Charity Knitting and panic
Ok, I’m panicking, I just found out I need 35-45 scarves for my charity knitting for Christmas, holy cow. I really like knitting and I like giving it away, and since most of my husband’s family want gift cards not handknitted scarves, I try to find alternate homes for them. But 35-45, I’ve got about 9 1/2 finished to date! HOLY COW.
Anyway I have a very easy one from the new Fons & Porter’s Love of Knitting (not Quilting but Knitting!) going. My favorite knitting magazine is Creative Knitting, it always has a couple of patterns easy enough for me, and good gift giving patterns, afghans, scarves, washcloths (now called spa cloths) .
And thank goodness for Lion Brands free patterns. The internet is so full of patterns and knitters, crocheters and charity projects. But I don’t know about all of them, but I’m in panic mode. And when I can find my camera cord, I’ll download some pics.
Try some knitting blogs while you’re waiting for me to finish a book because I’m knitting, Yarn Harlot is as good as any place to start.
August: Osage County, Tracy Letts
I just finished the play, August: Osage County, powerful, thoughtful, full of family anger and secrets. We’re all from that family one way or the other, all of us harboring secrets, frustrations, envy and anger, all trying to figure it out before it’s too late, all finding our place at the table. My mom used to say about our family ”well it isn’t a Norman Rockwell painting”, and so the Weston family isn’t either.
It’s a good play for Thanksgiving, to remind us normal may be different than Mr Rockwell painted us, but it’s what we are.
So pass the turkey and dressing, hope the fights stay to a minimum, and Christmas is just around the corner.
It’s also particularly humorous to hear reviewers on You Tube, say “Osage”, it sounds like some kind of sausage.
Thanksgiving and Books a Plenty
First, start with Tracy Letts’ Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play, August: Osage County, a dysfunctional family complete with dinner. Very Thanksgiving.
Next to keep the family theme going, Billie Letts, Tracy’s mom, has a new book, Made in the U.S.A.
Looking forward to Carolyn Wall’s Sweeping Up Glass.
Linda Hogan has penned a new novel, People of the Whale. You might want to start with her book Mean Spirit. Here’s a taster from Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma.
And for dessert Carolyn Hart’s Ghost at Work, a new series, a new heroine.
Five for dinner, you do have to spend some time with relatives and turkey. Happy HOLIDAY.
Sarah Vowell, okie author on Bookmarking blog
Thanks Chris for the review of Sarah Vowell’s works, and reminding us of her Okie roots.
Promote those OKIE Authors!!! Thanks Marilyn Hudson
Marilyn Hudson, Librarian from Norman, has established a website to promote Oklahoma authors. ”When your book is nearing publication or newly published and available for purchase, please send me the information and any links to places it can be purchased, author websites, etc..
I run a website that promotes Oklahoma authors and books that is linked from a couple of state websites and gets heavy traffic. It is OK Writers at http://www.okwriters.blogspot.com/ I also maintain a site that can promote all non-Oklahoma authors called Author Junction at www.authorjunction.blogspot.com.
Many new authors believe their publishers will “do all of that” – the promotion, marketing, horn tooting. The truth is that even with the “big name” publishing houses they expect authors to be their own most excited and prolific promoter. As an author you love to write but may cringe at the thought of promoting yourself or your book.
Also, some publishers can also be pretty hard to locate on the web and that means your book may be hidden to potential buyers. The more times you can be mentioned on the web improves chances of search engines finding and keeping your listing prominent for searches.
That is where OK WRITERS and AUTHOR JUNCTION can help. Best of all – it is FREE! I try to balance all types of publishing and have showcased authors from across the region. I have even posted from Tyndale Publishers for appearances by one of their authors.
Let me assist in making your author experience successful and profitable.
Also, there is a new social network for OK Performers and Presenters with a group for “Authors & Writers”. Connect with other writers, share critiques, get advice, share news and frustrations, learn how to do dynamic book readings, exciting book signings, etc. Visit and join “OKLAHOMA PERFORMERS AND PRESENTERS” www.oklapp.ning.com. If you do workshops or presentations, get listed on the “OKLAHOMA PERFORMERS DIRECTORY” www.freewebs.com/okperformers.
Why are these services being provided free of charge? Simply an attempt to promote the emerging author because tomorrow’s great author is at work today.”
Very cool Marilyn, thanks for the good work. Hope everyone checks out these sites and check back with me later in the week for a Thanksgiving Oklahoma Author Reading List.
Laundry day book definition, and “Reading Matters”
My friend said I need to define the term “Laundry Day Book” if I’m going to keep using it because who wants to go back and read all the posts trying to figure out what I’m talking about.
Laundry Day Book it has to be a book you can put down and pick up again, nothing too intense so you can stop and move clothes from the washer into the dryer, nothing too unputdownable so the dryer clothes don’t remain there to become hopelessly wrinkled.
