The Book Blog Went on Summer Vacation?

Hey- wasn’t it June? About 15 minutes ago?
It has been a very, very long time since I updated. I’ve been reading books, thinking about them. I’ve been writing. Just- not particularly here.

I’ve been having entirely too much fun as the New York Beer Pairing Examiner. As I’d hoped, it’s challenging me to teach myself to be a better food writer, to articulate tastes and recipe instructions more clearly. (I’m also trying out new recipes, and photographing my dinner.) The Examiner.com community of food writers is a great resource too. It’s become a great source of new recipes to try. I’m looking forward to some festivals and fun in the fall. For the writing experience as well as the delicious beer.

Book reviewing for the Ledger is picking up. A bunch of reviews are due for the fall. (I swore October was farther away than this! Yikes!) I think the best part is getting to do another Kids and YA roundup! I’ve got two glorious tote bags overflowing with picture books and teen novels. I really can’t believe the gorgeousness out there in kids’ picture books. And I find teen novels tremendously relaxing. (Maybe it’s knowing that I’ll never have to suffer through an algebra class, or play volleyball ever again.) I think they’re soothing precisely because the social drama is so overwrought.

Still blogging and doing housekeeping for Women’s Voices, and helping launch a fashion industry blog.
And– look for a couple other bylines to appear in the fall.

Even though humid weather makes me feel like a zombie, I can look back and say, I’ve gotten a lot done this summer. Go me!

Published in: on August 18, 2009 at 10:42 pm Leave a Comment
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Black and White and Dead All Over (review)

Black and White and Dead All Over
John Darnton
Anchor Books
Paperback, August 2009 351 pages
$16.00

When Theodore Ratnoff, assistant managing editor of the New York Globe, is found murdered in the newsroom, the murder weapon, an editor’s spike, seems a particularly grisly bit of poetic justice for a little-liked editor. Virtually everyone in the newsroom could be a suspect, even as the bodies, and tensions, mount. Covering the story for the Globe, reporter Jude Hurley is as stumped for ledes as the police are for clues. Jude works uneasily with Priscilla Bollingsworth, the officer assigned to the case, to chase a killer, while meeting deadlines, and finding a way to keep the imperiled paper running.

Darnton’s fictional New York Globe newsroom is absolutely right. Eccentric columnists and veteran editors combine nostalgia for the paper’s heyday with anxieties about dropping sales figures and the role of bloggers or the Internet. Without getting in the way of the mystery. Each character is perfectly New York, from Bashir the coffee vendor’s quips to Officer Bollingsworth’s awkwardness about her privileged uptown past. At times, the cast of characters is so crowded it’s like a confused Dickensian parody, but it’s hard to pinpoint any one character whose loss wouldn’t reverberate.
Betrayal, corrupt cops, old grudges and bloodshed keep the suspense churning frenetically in this well crafted and riveting tale.

Published in: on at 10:27 pm Leave a Comment
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So Many Books- At Once?

My friend and fellow blogger, Cheryl Katz, is in the middle of tons of books, and wishes she could read faster.

I wish I could simultaneously juggle several narrative books, but I tend to get confused between them.  Still, I get so anxious to start the next book sometimes that I may cheat my current book with my haste.  I’m a fan of quality over quantity, but that anticipation thwarts the depth of my reading every time.

In terms of my own reading habits?  Hmm.  Yep. I’m in the middle of a couple of books right now.  And I have even more sitting closed on my shelves (okay, they’re on my table in a big disorderly stack that I shove aside to make room for dinner.  Mom would be so ashamed.)  I have a couple of books that I’m reading, with varying degrees of work-related-ness.  Right now, I’m kind of all over the place.  I’m writing on a bunch of projects and having fun with that.  But feeling a little too fast paced to do more than flip through books, rather than taking the slow, sweet time to get immersed, cover to cover.  Oh, here’s a way I could combine at least two of my writing projects: Pairing books and beer! Wish I’d had that idea first!

And like Cheryl, I wish I could read more.

Published in: on July 20, 2009 at 6:46 pm Leave a Comment
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From WVFC: Angela’s Son- Frank McCourt

Excerpted from Women’s Voices For Change

written by Laura Baudo Sillerman

Photo: David Shankbone

Photo: David Shankbone

“She was seventy-three when she died. Seventy-three and glad to go. Not until then did I begin to understand the nature of her loneliness in Manhattan. Along with that came the guilt. I could have made her life easier. I could have taken her to dinner more often, even walked with her to the park. I could have drawn her out about her life. No, that would have been too much. I knew enough already.”

Frank McCourt

Angela's_Ashes_coverLet it never be forgotten that Frank McCourt chose to take his first big shot at writing the kind of book he loved to teach with a book that undertook to balance the scales for his mother. He hit the target and beyond. A Pulitzer after retirement. A dozen years of celebrity. Over a decade of telling stories to arena-sized audiences. And never did he lose the power to cut himself down to size. Or to tell a story as if there were only one listener who he wanted to reach—you.

