HSU IT Department

It's not my fault. It's circulating. irishredlass gave it to me. Or rather, she posted it and I can't say no to anything involving books, so I had to do it, so if I look like a showoff who's read, like, everything (or at least 70% of the list), blame her, heh heh heh...

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2.) Italicize those you intend to read.
3.) Underline those you LOVE.
4.) Put an asterisk next to the books you'd rather shove hot pokers in your eyes than read.

( The list, it be here )

Wow, how much fun is this?? http://www.dolldivine.com/deluxe-pin-up-maker.php
Thank you, droxy (I think -- although if I waste another hour playing with it the word "thank" may mutate into something else LOL!)

Now if I could just find where to buy all the pieces:

rivertempest recently posted her contribution to an interesting meme, so I commented on it in order to be able to play along.

The rules are thus: Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

She gave me seven very interesting word-prompts to play with: Books, Writing, Editing, Philosophy, Libraries, Wine, and Travel. So let's dive right in, shall we?

1. Books: Books are such a core part of my life and always have been that talking about them is sort of like talking about breathing. I started reading at a pretty young age, before preschool, and just never stopped -- since my mom has been both an English teacher and a librarian, I suppose there wasn't ever any question that this was my fate! Books go with me everywhere and have colonized almost every room in the house (I think the bathroom is the last holdout). I feel nervous if I don't have something to read within reach. Books have been companions, teachers, entertainers, mentors, guides and tools, both defense and weapon. Some people have comfort food; I have comfort books. Some people pack a book or two for a trip; I have to bring at least six, because what if I brought only two and it turned out I wasn't in the mood for reading either of them?? Calamity!!! When I visit someone's house, the first thing I do is troll their bookshelves. When I used to go visit my dad for two weeks in the summers, I brought two suitcases; one was full of clothes, the other was packed with books. My list of books read (which is incomplete) shows what a glutton I am for the written word. My to-read list demonstrates why I will never die, because I refuse to do so until I've read everything on that list. And yeah, I own a Kindle, but give me a proper book every time, complete with pages to turn and that great book-y smell :)

2. Writing: I love putting words together almost as much as -- and occasionally more than -- I love reading them. There's something magical about translating a story in your head into a form that other people can read and share. My plan as a kid was to be a writer. My goal as a much much older kid is still to be a writer, though I need to be more industrious about working at it. I belong to a very good online writing workshop, but need to carve out more time in my day for BIC HOK TAM. Not counting technical/non-fiction, I've had exactly one very short piece published and one unofficially accepted by Big Name Magazine (which operates on a Big Name Schedule, meaning it may be Big Name Years before it ever sees the light of day...). My goal for 2013 is to apply to the Clarion West writers workshop; it's pretty much the gold standard of FSF/speculative fiction workshops and counts among its alumni literally dozens of award-winning authors. All you do for six weeks is write, write, write, which is my idea of bliss. "That is one reason I write: as a kind of spiritual practice, to force truth to emerge from my habitual state of lazy dishonesty." (George Saunders)

3. Editing: In addition to my day job, I have a side business doing editing, proofreading and indexing. The most satisfying thing about editing, and why I love to beta, is helping someone say what they have to say, assisting in the birth of a piece of writing. That might mean finding exactly the right word the author was searching for, or spotting a plot hole so they can plug it, or simply tightening a phrase so that a sentence is honed to a point. (Or, occasionally, identifying anatomically impossible sexual positions LOL!) Much of my freelance editing is non-fiction -- dissertations, theses, papers to be submitted to journals -- which has its own limitations of form and function, but many of my authors are not native English speakers; if I can untangle a syntactical or grammatical knot so that their argument runs free and clear, I feel as though I have brought a tiny bit more order in the world.

