This is Cheap Chick. Daddies sometimes giggle when they say her name. I don't know why. She makes cheeping sounds when I give her a good swipe with my paw and she's a chick...Daddies are weird. I know she's not technically a mousie, but I think her cheeping is some kind of code. She and Featherbutt sound a lot alike, and he IS a tecnical mousie...mostly a mousie--except for the feathers coming out of his butt...maybe he's part chicken. Anyway, next time I play with the two of them I will have to see if I can decipher what they are saying. Mousie communication is a mystery! |
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I read or listen to "Wrinkle in Time" about once a year. Obviously, it's one of my favorite books (as are the two sequels: Wind in the Door and Swiftly Tilting Planet...Many Waters and Acceptable Time aren't sequels really--I like the former well enough, but have never been able to finish the latter). I was simultaneously overjoyed and trepidatious when this project was announced. And, I have to be honest...when I saw the cover I was horrified. Calvin looks awful; he's supposed to be more attractive than that even as a teenager! Now, that said, I have to say on finishing the the graphic novel that it was well done. I quite enjoyed it. It was very respectful to the original material. In reading this, I heard Madeleine L'Engle speaking the lines (she reads the audio book, you HAVE to listen to it). I think she would have liked this as much as she disliked the TV movie some years back (I really didn't mind the movie & I know I'm in the minority). Now THAT said, I agree with other reviewers out in the blogosphere, the color choice was just poor. When you have a character called "Man with red eyes" and his eyes are actually robin's egg blue...it just doesn't work. If the color had been red/pink, it would have worked better...but I think we should have gone black and white or full-ish color. So bad marks on the color choice. Other than that I really liked the are work. Oh, I also wasn't a huge fan of Aunt Beast. She and her people looked a bit goofy...and the suggestion of faces was just not right for the characters. I actually think the movie did this better. Neither was anything like what exists in my head. When you spend as much time with a book as many of the audience of Wrinkle have, nothing will live up to the vivid pictures in their heads. This was OK, and I do hope that Hope Larson does Wind in the Door too. Note to Publisher: putting a quote from James Patterson on the back cover of this book is like putting a quote from Ed Wood on the DVD of "Citizen Kane." No that's an insult to Ed...he was a better writer than Patterson
There's even a whole book of Star Wars origami instructions and doodles and activities from the kids at McQuarrie Middle School (and Tom Angleberger, of course). 75 activities and more stories from the McQuarrie kids. And later this year (can't tell exactly, though one website says as soon as August!) There will be another entry in the series! Watch for it. The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppet. Looking forward to it, but you should probably start with the first book if you haven't read the series. Let me know what you think! Banjo's Book Recommendations -- Guinea PI(g) "Raining Cats and Detectives" by Colleen A F Venable7/18/2013
Half way through what still feels like "the new year" we hit reset in a few ways. We stopped trying to sell the house and refinanced the old one. We adopted a new kitten (who puts the ram in rambunctious). I started this blog and a new writing regimen. And today I start a new job. That's a lot of new. But there's a lot of new in every day. Pema Chodron (my go to Buddhist teacher...in print anyway) wrote in When Things Fall Apart: “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. ” So every moment is new a d fresh. Here's to new beginnings! Let's go read, write, and share some awesome books!
I sometimes think I missed my calling. I should have been an editor. I almost (alllmost) enjoy the revision process more than the writing process. If I did not have to "kill my darlings" (that is revise away some of the phrases, scenes, words that I liked writing in the first place), I think I would like rewriting more. Used to be I would start writing long hand; and after a fur piece, I'd switch to typing (revising the first part before writing the second). Lately I have just started writing on the word processor to avoid "hat confusion" (that is having the writer and the editor in my head get confused as to who's doing what). Now I wear my writer hat until the first draft is done. Then I set the work aside for as long as I can. Then I put on the editor's hat. I usually print out a hard copy for the first edit (poor trees...I know, I ain't as green as I should be). I do interlinear edits which usually spill over on to the backs of pages with symbols (*,#,@, etc) indicating which block of text goes into which place like footnotes only messier. This results in a kind of first and a half draft that looks like a dictionary barfed on the page. I take that draft back to the computer and create the second draft from my notes. A lot of editing and re-editing occurs here. From this point, unless a major revision is needed, all editing is done on the computer. Novels and stories can go through any number of drafts. The only ones I have set in stone now are the ones that have been published (available for purchase on amazon ;-) everything else is fair game for a re-write. When I do the first couple edits, I keep notes on characters and events in a notebook with page references like I do when I read a book for a book review (yes, authors, I I have reviewed your book, I'd be a great resource for a concordance to your work because I have lists of characters , descriptions and events with page numbers of their first appearance or first mentions of their ages or characteristics). I can refer back to those notes in future edits. If it's a later edit, I am usually checking for grammar and spelling (Word is good, but it ain't perfect). And then there's the audio portion of our editing process during which I read the whole dang thing out loud. That's one reason I think my characters sound more like real people. It really helps to hear it. So that's a quick o |
About MeTim is a writer, book reviewer and Librarian. He has a Master's of Library Science and was on the Newbery Committee twice. Technology scares and often annoys him, but he is always game for a silly costume! Archives
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