Mystery Blogger Award

The Mystery Blogger Award was given to me by Jemima Pett in mid-June. I don't usually do these things, and I'm only half doing this. That is, I won't be tagging others to receive the award, not because I don't think the blogs I follow are super (because many of them are), but because it feels too much like a chain letter. But since Jemima tagged me, I'm going to answer her questions and I'll toss out some of my own for you to answer in the comments!

 

The Rules

Rule 1: Put the award logo/image on your blog.

See above.

Rule 2: List the rules.

… here….

Rule 3: Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

Thank you, Jemima Pett.  I really appreciate the kind thoughts and kind words, not to mention your constant support of my blog and my books.

Rule 4: Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.

About the creator: Okoto Enigma’s blog The creator’s name, Enigma, means mystery, thus the title of the Mystery Blogger Award.

Rule 5: Tell your readers three things about yourself.

1. I am not a Ninja or a librarian, but I do work at the library and I love books, and turning people on to books.

2. With a nod to Jemima's 2nd factoid, I am hopelessly left-handed, and drove my grade school teachers to despair as they tried to teach me to write legibly. I was saved first by the electric typewriter and then (by the time I finished my undergraduate work) by the word processor.

3. I love to hike and backpack as much as I love books. That's why you find backpacking trip reports mixed in here among the book reviews.

Rule 6: Nominate 10 to 20 bloggers.

Here's where I break the rules. No. I won't, especially not 10 or 20. Good heavens, don't these people understand math, and exponents? Pretty soon every blogger in the blogosphere has one of these awards.

That pretty much invalidates Rule 7 & the first part of 8:

Rule 7: Notify those people.

Rule 8: Ask your nominee any five questions of your choice, plus one weird or funny question (and answer the ones you were asked).

Here are the questions, and my answers:

1. What is the most memorable trait or visual oddity of a fictional book character you’ve read?
   (Example: Harry Potter’s lightning bolt scar.)
   • This requires some thought. It would be easy to say that it's Auggie in Wonder, though we don't really know what his face looks like, only that it's deformed. But probably the best for me is Pippi Longstocking and her long red braids. A close look at my profile photo will clarify that choice.
2. What most motivates you to buy a new book to read?
   • I don't buy many, and usually it's either the fill-a-bag sale at the library fundraiser, or a visit to a museum or National Park book store, where I find the most amazing gems of obscure history and natural history, which are about the only books I buy anymore.
3. How do YOU make an educated guess as to if a book by an author you haven’t read before will be “good” BEFORE you read any of it? (Number of books sold, number of reviews, average star rating, awards it received, friend suggests it, the cover, etc)
   • The cover catches my eye first, then I read the blurbs. I don't usually go to reviews, though a review by a trusted reviewer (see Jemima Pett, above) may send me in search of a book, as have discussions on Goodreads.
4. What’s your favorite comfort food. (Pic? Recipe?)
   • Chocolate Crazy Cake. Dump all the ingredients* in the cake pan, stir, and bake. Impossible to ruin, and really tasty, especially with chocolate sauce poured over it. So maybe I should just say that when in doubt, I turn to chocolate.
5. Where do you look for blogging inspiration?
   • Anywhere I’m allowed.  And some places I’m not allowed.  <---That's Jemima's answer, but I couldn't invent a better one.

Weird/funny question: Do you have a celebrity encounter story you can share?

• I'm sorry to say that I don't. I generally don't recognize faces, so I wouldn't know if I was standing in line for coffee behind a celebrity. 

Finally, here's...

Rule 9: Share a link to my blog’s best post.

 Tough choice. I have no idea what my best post it. But here's a short story I rather like, out of the many I have shared.
Daliah
And here are gratuitous photos of the Canadian Rockies.

