I cannot wait these days to turn 30! Then I may put away all pretense of being marriageable and concentrate on my interests.

– Letter from the mid- 1800′s, quoted by Betsy Israel in Bachelor Girl

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

On Turning 30

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I’m so pleased to be included in this. My submission for A Torn Page stands alone, but I think it will eventually be part of a loose collection of myth-related short fiction that I’ve been working on. (The first, The Age of All-Nighters was in In The Snake’s October 2011 issue)

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So Fine And Subtle Were They

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The next hours are  a blur of reading Snow Crash on the plane, wrapping myself up in the cyberpunk awesome and starting to giggle. I also brought my Beijing bookstore edition of Out of Africa, because even through I’m fascinated with social gaming and the wild new uses for gaming tech, I still have a low-gadget expat side.

The next morning, I literally walk down the Hollywood Walk of Fame to the studio, where I meet wildly talented guys and have amazing conversations about gameplay and the future. I think, again, of Hiro Protagonist, and although everyone is quite nice to me, I feel nervous, like the cool kids are letting me sit at their table.

My boss interrupts to tell me we have a last-minute demo in Santa Monica, could I stop what I’m doing and come with him to help?  And also could I help him get directions?

“Actually, boss, I have a GPS in my purse…”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Conflict and Resolution

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Despite having highwaymen, attempted ravishment by said highwaymen, a tragic blindness that turns out to be temporary, a tragic deafness that turns out to be temporary, tragic miscarriage, secret babies, secret babies who are the product of the lord of the manor and a commoner, dubious paternity, tragic death of the unfortunate maid before said dubious paternity can be resolved, surprise paternity that creates creepy incest in the original book, sex scenes that are more cringe-y than steamy, metaphors that cry out for a thesaurus, and a whole host of bad period-romance cliches, almost two-thirds of Linda Berdoll’s Mr Darcy Takes A Wife is acceptable train reading.

The final third is when all characters become completely unbearable caricatures of themselves.  Mr. Collins dies when, upset over a ridiculous hunting accident that has left Mr. Darcy (tragically and temporarily) deaf, he goes for a walk, upsets his beehives and runs from a swarm of angry bees into a cowpond. As he flails in the muddy water, Charlotte’s cape, which Mr. Collins has unaccountably worn to tend the bees, becomes waterlogged and he drowns face-down in the mud. His corpse is found by the sighting of his upraised legs in the muck.

I’m oddly impressed with the author for working that in with a straight face.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife

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Then the other day, John from Sinosplice asked how I made my What I’m Playing widget over there on the side, and I had to admit it was a cut-and-paste from BigFishGames and Amazon. But it made me think about adding a booklist widget.

I’ve installed Now Reading Reloaded, a nice plugin that lets you add an ISBN, and it will fill out all the rest of the info, and get a nice cover picture from an Amazon search. I tinkered with the sidebar display for a while but now I’m really happy with it. And that was hardcore tinkering! With php! Be impressed! But I’m not really skilled, so I can’t figure out how to reverse the order of books displayed to show the most recent, instead of the oldest. Of course I can backdate whichever 5 books are my favorites, but that invalidates all the cool library functions. I added all the books I’ve read so far this year, which turned out to be 11.

It may sound like a lot, but I read almost every night before I go to sleep, and also, there’s a slight possibility that maybe I slack off at work a little.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Reading List

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Heaven, in The Lovely Bones, is a non-religious afterlife where everything is just as you want. Susie encounters a heavenly intake counselor, a former non-profit caseworker whose heaven is working for people who thank and appreciate her, and a heavenly roommate, a Vietnamese girl whose heaven includes speaking accentless English and having an American name. Unfortunately for me, Susie’s own heaven was the least appealing one described, involving a townful of dogs (I think this proves I have no heart but I can’t really get into all the maintenance required for slobber machines), but the details here, like the 14-year-old reading of Seventeen or the smells she most loved on earth, make any reader imagine their own heaven, without harps and angels, but perhaps the smell of new plastic and endless brand-new scenes in the Harry Potter movies. At least for me.

Susie leaves heaven to watch her friends and family. She watches her sister learn of her death, and grow up as dead Susie’s younger sister in school and around town. She visits her siblings, parents and school friends, watching them live their lives for years, and appearing, now and then, in a reflection or for a second at the corner of their eyes.

