U.S. Support for Heritage Months Appears to Have Disappeared. You Can Do Something About That.

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This year I am doing what some might call identity reading--I'm reading books by authors who are members of groups that have been marginalized in the past or still are. I'm doing that by planning my reading around Heritage Months, months that have been dedicated to recognize various groups. Last month I read for Black History Month, this month I'm reading for Women's History Month.

I used the U.S. Department of State's list of heritage months, which existed in February. It does not exist now. Back in February, when I wrote about this, I carefully made a list of those heritage months, though it doesn't include which heritage groups are recognized on which calendar months. You can also find an archived State Department Celebrates Heritage and History Months from a different administration that looks pretty similar to the page that disappeared. 

You Actually Have the Power to do Something 

You can read anytime

If the removal of that material from the government website is something that concerns you, you can take positive action to compensate for its absence.

You don't need a government agency's guidance to read about women, Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, immigrants, LGBTQ Americans, Hispanic Americans, or Native Americans. Google any of those topics, and you'll find agencies and libraries with book lists. 

More important than reading about these groups, read books by authors who are members of these groups. It doesn't matter whether you buy their books or get them at a library, whether you read a traditional or e-book edition. Read something. If you like what you've read, use your voice to tell people.

• Tell people on Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, or any other social media platform you are part of.
• On Goodreads? Do a Goodreads review.
• If you can tolerate Amazon, do an Amazon review.

These are important actions for supporting all writers, at any time. You can do these things now for these groups of writers.

A Suggested Schedule

Here's the schedule I'm using for the rest of my Heritage Month reading project. You'll notice a few blank months. I definitely will need them to spread out the reading on some of the months honoring multiple groups. But, you know, we can read and support authors and groups any time of the year. 

• March: Women's History
• April: Arab American History
• May: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Island Heritage Month; Military
  Appreciation Month; Jewish American History Month
• June: Immigrant Heritage Month, Pride Month, Caribbean American Heritage Month. 
• Sept. 15 through Oct. 15: Hispanic Heritage Month 
• November: Native American Heritage Month. (That wasn't part of the Department of State's website. Make of that what you will.) Military Family Appreciation Month

You may find organizations that support other heritage or history groups. You can read and support anyone you want.

Reading and supporting someone is doing something. 

Time Management Tuesday: Heritage Months as Temporal Landmarks for Reading

Heritage months (also sometimes called history months) are designated periods of time during which various ethnic groups, often ones that have traditionally been viewed as outsiders or other, are recognized. They are like temporal landmarks, calendar events that create opportunities. I love temporal landmarks.

Various organizations recognize and support different heritage months. Northwestern University does a good job of recognizing more than one group per month. 

Right now, the U.S. Department of State recognizes nine heritage months, which I am listing here, just for the record. 

• Black History Month
• Women's History Month
• Arab American Heritage Month
• Jewish American Heritage Month
• Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
• Military Appreciation and National Veterans and Military Families Appreciation Months
• Caribbean-American Heritage Month
• Immigrant Heritage Month & World Refugee Day
• Hispanic Heritage Month 

My plan this year is to observe the months as the U.S. Department of State has listed them, because when I was planning this last fall, this was the most official looking list I found. I will stick with it to the extent that I can.

Now why would I want to plan a year of reading around heritage months?

So Many Books

Over the last 20 years or so, there have been surges of interest in just how many books are published each year in, let's say, the United States, since that's Original Content's home country. Here's one source that says 4 million books were published here in 2022. The same source says that 2.1 million books were self-published the year before, to try to give us an idea of what's going on with that. Quite honestly, though, I thought I saw a figure recently that said only 500,000 books are traditionally published in this country each year and another 1 and a half million are self-published, which would bring us to 2 million books, not 4.

Because 2 million books is so much more manageable a number than 4 million.

I am nitpicking in order to make the point that a lot of books are published each year. And then all those books are out there, and more books are published the next year and the next, plus there are all the books kicking around from years gone by.

So many books. I can't read them all. Neither can you.

