Went to a lovely wedding last night. I always cry at weddings. Autumn is such a tricky time -- on one hand: I adore watching the colors get warmer as the air gets colder. I love sweaters and jeans and boots and fires in the fireplace and the steam that rises from the hot-tub on a hung-over Saturday morning; on the other hand: long about Homecoming time I start to squint down the narrow tunnel of winter, dreading the stinging cold that never fails to freeze my every nerve ending mid-contraction. It used to be that the post-Halloween-sugar crash would ignite a bleak depression lasting through mid-January, when for whatever reason that end would finally come into view ... My sweet, patient husband banished my December-holiday blues, and despite the wild summer running around I'm definitely ready for a slower, more intimate season. I'm very much looking forward to gathering my girls in close. Of course two weeks in Hawaii in November and a girlfriends getaway in January are adequate bright spots in even the darkest winter, right? Deadlines early this week. The pressure is mounting.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
quote
remember friday bridge hands?
Last night I had this hand: QTxx x AKxxxxx x Playing imps, unfavorable. So let's say you're not a bridge player. How do you make sense of this? The four suits -- spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs -- sit in that exact hierarchy. When we "give" a hand (which is to say, when we talk about bridge hands we have to actually say what the cards in the hand are so that our audience can follow the story), we tell the spade suit first, followed by hearts and then diamonds then clubs. Early this morning (don't ask!) I "gave" this hand to George. I said, "Can I give you a hand?" "Sure." "Ok. You have queen-ten-fourth, stiff, ace-king-seventh and stiff." Look at the hand above -- QTxx/x/AKxxxxx/x. Can you see how that becomes queen ten fourth (spades), stiff (hearts)...? The x's are insignificant little cards. "Ok." Means George can visualize the hand. "You're up." He's supposed to bid (or pass). "One diamond." Let's stop here for a second. In order to evaluate the hand, you need to know a little more about the game. If you've read Chapter One, you know a little bit about this. Bear with me. Evaluating a hand begins with looking for face cards. We assign a numeric value to each face card: Aces are worth four points, Kings are three, Queens are two, Jacks are one. "You have a nine count." "It's a player." Right. Here's the next step: there are a total of 40 points in a deck of cards. Ace/king/queen/jack in each of four suits. In order for one side to take more tricks than the other side, they need to have a preponderance of the high card points. So in general, we bid when the high cards in our hand hit roughly 12. The hand above doesn't fit that. But we can all look at the hand and know that it's a player. We have seven diamonds. And four spades. "Let's say you pass." Shannon, my regular partner, will probably be in the camp of passers. I thought for a long while before passing -- wanted very much to bid one diamond. "I guess so." "It goes pass, pass, one diamond from partner." George chuckles. When partner bids one diamond, we know for sure that she has three and probably four diamonds. After three passes, she might have a weak hand, ten or eleven high card points, or she might have a gazillion. Unknown. "Righty bids one heart, so we bid double, showing our four spades." Someday I'll blog about doubles. Not today. "Lefty bids two hearts, partner bids two spades. Righty bids three hearts." Now what? Back to work. Big busy day. Thinking of you.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
peeling back the covers
This morning the alarm went off at 5:25. I snoozed in six-minute increments until 5:52 (cool, eh?) then found my way downstairs. Turned the coffee on, set the dog down to potty in the mudroom, turned on the light in my office and collected the overnight email. I don't use the auto-check every x number of minutes feature of my email program -- I like the process of actively collecting it myself. Very strange, I know. Once the coffee's made and the dog has pottied, we curl up with the keyboard and Miss Snark, Murderati and The Outfit Collective. By then it's six-fifteen and I have to decide if I'm going to blog first or write first. Writing won this morning, and between six and seven I managed almost a thousand words. They're not very good words, many of them will disappear upon the very first reading, but that's not particularly relevant. I happened to work out some important information and found some really exciting details. Then it was time to wake the girls and get the day started. Now here it is, 9:40. I've answered emails, played with the dog, met with Iwona and Tara about yesterday's kid issues, upgraded my Microsoft Office software, installed a new mouse (keyboard coming!) and printed the current chapter. I'll be back to work in a few minutes after a stern meeting with myself wherein I decided that I'd better get busy. 1,000 words in a day would be great, if it were every day. Which it simply isn't. So off I go. Wish me luck.
