I’m Giving Away Small Mercies

I went out of town for a weekend, and when I got home my stack of mail included several books for review. Inexplicably, I had received two hardback copies of the novel Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn how to do something new on the blog, so I’m giving away one copy. 

Can You Handel Seattle Opera’s Semele?

Brenda Rae (Semele) and the Seattle Opera Chorus in Handel’s masterpiece Semele.
© Avi Loud

Typical. I studied hard for the accessible Tosca. But I walked into Seattle Opera’s production of Semele cold. And I really could have used a little preparation; a Twitter hashtage for the production was #CanYouHandelIt. Here are five things that would have helped me Handel it better.

Finding Colin Firth

At my daughter’s school, students are encouraged to find connections between their own life and the stories in the books they read. If I was in the fifth grade, I would get an A for my book report on Finding Colin Firth. Actually, I would get an F for failing to turn it in – I read the book when it came out over a year ago. But never mind that. Let’s talk about the book.

Old Fashioned Wedding

We stumbled on a couple in historical dress getting wedding pictures taken at Nijo Castle.

The Dadaists and Big Hero 6

So I’m reading Lipstick Traces and it’s slow going because these beautiful sentences go on and on until your realize that they might not mean anything at all and you have to go back and read it all again very very carefully to see if there is anything there. And I’m reading about dada and I’m not sure why, but the picture of Alben Barkley (it’s disturbing, and I’ve included it below the fold) at the concentration camp makes me think about Big Hero 6.

A Five Star Dilemma

I love the speech at the end of the movie Ratatouille that talks about critics. It starts with the statement,

Negative criticism is fun to write and even more fun to read.

[Proof that it is true.] But even a negative review can turn a reader on to something they love. A critic may write, “The food was a confused mishmash,” or “The band was obscene,” but the reader may love fusion food and punk music. I had a friend in college whose movie reviews I trusted completely; the more enthusiastically he spoke of a movie, the more certain I was that I would hate it. Reviews are valuable; but a five star rating tells me nothing. Three stars tells me even less.

Ride the Lightning Thief

My daughter discovered Percy Jackson in the third grade and hasn’t read much else since. I have defended this choice, because like Neil Gaiman and education specialists everywhere (stay tuned for my article on the subject in the March issue of ParentMap), I believe that any reading is good reading. My own experience supports this. I too read high fantasy obsessively and exclusively for several years at about the same age, and I have grown to be an adult who reads primarily nonfiction and medieval literature.

Meanwhile, Rick Riordan has become something of a whipping boy for the literary establishment, trotted out as an example of what’s wrong with children’s literature today at every opportunity. It seemed strange to me. Riordan writes long narrative novels that incorporate classical mythology – doesn’t that sound like exactly what literary types would want their kids to be reading? Was it just a case of literary hipsterism that declared something so popular couldn’t possibly be cool?

Kyoto Station

The main train station in Kyoto.

The Truth About Rejection

Have you heard about the writer whose goal was to collect 100 rejections in a year?

Have you heard about the writer who is trying to wallpaper his studio with rejection letters?

Good luck trying to find the origins of these stories – not because they aren’t real but because they are so common. My friend and neighbor, Marisa Vitiello, wrote a post recently about her experience on both sides of the rejection equation. As a working artist, she has been rejected and been responsible for rejecting the work of others.

I think most of us intellectually know the truth in her observations, but we secretly hope that each idea we send out in the world will be met with open arms. So we need constant reminders of the truth about rejection:

On Rejecting and Being Rejected

 

 

A Fair Barbarian

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books A Little Princess and The Secret Garden are two of my favorite childhood reading experiences. I did not find out until I was a grownup that Burnett also wrote books for grownups. I read one of her first novels, That Lass o’Lowrie’s and enjoyed it for the Victorian entertainment it was, but I didn’t read any more of her novels until I found one in an unexpected place – on my Kindle.