So Hard to Find Numbers

Though there has been a great interest in increasing diversity in publishing since 2020, I can't find a lot of numbers to tell me what's happening with that. How many of those 2 or 4 million books are written by black writers or Asian writers or Arab American writers? If you scroll down here, you'll see that these people say that at whatever point this was published over 75 percent of writers in the U.S. were white, 7.6% were Hispanic, 5.9% Black, 4.9% Asian, and 0.4% American Indian/Alaska native. (These are their terms.)

The point I'm making now is that when a writing group is a small percentage of the whole writing group, they're going to produce a small percentage of the total number of books published. They can just physically only write so many books. Those books can easily get lost in the millions of books published. Even white readers who consider themselves color blind in their reading interests are not going to have a lot of books from nonwhite writers showing up in their personal book radar.

Where Heritage Months as Temporal Landmarks Come In

Writers can use temporal landmarks to help focus on particular things--using weekends for specific writing projects, assigning the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day for revision, using periods organized by groups, like National Poetry Month, to be their new draft time. This writer is going to use this year's heritage months as temporal landmarks to organize reading.

Why not just read these writers all year long? I do. But, like the people I described above, I only read what happens to pop up in front of me. Observing heritage months gives me an opportunity to do a little seeking out.

Additionally, as I said last year when I announced that I was going to do this, "when times are...strange, shall we say...publicizing the work of groups whose work didn't always get much attention in the past is something positive we can do. It doesn't involve name calling or ranting, which I've never seen doing anything for anybody."

Also, I love temporal landmarks. Focusing on one thing is just so freaking exciting. I am so up for this. I am actually reading two books now for Black History month. Sadly, I often peter out toward the end of a temporal landmark project, so I am worried the heritage months at the end of the year will be getting less attention from me. But I will just have to plan more carefully to avoid that, won't I?

My Real, and Very Shallow, Reason for Observing Heritage Months with My Reading

Lulu Blog has a lovely post on The Importance of Reading Black Literature. But it doesn't mention what I get from reading literature written by anyone from a group I don't belong to.

If you are a reader who has been around a while and has read a great deal...has read so much...a lot of what you read isn't what we might call new. There is a lot of sameness. There is a lot of old wine in a new flask kind of thing going on in books by your favorite writers or books in your favorite genres. Reading books by people in groups you're not as familiar with opens up opportunities to read about new characters and experiences. To read something different.

That's not a very virtuous reason for doing this. But maybe that's the best reason of all for reading the work of writers you're not familiar with. 

You should be hearing about my heritage month reading throughout the year.

 

Some Annotated Reading April 4

This is two weeks worth of reading, because I was a lazy blogger last week.

The Poet Laureate Project 

I read some Robert Penn Warren, who was both our third poetry consultant (the precursor to the poet laureate position) and, a couple of decades later, our first poet laureate. I read his novel, All the King's Men, when I was a teenager and felt I'd done some grown-up reading. I wasn't even aware he was a poet until a couple of weeks ago. And he is a poet I find accessible. I particularly like Tell Me a Story and True Love.  

The Francophonie Project

I managed to finish reading Menuet by Guy de Maupassant. It is about a man who meets an elderly dance instructor and his elderly wife, a dancer. Or it may be about something deeper regarding the narrator. Reading this raised a lot of questions for me about how we judge short stories now and how short stories from the past relate to that. Which is interesting, because what reading this in French and English was supposed to do was improve my French. Francophonie Month is over now, so I can put this book back on my To Be Read Shelf, where it has been for years.

Some Serious Cultural Reading

The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife by Sophie Elmhirst at The New Yorker. This was enlightening. The woman who was the main focus of this article was interested in the trad wife lifestyle, because she was into nostalgia. If that's the attraction for others, too, then that makes some sense. I, personally, think nostalgia of most--nah, of all--kinds is dangerous, but, again, nostalgia would provide an explanation for what's going on here. What I still don't understand is why women who choose to live this way want to tell the world about it. My guess is that they are hoping to monetize a blog or attract a big following so they can sell them a book. But that isn't exactly what we think of as trad wife behavior, is it? And why did they choose the trad wife lifestyle to try to make money off from? Why did they think people would "buy" that? Yes, I know some of them were right. But, still, where did this come from?

