Deadlines. I've Got Deadlines.

I feel overwhelmed by looming deadlines this morning. This scene from The Pit and the Pendulum comes to mind, in all its Roger Corman–imagined glory:



And now I will stop feeling and get back to working. Must halt that pendulum so I can hop up from the desk, relatively unscathed, in time to truly enjoy a bit of this holiday season.

A Brief Musing on "Busy"

I'll keep it brief because I'm — you guessed it — BUSY. I'm just wondering this morning, what is it about "busy" that always seems to attract more of the same? Why, when you have, for example, four deadlines in the first three days of the week, are you inundated with availability inquiries from clients (communications you'd rather not put off), personal calls/emails/invitations (stuff you want to focus on), and a growing list of must-suddenly-do-nows around the house?

What do you think? Do all these things always hover within your sphere but simply become more noticeable when a confluence of outside demands appears? Or does the "busy" energy you're putting out into the universe actually spark something that makes other people/forces seek you out?

Naturally, now — as my busy factor peaks — is the absolute best time to stop and try to get philosophical about . . . anything.

Before I get back to it, I want to give a quick shout out to any UW editorial certificate students checking out the blog: Hi if you're out there — fun to talk at you last night!

Award Winners' Circle

Has the weekend started yet? No? Dang.

While you wait, enjoy these articles about a few of this week's big kid-lit award winners:

ALA press release about Laura Ingalls Wilder winner Ashley Bryan

All Things Considered article and audio interview with Coretta Scott King Author winner Kadir Nelson

The Brown Bookshelf interview with CSK–John Steptoe winner Shadra Strickland

Just One More Book podcast interview with Newbery winner Neil Gaiman

NYT review of author-illustrator Uri Shulevitz's Caldecott Honor Book

PW interview with Neil Gaiman

PW piece on Caldecott winner Beth Krommes

Reading Rockets video interview with Kadir Nelson

SLJ interview with Newbery Honor Book author Kathi Appelt

Teenreads.com profile of Newbery Honor Book author Jacqueline Woodson

Literary Meme

I could use a distraction this Wednesday morning, so I'm posting a meme that's been floating around the blogosphere for a few months, especially on writer blogs.

The inspiration for the meme: The NEA reported that American adults have, on average, read just 6 out of the (NEA-selected) top 100 literary works of all time. So bloggers started posting their own "scores."

You can see from my list that I've read fewer than half the titles. Is that good? Is it bad considering my profession? Does it matter?

I don't know . . . although I read quite a few on my own, I can claim many of these reads only because they were educational and/or occupational requirements. I enjoyed all of them, though. And I've read gazillions of works not mentioned (including stuff I personally think should be on a list of musts), as have most writers and reading-inclined adults I know.

I haven't looked into the NEA's specific concerns re the list — as in whether they feel adults should have been exposed to these works in school or should be seeking them out in lieu of watching American Idol (a winning idea, btw). But reading is good no matter what. And playing with lists is fun!

The instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold the titles you have read. (For books I started but didn't finish, I've bolded a roughly proportionate amount of text.)

2) Place an asterisk* next to the books you LOVED.

3) Flag those you've read multiple times.

4) {Bracket} the titles you have viewed in the form of a movie/miniseries.

5) Reprint this list on your blog.

1. {Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*}
2. {The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien*}
3. {Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*} (5)
4. {Harry} Potter Series - J. K. Rowling (I'm reading Book 4 now.)
5. {To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*}
6. The Bible
7. {Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*} (3)
8. 1984 - George Orwell (2)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. {Great Expectations - Charles Dickens} (3)
11. {Little Women - Louisa May Alcott*} (4)
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. {Catch-22 - Joseph Heller*}
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien* (2)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger (2)
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. {Middlemarch - George Eliot*}
21. {Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell}
22. {The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald}
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. {War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy}
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
26. {Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh}
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. {Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll}
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame* (4)
31. {Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy}
32. {David Copperfield - Charles Dickens}
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
34. {Emma - Jane Austen}
35. {Persuasion - Jane Austen}
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis* (2)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. {Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden}
40. {Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne}
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving*
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins*
46. Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
47. Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood* (2)
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding* (2)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. {Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen}
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. {Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck}
62. {Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov}
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones
65. {Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas}
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. {Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding}
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. {Moby Dick - Herman Melville}
71. {Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens}
72. {Dracula - Bram Stoker}
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett* (2)
74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath*
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. {Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray}
80. Possession - A. S. Byatt
81. {A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*}
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. {The Color Purple - Alice Walker}
84. {The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro}
85. {Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert}
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. {Charlotte's Web - E. B. White*} (3)
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. {The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*}
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams* (2)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. {The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas}
98. {Hamlet - William Shakespeare} (5)
99. {Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl}
100. {Les Miserables - Victor Hugo*} (2)

The New Mac|Life Is Here!

Sad, maybe, but seeing the February issue of Mac|Life in my mailbox made my little blinked-and-it's-almost-over day. This cover image is of last month's issue, which I missed as I waited to see when my new subscription would start.

Biz-publication-wise, the only other paid subscriptions I keep up anymore are for The Writer magazine (I just noticed that I'm paid through 2013 — not sure how that happened) and Children's Writer newsletter. And those tend to pile up on my desk waiting for a browse. As much as I love the print version of Publishers Weekly, I can't stay on top of reading or recycling it, so I recently let that one go; I get more good out of its free email newsletters anyway.

Carry on!

Plug for the Literacy Site

Have you visited the Literacy Site recently? I hadn't clicked on it for quite some time, but I "went there" today to tie up some loose ends on the holiday shopping front. I'm glad I did because I found a few "just the thing"s.

I get no benefit from plugging them, but I thought other book/education lovers might like some of the site's gift options, especially those in which you give a donation and they direct 100% of the money toward providing books for needy children, sending Afghani girls to school . . . and even heating that school for the winter. They have other options of that type, all very affordable. And they also donate books with any merchandise purchase. Have a look!

Thanksgiving Tidbits

Some info I collected while researching my book Pilgrims in America (Rourke, 2007) last year:

In October 1621, the 50 Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, celebrated their settlement and a successful autumn harvest with a 3-day "feast of thanksgiving." There are only two known eyewitness accounts of that celebration.

The Pilgrims invited 90 Wampanoag Indians, who gifted their hosts with fish, clams, oysters, lobsters, deer, and wild turkeys. The Pilgrim provided foods such as ducks, geese, wild berries, cabbage, corn, beets, radishes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, and turnips.

Contrary to popular myth, the Pilgrims did not hold a similar feast the next year. Thanksgiving would not become an official national holiday for another 242 years. During the interim, several U.S. presidents, including George Washington in 1777, declared one-time national Thanksgiving celebrations. New York introduced an annual statewide holiday in 1817. And Abraham Lincoln used his 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation to assign a permanent holiday to the last Thursday in November. He likely chose that date to correspond with the Pilgrims' November 21, 1620, landing at Cape Cod. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a time-frame change to the fourth Thursday in November to give people and businesses more time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Congress approved the change in 1941, and we've observed the holiday then ever since.

Safety First

Just got back from a morning research run. As I (slowly) made my way from the library back to the main city roads, I remembered this series of photos from the route. (My husband took them last year.) The important safety warning is always appropriate and, I thought, perfect for a Wednesday chuckle.

I Am the Sonnet

I just clicked on a link to a personality test sent to me today. The idea is that you answer several multiple choice questions, and the results compare you to your most compatible poetry form. Okay. Why not. When you finish, the site then gives you some html to paste into your own site so you can share your personal form with the world (and send others to the test).

Here's what came up for me:

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?