Wicked Wildfire Readathon

I have signed up for the Wicked Wildfire Readathon, June 20-24th.  Unlike the other readathons I've been in, this is not a 24-hour marathon, but rather a five day period of concentrated reading time.  There will be prizes and challenges and a Twitter party.

My reading goal for this year is 75 books, which means I need to read 37 (and a half) by the end of June. So far I've read 32.  Finishing five books by the end of June is actually feasible - I have an audio going in the car and two in progress on my Nook and one in paper form.

To facilitate more reading during those five days, I am limiting my TV, Twitter, blog and Words With Friends time (my biggest distractions).  I'm not deluded enough to think I'll cut out any of them completely, but I do hope to minimize them and concentrate on books.

If the stack of books waiting for you is getting out of hand, or if you just need an excuse to ignore the dishes and read, go HERE and sign up. Wicked Wildfire Read-a-Thon is sponsored by Rebecca @ Kindle Fever and April @ My Shelf Confessions.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead—and celebrating it all—as she considers marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, faith, loss, all the stuff in our closets, and more.   Along with the downsides of age, she says, can come wisdom, a perspective on life that makes it satisfying and even joyful. Candid, funny, moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen’s status as America’s laureate of real life.

The publisher's blurb (above) is pretty spot-on.  This book actually delivers what is advertised  - funny, moving, insightful, revealing - a great book for women of a certain age.  I'm not sure what that age is, exactly, just that I don't think it would be as interesting to younger women as it is to those who have experienced at least some of what Anna is writing about.

The book is divided into four sections, corresponding with the stages and topics of life.  The final section, dealing with faith and mortality, wasn't my favorite - perhaps because our views on faith differ, or perhaps because I don't want to dwell on mortality - but I loved the first three sections.  I'll let Ms. Quindlen tell you in her own words:

On Aging:  

We build our lives bit by bit of small bricks, until by the end there's a long stretch of masonry . . . [and] we become aware of how random the construction is, how many times it could have gone a different way, the mistakes that you averted, not because you were wise, perhaps, but because you were lucky.

On Baby Boomers and Women's Rights: 

But sometimes I think that my entire generation of women adopted, for a time, that childlike point of view, that the women who raised us did things that were tedious and beneath notice.  You had only to listen to us to know that this was true . . . We invented natural childbirth. Also toilet training and time-outs . . . We invented balancing work and family and spousal divisions of labor and sexual harrassment and equal pay for equal work.  Or at least we behaved as though we had.  Occasionally someone would call us on all this...a mother of six who had taught high school Spanish for fifty years wrote me...suggesting that baby boomer women were not the first humans ever to have both a job and children.

I wonder now how we dared to criticize and condescend to a generation of women who soldiered on through the Depression, a world war and a world without much in the way of family planning or job opportunities.

On Memory: 

One of the great things about being the age I am now and having a reliably unreliable memory is that I can reread mystery novels.  I either don't remember whodunit or, when I do figure it out, I convince myself that it's because I'm canny and wise.

On the trend of "Micro-Managing" Parenting:

Keeping up with the Joneses turned into keeping up with the Joneses' kids.  Whose mothers, by the way, all lied.

You can't learn from mistakes and disappointments if your childhood is engineered so there aren't any.

Meet Me at the Movies

Image from www.blogshouts.com

Break out the popcorn and Milk Duds, we're going to the movies!

If you read yesterday's post, you know that I'm frustrated at the amount of money we're paying each month to receive hundreds of TV channels that we don't watch.  Since shutting off the unused channels doesn't seem to be an option, I decided to go the other direction and find a way to use the nearly 400 channels we receive that do not involve extra fees (pay-per-view or shopping).  So what to watch?  All "reality" shows were immediately ruled out, as were crime shows involving initials (CSI, NCIS, etc.), and action/adventure movies.  But I love classic movies - romances, comedies, musicals and the occasional drama involving Hollywood's timeless stars.  Unfortunately, they aren't usually aired during prime time.  Thank heaven for DVR, the greatest invention since the library.