Humor

We Are Unable To Offer You A Place At Yale Because Your Essay Read Like The Closing Narration Of A Teen Rom-Com by Amelia Tait at McSweeney's. I still feel a need to read things with childlit/YA connections.

When a Recipe Says It's "Quick and Easy" by Jiji Lee and Patrick Clair at McSweeney's. I wish I'd thought of this.

Listen, Cat: I'm Not the Out-of-Control Infant You Once Knew by Nick Gregory at Points in Case. We have a cat. We have a preschooler in the family. 

Suggestions For Rebooting The Marvel Cinematic Universe From Farmer, Essayist, And Poet Wendell Berry by Jeff King at McSweeney's. Here's what you have to understand about Wendell Berry and me--Years ago, I was a member of a reading group in which there was another member who was humorless, narrow-minded, judgmental, and unpleasant. (No, I am not talking about myself.) She was a huge Wendell Berry fan and suggested we read one of his books. As a result, I know Wendell Berry's name.  But reading him? I just can't.

American Expat in France: Probably Don't Do This by Kat Garcia in The Belladonna Comedy. What I particularly liked about this is that while it appears to be a list, it is really a story.

Ten Reasons to Run That You, a Parent Who Hates Running, Can Give Your Kid Who Also Hates Running by Lily Hirsch at Frazzled. The title is a little long and awkward, but that's part of the joke, and it really does tell you exactly what this funny piece is about. 

Gaaaaiiiiil. You've Got Some Reeeeading To Do.

Net Galley just approved me to read two arcs I requested. And I'm reading a book from Hoopla that I'll lose after 21 days, so I need to finish it up. Because it's worth finishing. I should just drop everything and read for a while, don't you think?

One Net Galley arc is for A Beginner's Guide to Starting Over. I'm going to read this in support of the author, Gabi Coatsworth, who is a Facebook friend and fellow Connecticut writer. Also, this is described as a woman's book, and I have a manuscript that I haven't found a home for and that I sometimes describe as a woman's book. I'm thinking this is a little research.

The other Net Galley arc is for Lit by Jeff Karp. I heard about this book through the author's publicist, who sent me an e-mail. I thought the book sounded like something that could become a read for Time Management Tuesday. The website talks about tapping into high energy brain states. I could use some tapping into high energy brain states here. There may also be an ADHD connection, and we have an ADHD connection in our family. ADHD is a draw for me now. Thus, I've got a couple of reasons to be interested in this.

I now have to do some reading for a workshop I'm registered for. So, you know, #amreading, as they say on X. And maybe elsewhere.

Some Annotated Reading March 21

Two weeks-worth of reading here.

I finished reading American Pop by Snowden Wright. As usual, I don't know what made me put this on my reading list. I suspect it was due to a blurb describing it as an "imagined history." (I paid attention to a blurb!) In places, particularly at the beginning, American Pop reads like creative nonfiction, as if the author is writing about a real family who ran a real soda empire and using fictional tools to do it. He refers to other works that are supposed to be about the family and their company. I found this incredibly intriguing. The book is not at all linear (or is it?) with sections about various family members moving back and forth in time and giving away characters' future well in advance of them reaching it, while, I just realized, not treating that future moment itself when it happens. I am an incredibly linear person, and I shouldn't have liked this. But I did. And the real ending of the book has a satisfying surprise.   

Allen Tate is the next of the poets I read in my quest to read all the American poet laureates, though he is from the day when they were called consultants in poetry. I couldn't grasp his work, I'm ashamed to say. He had a lovely voice, though, and you can hear him reciting his poem, Ode to the Confederate Dead. 