hard
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
from the journal
Where Beckett and Evan's rooms were maintained according to General Eaton's exacting standards, the pink palace Anna inhabited was another world entirely. Beckett Eaton, age twelve, saw to it that his quarters were never untidy. Evan, age ten, could bounce a quarter on the rough wool blanket covering his extra-long twin bed. Anna Elizabeth Eaton, age eight, floated out of her impossibly soft white bed every morning, slid her tiny painted toenails into fuzzy pink slippers and skated across the wide-plank pine floorboards that had served generations of Eaton daughters since the house was built in 1803. The round carpet covering the floor of the turret in Anna's room, made by Grandmother Amelia Eaton while she was pregnant with the twins who didn't live the first summer, covered a precious, important secret. She'd heard Mama and the General talking about it once, how perhaps it would be better if Beckett moved in with Evan so Anna could have his room. It was a little eerie, that turret ... Anna worried, briefly. When the General decided, the die was cast. If he agreed with Mama, she'd lose everything: her gorgeous yellowed walls, once flat white, now alight with the sweetest dreams of all the little girls who'd come before; the white iron canopy bed with a down featherbed laying on the mattress that felt just like a cloud when she launched herself onto it from the floor; the turret where the poor dead girl told her troubles to Ken and Barbie.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
favorites
Elizabeth George's new book, What Came Before He Shot Her, coming in October. Sherry Thomas, on Tuesdays. Gabriela Montero "Bach and Beyond" (ok, it came out in September, but ...).
reading
The Night Listener, after hearing Robin Williams on Fresh Aire with Terry Gross, and I am reminded of the Francine Prose I read a few weeks ago. The power of that work has become evident: I am reading (much more) closely and learning so much from it. Great writers really do write great sentences! I am completely smitten. I read some Armistead Maupin years ago when I worked at the Howard Brown Health Center (the Howard Brown Memorial Clinic, when I was there), but that was about getting a grounding sense of the culture of gay men. Now it's about reading as a writer... In other news, this morning I was sorting through the stacks of paper that come home from the elementary school while I was away. Apparently last Monday was Constitution Day or some such, the note from the Kindergarten teacher said that she was required to present information about The Constitution and would be curious to see what pieces the children retained. Ooh, I love this kind of thing! So, more than a week after the teacher presented the material, Kate and I had this conversation: "Hey Kate, did you ever hear anything about The Constitution?" "Yeah." "What is it?" "About the laws." "Who do you think wrote it?" "A lot of persons." "So ... is it a good thing or a bad thing?" "A really good thing."
Monday, September 25, 2006
in the news
So I read a pseudo-news story about Bill Clinton this morning - something I do rarely. I stay far away from all that (non-)news in large measure because I get all riled up when I do read it ... ultimately too distracting. Anyway, the last paragraph reads:
"That's what's driving the terrorism," he said. "It's not just that there's an unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. Osama Bin Laden and Dr. al-Zawahiri can convince young Sunni Arab men, who have (and some women) who have despairing conditions in their lives, that they get a one-way ticket to heaven in a hurry if they kill a lot of innocent people who don't share their reality."I am reminded: I used to believe that baseball was a hitter's game. I saw it only from the perspective of the guy with the bat in his hand, so to me the game looked like a group of foolhardy adolescents with something to prove. Then I had a couple of kids, grew up a bit, and realized that to a far greater extent than offensive power, baseball is about the partnership of pitcher and catcher, mine against yours. Sure, it's a pitcher's game. Without starting (and relief, witness CWS 2006) pitching, a team is nowhere. But without a smart catcher who knows his pitchers and the game very well, the pitching isn't going to get the job done either. It takes those two guys working together -- the pitcher handles affairs at the plate, the catcher directs the entire effort. I really liked quite a lot of what happened while Clinton was president. But after reading that article this morning, which I read because I thought the former President probably had some insights to offer, I'm thinking of him as more of a batter than a pitcher or catcher. Without an entire administration backing him up, Clinton sounds like an angry aging hippie. He lacks both the finesse to pick the play and the right stuff to get it done. In baseball the situation is pretty transparent: the players take the field and we get to watch folks doing their jobs. Why can't we elect the guys behind these Presidents, the ones with the ideas and the answers and the visions for the future? I'd like to hear from the guy whose idea it was -- the one who said "hey, I know! We'll put it out there that they have weapons of mass destruction..."