Using the search feature, I found ten movies featuring my favorite stars and set them to record.  Throughout the summer, I will be watching/reviewing at least one per week (I'm not good at schedules).  Here are the movies/stars I selected:

• Easter Parade - Fred Astaire
• Summer Stock - Gene Kelly
• Bye Bye Birdie - Ann-Margret and Dick Van Dyke
• Kiss Them For Me - Cary Grant
• Rio Bravo - Dean Martin and John Wayne
• Rear Window - Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly
• That Funny Feeling - Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin
• Love in the Afternoon - Audrey Hepburn
• Change of Habit - Elvis Presley
• Rope - Jimmy Stewart, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

So what are you doing to stay out of the heat this summer?  How about joining me?  
If classic movies aren't your thing, how about movies of the 80's?  Movies featuring a specific location?  Movies based on books?  Pick your category (or a variety of categories), grab the button if you like, then come back and leave a link to whatever you post when you Meet Me at the Movies!

Classic Movie Summer

It is common at our house to hear one of us lamenting the fact that we pay for over 700 satellite channels and we watch very few of them.  First there is the basic package- not the cheapest, but the one that came with the most sports networks.  Then there is the HD package because, seriously what's the point of having an HD TV if you don't get HD channels?  Then there is the additional sports package we added on so we get the majority of K-State games.  In total - a little over $100/month for 720 channels.  

Now - remove the On Demand movie channels that we rarely use, the shopping channels (who knew there were so many!), and a few other random things we knew we would never watch, and we're down to 372 channels in our "Favs" list.  When we sit down to scroll through the TV guide, 372 channels are displayed.  And usually there is nothing on.

The other day, I ran across an article about Apple's newest plan for television - a platform that offers "a la carte" channels.  If I understood correctly, you would be able to select channels individually - and thus be charged only for the ones you actually watch.  Naturally, they are running into some backlash from networks that survive by getting their network bundled in with the big networks that everyone wants.  But, I'm hopeful that this is the wave of the future and will be available in a reasonable amount of time.  

In preparation, and mostly out of curiosity, I browsed through the guide to see what channels we would select if the menu were a la carte.  The results were sad.  I would want ABC to keep up with General Hospital and Dancing With The Stars.  We would need the sports channels, of course, and Dave would want TruTV (also known as The Stupid People Channel) to keep up on schadenfreude.*  Other than that, we were hard put to name channels we watch on a regular basis.

In the "occasional" category we decided we might pay for:

• News channels for the occasional crisis.
• CLOO because they show House and Monk reruns - but we've seen them all so many times that I'm not sure it's worth money.
• BBC America - in case the Royal Family gets married, jubileed or some other thing I would find interesting.
• TV Land - for M*A*S*H reruns 
• CBS, NBC and FOX in case thy are hosting special events like the Olympics and in case I get over my boycott of American Idol.
• PBS for the occasional Masterpiece Theater or music special
• History Channel for Pawn Stars
• Lifetime for Project Runway

But paying for a channel 24/7 because we might watch one program a week?  Not the best use of money.

Then there's the "used to watch" group - channels we always wanted before, but don't use any more:

• Bravo cause they used to show West Wing, but I have it on DVD now.
• HGTV - watched a lot back in the day that it was actually about decorating and not about real estate and greed.
• Food Network and Cooking Channel - gave those up with the weight loss program, not sure I'll ever return.
• AandE because they showed Nero Wolf, but that's a thing of the past
• Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney - but the kids are grown now.
• USA because they had Monk - but it's been cancelled.
• When we were first married - and cable was still a new thing - we were so excited to get TNT, TBS and WGN because they were the "super stations" - but no more.

So, in order to feel like I'm getting something for all my money, (at least until Apple gets their TV to market) I've decided to have a Classic Movie Summer.  Using the search feature, I found  movies containing many of my favorite classic movie stars - Cary Grant, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Dick van Dyke, Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart and more. I am recording 10 movies over the next couple months and will watch at least one per week and review it here.  So watch for Classic Movie Summer posts and join me if you want.  Details tomorrow.

Armchair BEA Wrap up

Last week was an action-packed week of Armchair BEA.  Since this was my first time participating, I wasn't sure what to expect.  There was a tremendous amount of information and blogs thrown into a small time frame - it got a bit overwhelming at times - but I learned a lot and had fun, so I'm sure I'll join again next year.  Here's what I learned this year:

1.  You can't do it all.  There were over 600 participants, most of whom posted at least twice during the week.  There is no way to visit/read every post, every day.  You need to have some sort of system - even if it's as simple as "visit every 12th blog"  - to manage the tsunami of info. Which leads up to:

2.  It would be helpful if the list of participants were "tagged" or grouped according to the main focus of their blog, e.g. YA, mysteries, books+, over 40, etc.  That would make it much easier to visit blogs that have a higher chance of interesting me, rather than just clicking randomly.  I and several other bloggers submitted this idea to the hosts and hopefully the'll come up with a way to implement it next year.  And along that same vein:

3.  I am blown away by the number of YA bloggers out there.  It's fantastic that reading is so popular among the under-30 crowd!  Though fantasy and dystopia are not normally my favorite things to read, I'm all for any trend that can get this many young people reading.  

