Bookish Jet

Okay, so I haven’t updated this blog in ages. I keep thinking I should take the blog down — I don’t do anything with it, after all. I have been way too busy with work, reading books and writing reviews, birding, Master Naturalist duties, trying to learn trees (Hi David!), plants, and birds, cooking (grilling!), and watching TV and DVDs to have time to write here.

I’m very grateful that I have a great job, especially in times like this, but work sure takes up a lot of time! You’d think my working for thirty years would be enough! I do hope some day people in our generation and class will be able to afford retirement. I keep telling myself that there is big business in retirement — selling trips and golf clubs to older people — so maybe retirement won’t disappear for everyone, but then I think of who the ‘everyone’ might be. Librarians and waste-water treatment plant operators — people who help the community for little pay (includes teachers and people at a ‘working class’ pay) — may not ever get to comfortably retire. We’ll see.

I’m covered today in mosquito bites. I weeded yesterday for the first time in years. Usually my husband does that, but there’s a spot under the bird feeder that was overgrown with millet plants that he asked me to weed. For some reason, he doesn’t like mucking around in birdshit.

We got a new “squirrel-proof” feeder last week. Oh, well. It only took a week:

State of the Birds — The 2009 Report

“Birds are a priceless part of America’s heritage. They are beautiful, they are economically important—and they reflect the health of our environment. This State of the Birds report reveals troubling declines of bird populations during the past 40 years—a warning signal of the failing health of our ecosystems.”

The birds in the video on that page are really wonderful.

Since I was seven years old, I’ve wanted to be a writer. Now that I’m fifty, and I have no books or stories published, I have very strong doubts that it’s ever going to happen. When I graduated from college, I planned to work full time for rent money, and write in the evenings. My husband works rotating shift, so there are times now when I have hours on end alone, but there’s grocery shopping, housework, exercise, birding, updating the Bird Club and Marfan websites, and Master Naturalist duties.

I signed up for a creative writing class with a local community center. In college, I took creative writing classes, one from Mary Gordon (at the community college in Poughkeepsie mentioned at that link) before her first book was published, and another at William and Mary with Parke Rouse. If I couldn’t learn how to take the lessons they gave and write, I wasn’t expecting a lot from the local class. I know I can’t expect to attend a class and instantly learn to write great stories. I expected to get from this class structure, organization and inspiration. I wanted to attend a class each week and write assignments, a motive to make me actually produce some writing.

The class was canceled. Only two people had signed up for it.

Then I decided I’d take those two hours that I’d planned to be in class and use them to write. I’d go to a carrel in the library, read about how to write and write. I did this past week. I used a pencil and wrote unconnected sentences and paragraphs until my middle finger hurt. (I have no laptop).

But I just feel depressed when I get in these “I’ve got to be a writer!” moods. The task seems so incredibly daunting. The problem isn’t with writing sentences, it’s with structure, and with plot. I don’t even know what I want to write. I’ll have an idea but not have a full idea for a whole story: beginning, middle and end.

So I ask myself, why do I want to “be a writer”? Do I really like writing? Whenever I start, I just get depressed. So why not just stop wanting to be a writer? Why can’t I just be happy being a reader? I love more than anything to read, and I don’t usually get depressed when I’m reading.

It’s hard to stop wanting something when you’ve wanted it for forty-three years. I think to myself, okay, I won’t want to be a writer anymore. Then I immediately start thinking about writing a book about someone wanting to not want to be a writer after forty-three years. (Wouldn’t that make a thrilling plot?)

I’m writing this blog entry because it’s writing. It’s boring writing, but it’s writing. The rec center is going to offer the class again in the summer. Maybe then teachers off from the school season will want to sign up. It’s expensive ($95), but maybe it could be a lot of fun (or an expensive way to get myself even more depressed).

I’m not going to resolve to post more. It’s hopeless, and nobody (except maybe David) reads it anyway.

Looking back at last year, I’m amazed at how many books I’ve read. I didn’t get up to fifty, as I’d hoped, but 40 isn’t bad. I think there might be some missing from this list so maybe it’s more than 40.

About the ratings: It’s hard for me to give a book less than three stars. It has to be really bad writing! And I don’t usually finish (nor rate) books with really bad writing.

