Elaine Smith Writes

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Tag Archives: Friday Finds

If you thought Spenser was tough—

Meet Jack Reacher.

I  found these books.  I love it when I find a good writer who has written a whole series of books.  (Of course, my favorite writer ever is Harper Lee, and she only wrote one book—but she only needed to write one.)  It doesn’t happen often at this point, because I read a lot.  It often seems like I’ve already read all my favorites—and sometimes more than once.

Just recently, however, I came upon Lee Child and his Reacher series.  You wouldn’t have thought I’d like them.   I tend to prefer the genteel English murder mystery to machismo and militarism.  Violence doesn’t appeal to me.

But I had these books.

So, I checked them out.

I’m big on first lines.  In my experience, a good first line is a good first step.  It usually means the writer knows how to put words together.  She knows how to get your attention.  Chances are she will be able to keep it.  (It doesn’t always work.  The very best first line I ever read came in a book I could not finish.  Just couldn’t get to the end of it.  And I finish almost every book I start.  That one was very disappointing.)

There are great first lines, and there are first lines that are just okay.  I’m thinking the first line of the first Reacher novel was sort of in between.  Averagely good.  Which is to say, above average.  Enough to set up that question in your mind:  Why?  And what’s going to happen next?

So, I kept reading. All the way through the next 15 novels.

The plots are surprisingly complex—with new twists.  Not the same old action-adventure stuff at all.

The writing is good.  There’s a voice there, a command of language, some psychological insight.

I know, for sure, that I would not like Jack Reacher if I met him in person—but I’d sure want him around if I were in danger.  He meets violence with violence, and I’m not sure I approve of that in the real world (some would say it’s arguable that I don’t actually live in the real world)—but since he never attacks first, and the bad guys are like really bad, it works for me in the books.

He’s larger than life, of course, with a number of nearly super-human characteristics and an unlikely ability to figure out what the bad guys are going to do by just putting himself in their place.  I mean, it’s not really believable that a person can stand outside the Four Seasons in New York, look at the surrounding blocks and decide that the quarry must be in the third brownstone on the left out of all the millions of places to hide in the city.  But I can suspend my disbelief that far.

I like competent characters.  Reacher is that, for sure.  Those first 15 books were a good find.

Now I’ve got to go find the last two.

You might have had to be there.

 But maybe not.

I found this video.  And I’m laughing and laughing.  You won’t understand why, probably, unless you were a fan of the groundbreaking television series Cagney & Lacey. 

Cagney & Lacey was the first, and quite possibly, the only tv show to have ever been brought back from cancellation by its fans’ campaigns on its behalf.  It ran for seven seasons from 1981 to 1988, it enjoyed an uninterrupted and unmatched six year winning streak of Best Lead Actress Emmys for its two stars, and when it finally left the airwaves, it came back in four separate reunion movies.

I think it was also the first show where the two main characters were women.  Previously, almost all dramas would center on one or more male leads, a couple of supporting men, and a token woman.  As if one woman was enough to represent all women.  As if there were no differences among women.  As if the defining characteristic of any woman was that she was a woman.

And then we got Cagney and Lacey.

Two completely different women.  In the same show.

Smart scripts.  Extraordinary performances by Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless.

Let me say that again. 

Extraordinary.

Fully-realized, three-dimensional, very real characters who changed and grew and suffered and thrived—and solved crimes!  It was a police procedural that took on big issues—women’s rights, career vs. family, police corruption, love and loyalty and friendship.  No other show I have seen has ever struck and maintained the balance this one did between the professional and the personal.

It had a great supporting cast, but the center was always Cagney and Lacey, Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless.

I loved it!  And I still love it in the few DVDs that are available.

But what I’m laughing about today is this video I found of Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless singing at a 1999 benefit.  If you were a fan of Cagney & Lacey, you’ll probably agree that it’s hilarious.  If you weren’t, you might enjoy it anyway.  If not, go get the DVDs.  Watch a few episodes.  Then come back.

Either way, here’s the link:

Sharon Gless & Tyne Daly Sing

 

The most amazing thing has happened

I can draw!

I’m no da Vinci, but I’m sitting here with a couple of semi-respectable drawings.

It’s all thanks to this website I found: Drawspace.com

Drawspace offers over 200 free lessons in how to draw, and they’re pretty good.  I’ve been working my way through the beginner level, and I’ve learned some stuff.  I’ve managed some pretty good anime drawings, assorted simple cartoons, a decent line drawing of a fish and an awesome hand.