Read more at Women’s Voices For Change

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Ripped (book review)

Originally appeared in the Star-Ledger, July 10, 2009

A new wall of sound

RIPPED:
HOW THE WIRED GENERATION REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC
Greg Kot
Scribner, 252 pp., $25
REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH WILLSE

Greg Kot brings a rock journalist’s perspective to questions of copyright that emerged when music files and players went digital.

Some of his points seem fairly obvious: The internet’s wider fan community sped bands’ rise to fame; the existing legal system failed to keep pace with digital sharing technology.

Kot zeros in on specific bands in detail. Although Metallica’s battle against Napster was widely publicized, not everyone knows Metallica encouraged fans to trade bootleg recordings of early concerts; nor does everyone know why Prince changed his name to a symbol.

By presenting the impact of the technological shift on newer bands like Death Cab for Cutie, and established musicians like Paul McCartney, Kot constructs a decent survey of evolving music consumption over the past decades. He covers the economics and generational aspect, perhaps because they are the most obvious.

Although his character sketches are detailed, he seldom pushes innovative questions about new technology shaping musicians’ process, or what the next phase in music distribution might be.

Published in: on July 17, 2009 at 9:00 am Leave a Comment
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WVFC Poetry Friday- David Tucker

TUCKER 6 YASUKAWADavid Tucker is the deputy managing editor at the Newark Star-Ledger, in Newark, N.J, where he was part of the Ledger team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. Previously, he worked as managing editor at United Press International, and served as sports editor and later city editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He brings a journalist’s sensibility for clear language and visual immediacy to his poetry as well. Two years ago he told the American Journalism Review, when asked about his poems: “You can’t always sit down and dictate to yourself where you’re going with poetry. Journalism is about what the facts tell us. Poetry’s about what the facts don’t tell us.”
Read the poem and see a video at Women’s Voices For Change.

And yes.  I engineered this installment of Poetry Friday.  Largely because I’d gotten to know David through the Star-Ledger, and discovered his poetry, which is scorching excellent.  So very happy to find a poem of his that would work for WVFC!

Published in: on July 10, 2009 at 7:31 am Leave a Comment
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Pile of Books

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Published in: on July 3, 2009 at 6:53 am Leave a Comment

Booking Through Thursday: Celebrities

The question for this week has got to be inspired by recent events: “Do you read celebrity memoirs? Which ones have you read or do you want to read? Which nonexistent celebrity memoirs would you like to see?”

I’ve read and re-read Roald Dahl’s “Boy,” his memoir of growing up. It’s easy to see where he got so many of his ideas.  I should read some of his later ones, though. The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington isn’t a memoir, but looks fascinating as well.

The thing I most remember about reading Michael Caine’s autobiography
was a story of him getting drunk with John Lennon.

I need to reread Mark Twain’s autobiography.  It was astounding.  And funny.

Also- Beverly Cleary’s A Girl From Yamhill is due a re-read.   I didn’t know it continued: Time to grab My Own Two Feet: A Memoir from the library.

I wish Mick Jagger would write his memoirs.  Or Charlie Watts.  I grew up loving the Rolling Stones, and always wondered.

I also love memoirs of ordinary people, who are more about capturing vivid moments of history and place.  James Herriot, is of course, my very favorite.  So I’m always on the lookout for something that good, and would welcome suggestions.

Yes, I’ve noticed the British theme in my favorites too.  Got any Americans for me?  Well written, warmly funny, keen sense of region and history?

Published in: on July 2, 2009 at 7:42 am Comments (5)

Musing Mondays: Mid-Year Reading

Today’s Musing Mondays is about mid-year reading.  Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your reading so far?  Anything interesting that you’d like to share?  Any favorites?

Great new discoveries this year:

Lauren Willig’s floral-themed historical espionage.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

Shel Silverstein’s audio recordings are on MP3

I need to read more PD James.

There is good fashion writing out there.

Cherry Ames exists in modern printing!

And on the flip side, books that have not been great.  A mercifully short list!

Washington Square, by Henry James, isn’t worth finishing, even with Dad reading and writing about it too.

The Body Farm was dumb.

Published in: on June 29, 2009 at 11:03 am Comments (1)
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Poets and 19th century technology

Walt Whitman would have been a perfect blogger. Didn’t he revise and reprint Leaves of Grass dozens of times? What would instant posting and feedback have done to that thought process? “I sing the body electric,” all right.

After reading a YA novel that got inside the head of an imagined teenage Emily Dickinson, I’m convinced she would have loved MySpace.   Would she have posted her poems there?  Maybe.  Or maybe a cable modem and a glowing screen would have changed the flavor of her reclusive years.  I can picture Twitter affecting the rhythms of her lines.

Who else?

This isn’t quite bookish, but I’ve also always wondered what John Lennon would think of hip hop, or techno.  What he and Bono might say to each other, or he and Eminem.

Published in: on June 25, 2009 at 10:05 pm Comments (2)
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