I wrote down everything I read and began writing my own first novel...

This blog aimed to contrast what I was reading in in 1975-79 with the same month, week and day, 30 years later in 2005-2009. I'm leaving the blog up in archive mode, blogging in real time on Live Journal--and still writing novels.

Lynne Murray's Live Journal and Bride of the Dead Blog

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cautiously hopeful...

"I was waiting to call you till I had some good news to report, but there just hasn't been any." That's what I told an old friend when apologized for not having called in a few years. She said her situation was similar. It was bad news that finally got me off the dime to call her (if that expression still makes sense--I didn't use a pay phone to call and it would have cost only a dime if I had. I had heard that the independent bookstore where she's worked for decades will be closing. That sort of bad news is all too common these days.

So I am a bit cautious in saying that I will soon have good news to report on the publishing front soon. I can't say more until things are finalized. Like Emily Dickinson's feathered friend in Hope something somewhere within "sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."

I'll let you know when it's official (and yeah, I hate suspense that trails off to nothing, so if my hopeful publishing news falls through I'll say so).


From December 27, 1978 to January 29, 1979 I read:

Linda Goodman's Love Signs by Linda Goodman
Aiii! Later I even owned a copy. Mostly this book was useful for rationalizing why various romances fell through. Is there a net abbreviation for "rueful laugh"?

Doonesbury's Greatest Hits by G. B. Trudeau

Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man, the Founding of EST by W. W. Bentley, III

Love Kills by Dan Greenberg

The Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holloran

Sane Occultism by Dion Fortune Mary Violet Firth

The Most Dangerous Man in American, Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin
by Catherine Drinker Bowen

It's Your Body, a Woman's Guide to Gynecology by Laverson & Whitney

On Becoming American by Ted Morgan

Does She Know She's There? by Nicola Shaefer
This story of a woman whose daughter, Catherine, has extreme disabilities and Nicola updated her daughter's story a follow-up book from Inclusion Press entitled, Yes! She Knows She's There, telling the story of Catherine's moving into an independent living situation in 1986.


From December 27, 2008 to January 29, 2009 I read:

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith
I held on to this book till I was in a more warm and fuzzy mood. The story is enjoyable, but McCall Smith is such a gentle writer that he makes Agatha Christie look like a dark-hearted serial killer.

This book set me to thinking about Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, and whether someone who liked the No. 1 Ladies Detective stories set in Botswana would enjoy Dinesen's lyrical stories of Kenya circa 1920s. I'm not sure. Dinesen's stories are much sadder and less pretty, although the writing is exquisite.
I love this quote from Questions on the website devoted to her work and life:

...[Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen] spoke publicly about her literary persona...:

"I belong to an ancient, idle, wild and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who, for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world, has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard-working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller."