My Best Week: Not the Books, but the Readers

My Best Week number TWO!

What do you know—it's about books. I'm liking this trend.

So LAST last week there was a glut of fantastic YA book events in DC, starting with Libba Bray's Politics and Prose event for the release of THE DIVINERS…

…and continuing through the weekend's National Book Festival on the mall with JOHN GREEN and LOIS LOWRY and MAGGIE STIEFVATER (and a dozen others).

I don't bring my camera to these things; I apologize.

But really, pictures aren't the point! The point is, I had the opportunity to listen to intelligent, witty authors whose work I admire, in the company of intelligent, witty FYA@DC book club friends (and on Sunday, a long-abroad, just-moved-to-DC, dear teen-hood friend).

Not to mention, I got to see Nerdfighteria nuclear-grade meltdowns at the mere APPEARANCE of John Green*. Not since I saw BSB in their hey-day have I seen so many teen-girl-tears—although this time the tears weren't, thank goodness, mine.

[nostalgia for sale here, if you were so inclined]

Despite John Green's nerdstar status, however, the highlight of my NBF experience has to be watching this pattern unfold in the teen tent on Saturday, in the questions&comments period following each author's talk:

Commenter 1 (to Walter Dean Myers, Library of Congress Children's Literature Ambassador, author of 105 published novels, beloved by many generations): I just loved [insert book title here], and how you wrote the characters, and how…and how… [breaks down into tears]…and I just wanted to thank you, and…

WDM: [serious, gracious, patient] Thank you. 

 Commenter 2 (to Lois Lowry, author of the award winning hard-hitters THE GIVER and NUMBER THE STARS, venerable and beloved by many, etc. etc.): The experience of reading your books, and the heart you put into them, and…[voice breaks with emotion]…I just wanted to thank you so much…

LL: [serious, gracious, patient] Thank you.

Commenter 3 (to Maggie Stiefvater, current YA star and author of many beloved books, including the very moving Printz honor winner, THE SCORPIO RACES): I…[pause]…

Maggie: [incredulous] Are you CRYING?!?**

Maggie Stiefvater, ladies and gentlemen. Classic.

Annnnd then we all went for pizza. FYA girls, not Maggie (we wish).

And there's My Best Week, numero dos! See you allllll later.

* srsly: check out the NBF Tumblr tag for proof.

** though I will hasten to point out, while abrupt, this was not mocking or negative—whatever the commenter WAS doing (I couldn't see over there), Maggie's response broke the ice in a GOOD way. I promise.

Ghosting…erm, GUESTING at The Adventures of Cecilia Bedelia

Me writing words for blogs, TWICE in one week? Clutch your pearls, folks!

It's all steampunk all the time at The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia this week, and I have a guest post up today, in which I wax erratic (and maybe MAYBE a bit poetic) on the inimitable talents of Kelly Link and Libba Bray and the beauty of writing genre stories in which the genre is incidental.

STEAMPUNK! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

Go read about it!

A Good Day to Die

Or, Things That Happened in the Last Twenty-four Hours.

I...

1) ...gave a poorly planned "guest lecture" in my adviser's Prison/Siberian Lit class, that mostly consisted of my sitting in a desk and pretending to be an expert on Shukshin's Siberian "oddball" character.

2) ...unintentionally finished the first two seasons of the BBC's ROBIN HOOD, which meant embracing pure cheese, cringing through the sheriff's screeching awfulness, getting pumped up by the title music, and COMPLETELY FALLING FOR Marian and Robin's love story.*



3) ...successfully defended my master's thesis, which resulted in me *actually* proving my ability to be an expert on Shuksin's oddballs and so much more.

Yes, The Thesis. It's done. Well, save for some revisions, and general nitpicky formatting.

So. There's that.

Obviously, to celebrate, I danced my way through this COMPLETELY UN-SIBERIAN song:

And now, back to writing the mystery WIP...


*Marian and Robin will get their own post later in the week, once I've had some time to corral my thoughts. And to decide whether or not to watch the Marian-less third season...

Tested and found KLASS*

Well, at least that is what I am assuming. My harshest critic "thoroughly enjoyed" reading my thesis exam, and I figure, if you can get a historian of the Soviet experience of WWII and survival-economy black market structures – who writes her class tests with a punitive eye (her phrasing) – to thoroughly enjoy an exam response, you're pretty much set.

So now I just have a thesis to go. And piles of grading. But spring term has yet to start, so I am going to revel in pretend freedom for one more day. *revelrevelrevelrevel*

Thus far, my reveling has consisted of returning two dozen Russianish books to the school library, taking out two dozen fun books out from the public library, making and eating a reduced (size, not taste) recipe of Muddy Buddies, and looking like a loon laughing out loud to the WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON audiobook while walking around Eugene. Happily, the key to that last thing is that I am in Eugene: there are far, far crazier people on any given sidewalk than I ever could be.