So...once again, thanks to Jemima for giving me the excuse to goof off a little! And here are my questions for you to answer in the comments:

1. What is your favorite dinner food?
2. What is the most memorable trip you've taken.

  ***

 *Okay, fine, here's the recipe, for an 8X8 cake:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3 Tbs baking cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (or a bit less)
1 Tbs vinegar
2 Tbs oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup water.
Like I said, put it all in the pan, stir until mixed, and bake 30 minutes at 350 deg.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2017
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Fi50 (Fiction in 50--words, that is)

After watching Jemima Pett do it for a year or two, I decided it's time for me to jump on the bandwagon with The Bookshelf Gargoyle's Fiction in 50 challenge. That's a complete story, in exactly 50 words, written to a prompt he provides for each month. Posting is the last week of the month, and I'm targeting Mondays of the last week. This is my first attempt, so go easy on me--it's harder than it looks!

Moving with the Times

Innovation can be hard on the tradition-bound. I’m really trying, though, to get used to reading the new way. My son says anyone can do it. It’s easy, he says.

But it’s not easy, rapping him over the knuckles with one of the new-fangled books. My old scrolls are better.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2017
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

What I didn't finish, and why

Lately, I've found myself  not finishing some books, and while I don't like to write reviews of books I haven't finished, I thought it might be useful to talk about why I let them go. I'll say right here: it's not always because they are bad books. In fact, it's usually just because they aren't the right books and the right time. That said, here are a couple of books I let expire, and (to the best of my ability to suss out) the reasons why.

The Road to Little Dribbling, by Bill Bryson
Yup, that's right: I DNF'd a book by the famously witty Bill Bryson. As a matter of fact, this didn't totally surprise me. I had a love-hate relationship with A Walk in the Woods (yes, he made me laugh, but he also made me want to throw the book across the room with his lack of knowledge and planning, utter ignorance of good hiker etiquette and Leave No Trace principals, etc.). I enjoyed his book about Australia, but then when I read the one on the US, I found that when he wrote about places I know well his version was often shallow, misguided, or just plain wrong.


So I did start Little Dribbling with some trepidation, and it was justified. There was much less than usual of interesting history and stories and description of places, and much more griping about things that have changed in 20 years (I get that; I break my heart over some things that have changed, and not for the better. But as a theme for the book? Not good). But the final straw was that his humor seems to have become mean-spirited. I almost quit when he recounted tormenting a McDonald's employee for doing his job. I did quit after his excoriation of a shop owner who didn't seem to care if Bryson stayed or went. Really, Bryson? He ends up sounding not only like a grumpy old man, but a grumpy rich old man who is kind of annoyed by all the common people around him.

(Credit where it's due: I've enjoyed Bryson's historical work, At Home: A Short History of Private Life and The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way. Regarding that latter, knowing he'd written it and done his research, I was surprised at his rant in this new book about...English spelling. You explained that to us, man).

The Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries, by Emily Brightwell
This is a completely different case. The book is fine, really. Well-written and a bit humorous, and all that. But...it's not grabbing me, and after a bit of thought, I think I know why. Actually, it's the same problem as Bryson has, in a way: the humor comes at the expense of someone. I've had issues with this in other books I've read, where a character is presented as just kind of a comic bungler. When it's the main character in a mystery, it kind of works--after all, they manage to solve the crime. It works even better when the bumbling character is the narrator, because that's just humorous self-deprecation and we can take it for what it's worth. But in this case, I feel like the Inspector is just a patsy to allow Mrs. Jeffries to be the smart one. I get the plot device. The author has found a way to avoid the biggest problem of the amateur detective, their difficult position vis-a-vis the police. But.

My take-away: snark is a dangerous weapon. Self-directed snark by a 1st-person narrator is pretty safe, but beyond that, things get risky.

Note: I hesitated about putting this one on here, because for all I know the Inspector will get the last laugh and prove not to be an idiot after all. But I kind of doubt it. For now, I'm leaving the book on my MP3 player and may finish at some point. In which case, if I am more satisfied, I'll write a real review.

Other books
There have been some other books I've not finished, books that I won't name. Those have been books with deeper flaws, often: historical inaccuracies, poor writing or editing, etc. I don't need to reflect much to know why I drop a book with those problems. But I had to think about why I might dump a book with good prose, a strong plot, and a professional proof-reader. I hope it gives me food for thought for my own writing.

How about you? Do you leave books unfinished? If so, do you ever analyze why?

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Blogging from A to Z Theme Reveal Blogfest!

Oops! Messed up the time for the auto-post! No wonder no one has commented :D  Well, better late than never, so ....

