Stone Cold by David Baldacci

Let me say first that I have not read any of the previous Camel Club books. I picked this one because it happened to be on my shelf and I figured I wasn't going to get around to reading the first two so I may as well go ahead and read this while it is fresh on the market.

I had a hard time in the beginning because I hadn't read the previous books. I could tell from his writing David was referring to previous moments that would remind the reader that this or that character was a good person. There were two story lines that paralleled but didn't interact and when the first one ended I was disappointed. It was so run of the mill, as in well written but not what you come to expect from bestsellers. The entire storyline then became apparent as this first one ended and the two stories merged. At that point the entertainment began.

If this were the first book or a stand alone book I would say that I was disappointed by Annabelle's story, it was too distracting. I gather though that she has been in the previous books so I can only assume the readers really wanted to know about this honorary member of the Camel Club.

I liked Harry Finn, then again I've always been drawn to men who have families. From the opening lines he became this character that was superhuman in ability and yet very human in the way that he loved his family. The family though was just a family and Harry Finn while an extraordinary character didn't evolve enough to make me bond to him. Yes I very much hoped for his success, he cared a lot about his family and it is this protective instinct in family men that I find so appealing. He didn't change though, he didn't become a better person for the experiences he went through. Then again this is a thriller, the characters aren't really supposed to do that, are they? They're supposed to be superhumans who make us feel that it is possible to triumph against all the odds.

Now we come to Oliver Stone, the superhuman, the old man who still has it. He's likable but terrifying. He has the kind of personality that risk takers hang around, he's ex-CIA, hmm, that should about right. Still it bothers me that assassins are becoming the heroes of our stories. (For example, the tv series Bones) I don't like this trend in part because I see these men as loaded guns themselves and the outside threat isn't great enough to warrant state sanctioned murder. I shouldn't fault Baldacci for choosing to write what is currently popular. He's better at it than anyone else I've read and I would read another of his books even if the hero is an assassin. Above all I enjoyed the entertainment.

Baldacci writes very well, if he puts out a tidbit of information for you to hold onto he keeps his promise and it shows up in the plot later on. There is nothing quite so pleasurable as reading a story with a tight plot, suspense, and characters whose stories are interesting. David gives these characters vulnerability through their relationships. They are superhuman in their ability and yet very human in who they love, how they treat them, and what risks they chose to take or not take because of those loved ones. This is why he can pull off having an assassin for hero. It means that while some part of this man can take a human's life without question, without conscience, another part can deeply value human life enough to control the murderous side.

Oh and there's a small paragraph at the very end of the book worth reading. I laughed at this because it showed David has a sense of humor.

The internet

I don’t remember the first e-mail I ever sent. I don’t remember even when I learned I could e-mail. I do remember being in graduate school and the German student would sit on the computer and talk to his friends in Germany. He told me it was this system that universities used where you could communicate in writing, sort of, it wasn’t writing letters like I thought of it, but almost instant. He would send a message (the screen was green and the words were a lighter green) and then they would send a message back. I remember thinking he was cheating somehow, that he was using Virginia Tech and charging them for the long distance calls. How could anyone send a message through a computer and instantly hear from the person on the other end? That was the same year that one of the other European graduate students told me her laundry secret. Wear your underwear twice, once on the inside and the next day wear them turned inside out, then wash them. I was so grossed out she never spoke to me again. Graduate school was enlightening.

Sarcastic wit

It's supposed to snow here today, Saturday, this bluejay picture was taken on Thursday when it did snow and then melted off by lunch time.

So yesterday I had this emotional crisis that I swear if I could just pull out the sarcastic humor would be funny. What happened is this author was supposed to come to the library to talk about his book. The snow is predicted to be rather bad and he has a two hour drive in the midst of all this bad weather. So he cancels. Can't blame him, I wasn't looking forward to my five minute drive to the library in the snow and ice. The would be funny part is when I get hysterical because I now have to make phone calls to all these people telling them this. You'd think a nuclear bomb went off in my backyard, even as I'm walking around pounding my head into the wall, I recognize, this isn't normal, this isn't actually a crisis.

The trouble is, I'm a housewife, and the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me was childbirth. That was a long time ago and gory stories about pushing out a ten pounder get old. So here I am with nothing dramatic happening in my life except the fact that the weather has canceled my author visit. Now if only I could transfer all this energy into dramatizing what is happening in my manuscript , well, I might actually find myself a publisher.

Critique Group

I met with my critique group last night. One of the members lives within two minutes of my house so I picked her up, we rode together and talked about her new computer. She's in her seventies so she sees things differently. One of the problems she had run into was the fact that she wanted to print something and her lap top was wireless but she didn't have a wireless printer. So she carried it over to her grandson's house and asked if he could hook it up to his printer and print this file for her. He then stuck a cigarette lighter in the computer, pulled it out, walked upstairs and came back down with the printed file. I laughed when she described a flash drive as a cigarette lighter. It reminded me of one grandmother getting mad because to turn the computer off you click on the start button.