Title and author	Rating
After the Floods by Bruce Henricksen
The Appeal by John Grisham
Best-Ever Backyard Birding Tips by Deborah L. Martin
Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson by Elizabeth J. Rosenthal
Black Seconds by Karin Fossum
Blasphemy by Douglas Preston
Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe
Breakpoint by Richard A. Clarke
The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver
The Calling by Inger Wolfe
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
the dead and the gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Dreamers of the Day: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell
Faint praise : the plight of book reviewing in America by Gail Pool
Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson
Final Theory: A Novel by Mark Alpert
Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage
Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Goldengrove: A Novel by Francine Prose
Gossip of the Starlings by Nina De Gramont
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
A Guide to the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds by Paul J. Baicich
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld
Indignation by Philip Roth
Lethal Legacy: A Novel by Linda Fairstein
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Pyres by Derek Nikitas
Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski
A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders by Luke Dempsey
Weird Weather by Kate Evans
Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien
The White Mary: A Novel by Kira Salak
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
The Writing Class by Jincy Willett

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. I had planned to clean up my desk area, which is a ridiculous pile of papers, magazines, notebooks and books. It’s more of a mess now than before. There are so many words to read in the pile of textual rubble. Cooking magazines, birding magazines, novels, notebooks with field notes from birding trips and Master Naturalist classes, reference books, books on writing. There’s physically no way to read everything in my lifetime, and that’s really frustrating. I want to learn everything there is to learn! (Except maybe about how to field dress a deer).

I didn’t finish reading Pinnochio, in case you’re wondering. I really didn’t like it that much. I’d been interested in it since I knew the Disney version was whacked, but I didn’t like the original either. But I liked the book — the format and the illustrations. I read Linda Fairstein’s Lethal Legacy, which is a murder mystery that takes place in (or right near) the New York Public Library. One of the victims is a book conservator. It was entertaining. There was some interesting facts about the library I didn’t know (I don’t know much about the NYPL, but the facts that I learned from her novel were interesting). Then I read After the Floods, by Bruce Henricksen. I really enjoyed reading this. (But I have to write a review for it for LibraryThing, and I’m not sure what to say.)

I also have to write reviews for Blogging for a Good Book, but mine aren’t due until late next month. Wish I could write interesting reviews. I’ve signed up to take a local creative writing class. It starts in March. After forty-three years of wanting to ‘be a writer’ and not writing, it’s a step, perhaps, in the right direction. I’m paying money to get some organization around my desire to write. We’ll see how it turns out.

I just looked at the stacks of books I have to read (many advance reader copies that I was sure I’d read and review online) and felt almost like crying. I want to read ALL of them. I have a stack from Book Expo 2007 that I haven’t touched. More from ALA. Others I requested, haven’t touched. Books I’ve bought — can’t get to them. What am I reading now, you wonder? Pinocchio. I just finished listening to The Anatomy of Deception — really good! The only thing I didn’t like about it was that I listened to it non-stop and it took less than twenty-four hours to hear. That means I didn’t have time to feel like I was in the 1850s in Philadelphia for very long.

Well, I was going to write a longer post, but I’ve run out of time. I never have enough time to do everything I want to do!

This past weekend, I went with Shirley to the Wings Over Water Birding Festival. Had a great time! The weather was perfect for the days we were there, though it had poured raining the days before. There were tons of shorebirds on the side of the road in the left-over rain from the flooding.

Saw two bears! These were in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

The coolest thing to me, though, was not the bears (or the possible wolf I saw), but the huge, huge flock of Red-winged blackbirds that took flight and landed around us. This picture does not do it justice, at all. You could see the bright red wing patches on half the birds at any given time. And there was an albino in the flock, which really stood out (though it’s not in this photo. Well maybe it is? I can’t tell if that white thing is a bird or something else).

We went to the beach, too:

I love birding. I love being outdoors and looking at nature (or what’s left of nature).

Me holding an Ovenbird at Kiptopeke State Park bird banding station

I went to the 16th annual Eastern Shore Birding and Wildlife Festival this past weekend with some birding and naturalist friends. One stop was at the Kiptopeke bird banding station at Kiptopeke State Park. They caught, weighed and measured some cool birds while we were there, and we each got to release a bird or two. I released this Ovenbird. He stayed on my hand for a while before he flew off.

More pictures are here.