Loving Libraries

This is the 65th anniversary of National Library Week. Sixty-five years is a long time, but I think the surprising thing is that it took so long for a National Week to be declared for libraries. They've been around much longer than that.

A collection of about 30,000 clay tablets dating back more than 5,000 years was found in ancient Egypt. We've all heard stories of the great library of Alexandria and felt sorrow that a fire destroyed it. I could go on, spilling out facts of ancient libraries that I found on the internet, but I won't. The history of libraries is fascinating, but what really fascinates me is the whole IDEA of a library. The idea that you can gather in one place all human thought and knowledge is ambitious and, some might even say, arrogant. Arrogant yes, but brilliant. Having access to the accumulated wisdom of great minds over the ages is perhaps modern man's greatest asset.

Maybe even better than the history of libraries is the future of libraries. Many of the institutions we love are falling by the wayside, but I believe libraries will endure. Not in the exactly same form, of course. They will continue to change and evolve to meet the needs of the people who use them. Even in the relatively short time I've been involved with libraries, they've undergone tremendous changes. When I was a child, a library was a hushed, almost reverent, space, a place of respectful quiet - quite a contrast to the library I frequent now, where there's almost always something going on - quite often something noisy. Children, instead of being shushed, are encouraged to participate in activities that can get rowdy, but which foster a love of learning.

Most of these changes I wholeheartedly approve. Some, however, require an attitude adjustment on my part. One of our local library's more recent innovations has been the installation of automatic check-out kiosks. The first time I walked in and didn't see the familiar checkout desk, I was, to put it mildly, startled. And a little nervous. I saw a row of strange-looking mechanical things along the wall. Where was my friendly librarian? Would I be able to learn how to use these newfangled machines? Would they make me look and feel hopelessly outdated? Not a problem. Staff was delighted to help and it turned out to be easier than I expected.

The new system is undeniably more efficient than having to tie up library staff to perform a routine task. Efficient though it is, I'm dragging my feet a bit over this one. I miss the human contact. I've always enjoyed chatting with staff when I check out my materials. I miss having someone say "Oh, you'll like this" or "I've been thinking about reading that book. Tell me how you like it" or "That one's been getting mixed reviews" or ... any of the hundreds of small pleasantries we exchange when dealing with a friendly human. But I guess I'll get used to the new method, just as I've gotten used to other changes. Who knows? I may even learn to like it.

Bottom line - it doesn't matter whether or not I like it; in order to stay alive, an institution has to change and adapt. I know that. More to the point, I still believe the invention of the library is one of mankind's better ideas. Wouldn't it be awful if every generation had to start from scratch?

One thing hasn't changed at my favorite library. This little guy still greets me as I walk from my car to the entrance. He never fails to make me smile.

Happy reading!

Have Books Will Move

Packed on their backs? In boxes too small?

Sandy Cody’s blog for Classic and Cozy Books a few weeks ago spoke of coming home. I’m writing this week about leaving home. 

This is not an uncommon experience for me, my husband or any of our clan. We pull up stakes periodically after establishing ourselves in a town or job, leaving behind good friends who promise to keep in touch and we welcome them to every new home, especially when they bring with them the treasure of shared memories and events—which they always do—or they send their offspring as representatives.

Wherever we go, we embrace the adventure and the chance to explore—not only our new territory but ourselves and our opportunities to meet new friends.

Prepared for packing-by size

The one category of possessions that go where we go? Our books! The number of boxes of books increases with each new home, rarely decreasing, even though I have a fondness for digital books.

A good 70% of the books I hoist into cardboard boxes are non-fiction for research in world and American history. They aren’t known as “heavy reading” without good reason. Some are the ubiquitous “coffee table” books of photographs with captions. These cannot be packed spine to spine. Nor can they be grouped together in larger boxes. The logistics of moving books takes the love of jigsaw puzzles to slip and slot books of all sizes into boxes that can be stacked in a cargo container.