Saturday, September 23, 2006
home
in time to watch a completely disappointing White Sox loss last night. One more game this season. The good news is that my writing and travel schedules can heat right up with no post-season distractions. Last year was thrilling, but awfully like work in many ways. Busy holiday weekend; back to work on Monday. Until then, best wishes for a sweet new year! L'Shana Tovah
Thursday, September 21, 2006
big fork
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
quiet
morning at the Red Lion Hotel, Kalispell. It's a cloudy, rainy, chilly day here; the colors change drastically overnight, it seems. I base this on nothing in particular, since I haven't yet been outside. There is no Starbucks in Kalispell. Nor Whitefish. Nor Columbia Falls. Not in West Glacier, either. And that's okay. Montana Coffee Traders is all over the place, one just a block up the street, and I think the coffee's better. Partly that's about the coffee and partly that's about the change of atmosphere. Starbucks is convienent but too processed, too commercial. But you know I am a big Nespresso fan, and that's the Nestle corporation (talk about commercial). And that's okay, too. Eleanor doesn't drink coffee, never has, doesn't like the taste of the stuff. Doesn't drink cognac or brandy either -- she believes that women who drink cognac are bullshitters, trying to insert themselves into social company to which they simply do not belong.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
polebridge
We struck out for Polebridge, MT early this morning -- a bridge player we met last night recommended it highly. So off we went, up the west side of the north fork of the Flathead River in the rain, headed toward what the girl at the coffee shop called a hippie commune. Once upon a time, that would have been the place for me. Now? They have rental cabins there, no running water.
The apple turnover was great, the spicy cheese bread thing fresh from the oven was superb. The young homeschooled boy gave us the lowdown ... during the peak season, there are 50 full time residents in Polebridge. Come winter, only eight remain. Hard to imagine. They told us that the roads are plowed twice a week, correpsonding to delivery of the mail.
Ahh, the wild, wild west.
Shannon and I were third last night, so far today we're third again. If I'd been able to sleep, we might have played really well. But alas, my "take a nap" button doesn't work so well. sigh....
Tomorrow? Dunno yet. Stay tuned!
the eagle
Yesterday was ... amazing. Shannon and I started out from Kalispell, heading to West Glacier, MT, our nearest entrance to Glacier National Park. We found a wonderful place for breakfast, Montana Coffee Traders where the people were friendly and the eggs benedict (all made fresh, even the hollandaise) was $6.95. Then we went looking to take the tour we'd chosen.
We arrived at the helicopter place at the same time as two married couples, so six can fly far cheaper than two. With our temporary new friends, we could afford to fly over the park for a full hour (for just Shannon and me, to fly for an hour would have been $350 per person). Glacier National Park is magnificent -- this is the landscape that moves me. The glaciers and mountains are truly awesome, but it's the lakes that I found so spectacular.
After the helicopter tour, we headed into the park, where we hopped on the Going-to-the-Sun road up to Logan Pass, beyond which the road is closed for the season. We stopped several times: to hop over rocks into a stream, to watch a mountain goat, to use the rustic potties.
Then it was into Whitefish, where we bought tons of gifts and stayed for dinner. Made it back to the hotel in time to slap on a layer of lip gloss and head to the bridge game. Stayed up much too late, woke up earlier than I'd hoped.
This morning we're heading out to find what the locals say is the best breakfast with the best view in Montana.
Monday, September 18, 2006
big sky
arrived safely in Kalispell, Montana yesterday. Spent the day at Glacier National Park, had an absolutely splendid day. I took 116 pictures, two or three of which I'll post this evening. So much to be thankful for today..... it's game time. off to do what i came here to do. lots of love.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
peace and quiet
ain't all it's cracked up to be, you know? I took the family to the airport this morning, then ran around looking for a very specific item which, predictably, I couldn't find. Then I sat in an awful lot of traffic and got woefully lost before finally landing at my brother's place where ... sssssh, don't tell anyone ... I got to hold the baby! I'd cuddle them more often if they weren't so intoxicating. I've talked to my family about twelve times since I dropped them at 9:30 this morning. Finally home with a to-do list as big as the all outdoors. Outdoors! I'm going to Montana tomorrow! My plan is to work in the mornings and play in the afternoons and evenings and sleep all the rest. How likely? About as likely as the White Sox making the playoffs. Argh they are playing horribly, it is very disappointing. Perhaps something good will happen. About the manuscript -- moving right along. Had several really good work days and today I managed a huge score: I found my floorplan. Why's that important? Stay tuned.