I’m not so good with lips.  They all look like an alien spaceship or something you’d expect to come out of the Little Shop of Horrors, but I think I’ll improve.

Eyes are also a hit or miss proposition just now.  Conceivably, I’d do better with some actual drawing materials rather than a #2 pencil and the back side of laser printer paper.  I’m going to look into that now that I am not the artistic failure all previous art classes led me to believe.

I’m not saying I’ll ever be da Vinci, but I’m having fun.  Someday, I might be able to leave the sample drawings behind, and sketch something recognizable out of my own little head.  Wouldn’t that be something?

It just goes to show that taking the time to work at a thing and paying attention to how it’s done is half the battle.  Because if I can draw, I figure just about anybody can.

You should check out Drawspace.com.  But be warned!  Drawing practice is as much a time sink as Facebook—and that’s saying something.

So far, I’ve been very disciplined.  I’ve managed to keep up with my workouts and my yard work and some other commitments I’ve made.  But the housework is starting to slip down the scale.  And the writing has tended toward the bottom of the pile for the last few months (years?) anyway.

That will have to stop.

But in the meantime, I think one creative endeavor usually feeds another—and, besides, I can draw!

Who knew?!

The nut catcher

That’s right.

I said “catcher,” not “cracker.”

Today’s Friday Find is fudging it a little bit, since I haven’t actually found this.  I mean, I have found it—a link to it, anyway—but I haven’t used it.  We’ll call it a future find, okay?

I’m talking about an item that I discovered through an article in last month’s issue of This Old House.  Just as an aside, I’ll mention that I prefer Family Handyman to This Old House—but that’s just me, and this last issue did have a couple of good tips.

One of them was a recommendation for the nut catcher. Actually, its real name is “nut gatherer,” but I prefer “nut catcher”—even though it conjures up a vision, in a totally non-politically correct way, of some little man in a white coat chasing me with an over-sized butterfly net.

This nut catcher, however, has nothing to do with the balance of my mind.  Except in so far as the number of acorns and sweet gum balls that fall into my yard drive me crazy.  To say nothing of the safety issue of the spiky gum balls rocketing out of the side of the lawn mower at some exorbitant number of miles per hour.

The nut catcher looks like it would work—in a highly low tech way.  It may not, of course, and the concept of ‘easy’ might be a relative term—but it doesn’t seem too expensive to take the chance.  I’m thinking I might get one and try it out.

Meanwhile, for your listening pleasure. . .a little ditty that was extremely popular when I was in junior high school.  (Please do not do the math.  It was recorded some years earlier!)

Virtual rearrangment

…of furniture, that is.

My Monday Miracle this week was the rearrangement of my office furniture.  And the Friday Find I promised you in that post is the online tool I used to help me figure out a new floor plan without succumbing to the cliché of countless cartoons.

You know the ones I mean—where the long-suffering husband manhandles the sofa from place to place only to end up restoring it to its original position while the wife stands by and points?

As I mentioned in the previous post, sliders saved the MotH’s* back—because I moved all the furniture myself—and Floorplanner saved my sanity—because I only moved it once.

Floorplanner is an online tool that allows you to create a floorplan and furnish it with all kinds of included pieces of furniture.  Then you can view it in 2D or 3D and rearrange everything over and over without developing a hernia.

It’s easy to install, because you don’t install it.  You work with it online, in your browser.

It’s fairly easy to use.  All the furniture pieces can be resized to your dimensions.  You just drag-and-drop them around your room and decide whether you like the new arrangement.

And it’s free.

Previously, I had purchased HGTV’s Home & Landscape Platinum Suite 2.0, and I tried to use it.  Ultimately, I took advantage of their money-back guarantee and returned it.  It was just too complicated for what I needed to do (and I could never figure out how to remove the grass I accidentally got growing in the living room).

Floorplanner let’s me draw a room and stick furniture in it.  Then it lets me move the furniture around.

That’s all I wanted.  That’s all I needed.

The big, expensive software packages are probably worth the time and money if you are an interior designer or a landscape contractor.  I’m sure it’s nice to be able to show clients how the space will look all 3D and painted and lit.

But I just want to make sure there’s room to walk between the desk and the closet before I actually move the desk.

Floorplanner.  Yay!

Boogie down!

The 27-Fling Boogie

The 27-Fling Boogie is an invention of Marla Cilley over at FlyLady.net.  The FlyLady is full of tips and tricks to get your house in order and keep it that way.  Lots of good information, and much of it has been helpful to me.

