. And we have it all the time. Don’t wait for loss to feel, suffer, or enjoy deeply.