Despite the number of boxes—well-over 50 by now—and the weight, there are very few books that haven’t made the cut. One never knows when a book about herbal medicine, the history of the oldest town in Wales, or quilting in Pennsylvania will be needed. However, an instruction manual for a database program or software application which are no longer current may find a good home with someone else.

As sometimes happens in a writer’s life, we are moving to a state that has attracted my interest as a setting in one of my novels, currently a manuscript—a work-in-progress, titled Dance by the Light of the Moon. Research is one thing, actual physical contact with the fictionalized setting is another.

Having moved so frequently during and since my childhood, I’ve had the extraordinary opportunity to experience places that also inspire my imagination as an adult. Who would have thought that a rock formation in a Welsh forest could spawn an eleven-book historical series?

Or the threat of a tornado in the high plains east of the Rocky Mountains to form the perfect setting for a post-Civil War romance juxtaposed against the lilac groves of the Maine woods?

But what would all those physical settings be without the inspiration of reading books by other writers whose imaginations were sparked by fishing from a small boat in the seas off the Caribbean islands or tramping through the sands of the Sahara in search of lost gold mines?

Children and Reading

by Fran McNabb 

On a visit with our son’s family in Louisiana last month, I was able to read to my grandson’s first grade class. I was the “Mystery Reader,” someone who volunteers to come in to read for about fifteen minutes. 

I loved reading to these children. At one time in my life I was a senior English teacher. I’ve missed the classroom and the interaction with the students, but today I saw another side of education. These students weren’t seventeen-and-eighteen-year-old young adults. These were six-and-seven-year olds. What fun and how totally different.

Senior English consisted of analytical writing and British literature from the classics through the present day. Did these seniors get excited over what I was teaching? Maybe secretly some of them truly loved writing and reading the great authors, but mostly these students just wanted to get through the class so they could graduate.

 In this first grade class the children were excited from the moment I opened the book. I read from a Splat the Cat Halloween book. Most of them had read other Splat the Cat books so they knew what
to expect. Some of the children wanted to interject their own Halloween stories so we allowed them to share at the end of the session. Most told about what they'd be at Halloween.

 I loved, loved, loved seeing the excitement in these children’s eyes. It’s sad to think that with each year, most of them will lose their excitement of reading and learning. What happens in those years? As a realist I know as the children grow, their interests will change. Facing the future takes over the excitement of what to wear for Halloween.

Yes, I’m a realist, but that doesn’t keep me from wanting children and adults to love the idea of getting lost in a book and letting their imagination run wild. If they keep this love  and excitement of reading, they'll always be able to learn about the world around them. When a reader opens a book or turns on an e-reader, he or she will usually be exposed to something new. Even in the sweet romances I write, I hope my readers will learn something new—maybe they’ll learn about a new area of the world, maybe a new way of handling an emotion, or maybe realize there are other people in the world who face the same problems they do.

I hope these bright-eyed children who sat on the floor in their classroom  and listened to me read will hang onto that excitement for as long as possible. I know my son and his wife read to my grandson just about every night. The last time I was visiting he wanted to read to me. What a wonderful gift he is receiving, a gift that will travel with him throughout his life.

FRAN MCNABB is a retired English and journalism teacher who now spends her time writing, reading, painting, and spending time with her two grandsons. She writes sweet romances set on her beloved Gulf Coast and many times has included children in her books. Check her out at www.FranMcNabb.com or at mcnabbf@bellsouth.net

Please Don’t Leave Me Hanging

By Karen McCullough

Warning: Rant Alert!

Like many people with ebook readers, I subscribe to a couple of those newsletters that offer lists of free and low-cost ebooks. Many of their listings aren’t my thing – wrong genres or types of stories that don’t appeal to me. But sometimes there are books that sound interesting, and I’m always on the lookout for good new reads.