One of the most fun and effective things is the 27-Fling Boogie.

As I recall it, once you’ve decided which “zone” of your house is going to get your attention, you–very quickly–identify 27 things to throw away and 27 things to give away.  Put them in bags or boxes or whatever, and get them out of the house.

Right into the garbage can.  Right into the trunk of the car.

The purpose of moving them immediately is to prevent the inevitable second guessing that occurs if you keep the box or bag long enough that you take another look.  If you’re anything like me, you will re-think your decision.  Hey!  I might need that sometime.  If the bag is already in the garbage can and the box is already in the car, ready to go to Goodwill or wherever, they are probably going to stay there.

It seems simple, doesn’t it?  Hardly worth a whole bog post.

The thing is, there is something about the number 27.  Maybe it’s the rhythm of it.  Maybe it’s the magical quality of being a perfect cube (3 cubed).  Maybe it’s that it’s a high enough number that you have to really stretch to find enough items to meet the goal–so you steel yourself to get rid of that sequined purse that you have never used. “27” keeps you at it when you think it’s time to stop for cake.

The “boogie” plays into this, too.  It has a connotation of fast and fun.  As does “fling,” really.  The idea is to get moving.  Don’t stop to think.  Fling!

After a while, in subsequent iterations, you’re not going to find 27 things in a particular zone.  That’s when you expand the boogie to the whole house, I guess.  (Actually, the way it’s described on the FlyLady website now does apply to the whole house.  It may be my faulty memory that makes me think it was originally applied to zones.  I did do quite well culling my bookshelves, though, when I 27-fling boogied through my office.  Whatever works, right?)

And on my next boogie, I’m going to cube it a little further.  27 things to throw away, 27 things to give away, and 27 things for a garage sale.

Boogie down!

 

 

 

The parts that people skip*

Description Difficulties

I’ve found a new author.  Well, new to me.

I’ve always read a lot, but I went through a lengthy period where I rarely read anything new.  Life was so busy and hectic that I wanted to know, when I sat down with a book, that I was going to enjoy it.  I tended to re-read old favorites.

Now that I have moved and my days are less about just getting through them and more about enjoying them, I have been able to branch out.  And I’ve come across Ruth Rendell.

The Baroness (I love how the English reward artists as well as CEOs) is a well-known (although not to me, apparently) and much honored author of murder mysteries.  Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy a good English murder mystery?  A cup of tea, a body in the library, a good old-fashioned butler looking down his nose at the man from the Yard (Scotland, that is) while Miss Marple or her equivalent saves the day.

I like a book with a clear point.  It doesn’t get much clearer than a murder mystery.  Once you know whodunit, you are done.

The thing, however, that I really want to say about Ruth Rendell is how masterful her descriptions are.  I feel that this is an area where my own writing falls short.  (Basically, I suck at description.)  I don’t know why this is, although it is possible that in my early reading years, the descriptions were the parts I skimmed.  I remember skipping whole pages of Ivanhoe, for example.  It’s possible that I never really absorbed descriptive technique due to lack of paying attention.

It’s also possible that I am more of a verbal than a visual person, although I can conjure up mental pictures of people and places with ease.  There is some major disconnect, though, in my brain when it comes to putting words to the mental pictures.  I would be a total failure at that exercise I’m told happens early in police training–where someone with a gun bursts into the classroom, holds up the teacher and then flees, and the recruits are asked to describe the perpetrator.

The recruits, however, are taught to be more observant and probably given tips and tricks for estimating heights and weights.  They improve.  I probably can, too.

Of course, rookie police officers’ descriptions, of necessity, tend to favor clarity over the evocation of personality or a mood.  That evocation is that at which Ruth Rendell excels.  I think I’m going to have to study her writing a little more.

She’s written dozens of books, as both herself and under the name Barbara Vine.

How nice for me!

 

* I try to leave out the parts that people skip. — Elmore Leonard

If I’d known then…

Networking 101

Yesterday, I talked about discovering that my network is more diverse than I think it is.  That reminded me, again, of the importance of networking and how so many of us don’t think we’re very good at it.

It has a kind of slimy connotation, doesn’t it?

Networking.

All those people handing out business cards and chatting with spurious energy the whole time their eyes are scanning the room for somebody better to approach, somebody with more “contacts.” <shudder>

I think we lose a lot of time and a lot of fun and a lot of valuable relationships because of that view of “networking.” My dread of the process began to disappear when somebody pointed me toward  Keith Ferrazzi‘s Never Eat Alone.  I wish they’d given it to me when I was in college (except it hadn’t been written then).