I am making an attempt to read a Guy de Maupassant short story, in French and English, in order to observe Francophonie month. It's not going well. I've started reading the English portion first, then the French, and I am recognizing the French better that way. Still can't tell you what the story is about. I also read a de Maupassant story in English, The Necklace. I think I read this in my youth but got it confused with The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. The Necklace is grimmer than I remember The Gift of the Magi being, though.

Substack is Both Great and Terrible for Authors by Jane Friedman at Jane Friedman led me to seek out Substack vs. Medium: A Comparison of Two Popular Publishing Platforms by Si Willmore at Memberful. These articles may become part of a blog post at some point.

I read What Everyone Gets Wrong About Picky Eaters by Betsy Andrews at Saveur, because I write about eating from time to time, so I like to read something about food from time to time. We have a number of family members with the kinds of eating issues Andrews writes about, which is what drew me to her article.

Humor

Alternative Forms Of Meditation For Parents Of Young Children by Bev Potter at Frazzled.  

Quiz: James Joyce's Editor Or Me Commenting On My Child's Homework by Amy Greenlee at Frazzled.  As if I know anything about James Joyce.

Am I Grocery Shopping or Enrolling My Kid In College? by Kate Brennan at Frazzled.

Something I Read That You Can't Without A Subscription

The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker. I started this because John Wilkes Booth! You know I have no interest in Lee Harvey Oswald but something about John Wilkes Booth. I kept reading this piece because it was so good. When I finished it, I realized it was written by Jill Lepore! My favorite historian! I'm reading her history of the U.S., These Truths. I've been reading it for a while, and I'll be reading it for a while, which is fine, because it's so good.

Some Annotated Reading February 15

This week I finished reading The Manor House Governess by C.A. Castle. It was terrific to stumble upon this after just having finished reading The Jane Austen Society, because while The Jane Austen Society was about people obsessed with Jane Austen, The Manor House Governess is about a character obsessed with Jane Eyre. In addition, Bron, the main character, is living a twenty-first century, gender-fluid Jane Eyre life. I enjoy reading "versions" of Jane Eyre, and this one is well worth the read for people like me. Though I couldn't connect all the characters and situations in Manor House to characters and situations to Jane Eyre. Which means either that I wasn't being just to Manor House and reading it for itself or I need to read Jane Eyre again. I've only read it twice, and it's been a while. Both The Jane Austen Society and The Manor House Governess made me feel I should be reading the related classics over and over again the way the characters in these books do. But how when there are so many Austen- and Eyre-related work to read?

Remember The Madwoman in the Attic Answers Letters Pleading for Her Advice that I read this week? That's what I mean by needing time for Jane Eyre-related work. 

Jon Stewart Knows "The Daily Show" Won't Save Democracy by Inkoo Kang in The New Yorker includes something interesting I'd never heard of before--claptor comedy. It's comedy that isn't used to make people laugh but to make them applaud, because you've appealed to their beliefs. So now I know that. 

A humor piece for you: Ways I Imagined I Might Die When I Was A Kid by Anthony DeThomas in Points in Case.

Some Annotated Reading January 25

I don't usually care for one sentence pieces, even flash, but No Dead Bodies in the Dining Room by Kathryn LeMon at Flash Frog is pretty amazing.

The Wedding Photo by Megan Catana at Midway is kind of chilling.

With Whisk in Hand, I Celebrate New Love by Elinor Lipman at The Ethel. Still feeding my Elinor Lipman interest. 

Believe it or not, this past week I read a couple of pieces on men's underwear in the nineteenth century. This wasn't just lurid interest. I have a couple of things I'm working on set in that period.