It's here at last...the great A to Z Challenge theme reveal! Way back in February I posted that I was trying to work out a brilliant theme. I'm here to report that brilliant probably eluded me, as usual, but I do have a theme. I will be blogging all of April on...Mountains and Valleys. Mostly literal, maybe some figurative. I will be mixing up my usually melange of reviews, photos, and fiction, though I believe I will try to keep the fiction on Friday as usual. But don't be surprised by any type of post on any day! And it was originally just going to be mountains, but I got to thinking (uh-oh!) and decided I wanted a little more flexibility.

I'm also going to be mentioning my own work more. As fellow blogger Jemima Pett has noted, and it's as true for my blog as for hers, it would be easy for visitors to leave my blog never knowing that I write, or what I write. So don't be surprised when one of the mountains I write about is Skunk Mountain, or when I talk about being able to see Mt. Baker from Pismawallops Island!

See you all on the hop!

My A-Z of Literature

I saw this idea on Gus Sanchez's blog, where he'd gotten the idea from. . . you get the picture.  Anyway, it was a list of works from, well, A to Z, that had importance for him.  Lots of flexibility, author's name, first or last, title, and so on.  My list has a lot fewer heavy hitters, and more children's books, because so much of what made me the reader and writer I am happened in the early years.  But I'm going to take a shot at it, just because it sounds like fun.  The list is necessarily incomplete and would probably be different if I wrote it another time.

A. Louisa May Alcott.  I cried over Little Women more times than I can remember, and devoured all her books.  Yes, they are dated.  Yes, she wrote from some assumptions that grate on me now.  But in the late 1800s, LMA was writing about women and girls who were figuring out how to be something besides household drudges, and how to make a difference in their world, often by doing things that weren't considered properly "women's work."

Also Mary Hunter Austin (Land of Little Rain, Cactus Thorn).  A woman who wrote of nature and place with as much love and grace as John Muir.

B.   The Bible.  I'm an agnostic now, but I read the Bible more than once as a child and teen, and the language of the RSV and King James versions definitely resonates.  Besides, my Grandma showed me where a lot of the good gory (or racy) stories are (in the Old Testament).  Hard to top this book for the way it fills the subconscious of those of us raised in WASP America.

C.  Geoffrey Chaucer.  Found him in Grad school and because of him I spent ten years studying medieval literature.  I also blame him for my challenges with spelling.

D.  Douglas Adams.  You can be crazy and absurd and still have a great story. Or maybe even have a great story because it is crazy and absurd.

E.  Aaron Elkins and Earl Emerson.  Two writers of high-quality mysteries who never lose their grip on their sense of humor (however black the humor may get at times).  I will admit to liking the straight mysteries over their thrillers, though--because in the latter, the sense of humor slips.  Hard to be tongue-in-cheek while saving the world, I guess.  Though I'm tempted to try.

F.  Colin Fletcher.  The Man Who Walked Through Time.  Geology and backpacking together,  presented to me at a young age as about the most desirable activities out there (I managed to forget the former when picking a college major.  Silly me.  So I ended up an English major and have to go outside on my own time).

G.  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  I love alliteration.

H.  Hemmingway.  Because I have changed from loving him to hating him and back more than once, and if nothing else he constantly reminds me not to use too many words.

I.   Ivan Doig.  A discovery from some ten or twelve years ago, a writer who crafts his language and conveys and time and place like no one else I know.  It doesn't hurt that his place is Montana's Gros Ventre region.

J.  Jane Austen.  Read most of her books as a teen or early twenties, and couldn't see what the attraction was.  It took me to middle age to really appreciate her humor and insights into character.

K.  Katherine Kurtz.  Her Deryni novels were the first fantasy world that caught me as much as Tolkien did--though for very different reasons.  And eventually she even worked her way around to having some strong female characters.  I never forgot my Dad's criticism, though: that she spent too much time describing the clothes.  He was right, and I pay attention to when description matters to the story and when it's just self-indulgent.