You can find some of Mr. Ferrazzi’s tips and suggestions on his website, but basically, he talks in the book about building your network before you need it and about how you should really be trying to find the ways you can help the people in your network.

Try going to your next event looking for a way to help the next person you meet.

Think about it.

It gets the focus off you, so you won’t be so nervous–if you’re given to those kind of nerves.  It guides your conversation–which, if you are a person who hates small talk–is invaluable.  It not only guides your small talk, it makes it bigger.  (Whew!) The connection will be more meaningful if you bring something to it.

Never Eat Alone is one of those life changing books.  If you’re a natural extrovert, maybe you don’t need it.  I, on the other hand, found it invaluable.

I’ve got a pretty good network in spite of congenital shyness.  But if I’d known then. . .my niece would really have been impressed!

 

The Gammage Cup

The other Muggles

Once upon a time, there was a children’s book that resonated with adults. It was full of humor, adventure and whimsy, and the author’s imagination concealed some profound truths about humanity.

It was not by J. K. Rowling.

The Gammage Cup by Carolyn Kendal was published in 1959.  It won awards:  a Newbery Honor book and an ALA Notable Children’s Book.  It’s about being yourself and following your heart and how those in charge could be totally wrong and how doing things just because they’ve always been done that way can get you into a whole lot of trouble.

Mostly, it’s a lot of fun.

With heroes called Minnipins, how could you go wrong?

Add in some misfit Minnipins–Gummy, Mingy, Walter the Earl, Curly Green and the aforementioned Muggles–banished from Slipper on the Water because of a refusal to paint their doors a proper Minnipin green (among other things), and an inability to conform to the standards of behavior laid down by the ruling class of Periods (so-called because Fooley the Balloonist had a list of abbreviations among his things when he crash-landed years ago, and his descendants have been named things like Ltd. and Co. ever since) as well as a contest among Minnipin villages for possession of the Gammage Cup just at the point when the Minnipins’ mythical enemies, the Mushrooms, reappear, and you have a gentle, very clever fable that entertains as well as enlightens.

This book, although well-loved by those who know of it, was never a blockbuster, as far as I can tell.  It’s still in print, though, and available from Amazon if your local library doesn’t have a copy.

Check it out.  I think you’ll like it!

 

Discover the world.

“The public library is one of the great strongholds of democracy. Who doesn’t love a library? It is a place you can go in any town and discover the world.”*

My grandmother was a librarian.

She didn’t have a degree in Library Science, and at the end of her career, those who did had been hired and placed in supervisory positions over her.  The final days of her working life (at the age of 89, by the way) were spent entering new acquisitions and affixing the cards to them in the back room of the headquarters branch of the county library system for which she was the earliest employee.  Along the way, she had run a library on a Naval base, opened the first library in Clay County, FL, shelved countless books, traveled miles of country road in a bookmobile, shushed I don’t know how many children, and provided me with most of the books that are in my personal library today.

She didn’t have a degree or, in the end, the official title, but my grandmother was a librarian.

Today’s Friday Find is devoted to something about which I suspect she never knew, even though it began nearly 20 years before her death, but of which I know–know–she would have heartily approved.

Project Gutenberg.

Not much of a find, you say, since it’s been around since 1971?

Okay.  But how many of you have really looked at it?  How many of you have really thought about what it means?

For those of you who haven’t heard of Project Gutenberg, it’s a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works–i.e., books.  As of July 2012, there were over 40,000 items in its collection with about fifty new eBooks being added every week.  (More history here.)

All of the works are available on the Project Gutenberg website for reading and/or download, usually in multiple formats.  Most are in English, although they do have some works in other languages.  They are all, also, all free to users in the United States where their copyrights have expired.  International users should check the laws of their own country before downloading.

The project is named after Johannes Gutenberg, who invented movable type and launched a revolution in 1439 by making knowledge and learning available to the masses.

That’s what a library does, and the heritage that Project Gutenberg, as the next logical extension of the library system, carries forward.

It’s been said, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Show him how to catch a fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

I say:  Give people a library and you not only show them how to catch fish but how to clean it, cook it, sell it, paint a picture of it, mount it, raise it and do seventy million other things having nothing to do with fish!

A library should be the last funding cut in a free society.

Meanwhile. . .Project Gutenberg!  Discover the world.

 

* Pat MacEnulty


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