So while I’m on here, I found a quote in WLT (World Literature Today), University of Oklahoma literary magazine, that I would like to share and hope I take to heart when writing in my blog.
“We readers who say we want to share our love of books all too often choose to act as commentators. As interpreters, analysts, critics, and biographers, smothering great works in pious testimonies. Victims of our proficiency, the words in books give way to our own. Rather than allowing a book’s intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut its doors: Reading matters!”
from The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac
(forthcoming from Candlewick Press in November 2008)
Laundry day book definition, and “Reading Matters”
My friend said I need to define the term “Laundry Day Book” if I’m going to keep using it because who wants to go back and read all the posts trying to figure out what I’m talking about.
Laundry Day Book it has to be a book you can put down and pick up again, nothing too intense so you can stop and move clothes from the washer into the dryer, nothing too unputdownable so the dryer clothes don’t remain there to become hopelessly wrinkled.
So while I’m on here, I found a quote in WLT (World Literature Today), University of Oklahoma literary magazine, that I would like to share and hope I take to heart when writing in my blog.
“We readers who say we want to share our love of books all too often choose to act as commentators. As interpreters, analysts, critics, and biographers, smothering great works in pious testimonies. Victims of our proficiency, the words in books give way to our own. Rather than allowing a book’s intelligence to speak through our mouths, we replace it with our own intelligence as we talk about it. Rather than acting as emissary for the book, we become guardians of the temple, boasting of its wonders in the very words that slam shut its doors: Reading matters!”
from The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac
(forthcoming from Candlewick Press in November 2008)
The Lace Reader, not for laundry day
The Lace Reader is definitely not a laundry day book, now I have a dryer full of wrinkled clothes and the washing machine needs to do another rinse cycle. It is definitely very good. Pick up a copy and when I’m done we can talk. Here’s the website, http://www.lacereader.com/ (I’m not much for book websites with whirligigs and flash players run wild, but the book is worth checking out.)
Dick Tracy gone? creator Chester Gould from Oklahoma
As Sadie’s Extremely Graphic blog reported, the demise of the Dick Tracy comic strip may be at hand. The creater Pawnee born Oklahoman, Chester Gould started the comic strip in 1931. For a very interesting interview with Gould, read The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy.
Libraries or Amazon.com should have other books on Gould and Tracy; Dick Tracy: The Official Biography by Jay Maeder, Dick Tracy: America’s Most Famous Detective by Bill Crouch, Jr. and for a more scholarly approach, read Dick Tracy and American Culture by Garyn G. Roberts. The last has a fantastic bibliography.
And there is a series of collected strips called Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy , Volumes 1-6 (so far), published by IDW.
Did you know that when a signed picture of Chester Gould was taken from the Oklahoma State University (later recovered) the Oklahoman accidentally declared him deceased and Gould took issue, being very much alive at the time. Here’s the note sent to the Oklahoman and all was corrected and forgiven.
In case you can’t read the print under the note:
‘VERY MUCH ALIVE’ as the author of the Dick Tracy comic strip, Chester Gould sent this message to The Oklahoman from his Woodstock, III., home to prove it. Last week a framed picture of the crimestoppor extraordinaire was taken from the student union at Oklahoma State University, and Gould was erroneously ideniified in the early edition Aug. 31 as “the Late” on the word of a student union official. The Oklahoman and OSU, Gould’s alma mater regret the error.
There’s a Chester Gould/Dick Tracy museum in Woodstock, Illinois.
Oklahoma’s Arthur Conan Doyle, Will Thomas
Some may be surprised we have our own Arthur Conan Doyle, right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writing about a very authentic feeling Victorian England, covering the adventures of Cyrus Barker, enquiry agent and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn. While reminiscent of Holmes and our dear Dr. Watson, Will Thomas’ stories are able to stand on their own. I found a great site for reviews of his five novels, Heretical Ideas does a marvelous job of describing all five.
Will Thomas just happened to win the Oklahoma Book Award in the Fiction category in 2005 for Some Danger Involved.
Do they know what they’re doing or what. I think the first one is a must, getting your bearings with the characters, and atmosphere.
What I really like about the series is the handling of historical, ethnic and cultural issues, while serving up a good mystery.
Some Danger Involved, looks at anti-semitism in Victorian England; To Kingdom Come, Irish terrorists; The Limehouse Text, Chinese immigrants and culture in London; The Hellfire Conspiracy, child kidnapping, serial killings, and the Hellfire Club amid socio-economic minefields; and finally the Sicilian mafia, and the introduction of organized crime to the streets and docks of London, in The Black Hand.
This new one is out there now, start reading, but I think you will want to go back and pick up the others. I’m almost finished with my fifth.
