Lulu Publishing

My aunt wrote a sequel to her first book The Christmas Tree. It is called The Paperboy's Dream and talks about how my Uncle Steve first learned about paratroopers and how he decided he wanted to jump out of planes.  And how he managed to make that happen. 

It turns out that his awareness was triggered by a stunt by Bernarr Macfadden. That was an interesting internet hole to dive into. You never know what experiences will impact others. 

Posting these links to her author's page and books so that people can find them. I'm not sure why her friends struggle with the Lulu Bookstore so much, but they do.   

• Constance Gessner's Author Page
• The Christmas Tree
• The Paperboy's Dream

A new book published!

My aunt has had a dream for years to create a book about my uncle and one of his childhood adventures.  We finally made it happen!

Her first book, called "A True Christmas Story", has been completed and is not available.  You can see it at  http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/TrueChristmasStory. 

I have to give Lulu credit for a pretty easy process.  My learning curve was a bit steep, I've never designed a book before, but once I got into it, it went well.  Excellent customer service so far.  We're ordering her holiday gifts tonight!

I am going to turn this into an e-book next.  And then we'll see what other ideas people want to get published.  Now that I know how to do this, I'm adding to my list of editing services.  Let me know if you have a book you need help getting to the final proof stage!

2015

Not even sure I should be titling this a 2015 blog, but here goes.

I have decided that I am not a blogger. I love twitter, I love facebook but I don't love blogging. I think it is a few reasons:

• I'm too busy
• I am happy to share my opinion when asked, but just putting stuff out into the void seems a bit pretensious
• New tools have already supplanted the reason I relaunched this blog

So, the reasons.  I'm too busy.  I love my job at UB. I work on a computer all day long. I'm not doing a lot of generic computer work in my free time.  I have freelance jobs too, so again, when I don't have to be on a computer, I'm not being there anymore. So blogging fails the free time test.

I'm happy to share my opinion.... but not just being opinionated.  I'll share fun stuff on twitter (follow me at (@cpd623)  and hang out with my friends on facebook, but that stuff is way more personal than what I want to share on a blog. Maybe I'll change my mind again, but maybe not.  I'll keep this active, but more like monthly than weekly or daily.

New tools. I love Pinterest for my book tracking. I managed to pin 52 books last year and I've started the same goal for 2015. I don't need to blog about them anymore cause that is faster.

I'm always open to new ideas, work requests, professional contacts etc. If you'd like to work together, find me on LinkedIn. 

May was a whirlwind

So hello June. In fact I'm late on the hello part since today is June 3.

No books read since my last post. Grateful I got ahead on the year-long goal when I had the chance. Between the family funeral, getting Peter home from college, Maggie's end of SHA activities, Pete's birthday and a weekend in Richmond, VA with Matthew for the East Coast Volleyball playoffs, I lost the month. Totally.

Update on the projects... um, the dress is still not done. Have totally reworked it. I begin to understand why couture costs so much. I am literally hand stitching part of it now to fit her properly. I hope it is wearable when done but I now afraid that it will be a tortured piece of fabric when finished. I'm not sure I'm a candidate for Project Runway anytime soon.

On the plus side of that not being finished, I will have a legitimate excuse to sit in the cooler basement while working on it.

Starting to read Rebuilt and planning to read "12 Years a Slave." Looking for history recommendations. I find those easier to read in spurts and that appears to be my life for the next few weeks as we prep for two graduations this month.

Another snow storm

Buffalo had another snow storm yesterday. As my friend Arlene said on facebook "You know you are from Buffalo when everyone is complaining that ONLY 14 inches of snow and 30-40 mph winds and 1/4 mile visibility is hardly a blizzard and doesn't measure up to our standards."

I have to agree that it was never a blizzard yesterday, but thundersnow was a new experience. 

Got to finish reading The Monuments Men while home and had a mini movie marathon with the kids. Watched Red 2 and Despicable Me 2. Both were Christmas gifts we have not had any time to watch. Also did a bunch of computer work and got organized to try to make a spring dress, while Pete worked on the kitchen some more. I think we need more days off like that. Totally random where you are up and moving (both Pete and I went to work) but as the city shut down we both came home at noon and were energized to get some things done. Quite a gift actually.

Have two mysteries to read and two more kindle possibilities. We'll see how I do this weekend. 

18 books finished so far in 2014.

February Break

Not the week/ month I expected to have but a couple of days sitting as a hospital visitor really boosted my reading.

Last entry I had finished 7 books. Since then 7 more (Blink, Altered Carbon, I will fear no evil, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (last 3 by Heinlein) Fever Dream and Cold Vengeance by Preston/Child)

I hit the library and picked up two mysteries, two of the newer Dune books and downloaded 2 more to my kindle. We'll see how many I finish now that things are "back to normal."