I’ve learned to be cautious. If I don’t know the author, I read the free sample. If there’s no sample, I move onto the next offering. I’ve been burned a couple of times by books that sounded interesting, had an intriguing premise, but turned out to be poorly written or badly plotted. To be fair, I’ve also found a couple of new-to-me authors whose books I’ve really enjoyed.

Recently, though, I had a reading experience that left me just purely furious. It was a novella and it was pretty good. I was into it, enjoying the adventure with the characters. And then it stopped. I can’t say it ended because it had no ending. It just quit, with no resolution to the story. In fact, it left our protagonists in an uncomfortable position.

Did I immediately go and buy the next one in the series? No way. The story was pretty compelling, but not enough to overcome my distrust of the author. How could I know whether the next one would wrap up the story? How many books would it take? Does the author even know how it’s going to end?

I can handle a background story that may not be complete in this book as long as the main plot gets some sort of satisfying resolution. Let our heroes win this battle even though they haven’t won the war. I’m find if the author lets the characters accomplish something and take a breather before facing the next challenge.

I don’t mind reading a sample from a book—as long as I know it’s a sample, or part one of the story. I do rather mind paying for it, since essentially it’s just an advertisement to hook me into buying the next one. But, still, I’m okay with it as long as I know going into it that the story ends on a cliffhanger or isn’t complete in this book.

So authors, please!  If you’re going to end your book in the middle of the story, at least make sure it has a big, fat warning label.  Otherwise I’m going to feel betrayed when I get to the end and there is no resolution. And I’m never going to buy a book from you again.

Amended to add:

Because I’m going to be on vacation for the last part of August, I’ve written this well ahead of time and this morning I discovered a similar rant posted here:

http://allaboutromance.com/the-new-age-of-the-series-a-reader-rant/

Why I Read Reviews

Reviews are Everywhere

There are product reviews from apples to zoos and everything in between. I never book a trip without reading hotel reviews on Trip Advisor. I look for clean, a friendly staff, and a good location to the sites I want to visit. Not everyone judges a hotel by the same standards. I have read reviews, both good and bad that have affected my decision. Some are more descriptive than others and definitely get the point across. One hotel reviewer complained of pubic hair in the tub, but had only nice things to say about the hotel. That was enough for me to take it off my list.

The same can be said about book reviews - Not everyone judges a book by the same standards. I may write romance, but I read all genres. I don't expect to find a romance in every book I read.

RWA STAT of the Week

2014 Romance Book Buyer Report | Nielsen and RWA
While one in four [survey] respondents state that they are not influenced by review sources at all, for those who are influenced, Amazon rating/reviews is by far the most prevalent (46%), with no other source mentioned by more than 10% of buyers.
https://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=582

I consider myself part of that 46% who read Amazon reviews. Like the participants in the survey, the story is the number one reason I choose a book.  I like a review that gives a good summary of the story and tells me something about the characters or location. Sometimes, the author's description is not enough. I have no problem with spoilers as long as the reviewer lets me know right away that the review contains a spoiler. It's my decision if I want to read further. I most likely will.

Some readers are bothered by typos and grammar and will let you know in their review. I usually skip those reviews. I don't read as an editor, I read as a reader.  Even the best known authors will have the occasional typo.  Again, I want to know about story and characters when I read a review. 

I definitely don't like nasty reviews or reviews that don't have at least one nice thing to say.  Really... how bad can the book be? Did you like the cover at least?

I've read reviews where the reviewer states right away that she doesn't normally read this genre. She went on to say that she couldn't get in to the story and that's why she gave it a 1 star review. Why even bother?

The number of reviews doesn't impress me. I have found some really good books with only a few reviews. 

Keep reading and if you write reviews be kind. 

When I Started This Writing Gig

What makes a normal kid want to write? I grew up reading fairy tales and telling my own stories. I had no idea that what I found a natural and necessary part of my life was a fundamental part of human experience. From earliest times, humans have told their stories with drawings on cave walls, songs of heroism, tales of struggle and adversity, sonnets of love.

