flitting on fiction

YAY me. Managed to post - and drop - every day this month - not on all of my blogs but on both of my today.com blogs. Hasn’t helped my traffic all that much really - but still an improvement in overall traffic from last month on both - and that has, to date, been my goal each month.

Somehow I suspect THAT particular goal is over. It is likely to take some time to get used to the loss of my Entrecard traffic. But I shall continue to try, anyway. And hopefully today.com won’t jump to dump me off of the PPP plan so it should still be worth trying to build non-Entrecard traffic.

Only a few more days of ads to run here - so if you haven’t yet bookmarked me please do. Also, I will be adding to my blogroll at the end of this week - my favourites and regulars and other today blogs I hope people will continue to support and. …want me to add yours? Drop a comment and I will add you too.

If you are on blogspot, you may have noticed that I’ve been joining communities on those as well.

Some things that will be coming up on flitting on fiction over the next while:

• A review of Robert J. Sawyer’s new novel, Wake
• In June I’ll be off to the U of Victoria in B.C.to learn about digital editing, followed by 2 weeks of summer school at Trent
• July is the Leacock Festival in Orillia - something I look forward to every year. Lots of author interviews and book review opportunities.
• And of course, as always, more flitting on fiction

Will be back later to fix some formatting issues. Right now am in car on the way to Peterborough. Love my Blackberry but it doesn’t work so well for formatting

One of my favourite places to read is in the tub - except that today that did not work so well.

Enjoyable book - I was reading a YA novel by Jonathon Scott Fuqua - King of the Pygmies .

In some ways, this novel reminds me of one of my favourite novels of all times - Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Joanne Proux. Anthem is better written on the whole, I think ….  but both are what Joseph Gold, author of Read For Your Life defines as “misfit literature”.

And given my interest in working with misfits, misfit literature is just the sort of thing that I am interested in. It has all sorts of therapeutic possibilities that I will be exploring over the course of the next 4 years or so.

King of the Pygmies is about Penn, an adolescent boy who suddenly begins to hear voices. Not, apparently, the voices of schizophrenia that his social worker mother suspects, but rather, the thoughts of those around him. A black-sheep uncle reveals that this ability is common among the pygmies - shorter than normal people who have special abilities. Penn seems to have exceptional talents, which Uncle Hewitt tells him are a mark of kingship.

I have a couple of minor beefs about the book - one about the writing - it irks me that Penn’s dad keeps calling him “sweetie”. What kind of dad calls his teenage son “sweetie”? Seriously!  And the other relates to my experience of reading it in the tub.

I DETEST having anything dirty or staining on my hands… and the dark blue cover of the darn thing (I always take off the dust jacket - they annoy me) STAINED MY HANDS DARK BLUE.

YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!   Had to scrub my poor hands to death to get rid of the blue stain. BAD book cover!

Hubby found an article about the JetBook …. which led to yet another conversation about whether I need an electronic book

Of course I do!!!!

I’m an English major for crying out loud! In graduate school… and a total geek, too … there just is not that much to discuss. Obviously I read a LOT …and cart around a lot of books everywhere I go.

From there we moved onto whether my blogging money - which is all sitting in a paypal account doing nothing - should be part of the household finances….. or whether it’s money that I can use to buy myself an eReader.

Guess which side of that argument I am on?

Anyway ….although we haven’t resolved that part of it yet, have been doing some research about eReaders again.

JetBook doesn’t sound like it would do for what I want, particularly …. according to their FAQ:

It seems that jetBook does not support some e-book formats, why is that?

 

We are working on additional e-book format support, but at the same time we have found that 90% of free sources (Internet sources offering an almost unlimited of books) use either TXT or DOC format. Should you need any assistance finding an e-book online, please feel free to contact us and we will be glad to help you out. Our team will search, find, and send the link of that book directly to you. If you bought a jetBook, please register so you can contact us anytime with questions.

So …that won’t do…. back to looking at the Sony eReader I go …. going to have to go have a look at their website and see what they have in terms of books I would want to buy.

