books

eReading


Kobo eReader

Image by ndh via Flickr

I have an eReader now, a gift from Edie and Mick.  It tells me it can store a thousand books all by itself. Should I care to purchase it a Micro SD card, it will happily store 30,000 tomes.  So much for my room lined floor-to-ceiling with books I’d need a wheeled ladder to peruse.

When I was first teaching reading in the middle school, it was vogue to use incentives to prod the children to “free” read.  Free reading was whatever books the children read outside of class or during the silent reading periods during home room.  The lures mainly centered on candy, but we gave them pencils, junk toys of a Happy Meal nature and even tempted them to read as a collective and then rewarded entire classes with pizza parties.  Incentives, or bribery as it is more commonly known in parenting terminology, had limited life spans.  Children quickly tire of toiling for trinkets. Even the most eager student eventually reaches saturation.

But imagine my amusement when I discovered that eReaders offer incentives to adults to read more.

At the bottom of the reader’s screen, a note periodically pops up informing me I have an award I can claim and post to FaceBook. Normally, I tap a finger, which makes it disappear and I continue reading, but last night, I decided to investigate what constitutes an award by Kobo eReader standards.

The award has popped up before and is called The PrimeTime Award. When I opened it, I found this message:

Your television must be lonely because this is the fifth time you’ve read during primetime!

I didn’t know whether to laugh or fear for humanity.

For the record, once again, we don’t have cable, satellite or … until Edie gave her father a six month subscription as a Christmas gift … Netflix. We are strictly a dvd family, and even then, Rob and I return more unwatched movies to the bookmobile than not.

The once and never again reading teacher in me finds turnabout hilarious, but the literate adult sighs.  Knowing full well, as I do, that most people would rather do anything else but read, I can’t claim surprise that even eReaders must prod and cajole.  It’s hardly a sign of the coming apocalypse.  Not like Rick Santorum surging in the Iowa Caucuses is a harbinger of evil.  It’s a smaller and more subtle sign of civilization’s continuing quest against complete idiocracy.  But heavy sigh.  Just heavy sigh.

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A Literary Dinner Party


Today’s meme was stolen* from Bookends, LLC, an agents blog I follow. Bookends, in turn, lifted it from their client Jennifer Stanley and her Cozy Chicks blog.

The objective is filling four spots at a dinner party with authors with whom you would very much enjoy spending time eating and conversing. Said writers can be dead or alive.

They recommend choosing your authors before reading the picks of others because knowing who someone else chose will only increase the likelihood of second guessing and dinner guest envy.

I can only state my preferences of the moment. Who I’d like to spend an evening with discussing their work and the world in general fluctuates with my reading habits and genre interests.

But, here goes:

Stephen King, I adore his novellas and short stories more than his longer works – especially of late. I really think his better long work came early in his career. It would be neat to talk about The Stand though and how he would tackle it if he were writing it for today’s world.

Hilary Mantel, I can’t wait for the sequel to Wolf Hall. I ran across an interview where she reads a scene about Anne Boleyn and Cromwell. She is filling him in on the latest gossip concerning Jane Seymour’s father. Seymour would be Henry’s next wife. It’s wonderful and she read it like a kindergarten teacher to her rapt class sitting on the carpet at her feet. Nothing but expression and pure delight. And, she’s English. I could listen to them talk all day.

I would choose David Eddings and Anne McCaffery as well. The are fantasy writers and I love a good fantasy series. The skill it takes to create and maintain a reality is no little thing.

Helen Humphreys. She writes these amazing short novels. 200 pages more or less. That are poetic, compelling and make you wish they were longer even though you know that length would spoil them.

No pressure to meme this on your home base, but yes pressure to leaving a comment with at least one author with whom you’d love to sup.

*Memes were meant to be set free. Kinda like YouTube vids.

Wolf Hall


Wolf Hall was, maybe still is, the ancestral estate of the Seymours. Jane was Henry VIII’s third wife and the mother of Edward VI. She came in between the headless wives and contrary to popular myth, Henry did not routinely murder his wives. His first and third wives died of age and childbirth respectively. He’d divorced number one because he became convinced he’d sinned in marrying his brother’s widow, as she was, and that this was the cause of his son-less state. A hugely big deal in the Middle Ages. Well, let’s be real, being without sons is still considered tragic to lesser or greater degrees depending on where in the world you stand. He annulled his fourth marriage on grounds of ugliness and bad breath, and wife six survived him but only just. Wives two, five and six were adulterers to varying degrees with two and four losing their heads over it and six barely managing to outlive him before being arrested for treason herself. Wife two’s guilt isn’t proven but five and six were definitely involved with other men which given Henry’s reputation was just plain stupid.

Wolf Hall is mentioned infrequently in the novel of the same name by Hilary Mantel. In fact the Seymours only appear when the author wants to foreshadow or make a specific point about creeping evil. Jane Seymour’s father was a lecher who carried on with his daughter-in-law at one point and may have even fathered his own “grandchildren” on her. Jane herself is a quiet voice of practicality who is continually affirming Cromwell’s (the main character’s) information about the debauchery that goes on in her childhood home.

Wolf Hall represents the slip on the slope and it’s not until the end of the novel, after Thomas More’s head is piked on London Bridge that Cromwell heads off on his first visit to the Seymour’s. But an astounding amount of teetering on the top of the slope has taken place by this point and even if I didn’t know that Thomas Cromwell will lose his own head at a not to distant point in the future, I’d be able to guess it.

I love Tudor England. Sometimes I wonder if my affinity suggests that I lived a life or two there. There are only a few other time periods I am drawn to so perhaps.

It was not a simple or simple-minded time. Henry is neither monster nor misunderstood. Thomas More is no saint and Cromwell not as soulless as the history books would like us to believe.

History is suspect. It’s written by the winners and the vanquished never get to tell their side of the tale. Tales, being multi-sided like houses and books, should represent, don’t you agree?

Wolf Hall is a sumptuous read. It’s so hard to find decent fiction anymore that I am a bit sad when I finish. Thick text though so be aware that an audio version might be better. I found a delightful discussion about it at The Slate and will leave you with a pulp version of Tom and Henry.