Saw this floating around the blogosphere in honor of World Book Day 2011 (not related to the encyclopedia) and thought it would make a fun, quick post for a Friday night.

The book I am reading: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, and my feelings about it are mixed. The story is interesting, a page-turner, as her books always are, but the writing quality fluctuates, and so far the characters aren’t gripping me quite like the ones in The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance.

Technically I’m also reading Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Chalion fantasy series I adored, but I’ve temporarily abandoned it because I got a bit bogged down in space politics after having only recently finished reading all the Orson Scott Card books. I really like the characters, though, so I’m sure I’ll be back to it once I’ve had enough of a fix in a different genre.

The book I am writing: Still Songs for Piano and Voice, which has received the attention of an editor whose critique confirmed most of my suspicions about bits that still need work and provided insight into potential marketing issues to work around. I’m excited to get back to work on it and whip it into shape; if only the Burt Squirt would cooperate by taking longer naps!

The book I love most: Anne of Green Gables, without question. My copy is falling apart, and every time I read it, I still laugh out loud. The warm fuzzies I come away with aren’t just from the oh-so-endearing characters, but also the nostalgia of reading it with my mom when I was eight and laid up with a broken arm, and of my friend Susan and me acting out Anne with our Barbies.

The last book I received as a gift: My brother gave me Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson for Christmas. I read a couple of chapters, but I had a hard time getting into it because so far it’s just the narrator talking about her grandfather and not giving me a good feel for who she is. I’ll probably pick it up again sometime, when I’m in a more literary frame of mind (and have had more sleep).

Saw this floating around the interwebs today and had to try it.

Never having read any Stephen King (with the exception of On Writing, years ago), I have no idea whether my style remotely resembles his.  (My previous blog post came up Margaret Atwood – yay! – but the first page of my novel, which I re-wrote yesterday, came up Dan Brown – bleurgh.) Maybe those of you who read King can read this short story of mine and compare.  But do not expect any telekinetic prom queens, freaky clowns, or possessed automobiles.

Dust to Dust

I hear the doorbell ring and suddenly the panic takes me
The sound so ominously tearing through the silence
I cannot move, I’m standing
Numb and frozen
Among the things I love so dearly
The books, the paintings, and the furniture
Help me …
- Abba, “The Visitors”

Two black bags stood packed in the middle of the living room. It was the first time they’d ever been used, purchased not quite three months ago at the J.C. Penney thirty miles away. Their newness was obvious, even jarring, in the midst of all the antique furniture that fitted out the room. A lot of it was Victorian, or Victorian reproduction, and all of it feminine. None of it suited the dark paneled walls and rustic beams in the ceiling, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of furniture to suit the leathery skinned, denim clad cowboy leaning against the kitchen doorjamb staring at the bags (who, if he’d heard himself called a cowboy, would’ve made a gruff sound in his throat; he was far too old to be called any kind of boy). It was the detritus of the grandmother Judith had never known, which always seemed coated in layers of dust no matter how often she took the furniture polish to it, as if the dust were Nana’s presence in the house.

The old cowboy — Papa, he was to Judith — never talked much about Nana, yet to Judith, it somehow felt like he never spoke of anything else. He held her forever in his deep-set, startlingly blue eyes; her name was marked indelibly on his forearm, below the rolled-up shirtsleeve. Once Judith had asked about the tattoo, and Papa grunted and told her that all the guys got them during the war — anchors and eagles and such war imagery, or hearts draped in banners with their sweethearts’ names. It was very romantic, Judith thought, and very tragic. She told her boyfriend Johnny, and for Christmas he got her name tattooed on his bicep for her, which made Judith write in her diary that it would be Johnny her own granddaughter would see forever held in her eyes. Which were green, and not as naturally conducive to tragic romance as startling blue; but she had to work with what she got.

What Papa didn’t tell Judith was that Betty Jean hadn’t been impressed by the romantic gesture. Said she thought love meant remembering a girl’s name without having it written on your arm like a cheat sheet. She’d been that breed of practical Baptist farm girl indigenous to East Texas — the breed of girl Judith had never quite managed to be, even though she wore western cut jeans and shirts and boots.

But then, Judith had been born in San Francisco. Read the rest of this entry »