Reading update

So at least I'm going to blog about the books :)

Managed to read around/during the volleyball tournament this weekend. The last time I blogged I was reading Kenobi by John Miller and Necromancer by William Gibson. Yesterday I finished Tipping Point and started David and Goliath.

Total count for the year is 7 completed (still on track for a book a week)

As I only skimmed The River of Doubt, I'm not including it in my count for the year.  I was disappointed with that book. I ended up reading the beginning, part of the middle and the end. Nothing made me want to read every page.

On deck is Altered Carbon (recommended by co-worker Mike Conroy, I will fear no evil by Heinlein and Blink by Malcom Gladwell (totally working my way through his books on my kindle!


Of course, the Olympics are going on in Sochi, I have to do the taxes, I have a lot of work to do for Off Peak and the kids have winter breaks coming up. But I can always find time to read :)

PS: Watched World War Z. Disappointing after the book although I did see some pieces that were similar. I just don't understand why they had to change it SO MUCH! 

Reading in 2014

My life flies. Totally on full speed in this phase of my life between working, kids, family needs and sports.  But, at the same time, I can always have a book tucked in my purse for five minutes of downtime. I'm going to keep track of the books I read this year in this blog. Perhaps it will get me to blog more often :)

Since January 1, I have read:

World War Z by Max Brooks
2 b r 0 2 b (short story by Kurt Vonnegut)
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
War Wives by Helen Bryan

Am currently reading:
Kenobi by John Miller
Necromancer by William Gibson

On deck:
The River of Doubt (Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey) by Candice Miller
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

And as long as I was reviewing my Kindle to check out the author names, I took at look back at 2013. I think the Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis was one of my favorite books last year. Freakonomics was also pretty interesting. And I'm pretty happy I'm on track for at least one book a week in 2014.

American Lit

So, I got into a discussion on twitter about American Lit (note, I work in higher ed, so intellectual discussions are possible 140 characters at a time). I hated American Lit in high school, managed to talk my teacher into letting me read War & Peace instead. Yes, Russian fiction in lieu of three American lit novels. The page count was greater and she was excited to be able to tell people one of her students read that book. I was excited to skip the whiny novels.

So, as an adult, when I could not contribute to the discussion about which American authors are better, I asked for suggestions of what to read. I was told these novels:

Invisible Man (already read)
Angle of Repose
Sound and Fury
Absalom, Absalom
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Slaughterhouse Five (already read)

My dad's favorite book of all time is the Old Man and the Sea (already read). Another suggestion outside of twitter was Of Mice and Men (already read).

Since the twitter exchange I have read two of the books (Angle of Repose and Death Comes for the Archbishop) and I discussed Slaughterhouse Five with my son.

I went and looked for a list of great American Novels, I've read 25 of them. Was surprised to have so many. 

I will go get the Faulkner novels from the library and attempt them. But I'll be honest. As beautiful as some of the descriptions of the wild west, I still find these novels whiny. My issue with American Lit 30 years ago and still today is that we don't have enough history here to claim any understanding of the world. We are only a few generations removed from people who believed in miracles and came here. The disappointment these authors report is inevitable. Reality is always harsh. I find that these characters are so busy being disappointed in their lives that they miss the beauty being described around them. And I want to shake them.

Do you feel differently about American Lit? Why? Help me see the other side. 

Books

I've noticed people commenting about how many  books they've read or how many books people read in a year. I'm not sure I could ever count how many I've read. If left alone I could probably read a book a day. With three kids, work and a new puppy I am lucky to finish one book a week. My kindle got me back to this average... it is easier to carry that around with me and I can read a few pages when picking up from sports etc. I remember summers reading a book a day and spending every allowance to buy new books. Conservatively I have probably read over 1200 books, assuming an average of 30 books a year times 40 years (been reading since before Kindergarten but only counting since then). If you think that number is high, I'd like to point out that I won the reading contest in 4th grade for the month of October (how many mysteries can you read?) with 31 accepted books. I read more but the teacher would only credit me with one a day and my mother had to write a note that yes I really did come home from school everyday and sit down and read. Plus more than half of those books came from the school library and the librarian had to attest that I did check out a different book everyday and could answer questions about each one.

My kids don't read nearly as much. Aside from their overall increase in homework, they have activities I never could do (my Mom didn't drive) and they have multi-media entertainment to consume. They all do read, but not nearly as voraciously as me. The sad part is that they watch a movie and think they understand a book... and yet Hollywood uses book titles and themes with no regard for the real material. Even when they are motivated to stay true to the material, ie, Harry Potter, they still change things just because (the 7th movie with Snape, Harry and then Harry with the elder wand). No reason to change it but they did.

I have a new rule with my kids that they cannot see a movie without reading the book first. That way they have their own vision in their minds eye and can compare as opposed to a two hour synopsis that may or may not be right and then to get frustrated when the book is different. This helped our family enjoy the Hunger Games and I hope the future ones as well.