As a child, I had stories roving around in my thoughts from my earliest recollection. My experiences always form some part of my novels, not necessarily in their exact context. Every writer makes use of material from their lives.


One of my lecturers once claimed that new writers too often write about the one thing they know the least about: themselves. However, that is the primary motivation for story-telling, to bring into focus and clarity our individual perceptions of our world.

Many of us keep diaries, journals, personal web logs: what else is an Internet based profile page but a public accounting of our lives and all too often our interactions with others who may not want their personal experience exposed.

Some of these exposés have attained the status of literary efforts, attracting readers and followers beyond their initial purpose, turned into cults, transformed into another communication medium such as film and print.

With the advent of the digital age, there seems to be no barrier to what and when or how a person can expose their innermost thoughts. The cacophony of experience thus laid before us will be of vast importance to historians of the future.

But I suspect most of what we currently call ‘being connected’ will be seen in an entirely different light in future generations, just as we see the very popular entertainment, tableaux, of the Regency and Edwardian periods as archaic and quaint.

Without a doubt, we will still be telling our stories but the form these take will be beyond our present imaginative capabilities.

All the same, we cannot tell our stories without a past upon which to base them and they will have no meaning without the context of our era and our experience of it. We invariably look to the past to inform our present and future. Our natural curiosity compels us to look for meaning and motivation in what we ourselves have seen and felt as well as how that plays out in the scheme of all mankind.

One of my most important experiences was to collect the oral and written histories of women during World War II. We know a good deal about what men experience in war, but reading and hearing about women’s lives at this traumatic time in our not-so-distant past helped me to realize a fundamental fact: we are not so different in our wants and needs from any person who has ever lived upon the earth.

What Joseph Campbell found true about the ancient hero odyssey is true in every story written by modern writers. As Aristotle theorized, every story must have the critical element of truth: not as fact but as interpreted by the listener/reader. Every story is a journey of change: from unknown to known; from apart to bonded; from static to dynamic and all the various ways in which the human joins humanity.


I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, so I keep writing!

Simple Pleasures

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

 It’s been a brutal winter so far, and for some of us it’s far from over. The news has been saturated with shots of gigantic snowdrifts and ice-choked lakes. It’s a dangerous time, when just the simple act of going to work can be life-threatening – if you can get there at all. Even here in the southern part of the country we are coated in ice and a huge number of schools and businesses are simply closed as we struggle to keep warm.

But, once all are well and safe at home, there are compensations. The work of spring – cleaning up and planting the garden, for example – is still safely locked in the future. There is only so much that can be done in the house and, in this season of hunker-down-and-keep-warm there is a disinclination to do housework. (For some of us there is always a disinclination to do housework whatever the season, but that’s the subject for another blog!) The power supply can be iffy, but there are the alternatives of fireplaces and candles and lots of quilts, all in a perhaps unwilling imitation of our pioneer forefathers’ lives.

Don’t get me wrong – I would have made a lousy pioneer. I like my modern conveniences, but still on occasion I can handle the primitive life, if for no other reason than to foster an appreciation of my current electrically powered and well-insulated lifestyle.

When the failure of electricity takes away the TV and radio and computer, we are forced back onto the old methods of amusement – reading, or charades, or board games, or (gasp!) just talking to each other. Of course, you can do these things with the power on, too, but when the power is on families unfortunately tend to fragment into their own spheres.

Whether you have power or not, when you are left to your own devices there is always reading. Even when the weather outside isn't frightful, there is an atavistic comfort in bundling up in quilts, perhaps in front of a cheery blaze if you are fortunate enough to have a fireplace, and reading a book. It doesn’t make any difference if it is a paper or an electronic book, though electronic readers will have to be recharged sometimes, which is a vote on the side of paper books… Anyway, add a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies or, should you be so inclined, a nice hot toddy, and the scene takes on a positively desirable quality.

