Summer Blog Blast Tour : Monday

The Summer Blog Blast Tour for Monday:

Adam Rex at Fuse Number 8
David Almond at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland
Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

Have fun!

(Thanks to Kelly F for all the coding!)

Five Things Meme

It's rainy so why not do a meme? I've read this a few places but Christine inspired me to play.

Five Things Meme

Rules for the game:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
So that would be 1998. I was still an attorney, working as in-house counsel.

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Pay off student loans and credit card debt -- and help friends and family do same, up to 10,000. (I think that is the current IRS guidelines for gifts.)
2. Buy a house.
3. Invest so I could live off investments.
4. Travel.
5. Set up trust funds for niece and nephew.

Five jobs that I have had:
1. Babysitter
2. Federal judicial law clerk.
3. Law associate.
4. In house counsel.
5. Librarian

Three of my habits.
1. keeping a written list of all books I read.
2. clutter. Not getting rid of clutter is a bad habit!
3. watching TV and reading at the same time.

Five places I have lived:
1. Elizabeth NJ
2. Matawan NJ
3. Pt Pleasant NJ
4. Philadelphia PA
5. Spring Lake NJ

If you want to do this -- you're tagged!

Are You Ready for The Summer?

Or, at least, the Summer Blog Blast Tour of 08?

Organized once again by Chasing Ray, here is the schedule:

Monday

Adam Rex at Fuse Number 8
David Almond at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland
Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

Tuesday

Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
Sean Qualls at Fuse Number 8
Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
Robin Brande at Hip Writer Mama
Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
Debby Garfinkle at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy
Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Writing and Ruminating

Wednesday

Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
Ingrid Law at Fuse Number 8
Polly Dunbar at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
Barry Lyga at At Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Thursday

Elisha Cooper at Chasing Ray
Dar Williams at Fuse Number 8
Jennifer Bradbury at Bildungsroman
E. Lockhart at The YA YA YAs
Mary Hooper at Miss Erin
Charles R. Smith at Writing and Ruminating

Friday

Varian Johnson at Finding Wonderland
Jincy Willet at Shaken & Stirred
John Grandits at Writing & Ruminating
Meg Burden at Bookshelves of Doom
Gary D. Schmidt at Miss Erin
Javaka Steptoe at Seven Impossible Things

ALA Question

Are you going to ALA? Are you a member of YALSA?

If so, please email me! It's lizzy.burns at gmail.com

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 926 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Buffy Quote of the Week

"What's this? Just sitting about watching the telly when there's evil afoot?"
-- Spike, ep: Doomed

Have some reviews!

• Paper Towns by John Green
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (which librarians and teachers can get for free! Very exciting.)
• My Most Excellent Year: A novel of love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Whee!

Jezebel Defines YA

"Fine Lines will from now on define "YA" as any book read in one's own company from the time one learns to read to the time one pays one's own rent."

Fine Lines, Jezebel's Weekly Retro book review.

Printzess Carlie

Congratulations to Carlie Webber, a member of the 2010 Printz Committee!

Full YALSA election results are here and here.

Take the Lantern

Thanks to Fandom Wank's post about old school text only computer games, I've been wasting the day playing Zork.

I'm Back!

I'm back from vacation in North Carolina; like many other folks from NJ, every time I visit I think, look at how cheap houses are! I should totally move here!

So, what did I miss? I have over 500 emails and over 3000 posts at bloglines. Wow. And, I also have to do laundry today.

Carlie's post on ARCs is a real conversation starter, especially as it picks up on something I read (somewhere? look at all those emails and posts, of course I'm confused!) about how while publishers and authors may look at reviewers, bloggers, and ARCs as part of the marketing of the book, we (reviewers, readers, and readers), no matter how much we love the authors, are in it for the book.