Friday, September 15, 2006
wonder
why I always seem to do the most and best work when it's absolutey gorgeous outside and nobody in their right mind would be sitting at a computer? I'm working furiously today and tomorrow, with a few interesting pauses, trying to get ready for my trip West. George is taking the girls and heading to New Jersey tomorrow morning (mazel tov Oren, Beth, Alex, Daniel & Peri!), I'll be gone by the time they get back on Sunday. As ever, I am apprehensive about aspects of this trip. But the excitement is building, too. Man, I hope they have Internet access out there, so I can share it with you!
WAY TO GO JEN JEWELL
Thursday, September 14, 2006
happy anniversary
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
from the journal
Before, with the communism, we was waiting on the line -- you couldn't buy nothing -- everywhere was empty shelves, even if you wanted to buy bread, or sugar, or chocolate, or even toilet paper. A big line, everybody waiting all night long, because for first or second in line it was a lot more choices, you know? It wasn't enough for everybody. They would give you coupons, and you could buy extra, you know, coupon, from friends. Or alcoholics. What wants alcoholics with sugar? For them, alcohol it's the most important. Cops, soldiers had extra place, the shelves full of everything. Friend of my mom? Her husband was a soldier, so she had card for the cop's place. Sometimes my mom? She borrow the card. We always have freezer full of meat against the day when it's going to be for us empty in the store. After the communism was over, you can buy everything in the store in my country. When the time came and communism fell, everybody was fighting in the street. With cops and soldiers, even they was shooting. It was danger, really really danger. Everybody was strike, do you know what it is? Strike? It was Walesa and the Church. The priests was talking about ... help people believe, be strong, not to give up. Then it was John Paul Second, you know? Came to Poland and people in my country, I dunno, feel like they got somebody who can gonna protect them. Not like that guy can protect you, but that's what they think, the guy is gonna protect them. Before, I was more sure of Polish people.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
tea time
From Teavana via Sherrie, who really should be a stylist. Called Rose of Suzhou. "This artisan display tea is comprised of a Globe Amaranth flower handtied with Suzhou (the Venice of China) green tea. Considered the tea of love, it will blossom as it steeps. Great for tea parties or a special gift for the tea lover in your life."
Monday, September 11, 2006
don't worry! everything's fine!
Yay! Finally got them!
been trying to post some cute pictures of my two unlucky patients: Joanna, who sliced open her finger at the ice rink on Saturday, and George who had some unexplained ... uh ... bleeding. Follow up with your family doctor. The internet is choking (probably blogger glut) or you'd have photos to put your mind at ease.
All is well. I'm just stress eating. No, I'm just blaming bad food choices on the events of this weekend because it is convienent. The fact is I'm not in the mood for self-control on this front. The gym beckons. My thirteen -- Ulcerative Colitis. Man, life is sticky. I always believed being a grown-up meant fun. Wicked, up-all-night, hip-smacking, mind-blowing fun; I imagined dinners and parties and dresses and lipsticks and violins playing Bach and the twinkle of crystal in candlelight.
My brother's baby is beautiful. I am blessed with the minor crises of an active, healthy family. Seems like the dream came true.
so far today
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
i need a word
Friday, September 08, 2006
miscellania
I know who did it. I even know why. Thrilling stuff, that. It's for me to know, and you to find out. Hang in there, I'm going to do my best to make it worthwhile. My brother and his wife had a baby. Welcome Tristan! Regarding the girls getaway: it looks like January will work best -- the bridge, family and college trips in October, November & December are all in place. There's an outside chance we will be far, far away in January &/or February, so I'm proceeding somewhat cautiously. Book selection: have you read Zadie Smith, On Beauty? Let me know what you think. Have another idea? It's a democratic group... A busy weekend ahead. Be well.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
did i mention...