I realize that it might be considered simplistic or deliberately naïve to even think of taking pleasure from what to so many is close to a national tragedy. On the other hand, my grandmother always said the weather is inevitable, so if it’s going to happen anyway I believe we should go ahead and take what joy we can from it, even as we dream of spring. Happy reading!

Reflections

Recent posts on holiday lights brings to mind an item I read in the newspaper. At that time, I found the column amusing, but now I'm not so sure. The Christmas lights do add to the beauty of holiday decorations and displays. However, all the additional light and intense focus on holiday traditions doesn't always bring happy results.

Any smooth surface around these lights will give off reflections. There's no escape from the image of the gray haired woman staring back at you when you pass a store window or mirror. At first you think the image resembles your deceased mother. Perhaps you turn quickly to get a better glimpse of someone passing on the street behind you, but see no one familiar. You may dust a table or glance at a framed photo and see a reflection of the stranger again. She looks familiar, and yet she doesn't. But she is always there, peeping over your shoulder when you pass a light reflecting surface. When you can't find a favorite book or misplace your keys, you recall how your mother once did the same things.

The impression gets worse when you attempt to pass on family traditions.  Recipes can't be found, or attempts to cook your family favorites go awry. You're desperate to recreate memories from the past, yet your attempts fall short of your expectations.

All the while, that older woman appears behind you like a shadow, and you're certain she is always frowning. You're disappointed at what you consider your failure to rekindle traditions. Yet guests compliment your decorations. Others love the refreshments or ask your secret of creating such a wonderful holiday scent in your home.

But you can be certain not everyone likes the same thing, and that is true of writers and readers. Even the best of friends aren't going to like the same movies, music or books, and that is good news. Each person will notice something different. You may love the extra hint of sage in the holiday stuffing, while your family may love the moist/dry consistency. And you can bet that shadowy image is going to be there, and she will always forget some detail...

The good news is that all readers don't read your book to look for mistakes. Most people read purely for pleasure, and even that reflection in the mirror smiles some of the time.

Now...about those other reflections, the ones you assumed this post was about... Do you look back on the past year and make New Years' Resolutions? 

In a Nif-Tea Mood for Reading

Today's a snow day for me, which allows me to get some reading in. And perfect timing. I got my tea delivery yesterday. Yes, you read that right. My tea delivery. I get a lot of things delivered. Books (naturally), gifts, clothing, coffee, and...tea. 

My daughter turned me on to the Republic of Tea when she went away to school a few years ago and needed her tea fix on a regular basis. I would send her shipments with new flavors and some of them sounded so good, I had to try them for myself. A few sips of Caramel Apple and Pomegranate Vanilla, and I was hooked. So, yes, every month, my girl (now living home again) and I sit with the catalog, fight over the free sample that comes with it, and try to limit ourselves to no more than six flavors per order. It's not easy. They have black tea, green tea, red tea, white tea, herbal tea, and matcha. There's oolong, rooibos, and decaf. Loose tea or bagged. The possibilities are endless! Last month, they started a Downton Abbey collection with specific teas and flavors based on the popular television show. It's enough to make an Anglophile dizzy.

This time around, we grabbed the usual Caramel Apple for me, along with a Kiwi Pear and a Caramel Vanilla; she opted for Goji Raspberry, Chamomile Lemon, and Vanilla Apple Hibiscus. 

I have separate love affairs with tea and coffee. Coffee is my writing beverage. It's an adrenaline rush, a jolt that gets my creative spark awake and sends my fingers flying over the keys. Tea is my reading beverage. It's a slower, settling-in drink. There's something comforting in a cup of tea and a good book--especially when it's cold outside and I'm toasty warm inside. The word "cozy" leaps to mind.

So, yes, while the snow swirls and the wind howls outside, think of me, cozy in front of a roaring fire, a cup of caramel apple tea by my side, my current book open on my lap, a cat purring beside me. Now, if only I could get my husband to wear a waistcoat...