L.   Louis L'Amour.  Yeah, he's an awful writer in so many ways.  But in Jr. High and High School, I devoured his Westerns and appreciated that he occasionally even had a female who knew exactly what she was doing and was good at it.  For better or worse, he and his imaginary West are permanent parts of my imagination.  When not spouting absurd philosophy or shooting his hero full of holes, he also did a good job of conveying the landscapes.

Madeleine L'Engle.  Not only did she write a boat-load of really good books that were fun to read, but she and Dorothy Sayers between them wrote some of the first books I read about writing.  Both wrote about being a Christian and a writer, which was relevant at the time but isn't now.  But since what they were really concerned about was being the best possible writer, it still resonates.

M.  L.M. Montgomery.  Apart from the whole miserable orphan thing, I was Anne of Green Gables.  Big words, long red braids, and an imagination that wouldn't stop.  All too often a tongue that didn't stop quite soon enough, either.

Charlotte MacLeod.  Murder with an absurdist twist--proof that you can write mysteries and comedies at the same time, in the same book.

N.  Ogden Nash.  I like nonsense verse.

O.  Oxford English Dictionary.  Unabridged.  Love all the history embedded in the etymologies.  Also loved the look on a long-ago housemate's face when she was joking about the "Compact Edition" label on the two giant volumes.  Then I showed her the 4-pages-to-a-page format.  Yup.  Compact.  Came with a magnifying glass.

P.  Terry Pratchett.  I only discovered him this year, but he is living proof that you can make a career out of writing brilliant nonsense (see also Douglas Adams).

Pride and Prejudice.  One of the books I thought boring when a teen, and discovered later was witty and fun.  (See Jane Austen, above).

Q.   Quests.  All those desperate quests and hopeless last stands.  Loved that stuff.  Still do.  (Okay, it's a stretch.  But I can't think of anything better for "Q".)

R.  Robert Service.  What's not to love about "The Cremation of Sam Magee" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew"? (See Ogden Nash).

S.  A Sand County Almanac.  One of the first books that started me thinking about conservation and ecology.

Will Shakespeare.  Yeah, the Big Guy.  He was an early source of a love of words that taste like honey in the mouth.

Dorothy Sayers.  She invented Lord Peter Wimsey.

T.  J.R.R. Tolkien.  I don't care if it's hokey, and he couldn't cope with female characters.  I read the whole LOTR trilogy pretty much annually from 5th grade until sometime in my 20s, just because I loved the drama, the noble last stands, and all that.

U.  Up Periscope.  Robb White sold me on adventure and war stories at and early age.

V.  Voltaire?  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.?  I've read them. . . just not sure they qualify as big influences.

W.  Laura Ingalls Wilder introduced me to historical fiction.
P.G. Wodehouse.
    
X.  I don't think so!

Y.  Why not?

Z.     Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Funny thing is, I can't remember much of anything about it, just remember thinking it was life-changing at the time.


[Note: it took me about 2 months to come up with this list.  This was hard!]

We have a winner!

I'm a day late and a dollar short with my Wednesday post (School Board meeting last night ran late, so I bagged it and went to bed).  But that makes me just in time to share the winners of the Valentine's Day raffle from Love Middle Grade, Actually.

Just a big shout-out and congratulations to Dorothy, Christine, Dixie, Shawna, Andrea, Melody, Cindy, Steve, Jill, Michelle, Deanne, Malcolm, Annie, Tessa, Pawel, and Renee!  Enjoy your books (Dorothy, enjoy that Kindle!) and we all hope you enjoyed our sample chapters!

*****************************************************************************

In other news. . .
Today is international book giving day.  I just learned this from a couple of bloggers this morning, but it looks like a great idea!  Here's a link back to one of my fellow bloggers and writers to tell you more.  And of course it doesn't just have to be today.  Books are great to give any time, to people you know and people you don't!

*****

I'm working on a new series about writing, starting from the beginning of the process.  I hope it gets some discussion going, because I sure as heck don't have all the answers.  At the most, I am starting to get some idea what works for me.  But because all writers like to talk about writing, I'm jumping on the bandwagon.  Besides, putting my process into writing requires really thinking about what I do. . . and that is always a good thing.  The first post in the series will go up later today.  Tomorrow at the outside.

Do I need to link back to my post about procrastination?