Best Unpublished Manuscript Contest

James River Writers sponsors a Best Unpublished Manuscript contest. I didn't submit anything so I asked if I could help with the judging. I was allowed to help with the initial round, which is basically sorting manuscripts by the strength of their writing. This is done by having several judges read the initial chapter and rate the manuscript on a scale of one to ten. They will then go on to different judges where the entire manuscript is read.

The thing that struck me the strongest when reading these manuscripts is that I'm judging them. This means that I'm looking for faults and finding them. Had I judged my own it would have fallen even lower on the scales than the ones I was reading. In all honesty I couldn't have put a ten on any aspect of my own work, not because it was mine, but because it didn't meet the criteria.

Did the characters engage you? Well no. Sometimes it was because they were arrogant and abusive. Sometimes they were weak and reactive rather than proactive. Sometimes they were just not there, as in, who is the main character because I've been introduced to three in less than ten pages and one of those appears to be a city. Oddly enough there was one manuscript that stood out and the main character was less than desirable as a human being yet this character totally engaged the reader (I heard others say the same). How? I drove home trying to figure this out. I've been puzzling over it all evening. This character was awful as a human being but I sympathized. I also knew as I read this manuscript that my main character would not have engaged the reader so well.

Setting, did you know where and when the story was taking place? Sometimes it was easy, today, or 19?? because the author stated this. Sometimes it was more difficult because while it was obviously modern there was the question of exactly where in this modern world was it, rural, city, suburban? Once on page four I was surprised to learn I was in a different country. That manuscript I liked and others judged well, it didn't tell us exactly where we were, yet there were details that made location clear. Later the author did tell us exactly where the character was but it was the details that made the story real, not long drawn out detailed descriptions but just one or two. I forgot those details when I was writing my manuscript.

Theme, did you know what the author wanted to say? The genre novels were easy, they were clearly laid out in the beginning. Mainstream literary though was difficult. Sometimes it was just, huh? Sometimes I wondered if it was me because when I read literary novels I'm never thinking, what is the writer's theme. I'm reading because I like stories. Though I have to say the stories that begin with the main character talking about being urged to be a writer because he or she reads so much kind of turned me off. The theme there comes across as, "let me tell you a story where I'm the main character." Isn't the purpose of literature to see the world in a way that helps us cope with our world? If the character is a hero like Cuchulain (Irish, Red Lion and I can't think of the author at the moment) then it is helping us to cope with war and believe that we are on the winning side of it. If the character is Laura, Little House on the Prairie, then it is helping us to build our collective identity as Americans with a history of the pioneer spirit. Opps that last one wasn't fiction. Umm, okay if it is Wilbur the pig in Charlotte's Web then it is that love ensures survival of those we love. I've wondered for a while if my theme comes across as "let me tell you a story where I'm the main character," or if it is universal enough that other people can relate to it.

There was more, the list of things to think about when judging was very long. Briefly I thought about returning to critters.org so that I could hone my critical skills, the better to know what is good and what isn't in a manuscript. While I enjoy some fantasy, I don't like all of it, especially when I feel the need to contact the FBI because some writer is a pervert. I regretted that I missed the one fantasy manuscript in the contest and then when I had decided to go saw it on the table. By that time though my brain was exhausted, since I usually take a lot of breaks to wash clothes, weed the garden, or run errands, four straight hours of reading was too much for me. I did take a moment to read the first few pages, they were good, I really wish I could have stayed to read the first chapter. Ah well, I need to work on my own stuff. Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.

Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner

This is the book I bought for my son. One afternoon my son said he needed to read 50 pages to finish an English reading requirement and I suggested he try this book. I felt justified in spending the money for a HB when I called him for supper and he was surprised to see he had read far beyond the fifty pages. The next day I noticed the book mark had moved further along in the book.

Jake Wizner does a good job of writing about what teenaged boys are interested in and confronting in school without it seeming the least like a lesson. First of all the lead character who is unfortunately saddled with the name Shakespeare as a first name is preoccupied with sex. As a parent this disturbed me until I began to see that Shakespeare is merely dealing with hormones. Other aspects of the book also disturbed me, he smokes pot, but then decides that this isn't what is right for him because he doesn't like that loss of control. He drinks alcohol, both his parents are heavy drinkers so it comes natural, and again decides that too much isn't right for him. Moderation. So each time I would think I've made a mistake in giving this to my child only to think maybe not because the lead character is learning there are drawbacks and consequences beyond the ones mere parents dish out.

There are other aspects to this book too that I like. Number one was that he, the author, was teaching boys how to write. I was three-quarters of the way through the book before I realized this. The driving force behind the story is that in Shakespeare's senior year he has to write a memoir for Mr. Parke the English teacher. “Mr. Parke says memoir is not just about the events in our lives, but also what those events reveal about who we are. He says that every story we tell should have an under story, and everything we write should serve to illuminate the themes in our lives.” Here Wizner is teaching the boys who read this book about writing without them even knowing they are learning. He follows it up with a series of questions that point out what makes a story interesting, questions like, “is it my unexpected and ultimately humiliating sexual awakening?” Instantly the reader is turning the page because you just have to know what was that humiliating experience, and for parents, this had nothing to do with the backseat of a car.