That Jacobs is USA1? The New York Times is continuing its celebration of the antics last month in White Plains: Confusion at the Table, and Lady Luck Intervenes
character thursdays
I gave myself the serious creeps this morning. Last night during the break in class, I was describing for Jill some of the problems I've been having in my story -- specific, technical, crime-scene kinds of things -- places I need to do some research, that sort of thing. Jill mentioned having seen a place on Ashland called U Spy Store; to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows me, I checked them out on the web first thing this morning. Take a look, then come back. Wow, huh? I glanced at all the tabs, selecting the obvious "books & videos" for my initial exploration. Yikes. I hesitated to click through any of the titles, afraid that the very act of googling "spy" and "store" together had won me free entry onto somebody's list. I'm sure that hitting that particular website elevated my IP address in someone's estimation. Imagine if I'd bought something! Seems like (best case) law enforcement types might hand-deliver books of that nature. Want to tell myself to get a life, right about now. We did a fun exercise last night in class; working with a character who's not yet especially prominent in the manuscript, we were asked to write a first-person monologue in which the character discusses his/her biggest flaw. Then, the second part, we had a best friend/spouse/co-worker (whatever) describe what s/he thought was the first character's biggest flaw. What a great way to learn about characters. I spent the morning reading the one of the two stories that'll be workshopped in class next time. I'll miss that class, so I read a bit extra-carefully and wrote copious notes. Lou wrote a beautiful piece in which an 89 year old woman confronts death and wins. Awesome.
what if the monkey
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
from the journal
"Anna, slow down," Beckett said. "You said she was acting weird this morning. Weird how?" "Well, she told me she'd run into an old friend and was meeting her for breakfast. Eleanor never has breakfast in public. She and Miguel always get a suite and come out half an hour before game time looking rested and fit and beautiful, and that's the only time you see them. The second they finish playing, either of them, they slide their cards into the tray and up they go, zipping up to the 33rd floor or wherever, into the suite. I don't know, maybe they hop into waiting limos and race over to some fancy restaurant, nobody ever sees them. It's part of their mystique, part of why people are fascinated by them: they don't hang out in the bar, they're never in the restaurants, you won't see them walking by. The only way you know if Miguel and Eleanor are at the tournament is to show up in the playing area. So now Eleanor shows up alone, gets to the hotel with some old friend nobody's ever heard of, and a couple of days later is out for a bit of breakfast? I mean, I guess she must have old friends, but ... How good of a friend could this woman be? I've never even heard of her. Then, here's where it gets even weirder. She called me twenty minutes late. Eleanor always/> calls me at noon. Not eleven fifty-nine, not twelve-o-one. You can set your watch by it. I do, obviously. I mean, she's my game day wakeup call.. Anyway, she called me twenty minutes late and was all strange on the phone." "Strange how?" "Well, she gets all lovey-dovey on the phone with me, which is totally not Eleanor Scout Lee. The Eleanor I know calls while she's doing ten other things. Most I usually get is a brusque 'You up?' Once in a blue moon she'll ask me to get the entry, but that's pretty rare. This time it was, like ... I dunno. Like she wanted to keep me on the phone, chatting away. She said she wasn't having a good time with her friend. All that, late and everything, it was pretty strange." "Ok, so then what?" "Beckett, can we cut the crap and find my partner?" "We are already hard at work on that. What happened next?" "So as soon as I got off the phone with her, I was like, 25 minutes late." "Late?" "Sure. Eleanor likes me there at quarter-till. Without fail. It's one of the major things with her. Gotta be there at least fifteen minutes early. So usually, I have 45 minutes to get up, get dressed and get down there. I usually make it. This morning I only had about twenty minutes. No way I could get there on time. So I hopped in the shower, quick curled my hair, tossed a coat of clear polish on my toes and tore out of there still buttoning my blouse. Of course it was ten till one, so it took forever for the elevator to come, and then when it did finally come we had to stop on every. Single. Floor. I get down there and it's like two minutes till one and I start looking for her. She'd got the entry, so I knew where to go..." "Wait a second. How'd you know where to go?" "Huh? She told me."