4. Philosophy: The closest match for me is Stoicism. I believe that reason is the most important tool we have for understanding ourselves and the world, and that our highest purpose is to use that reason to improve ourselves as ethical and moral beings. As Marcus Aurelius says, "Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." We need more philosophy in our daily lives, because it makes you think about why you do the things you do; too many people, personally and socially and professionally, act on the whim of the moment, without ever knowing (or caring) why. The book that best explained to me why that matters -- why a moral code isn't an abstract theory but a matter of great practical importance -- is Atlas Shrugged. "Isn't it odd? When a politician or a movie star retires, we read front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it." "They do, eventually..."

5. Libraries: Given my response to Item 1, you'd have to be pretty slow on the uptake not to realize that in my world, libraries = win. Mom took me to libraries from a very early age; in fact the first time she took me to a bookstore, apparently I was still operating under the library mentality and picked out two dozen books :) I got my MS/LIS in 2004 and I currently work at an academic library in the rare books and manuscripts department (kind of like the restricted section at Hogwarts) which is BLISS. As you can imagine, I love stories about libraries and archives and mysterious manuscripts and letters and diaries and so on and so forth. Libraries rock -- we need more of them, and more money for them, and everyone should visit/support them, frequently and generously.

6. Wine: Wine is A Good Thing. I like the way it looks in the glass. I like the way it smells. I like the way it tastes. I like the way it inspires my fics -- as Hemingway famously said, "Write drunk; edit sober." (I don't like the calories, however, so I recently gave it up for a month to see if that would allow me to lose weight while still consuming all my other favorite stuff -- i.e., garlic, chocolate, cheese, etc. Sadly, it did not.) I am a down-to-earth oenophile, so I enjoy laughing at pompous and pretentious descriptions ("Historic almost overcooked Chardonnay. Throws out raspberry, focused lemon and atomic traces of smoked bacon. Drink now through Friday." HAHAHAAA!) Favorite white: Mud Pie Chardonnay. Favorite red: Rosemont Shiraz. Favorite bubbly: Veuve Clicquot (New Year's tradition at our house!). Favorite fictional wine: Benden red, beloved of the Masterharper of Pern.

7. Travel: I don't do so much now, but I traveled quite a bit in and just after college. I've been to most of Western Europe, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, France, England and Scotland. On one memorable trip we mistakenly bought tickets for the slow boat down the Rhine rather than the fast one which, while highly picturesque, meant three days on a boat and two nights sleeping in the shrubbery ashore, since you couldn't stay on the boat overnight. (We did meet some very nice young Brits who were on vacation from medical school, and assisted them valiantly in building up a very large tower of empty bottles at a wine bar in Cologne the first night. This probably explains why we were able to sleep so soundly in the shrubbery.) Switzerland was memorable for vividly illustrating how out-of-shape I was, when we hiked from Interlaken up to Gimmelwald (GORGEOUS place, complete with the cleanest cows I've ever seen wearing big clonking cowbells). Immediately upon leaving Interlaken there was a sign that said "Gimmelwald 40 minutes." An hour later, after panting our way up perpendicular hillsides, we passed another sign: "Gimmelwald 20 minutes." Gimmelwald was also notable for the curious hot-water arrangement at the hostel: the shower was down the end of the garden, but the meter for hot water was in the kitchen. So you dropped your francs into the meter and then had to sprint down the path in order to get there before the timer ran out :D

Thank you, rivertempest, for seven highly useful words!

I love LZ Granderson :)

"I'm sure you've heard a lot about the gay agenda, but may not know what's in it. Here's what you do: Download a copy of the United States Constitution, read it. Everything the LGBT community wants is in there. Sounds like an oversimplification? It's not..."

Read the rest of the article here.

When you consider the only currently available alternative to aging is, well, being dead, getting older suddenly looks much more appealing. But there are times when what seems like a simple, gradual process that you have plenty of time to get used to suddenly throws up a mile marker that startles you.  This one happened to me last summer.

