The Getting Clever Project

 Steve Jobs' Life By Design by George Beahm. This book does not contain the text of the 2005 commencement speech. The author takes that speech as a starting point and tries to illuminate various sections with additional information and anecdotes from Jobs' life. The author is clearly a fan of Jobs and wants to share that enthusiasm. Jobs is undoubtedly a visionary and a brilliant inventor. But learning details about him as a husband and father, I came away thinking less of him as a man. Perhaps it was simply the author's style, with too much of a gloss. Watch the video on YouTube and learn what the man wanted to share from his own lips. 

NaNoWriMo cut significantly into my reading time. For the record, my final word count for November was a tad over 36,200. I'm still working on it - I think there's a good story in there. My Censor kicked in, so I have gone back and edited some more. It's probably shorter but I've advanced the narrative

If anyone has been thinking about memoir writing, Simon & Schuster, the Huffington Post, and AARP are sponsoring a contest. You need to be born before Dec. 31, 1964. Due date for submitting the first 5,000 words is February 15 and the rules are here http://blog.aarp.org/2013/12/23/write-your-memoir-to-win-a-book-contract/

My book count for the year ended at 168, not including a few rereads. To be honest with you, I think that stupid Candy Crush game ate up more of my reading time over the last two months than NaNoWriMo did. I should delete the app.

For a few weeks prior to the start of NaNoWriMo, I was thinking about the writing process. I read a couple of books by well-known authors about their approaches and a couple of books with writing exercises so that I could limber up my mind and fingers, as it were.

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. The book collects a series of lectures he gave in 1927. It's a classic: he analyzes story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. The story appeals to our curiosity, the plot to our intelligence, and pattern appeals to our aesthetic sense. Values come from people. I loved the way he took chronology out of his analysis. The image of all those authors gathered in one room was highly entertaining on several levels.

Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood. An interesting book. She explores who writers are writing for, why they do it, and where it comes from. She concludes that writing is about entering the darkness and illuminating it. She doesn't cover the hows or wheres but why. She has interesting things to say about the role of the reader and also about the role commerce plays. This is also a compilation of lectures she gave.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg. A collection of short essays on writing. She covers a wide variety of topics including where to write, exercises to get started, writing buddies, and the importance of listening. There's some repetition but it's helpful overall. I also enjoyed her occasional discussions of Zen practices.

The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron. This book is very specifically about the writing process. At the end of each short chapter she has writing exercises. I liked the examples she drew from her own life and the insights she had into the writing process. I like the way she rooted her process into her locale.

19 jokes only grammar nerds will understand
http://www.buzzfeed.com/aj8/19-jokes-only-grammar-nerds-will-understand-cfe3

Not really - some of them are pretty obvious. Love the accompanying photos!

Nightingale's Lament, Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth, Hex in the City, Agents of Light and Darkness, and Hell to Pay by Simon R. Green
I went on a Nightside binge this week. The books are quick easy reads. The series features John Taylor with a magical gift for finding things and an attitude about authority. The books are urban detective fantasies, set in an alternate dark London. The plots are pretty basic. The first few books in the series are connected as Taylor tries to find out about his past, especially his mother. I like the secondary characters more than the main one. There's an interesting assortment of minor gods and demons and the people who follow them. Not as nuanced as the Dresden books but in that family.

Buzzard Table by Margaret Maron. One of her Judge Knott series but Sigrid Haraldson makes an appearance. Well written, good characters, interesting plot. Interesting victims who at one point seem to be connected but aren't. Clever motives too. A good entry in the series.

A Glancing Light by Aaron Elkins. A new protagonist - an art expert. Still has the interesting characters and great locales plus some oddments of information I expect from Elkins. Lots of twists in the plot. I like this one. I hope to see more of him.

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg. A book on writing fiction by a romantic author. I had mixed feelings about it. Some of the chapter were really interesting and helpful, others not so much.

And I was massively disappointed by Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.I had high hopes for it because he wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's not worth wasting a minute on.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules for Writing. Short, sweet, and to the point. Pithy advice for writers, with cute cartoons and writers who have earned the exceptions.

The Body in the Piazza by Katherine Hall Page. Nice descriptions of food, somewhat sketchy descriptions of ambiance and scenery. Which is odd because it's Italy after all. Nice puzzle though, so that gets bonus points.

Patience of the Spider by Andrea Camilleri. A good entry in this series. Montalban is feeling introspective after an injury. There is a kidnapping but the resolution is telegraphed early. Still enjoyable t read the unwinding.

Dearie by Bob Spitzer. A biography of Julia Child. Nicely done. It explains some of her foibles, her relationship with her husband, but most of all how she wrote her cookbooks and created the TV shows. I didn't know she was somewhat homophobic but overcame it late in life. She had a complicated but good relationship with Jacques Pepin and she and Madeline Kammen had a lifelong hate going. I got a good sense of her joy in life too. The author sometimes used rather too colloquial words or jarring slang but that's a small quibble. I liked learning about her career with the OSS.

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris. This purports to be the last book in the Sookie series (but I'd bet there will be some novelizations from the show). It ties up some loose ends. I thought it etter than a couple of her more recent entries. We revisit a few old friends to see how they ended up.

The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd. A cleverly executed combination of archaeology and the fantastical. It's based on Schliemann's discovery and excavation of Troy. I loved the characters and milieu he created and the quotes from Homer and Virgil. Well worth reading.

Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly. I've previously enjoyed a number of Barbara Hambly's fantasy and historical fiction books. Here she writes about the first four First Ladies of the US, with Sally Heming appearing instead of Jefferson's late wife. She skips about in time and space and character point of view but she carries it out very well. It's easy to look back on American history now and forget that the new nation faced a host of problems. It was a good read by a good author.

Liars All by Jo Bannister. I've seldom been so disappointed in a writer or a book. The main character, a "strikingly beautiful" woman with two men in thrall - one stereotypically brawny, the other brainy - has been done often and better. One "friendship" is more like Stockholm syndrome. Only in fiction would anyone get away with such nonsense. I've tried three of her books but I'm done.

Flight of Aquavit by Anthony Bidulka. On the other hand I enjoy this series. This book is set early in the series. The setting is unconventional for a private detective - Saskatoon - but that adds to the enjoyment. He's gotten better as the series continued but this was a good entry. I like his characters.

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty. It's been done better. It's a good refresher course but I've read some articles lately that were just as useful. The breezy tone undercut some of her points.

And I can't exactly say I'm reading Modern English Usage by H. W. Fowler. It's more the kind of book you dip in and out of but find endlessly fascinating. Instead of the meaning of words he discusses usage. The first edition in 1926 was groundbreaking. His entries on elegant variation, slipshod extension or really any and all of them are still right on point. It's great browsing if you love words.

I think what my book reviews tell me is that I need characters and good locales to enjoy fiction.

Marvelous article on the use of the serial or Oxford comma here http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/06/30/137525211/going-going-and-gone-no-the-oxford-comma-is-safe-for-now

The Bachelorette examples were particularly funny. "It's perhaps not surprising that a comma that can singlehandedly create human beings can also get people pretty wound up."

But this was the best (capslocks in original post):

AND NO THAT DOESN'T MAKE "IRREGARDLESS" OKAY AND STOP USING "LITERALLY" TO MEAN "FIGURATIVELY" I AM BEGGING YOU.

I need to share this link with the fandom grammar people. It is made of awesome.