Among the humor pieces I read this week:

• A Victorian Woman Afflicted With the Common Cold vs Me With A Cold Today by Laura-Liisa Klaas at Jane Austen's Wastebasket
• We, Your Children, Don't Have Snow Pants That Fit And We'd Like To Know What You're Going To Do About It by Stacy Curran at Frazzled. This is funny, but it's also sort of like a documentary.
• Family Movie Night: Who Thought This Was A Good Idea? by M. Nathan Robinson at Frazzled. What I found interesting here was that this piece is funny, but also essayish, and some of the humor publications at Medium, and elsewhere, do not embrace humorous essays. So this is a bit unique.   
• To Show You How Much I Appreciate You Letting Me Stay At Your Home, I Kind Of Made The Bed by Adam Dietz at Slackjaw. Yeah, this one spoke to me, because I don't want my houseguests kind of making their beds. I want them stripping them. And carrying the dirty linens to the laundry room. And, I kid you not, someone once did that at my house. She carried the dirty linens to the hamper in the bathroom but good enough. I can still see her walking down the hall with an arm full of sheets and pillowcases. It chokes me up to this day. 

Some Annotated Reading

Because I am concentrating on short-form writing, I need to be looking for places that publish the same. The reading involved is time consuming, and I sometimes feel I should just sit down and do nothing but read for a month or two. 

Instead, what I've been reading this week includes:

In the Bird Cage: Finding Out What Funny Is by Steve Martin, New Yorker, October 22, 2007. This is an excerpt from Martin's book Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Very readable. The lesson learned? Martin dated some interesting women when he was young.

The Kid Is Alright: In Defense of Picky Eating by Irina Dumitrescu, Serious Eats Serious Eats publishes personal essays about food. I write personal essays about eating. Also, we have two generations of picky eaters in our family. Serious, serious picky eaters. The lesson learned after poking around Serious Eats? A lot of their essayists are award winning food writers. I must make of that what I will. 

The House With Feet: The Dire Importance of Ruth Stone's Bequest by Bianca Stone in Vida: Women in the Literary Arts. This piece has nothing to do with my market research and everything to do with the fact that I'm developing an obsession with Ruth Stone, just as I have one with Shirley Jackson. It appears that I have not mentioned here that I received The Essential Ruth Stone for Christmas last year and read it this spring.

Pretty Bad Middle Grade Novel--I wouldn't finish this, but I'm skimming now because I bought the thing. I will have more to say about this after I finish. 

Medium--I try to do some reading on Medium each week, sometimes to check out publications I might submit to, sometimes to try to support other writers. I'm hesitant to post Medium links, because it appears that my readers can't read a few piece per month there anymore. But, just in case, this was a pretty good poem.

Interesting Reading From The March/April 2022 Horn Book

The March/April 2022 Horn Book carried a couple of articles that particularly interested me:

• The Shut Doors of Libraries by Jeannine Atkins. Libraries, it turns out, have not always been color blind and open to all. Jeannine is a Facebook friend and the author of, among other things, Little Woman in Blue.
• Graphic Memoirs: Why We Read Them. Why We Need Them by Sylvie Kantorovitz. The author discusses what the images in a graphic memoir should be doing, as well as how a memoir is based on memories and what that means in terms of fact.

Some interesting reviews:

• Cold by Mariko Tamaki, which I've read. 
• Ironhead, or, Once a Young Lady by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem, translated by Krisen Gehrman, which I have in a book bag in a closet next to me.
• Alone like Me by Rebecca Evans. I went to school with Rebecca's mother! From third to twelfth grade.

I'm Doing #MGReadathon

This weekend I'm doing the #MGReadathon organized/sponsored by Karen Yingling of Ms. Yingling Reads. I am not well prepared for this, which I never advocate on Time Management Tuesdays, but I'm grabbing an opportunity for some intense reading and Twitter socialization. And I just happen to have brought some middle grade books home from the library on Monday. 

I won't be posting about the books until next week, but I'll be posting cover images on Twitter as I finish the books. You can use the #MGReadathon hashtag to follow what's being read on Twitter. Truthfully, I'm only talking maybe four books. Karen is hoping to read thirty.

My 48 hours began at 2:30 this afternoon in a pickup truck on the way home from biking. Life is chaos, and I will be reading chaotically until mid-afternoon Sunday.

I've finished Book One!