I found myself avidly reading this book even though I was never a teenaged boy nor did I have to deal with the issues the lead character did. I was fascinated all the same because he matured, he grew, and every experience taught him something that was worth learning and learning about. In the end you knew this boy would turn into an admirable man despite his parents ineptitude.

This parental ineptitude would have been the only thing I didn't like about the book. His parents were a bit too weak for my appreciation. I suppose they had to be for the story to make sense but to my mind they made mistakes that might lead an impressionable reader to think that his parents should shrug their shoulders to learn that their son was sent to the principal's office.

I have no regrets in giving this to my son because I trust his judgment. I would though hesitate to give it to a boy whose parents are raising him with very conservative values because I think the preoccupation with sex and the occasional use of a cuss word might offend the parents. It shouldn't. Shakespeare explores these ideas and makes the right decisions without coming across as a goody two shoes. All in all it was an interesting book, it got my son to read for pleasure, and hopefully he picked up those writing lessons!

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

This book made me glad that I made my New Year's Resolution and that I chose her book to read first.

Kelly's father is an optimist, she opens the book with this information. At first I thought, this is not what I want to read. Rosy people who can't see there are two sides to every story irritate me. As I read through her story I understood, like her father she is an optimist - of a different kind - my kind, because she saw both sides. This is what I liked the most about her story. She tells everything, not the gory aspects of cancer, but the emotional ups and downs of it, without shame. She mentions irritation building, anger, frustration, yelling at kids, and then makes me laugh when she suggests her neighbors must think she's hitting the vodka and it's only 10:30 am. She also takes lots and lots of pictures of their lives so that they can remember the good moments.

Her story goes from moment when when the doctor told her you have cancer and his eyes wouldn't meet hers because he had read the book and knew the ending, to the moment when she has to envision her father's funeral and her life beyond that. The answer is never what you think because optimism works miracles and yet as her cousin who has lost a child says, "I am now one of them, 'the people who are aware of other.' "

The book was full of succinct paragraphs conjuring up images that tell the story in the way that pictures do. "This is exactly what being an adult is - leaving a voice mail for the national expert in urology while scrubbing out the grime that builds up inside the lid of a sippy cup. Keeping your toddler from opening the bathroom door while you inject a thousand dollars worth of Neupogen into your thigh so you can keep up your white blood cell count. Untangling a pink princess boa while wondering if you are a month away from losing both breasts, both ovaries, and your father. " Kelly was good at this not just here but throughout the book.

I will say reading this book is an emotional roller coaster. Personally I liked this about it. I felt like she was like me, imperfect and yet able to survive; tearful and yet capable of continuing her life until that moment when triumph comes because she didn't give in to depressing thoughts or permit rosy denial. For some people stoicism is self defeating because it creates a volcano, gradually releasing the pressure keeps the explosions under control. Most of all I liked her book because it made me feel better about my own life. I can not claim to have even brushed against that suffering people experience when death becomes Death. Kelly made me grateful for the mundane existence of my life and the ability to read about hers, to almost know what it would be like to have cancer, and to be in the safe place where I do not.

a different cup of coffee

Well, I give up. Who needs writing anyway? I've decided to make a New Year's Resolution, no it isn't to lose weight, or to finish my manuscript. I've sort of figured out that will never happen. Then again maybe I should make it my resolution to quit writing because I've quit so many times I'm like an overweight person hanging out in the donut shop because I figure if I could just breath the sweet sugary air I would be satisfied, I would be able to refrain from... wow that donut was good.

No, my resolution is to read a book a week. I finished Haig's book Mortal Allies. Needless to say I loved it. It was significantly better than the first one of his I read which was President's Assassin. It was a more intricate plot with a lot of unexpected twists. I liked his treatment of the characters too except for the jerk of a lawyer. That was the one thing I missed. I wanted Sean (the main character) to send a bat to the jerk off lawyer. I wanted that satisfaction, you know when the main character wins, of being right, and shoving it back in the face of the arrogant jerk. I'm not spoiling anything here am I? We all know the main character has to win or the book isn't a series and it isn't worth reading the next saga of how he almost loses and manages to win out in the end. This is why we go see Harry Potter 1, 2, 3, 4 and on to number 7.

Anyway I might try my hand at writing reviews but not of Mortal Allies because I didn't read it with that in mind so I didn't take notes of my favorite parts, or well written paragraphs, or misleading stuff etc. I enjoyed it for the pleasure of reading a thriller.

My sister and I went to Three Lakes Park yesterday. This is where I got the berries picture. I enjoyed being outside in the cold which is unusual for me since I'm one of those people who can't stand to be cold. I think it was just nice to be in the fresh air. I wanted to get pictures of her kids on the playground but the ground was muddy. Instead I got some of the kids walking around the lakes.

Happy New Year!