4.  The Twitter Parties were a blast - hard to follow, dizzying, and confusing - but a blast.  This was the time for all types of bloggers to be together and share ideas.

5.  Prizes!  The organizers and sponsors of Armchair BEA put together an impressive list of prizes.  (I won on the last day - I'll share that when it arrives.)  Also, hundreds of bloggers sponsored their own give-aways.  I appreciate everyone's generosity, but got tired of filling out Rafflecoptor forms, so I didn't enter nearly all of them.  Each blogger is free to set up their blog give-away however they like, but some blogs had way too many hoops to jump through for my taste.  I don't care for forcing people to follow your blog, twitter, facebook, etc in order to get a chance at a prize.  I want readers who are here because they get to know me and enjoy what I write.

6.  I'm glad I wrote - or at least sketched out - my posts in advance.  Taking time to write during the week would have meant I missed even more blog entrants.  Thanks again to the hostesses for putting up the daily topics way in advance.

7.  Visiting all those blogs made me aware of the importance of blog design.  As each blog opened, I made a judgement within the first few seconds if this was a blog I wanted to explore further.  When I began blogging, I used a pre-fab background and color scheme.  They were pretty, but they weren't "me".  Eventually, I made my own theme.  I chose the vintage kitchen design because it conveys the mood I want - come into my home and let's discuss books and life over a cup of coffee.  I appreciated the blogs whose design made a definite statement about the content and mood.

If you have a book blog, or begin one within the next year, or if you just want some great info on the upcoming books and trends in publishing, follow along with Armchair BEA next year.

Armchair BEA - Day 5 - Experts

It's the final day of Armchair BEA.  Today's topic is Ask the Experts: Ask your burning questions of your fellow participants or share your own personal tips about blogging. I've been blogging for just over 2 1/2 years and I've developed my own system, so can't say I really have any burning questions.  Not sure I have any tips for a successful blog either, but since when does not having anything helpful to say stop me? 

First, define "successful"  If your definition involves fame, fortune and free stuff - I can't help you. Not that those are bad goals, they're just not mine. I blog to have a place to write, to have someone to talk to - about books and about life - and to make friends.  If I'm accomplishing those things, I consider my blogging a success.  If that's your goal then here are my tips:

1. Be yourself - don't try to sound like anyone but you. If, like me, your normal speech contains sarcasm and obscure references, include them in your blog.

2. Don't check your stats - they'll drive you nuts.

3. Write about what interests you - it will interest someone else, too.

4. Respond to every comment - the only way to make friends and start conversations.

5. Don't worry about posting every day - that will also drive you nuts. And your readers don't mind if you skip a day - less stuff in their reader.

6. Do what makes you happy. Just to pick a totally random example - if you like to create puzzles about books, tv and movies, do it.  If you had fun making them - that's enough. If you like memes - join memes.  If you want to post nothing but reviews of mystery books by female authors with an R in their name - go for it.  It's your blog - be happy!

Armchair BEA Day 4 - Beyond the Blog

Today's assignment at Armchair BEA is to "share your tips for getting beyond your blog".  This could include freelance writing, monetizing, etc.  I have no experience with those areas, but I do get "beyond" being a book blog by sharing about daily life, gardening, parenting, crafts or whatever else comes up.  Although this blog started out to be strictly about books, it has expanded and usually the posts about family life garner far more responses than the book reviews.  If you are a blogger, I encourage you to broaden your horizons and write about your life beyond books.  When I'm behind with my reader (when am I NOT behind?) I find myself reading the life posts and skimming past the book posts.

If you're new here and want to know more about our life beyond the books, here are a few posts that will give you an inside glimpse:

"Musical Vehicles" - Part 2 of our ongoing vehicle crises.

"I Know When I've Been Insulted" - Trying to parent college-aged offspring

"Hallelujah, Holy S**t, Where's the Tylenol" - Thanksgiving vacation catastrophe

"Give Me Park Avenue" - My experience with farm life . . . and snakes

"Muskrat Love" - Further exploits with wildlife on the farm

"Gabby's Post" - Goofy guest post by the dog we adopted from a rescue shelter