Another Reading Retreat Week In The Rearview Mirror

A very successful retreat week. In addition to the stack of reading you see in the accompanying picture, I knocked off maybe 8 pieces of flash fiction on-line and untold numbers of articles on Meghan Markle, with whom I am growing bored. Additionally, I listened to an hour plus podcast for my history methodology ultralearning project. I did catch up on my Horn Book reading, which you'll be hearing about over the coming months and came up with at least one new flash fiction idea. I'll have to check my notes on that.

Speaking of ultralearning, I thought I posted last Tuesday's Time Management Tuesday post on my Ultralearning read last Tuesday. However, I didn't think to check to see if it went up successfully until I got home yesterday afternoon. So that arc will continue to drag on.

Hey, but whatever. I've had a week-long reading retreat and I'm feeling the calm. I would ask how to make that last, but asking how to make the calm last would wreck the calm.

Retreat Week Begins Tomorrow

Things will become quieter here for the next few days, because we're leaving for our annual retreat week tomorrow. I am going to try to put up the Time Management Tuesday post next week, because I'm desperate to finish the Ultralearning arc and that will bring me one step closer. Otherwise, I don't plan to be here.

I call these annual trips a reading retreat. We do some snowshoeing, go out to eat, maybe spend some time in the fitness center, and hang out in our timeshare unit reading, listening to music, and (someone else) doing jigsaw puzzles.

My reading bag this year contains:

• Two back issues of Writer's Digest
• An entire year's worth of The Horn Book that I haven't read. I realized yesterday that the HB subscription renewal notice came before Christmas, and I found it! Now I should pay it, shouldn't I?
• Two copies of Mindful.
• One copy of Tricyle
• The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson, because it takes place in Vermont, and the first book in the series sounds as if she had the area we're going in mind.
• My Kindle, heavy with eBooks, including The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe, which I hope will be a read for Multicultural Children's Book Day at the end of the month. 
• I also have my iPad loaded with links to flash fiction and historical methodology reads, both this month's professional reading focus.

Retreat Reading 2017

And in spite of all that, I'll make my annual pilgrimage to Bear Pond Books, where I try to find something new for me. That is how I became a Mindy Kaling fan.

My traveling companion has had a mild cold since Wednesday, I am now fighting it off, and there is unseasonably warm weather and rain expected this weekend where we're going. But I'll still have the reading. And eating in restaurants.

My Year In Reading

I am active on Goodreads for one reason and one reason only--it keeps track of my reading for me and makes a nice little annual summary. I've learned you have to work this thing to get the result you want, because if you aren't careful to include a date you finished reading a book, it will just have you down as having shelved it in, say, 2019, and not having read it that year. You also have to be careful to actually record the books in the first place. Goodreads can't keep track of something you haven't entered there. It's not a mind reader, though that would be nice.

All that explains why when I checked my Goodreads Year in Books late yesterday I saw I'd read only 18 books, though I'd shelved more. I spent some time after dinner last night putting in date read material on the shelved books and then going through this blog to find a number of books I'd read but never recorded.

That brought me up to 42 books for the year. Probably not a great accomplishment, especially since I have a screenshot from 2017 that indicates I read 45 that year, but so much better than 18 that I am happy to take it. And, no, Bread & Wine was not my first review of the year, but I'm letting that go.

On to 2020!

Reading Is A Sign Of Good Health

After three days on an antibiotic that doesn't make me sick (so far), I am again sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, I started working again yesterday and have done a little cooking.

I've also watched a lot of TV. Last weekend when the body aches hit, I added a Netflix app to my tablet so I could watch TV in bed, twenty-four hours a day. And that's what I did for several days at the beginning of the week. I watched two Katherine Ryan specials, the new Aziz Ansari special, all three seasons of Broadchurch, part of season one of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and an episode from the last season of Episodes.

I would wake up and watch some TV on my tablet before I got out of bed. Once I was better, I moved out to the sun room to watch tablet TV. I'd go to bed and watch an episode of Broadchurch before I went to sleep. Except one night when I was running late, I watched that episode of Episodes because it was only half an hour. If I woke up in the night, I watched TV.

Those were all times when I used to read. I had no interest in it then. Kind of like I didn't have an interest in eating Saturday night into Tuesday.