Like many (many many many) people, there is a Starbucks near where I work. Like man (many many many) people, I stop in there frequently. There's a young guy who works there, a graduate student in architecture. Based on my interactions with him there, and more so at the library where he helped us out over a semester with some of our architecture collections, I knew he was intelligent, quick-witted, reliable, nice, funny. Last summer he joined this group that bikes across the US, stopping to help work on affordable housing projects at various places along the way. His colleagues at Starbucks put up a flier about it so people could donate, with a link to his blog, where I learned more about him: that he was an Americorps volunteer, worked with Habitat for Humanity, has a lovely philosophy about making people's lives better, likes to draw, and a number of other very appealing things, all of which summed up to his being a genuinely remarkable young man.

Oh, and did I mention he's also very cute? Shaggy brown hair, nice eyes, sweet smile, etc.

Now, for the last several many decades (exactly how many, modesty prohibits me from disclosing), all of this would immediately have spawned the thought, "Wow, I would love to go out with this guy."

This time? The very first thought that crossed my mind was, "Wow, how amazing would it be to have a son like that? I would be so proud..."

This was quite a shock, let me tell you. I mean, I knew I'd reached the point where my boss is younger than I am, but I had no idea I had crossed the Rubicon from having men in the world that were too old to date, to having men in the world that were too young to date. And it came upon me so unexpectedly and so fully-formed -- it wasn't like I had some sort of internal debate about it, it was just a done deal.

The aftershocks still haven't quite settled out in my mind nearly a year later. Even writing it down makes me feel rather odd. So I think a cup of tea and some chocolate is in order.  And perhaps some voting on English men :)

We attempted two unusual movies over the weekend. One was an utter failure and the other a rousing success. The first was Stalker (warning: link has spoilers), a subtitled (strike 1) 1970s (strike 2) Russian sci-fi flick which appeared from it sepia tones to have been filmed in the 1940s (strike 3) and which had not a single line of dialog for the first ten minutes (Yer out!!). The premise ("an expedition led by the Stalker to bring his two clients to a site known as the Zone, which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires") sounded intriguing but the execution left a lot to be desired. Plus we weren't in a subtitley mood, so after 15 minutes we called the game on account of "Meh."

The second, however, was intriguing and I highly recommend it. It's called Ink, and came out in 2009. Visually it's unusual and striking -- overexposed in parts, strange fades in and out, abrupt scene shifts back and forth in time, and events are rather subtle in that you have to be patient but also pay close attention to comprehend events. Very much like a dream, which is apt since the story is about two factions, one group that brings good dreams and another that brings nightmares. The story concerns a little girl who is kidnapped by the scrofulous raggedy-robed Ink, who intends to give her as payment to a mysterious group known as The Assembly (they're the ones that bring nightmares), in exchange for beauty, wealth and happiness.

There are also Storytellers and Pathfinders -- one of the best scenes is one in which the Pathfinder "conducts" a series of coincidences to create the situation they need. They travel by means of doors, which they open by playing rhythms on small drums. And the child who plays the little girl is extraordinary: both adorable and fierce, like a tiny Gryffindor.

There's a psychological element to the movie as well, because what's happening in the real world and the dream world interact and affect each other. I don't want to say to much more for fear of spoiling it, but it's a wonderful and thought-provoking movie. (As you might guess, it never made the mainstream theatres but played the art house and film festival circuit.)

Anyway, I highly recommend it. It's not a traditional movie where the storyline is blatantly obvious, but it's well worth the time and patience to experience it.

My lm_hgficxchange gift fic posted, and it's absolutely wonderful! It's from the pen of the talented rivertempest and she has outdone herself. The story has all my favorite things: clever plot, witty/snarky banter, a little UST, and Lucius in some truly monumentally funny situations. I laughed until I cried at the herbal tea and the men's wear :D

Go forth now and read Equal Opportunity -- you won't be sorry :)

Tired of paging through multiple chapters of a long fic? Wishing there was an easier way to put a long fic together other than copy-paste-copy-paste (repeat ad nauseum)? Or maybe you just prefer to hold a tiny lightweight Kindle instead of hunching over a laptop? FRET NO MORE!! I give you the fabulous fanfic compilation tool FLAG (Fanfic Lightweight Automatic Grabber).