Just look at some of the language contained on ARCs (more on that in a future post, I promise!), which comes down to "you give us a negative review from an ARC and we'll sue you." Which is so not cool! Publishers, you create these ARCs to have pre-publication buzz and reviews. Which means that you have to take the risk that some will love it, some will hate it, some will get it, some won't. Just like with the final book.

OK, I'm back to reading why I will never go to a science fiction convention. And when authors and reviewers go into battle, and Amazon ends up looking bad.

Poetry Friday: Iambic tetrameter and you

Because I love iambic tetrameter: Poem 126 by Emily Dickinson

The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea
For, hold them, blue to blue
The one the other will absorb
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do
As syllable, from sound.

--

I know when most people think of meter and poetry, the default setting is iambic pentameter, because that's what we study the most of in school. But twelve years of percussion study make me focus on the rhythm of poetry (sometimes to the detriment of not getting the poem itself because I'm so fascinated with the auditory quality) and I find iambic tetrameter far more interesting. Observe:

• Nearly all of Emily Dickinson's poetry is in iambic tetrameter.
• Although we don't much talk about poetry meter when we compose music, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The Yellow Rose of Texas" are also in iambic tetrameter.
  
• The Sorting Hat songs in the Harry Potter series are in iambic tetrameter. That means you can sing all of them to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Want to impress people? Recite the entirety of the Sorting Hat song from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's much easier than it looks because everything is easier to memorize when set to music.
• Iambic tetrameter fits the natural movement of our bodies. Try this: Walk as you say the poem above, with your right foot landing on the stressed syllable (this means you'll say the first syllable of the poem standing still; it's like a pickup note). As you read, if you don't stop walking on the silent syllable, you'll always land on your right foot at the end of the phrase. Now, this works with iambic pentameter, too, but what I find more interesting in tetrameter is that you'll walk in phrases of eight counts. You know what else is done in counts of eight? Dancing. (Well, not dances in 3/4 time, but you get the picture.)
  
• Iambic tetrameter is easy to read in rhythm, especially the way Emily Dickinson employs it. Read the above poem aloud. Because most of Dickinson's poetry (and the Sorting Hat song) pauses on every eighth count, you have a natural place to take a breath. Taking that breath means you can keep up the reading pace.

And so ends today's lesson. Happy Friday!

There's a fine line between cute and scary...

...and this definitely crosses into scary.

The Stitch CD player, profiled at Shiny Shiny.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd be afraid to put my hand in that thing. It might do to me what Gollum did to Frodo...and I don't even have the One Ring.

If ARCs=spoilers then reviews=? (-ARCs)

In which I have questions regarding reviews, spoilers and ARCs.

Liz is on vacation this week so I'll be commandeering Tea Cozy, bwahaha.

Poetry Friday: The Red Wheelbarrow

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

Poetry Friday round up is at The Well Read Child.

The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty: Create Your Own Ballet by Viola Ann Seddon (illustrator) and Jean Mahoney (author). Copy supplied by publisher, Candlewick.

It's About:

Creating your own ballet for Sleeping Beauty.

The Good:

I was not a ballet kid. I was, however, a miniatures kid. Had a dollhouse. Had a book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that recreated four rooms from the museum, complete with furniture. Loved it.

So I eagerly opened up the box for Create Your Own Ballet, with its promises on the box: Changeable Scenery and Backdrops, Twirling Dancers, Full Story and Stage Directions, and Audio CD.

The box opens as a theatre would: open the doors, open the curtains, and there is the stage. On the bottom of the box is a compartment; open it, and there are the dancers (beautiful dancers, with a stick to manipulate the dancer.) And the backdrops. Along with the book. (Follow the publisher links for images).

The book is not just the stage directions to create your own play-it also includes a CD for music cues to move from scene to scene. There are additional details and information, such as the history of Tchaikovsky's ballet, information about staging the ballet with real people.

A great gift for little ballerinas. Or kids who like dollhouses and miniatures. Or future directors, who will be inspired by the mini stage.