Then one morning instead of watching TV in bed, I used my tablet to read articles. A number of them. Last night I ended up reading the first story in a Shirley Jackson book I've had on my Kindle for at least a year. Even though twice today I petered out and stretched out on the sun room couch to finish Broadchurch, it looks as if I'm back reading.

As I was writing this, I realized that my desire to read came back along with my desire to eat.

Reading To Support Goals

At the end of January, I made an adjustment to this year's goals and objectives "Research and create notes for a happy apocalyptic story." I read Pandemic 1918 by Catharine Arnold and Pale Rider by Laura Spinney to research that story, but I'm also trying to read some general science fiction to ground myself in the genre I'm writing. (I also have an adult first contact story that I'm holding on to for a little while before I submit it again, so grounding myself in the genre would be good for that, too.) So late this winter/early this spring I read Lock In and Head On by John Scalzi. (I read his Redshirts a few years ago, and I believe we have his Agent to the Stars floating around the house somewhere.)

Lock In and Head On are police procedurals set in the near future, using the same main characters and same world. To be truthful, I found the science a little long in places and hard to follow, and there were a lot of secondary characters, particularly of the potential bad guy variety. I loved the main characters and their world, though, enjoyed the reads, and hope Scalzi does more Lock In books.

 

How Do Lock In and Head On Fit In To My Grand Scheme?

The Lock In books involve bringing science fiction elements into our world. This is my favorite kind of science fiction. I am not a big fan of stories about human elements entering science fiction worlds. When I write science fiction,which, granted, isn't that often, I bring science fiction to the here and, so far, the now. That's what I did with My Life Among the Aliens and Club Earth, which have the same main characters and world. They involve aliens coming into suburban children's world.

So I'm going to try to stick with that kind of science fiction reading for the immediate future.

Naomi Kritzer, Short Ficton

You will remember that reading is part of my goals and objectives this year. I'm sure I mentioned it here. Several times. An objective for the essay and short story goal involves reading a short story or essay every day. I've been hitting that one out of the park. I missed only one day when an elder was in the emergency room. And I wasn't one of the people who stayed there all afternoon. And evening. I definitely shirked that day.

My plan was to read randomly, which I pretty much have, though I did find myself doing an author study early on.

I discovered Naomi Kritzer on Facebook, believe it or not, when she very appropriately posted a link to one of her short stories in someone's comments. I loved it and took off.

Favorite Kritzer Stories

So Much Cooking was what got me started. This is an apocalyptic story written in the form of a food blog. So much to like.

Field Biology of the Wee Fairies. A fairy story for people like me who don't like them.


Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty's Place Cafe. An end of the world story? Or something else? 

Paradox. A time travel story that doesn't take itself too seriously. And it has a Travelers vibe.

Bits. This is the story everyone who has ever seen a story about human/alien romance has been waiting for.

What I like about Kritzer's writing is that she does scifi and fantasy stories and sets them in our real world. Or, in some cases, our nearly real world. That's my favorite kind of science fiction and fantasy. Which explains why I so rarely like fantasy. I don't find a lot of it set where I want it set.

YA Coming

This fall, Naomi Kritzer's YA novel, Catfishing on CatNet will be published by Tor/Forge. You can check out an excerpt at Den of Geek.

So Kritzer writes this neat short fiction AND she has a childlit connection. She's perfection for Original Content.

A New Twist On "A Room Of One's Own"

One of my January accomplishments was to finish reading A Room of One's Own, a significant piece of feminist writing, by Virginia Woolf. Woolf is one of those writers like Michel de Montaigne, as far as I'm concerned. I like the idea of them much more than I like reading their work. Woolf I can make some headway with, but I feel she rambles. I'm into communication, as both a reader and a writer. I don't want a lot of extra words distracting from the point.

Woolf does make some good ones in A Room of One's Own. She's writing about what women in her era needed to write fiction. She famously says they need a room of their own and five hundred pounds a year. These things, she contends, are what male writers have had for generations and why she can't find many women writers in past historical periods. Or women writers writing about issues of interest to women.