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
check this out
Monday, September 04, 2006
swirl
I spent a few minutes with Francine Prose yesterday. Nothing happened. I read for a dozen pages or more and she said, essentially, that great writers write great sentences. Okay. Not exactly the insight I was looking for, but then it does seem occasionally that I end up needing most what dropped in my lap while I was wishing for something else. However, I was thrilled when I read her thoughts about dialogue. The basic question: Does the dialogue serve only one purpose? Aha. I. Eleanor remembered that first time, too. She remembered the clamshell velvet booth, the genteel suits, the exotic stranger. Nerves alone would have been enough to set her ears on fire; but when the flush rose from her shoulders and she turned entirely red, Eleanor began to suspect the sweet wine was a player as well. "You're beautiful," Alex said. The flush burned even brighter; Eleanor smiled and glanced at her plate, toyed with a fork, took a sip of water, shifted in the booth, then folded her hands. "Are you nervous?" she asked. "I didn't expect you to be so beautiful." Those were magic words. The flush began to recede, slowly at first but then it was just gone, disappeared, as if it had never been. Alex wasn't Miguel -- not her smart, funny, kind Miguel. Miguel made her feel safe. Miguel wouldn't have been nervous, and he'd have seen to it that Eleanor wasn't either. Miguel was her love, not Alex. Eleanor's ... what was it, a crush? Simple curiosity? Lust maybe? Whatever it was, it was gone before it ever got going. It was just that time was a factor: it took her more than two years to screw up the nerve to speak to Alex, then there were a few months courting to get to that fateful first dinner. Should she have been surprised, then, that it took her more than two years to get back out?
Sunday, September 03, 2006
looking forward...
Classes start this week. Well, one class starts this week, another in a couple of weeks. I'm thrilled, and nervous, and completely determined to make the most of this opportunity. It's been ages since my schedule permitted taking classes and this fall I get to take two -- one workshop and one exercise/practice lab. Yum. Can't wait. I'm running out of notebooks (I bought a bunch in spain last year, unique and absolutely perfect) but I have a good supply of smooth writing gel pens and I even checked the serial numbers on my laptop and battery to discover that I don't have one of those faulty catch-on-fire laptop batteries. Phew! The second crime has happened in Keeping Score. I knew it was coming and it even shocked me. The third is coming up quickly -- building up steam to the end. A bunch of trips upcoming, and the High Holidays, then the Fall Nationals in Hawaii. Keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times. Might. I might fail.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
finally
Up to my eyeballs in Keeping Score. Can you imagine how desperately I'd like to be one of those writers who can sit down and pound out an entire novel-length work in 3 weeks? If I wasn't going to be gone for most of November I would probably jump into National Novel Writing Month. Except for a few trips in October, I'd just do it a month early. Or late, except December's a nightmare too. January seems open, maybe I can write a novel in January. Because February and March are pretty busy. Ahhh, April. How the time flies.... Sigh. I may fail.
Friday, September 01, 2006
reading
I've selected A.M. Homes to read this fall -- I have all of her books on my desk, I'm reading them backward from the most recent. I'm also reading Francine Prose, her new volume on writing and reading. Armed and ready. Prose advocates close-reading: pulling back the cushy dressings of plot and story and voice and getting down to the nuts and bolts of language, sentence, word. I admit to being one of those horrible readers who's too easily seduced by action and dialog and a good story, one of those non-critical readers. This fall I'll endeavor to study as well as read. To read close, and maybe learn something. I'm just wading into Homes' story, some of the early passages are quite striking. I read them my old fashioned way, now am taking a break from the Prose to re-read the opening pages, closely this time. Imagine my surprise to notice that (65 pages in you think I'd have noticed already?) there are no chapters. It's just one big book, broken up by a double-wide chunk of white space. I'm not quite sure what's happening; as far as I can tell, Richard is in some pain and we're going to ride along with Homes as she figures out how to get him feeling better. Just in case, I thought yesterday, I'd be interested to read a review of this book. Handy dandy New York Times. I found this review first. Honestly? I knew less about the book after the review than I did before it. Just now I went back on a google search for the title so I could re-copy the URL and paste it here for you. Imagine my surprise to click on the first of two New York Times links and finding a different review. This second one, much easier to follow. Says the book is dreadful. Hm. In the half an hour I have before Joanna comes home from school, I'm going to take my pen and notebook and sit outside (it's bright and sunny, 80 with a cool breeze) and see what I can learn about writing from a book that's either brilliant or dreadful.