Many of the books I am most interested in having are actually more textbooks than popular fiction… Foucault and Warner and  Bourdieu and….. and….and….   there are bunches. And, since I’m going into the Canadian Studies program for my doctorate (still can’t believe it!!!!), I need lots of Canadian content, as well.

Which also seems to point to Sony’s eReader , since Amazon doesn’t like us Canucks!

But before I go spending my hard earned blogging money, I’m off to download the new Blackberry beta software that Fictionwise is offering. I’ve never downloaded any software to my Blackberry Curve, but seems like I’m well on my way to having an ebook application…YAY me…. now will have to go buy some books to try it with, eh?

End of an Era is the novel that Robert J. Sawyer ’s wife recommended when I asked her, via email, for “the best” Sawyer novel to read if one was interested in the topic of viral contagion, since that was the subject of one of my courses this semester.

End of an Era is a  relatively short novel, easily read during one rather longish soak in the tub (no, I did not drown) And it does indeed address the topic of viral contagion, although not explicitly so until the latter part of the novel. Archeologist Brandon Thackery and his colleague & friend, Klicks, travel back in time in an effort to study dinosaurs before their extinction, and to attempt to discover the reason for their eradication. And yes, of course they are successful…but beyond that, I ain’t telling. 

In addition to dinosaurs, time travel, and viral contagion, the novel includes aliens, space & astronomy - all packed into an engaging and highly readable package. As always, Sawyer succeeds in incorporating so much actual science that by the end of the book you feel like you’ve learned a whole lot - given that it is, after all, science fiction, you don’t necessarily know how much of it could actually happen (might have to Ask Stephanie ) …but it all feels pretty believable. That is, I think, one of the major differences between Sawyer and many other science fiction authors, and it is one I very much enjoy.

To read Chapter 1 of End of an Era , visit Sawyer’s webpage - you can also order signed copies there, at no extra cost. There are also several other resources there, including a A Discussion of the Book’s Opening Line and a Reading Group guide. And of course, Amazon.com and Amazon.ca both carry End of an Era as well. 

I’m looking forward to Sawyer’s next book, which  will be released in April - if you are in or near Ottawa or Toronto, check out Sawyer’s blog for details of the book launch for Wake . 

So …last night I managed to stay awake and get my fix of hospital shows.

And this morning I am about to embark on a day of what my hubby and kids call my stOOpid judge shows. 

Usually I don’t bother turning the TV on until 6 p.m. when Judge Judy comes on …she’s my favourite, although Judge Milian, of The People’s Court runs a close second. Last time I was home and able to watch TV during the day, I couldn’t find it though!!! :(  Hopefully it is back where it belongs - I haven’t checked yet.

But today, I have the house to myself, since hubby is off killing bugs for someone that I HOPE he is charging the jerk rate - dude is more than a little demanding.

Back when I used to fix computers for people I had 2 prices - one for people I liked - you know, reasonable people that didn’t expect instant service and for me to spend hours on the phone with them when I could have been fixing their computers if they would just shut the heck up and let me get to it, and the other for people that irritated me. The jerk rate was double my regular rates - you’d think that would have been enough to make them go elsewhere but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!   Anyway, this guy demanded that hubby call him “between 6:30 and 8 a.m.” …. and then when he did, even though we are NOT morning people, demanded that hubby get there to kill his bugs by 8 a.m.  Uh … not everyone lives on your street, dude! We happen to live 45+ minutes away. And since the season has not yet started, the equipment and so on is not all on the truck (it would freeze - bad) so you’ll just have to bluddy well wait, won’t you?  

Anyway…. hubby’s off killing Mr. Impatient’s critters, so I have the house to myself and can turn on the TV and listen to bunches of judge shows. 

If I can’t find People’s Court will have to make do with Judge Alex and Judge Mathis and Judge Joe Brown. And yep, I know these sorts of shows are not approved fodder for graduate students in English….do I care? I like ‘em :) 

Dang… still no People’s Court … that bites!