Woolf was writing about male privilege. But she addressed it as a male/female status issue rather than as a social class issue. She didn't, for instance, get into male writers who don't have a room of their own and five hundred pounds a year. Or how the female writers she was writing about could get the room of their own and five hundred pounds a year she claimed they needed.

Just this past week, Sandra Newman picked up Woolf's material and looked at it differently by asking What If You Can't Afford "A Room of One's Own? at Electric Lit. Does that mean you can't write? Newman argues that no, it doesn't.

What would Virginia Woolf have made of someone like Sandra Newman?

Are Personal Retreats Worth The Effort?

Retreat Reading Spot

Oh, come on. That question must be clickbait. Six days of doing whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with no phone calls or e-mails about problems and when the weather is too bad to drive to a restaurant you just walk across the road to a lodge to eat dinner next to a fire? Of course, a personal retreat is worth the the planning, the packing, and the five-hour drive.

But What About Professionally?

Retreat Reading

Well, remember, the big activity on my retreats is reading. Yes, I spent 5 hours snowshoeing one day, snowshoed to a chapel another day, and to a bierhall still another. I made my annual visit to Bear Pond Books. That still left me enough time to read:

• 3 UVM alumni magazines
• 3 back issues of Writer's Digest
• 1 back issue of Carve
• The new issue of Seven Days
• 30 pages of A Room of One's Own (I forgot I planned to read it during Retreat Week until Thursday.)
• Maybe a third of Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer (Hey, it's a big book.)
• The last few chapters of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• All of In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware (My purchase at Bear Pond Books where something almost always jumps off the shelf at me.)
• 9 short stories (4 in that issue of Carve)
• 4 essays (2 in Carve)

Again, What About Professionally?

Travel Journal

Well, I also generated 9 pages of journal notes. Unfortunately, many of them related to a new project that's not part of my goals for this year. But I also got a few ideas for agents to research as a result of reading all those Writer's Digests. I've also got some lengthy notes for an entirely new essay and came up with an approach for another subject that could result in both a short story and an essay. Maybe flash.

So I guess I could say my reading-retreat week fired up some creativity. I've had similar things happen on just a regular vacation. The extra reading and the removal from my usual environment and the next thing I know I'm writing something in a journal.

 Retreat Reading View

Creativity doesn't always get its due. It's sort of an up-and-down thing. Right now it's down while we're focused on discovering readers and making that first sale and giving our main character something to want and then keeping it from her and the Hero's #@!! Journey.  Comparatively, creativity is kind of soft and squishy and maybe even a bit woo-woo. Except it's not. Creativity is how we generate new material. Without it, we're just staring at flickering computer monitors and virgin journal pages.

So if you go on a personal reading retreat, it jump starts your creativity, and you go home all excited because you have a handful of ideas and a book buzz on, how can that be anything but worth the effort? 

My Year In Books

I am active on Goodreads for one reason--it keeps track of my reading and gives me an account at the end of the year. This year I read 45 books, nothing to write home to Mom about. This is down from 83 books last year. Well, that's 2017 for you.

I'm not sure if I read more adult books this year than last, but some of my 2017 adult reading wasn't very gripping. In fact, there was one particularly lengthy one that was quite a chore to get through. I kept at it believing that I was improving my self-discipline.

I don't feel all that improved.

I considered setting some kind of reading goal for this next year, but I'm not comfortable with that. Reading is sort of spiritual. (Though maybe not when you read the kind of books I was reading last year.) Should you set goals for something spiritual? Will having a goal make me feel pressured and wreck my reading mojo?

I do hope I break 50 books this year, though.

And How Are Your Thanksgiving Plans Coming Along?

I have family coming for the Thanksgiving weekend. I haven't cooked a thing. I haven't cleaned.

What I have done is make a trip to two libraries to stock up on books. I'll be reading with a littlie any moment I can snatch next weekend.

So my Thanksgiving is pretty much all set.