Enter the URL of any chapter of the story you want, from any one of 24 popular websites (soon to be 30 or more; sycophanthex is upcoming, I know because I emailed and asked!), choose your format (epub, mobi, PDF, HTML), click Download, and poof! You get a lovely file with all chapters in order, complete with copyright statement and TOC. You can even have them emailed straight to your Kindle! How geek-cool is that?

Go. Try. Give some love to the creator, who does it all for the geeky fun of it (but also appreciates paypal donations). And enormous thanks to madeleone for alerting me to it.

I have another "reptilian hindbrain" surprise, but I think I'll save that in favor of one that I was reminded of last night as we were watching Supernatural (digression: Yay the Impala!) and enjoying the classic rock music.

When you're a kid, you think all grownups are old and boring. They do boring thing like go to work and pay bills, and the things they do for fun are a real snooze, like going out to dinner. Right? And then at some point something happens, and you are amazed to find that hey, they're not that different from you, and you get your first inkling that the gap between kid and grownup isn't some unbridgeable chasm, on the other side of which Grownup You will be some unrecognizably alien and different being from Kid You. Instead it's a continuum, a long and a winding road with no gaps, just slow changes, and for the first time you can (sort of) picture yourself somewhere up ahead on that road.

This happened to me when I was about thirteen. I babysat one night for a couple that I thought of as "old" because they were married and had a baby, though of course they were probably in their early 20s. As per usual, the husband had picked me up at my house around dinnertime, so then when they got home he gave me a ride back to my house. On the way home he had the radio on. We're putt-putting along, I'm kind of sleepy because it's late, and all of a sudden he says, "Oh man, I love this song, do you mind if I turn it up?" Of course I said "No," and he cranks the volume and the windows are practically vibrating to the beat of The Knack's My Sharona.

Now I loved that song as well (still do, actually -- shameful secret LOL!), and of course one must listen to at a very high volume :) So I distinctly remember the surprise I felt at this: A sedate grown-up wanting to blare loud rock music?? What is this??? Grownups don't do that!!! And for the first time I could actually imagine myself becoming a grownup, because here was something that I liked and (apparently) they liked too, at least some of them.

That husband probably didn't think of himself as very different from what he'd been as a kid; looking back, that long and winding road is easy to see. Looking forward, though, it's unimaginable: how will I change, across that gulf separating Now from Then? What will I be when I'm done? Will I even recognize myself? This was my first clue that there is no chasm, no gulf, no sudden transformation: just the drip-drip-drip of accumulated little changes, a thousand-mile journey composed of one small step after another.

It was a strange sensation, almost like a snatch of time travel, seeing through the eyes of Future Me...

I've just come off three very intense weeks editing a 300+ page tome for a client -- excellent content but the wording/phrasing needed considerable massaging, plus there was a good bit of fact-checking he wanted done (well there would be with 600+ footnotes, wouldn't there?). So the last three weeks have been 9-5 "real job" and then 6-midnight freelance job. I've hardly spoken to Spouse other than to mumble "Pizza or chinese? Can you go get it?", I've had zero time to read (fic or otherwise), and have subsisted mostly on coffee and take-out. Blargh.

The deadline was yesterday and I delivered, so tonight I came home and had NOTHING TO DO. Do you hear me? NOTHING AT ALL, I was free to do what I wished to do. I got to cook! I got to read!! I got to have a glass or two of wine and play with the kittehs!!! I got to read all eleventy billion prompts at sshg_exchange!!!!!! Plus, as a bonus, I got to go a bit sentimental over tonight's episode of Big Bang Theory. "Oyyyy veeeeeyyyyy!" and *gasp* Sheldon took Amy's hand :D

Indeed, I am a happy camper.

Tomorrow I get back on track with LJ and posting my 100 Surprises. Teaser: The next two, or maybe three, will involve the reptilian hindbrain. I'm sure you just can't wait...