She also watches her high-school crush, Ray Singh. The relationship between Susie and Ray is absolutely perfect. High school relationships in books and movies tend to appear as whirlwind perfection or unwatchable awkwardness. (I do pull the embarrassment pillow over my face when this happens, but this isn’t always effective, since my father and my boyfriend both like to narrate movies as they unfold.) The Lonely Bones perfectly captures the awkward beauty of teenage connection without turning either Ray or Susie into a caricature.

Susie also watches the man who killed her. She learns his habits, and his history, even meeting in heaven a collection of other girls and women murdered by this man.  Descriptions of him are almost sympathetic, which is the most disturbing part of the book, far creepier than Susie’s rape and murder. As Susie is almost omniscient in heaven, she looks through his life. In a book like this, with characters that are so fully developed, it seemed weird to track the killer’s life back to his mother’s abandonment, transferring the blame for all the deaths (and Susie is one of a long line) not on the killer, but on his mother.

Without giving too much away, Susie’s father and sister determine her killer,  but readers are brought not to revenge or retribution, but to healing. The story ends with a satisfying conclusion, a conclusion that’s more of a beginning than a resolution.

I have to wonder how this story will translate to a film. I can read about Susie’s death and be moved by it, but I don’t think I want to see it. This is entirely different from my usual skittishness towards movies based on books I enjoyed, I’m not worried that the filmmakers won’t show it the way I pictured it in my head, I’m worried that the filmmakers will show it at all. Tragedy and violence are moving on the page, but usually gratuitous and messy on the screen.

I also wonder how Susie’s appearances to her family and friends will translate to a movie. I’m reminded of the topiaries in The Shining, which terrified me in the book, tickling that creepy sense that something is moving just beyond our field of vision, but somehow killer shrubs just looked goofy on film. I found The Lovely Bones gentle and disturbing by turns, and it will be interesting to see how it appears in a movie.

The folks at Ology asked me to write a book review as part of their Lovely Bones Book Club, and, once I was assured that I could bash it if I hated it (What? I’ve been known to trash a bad book), I agreed happily.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Lovely Bones

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Look, another post where I hold up something to which I’ve contributed to in a tiny way!

My Craftsman Farms blog and I are mentioned in this business communications textbook! I’m on page 5, so this will be covered early enough in the semester that everyone will be on top of their reading assignments!

When I got this book… oh, who exactly am I kidding here? When I was doing my happy dance around the apartment and pointing this out to Stick over and over, I wondered why the book didn’t include any links to these social media projects. Yes, I forgot that paper doesn’t have hyperlinks. I should really consider getting out more.

The paragraph isn’t entirely clear on this, but I’m in Cary, NC, not the Stickley Museum.

Related:

Business Communication Today (10th Edition) on Amazon

Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms blog

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Textbook Case

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Now, I love Pride and Prejudice.The story is an understated comedy of formal manners and romantic expectations, plus nerdy girls everywhere agree that Mr Darcy is a catch. I love it because it also shows that the clever use of sarcasm can make any difficult situation better.

I was excited for some more brilliant Elizabeth / Darcy banter, and I was interested in seeing how the relationship matured. Would seventeen years of marriage to Elizabeth get Darcy laughing and lighthearted, or would she find that the dark, sarcastic, brooding type can be hard to live with? Are Jane and Bingley cheated by every servant, as Mr. Bennett predicted at the end of Pride and Prejudice?

I was hoping that bookish Mary would have some bluestocking friends and perhaps meet a nice professor or author for her love interest. Instead, she is kidnapped first by highwaymen, then by Darcy’s brutish secret half-brother, and finally spends most of the book held hostage by, um, a human-sacrifice cult living in the huge underground caves near Pemberley! (The Darcys just have endless skeletons in their closets, don’t they?). I had to check a couple times to make sure I was reading an actual novel and not internet fanfic.

The understated comedy was gone. Instead, characters with the same names as my beloved Bennett sisters had emotional blowup after emotional blowup. A blunt and uncontrolled Elizabeth Bennett Darcy shouting mediocre insults? Huh? Antisocial Darcy — who goes by the cutesy nickname Fitz — is networking with the house of lords as part of his campaign for prime minister, and trying to keep both his thuggish half-brother and mad, alcoholic Lydia Bennett Wickham a secret. One clever moment, when Caroline Bingley is dispatched to deal with pushover Jane and Bigley’s unruly children, is canceled out by bizarre actions by characters we know and love.

Writing a sequel to such a well-loved story would be difficult no matter what, and subject to readers insisting that that’s not what Jane / Elizabeth / Darcy / Mary would really have done. But, come on, a human sacrifice cult? In Derbyshire?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett

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