Also, I have been creaking back into my WIPs. For all the flurry of ideas that stormed in my brain over the last two+ weeks of forced hiatus, I am not finding my return to be easy. I love what I have, but I'm kind of annoyed that I actually have to work to move anything forward. WORK IS SO OVERRATED.

So instead of anything pithy to say about writing, I want to give you all this:

This started as a joke in an email to my ridiculously hipster friend going to grad school in Malmö (these feather extensions are EVERYWHERE in Eugene, and we can't be the only ones), but once I saw these videos, it became worryingly less silly.

I mean, this is SILLY:

But all the blatant silliness somehow kind of... works?

What if I get feather extensions, you guys? I'm a little worried this might maybe happen. Even though it absolutely, absolutely should not.

... or should it?

GAH. BacktowritingWIP.

Also, enjoy Russian slang:

*as defined by my favorite fingertip dictionary, Multitran:

класс! сущ. в начало
Майкрософт	Wow!
сл.	stunning; the nertz; the nuts; kick ass

(but I will not go a step further and try to figure out what "the nertz" means. WE ALL NEED SOME MYSTERY.)

A placeholder for the dark weeks

With both the end of the regular school term and my comprehensive literature exam in less than two weeks, I am going (and have been) social networking dark, but in the absence, I leave you with this short(ish) TED talk on the future of learning, which answers the question: if, in an age of a knowledge surplus, schools are no longer the place students have to go to find said knowledge, what is the purpose of going?

The idea of allowing students to make mistakes is far-reaching, and incredibly important in the writing process: it is what the first draft (or second or third) is for. You do it once to find out how things work; you do it again to make those things work well.

So with that, see you in a couple weeks.

Enjoy!

Speaking of marginalia…

There was a lovely look at the role of marginalia in paperbound books today in the NYT, which continues my discussion from yesterday on the role of the reader as participant and not just observer in a text:

"Studs Terkel, the oral historian, was known to admonish friends who would read his books but leave them free of markings. He told them that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation."

I am not at all a part of the Russian-order, monologic school of reading and learning.  I adore used books, and borrowed books; I love engaging with previous readers and the author (himself, too, technically a previous reader) when diving into a new book, and I leave my own dogears and underscoring and marginal exclamations in for the next reader – even if that next reader is me, a few years down the road.

There is so much to learn from how others engage with material, much of which is related to the sensory, tactile experience of holding a book and seeing grease smudges and fingernail scoring and little rips in the pages that can't be replicated in the digital form.  I have nothing but positive thoughts for ebooks and the possibilities digital publishing affords, but I can't imagine a world without marginalia, and without a conversation between readers over time.  In this way, I absolutely agree with one of the voices in the article:

"David Spadafora, president of the Newberry, said marginalia enriched a book, as readers infer other meanings, and lends it historical context. “The digital revolution is a good thing for the physical object,” he said. As more people see historical artifacts in electronic form, “the more they’re going to want to encounter the real object.”"

My own experience with marginalia is rich, and funny, and dear, but one incident stands out in recent memory: reading the Dostoevsky novella, Notes from the Underground, I came across a note I had taken down in undergrad, in response to the Underground Man's comment, "Haven't you noticed that the most refined bloodshedders are almost always the most civilized gentlemen to whom all these Attila the Huns and Stenka Razins are scarcely fit to hold a candle[…]?"

My advisor was Finnish and crazy, and apparently had this to add to the discussion:

The huns… not a pleasant people.

I about died laughing when I found it during this second reading.  Even Dostoevsky can be funny, with marginalia kept in tact.

So any other marginal anecdotes out there? Am I in the minority, loving to mark up books and to read others' vandalism?

Do I get a badge?

I have an official writing injury!

Not only that, but one of the treatments from the physical therapist is a BATTERY-POWERED BANDAGE. Dudes and ladies! We totally live in the future.

(localized electro-magnetic cortisone... patch)

In what wasn't-related-but-now-is news, here is a lovely summary of Sara Zarr's SCBWI keynote talk (which I only followed on the twitter chatter of those attending, obviously) from the Notes from the Slushpile blog. My favorite two take-aways were:

1) Your creative life is one of the only things that you really and truly own,

and

2) There is no artistic romance in being self-destructive (i.e., take care of yourself)

Ha. Well, over-extending myself typing isn't really self-destructive, and I am fanatical about eating greens and sleeping, so. I think I'm good.