The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart

If there is one way to predict how bad Internet addiction is, just start by hanging out with a bunch of readers. We all bemoan our fate of too much "Facebook" etc. All the time.

And wouldn't you know.. 

FaceBOOK is like a book. With real characters that just happen to be the protagonists and antagonists in your own story. How could you go wrong?? Multiple settings, story arcs, my God it's a library right on your techno device. What's not to like?

We discussed the barriers to our reading and it always turns to this problem. The Net. And since then I have seen a few of my book friends turn to new goals, and they have been very good at keeping them. One makes sure she reads so many pages per night, one makes sure her entire Web sources are locked down and some just left and haven't returned. That's not true, they left and came back with three read books under their belt. 

I was insanely jealous. 

Focusing on time to read is hard for me, every day I wake up and say, I am going to read, end of story. What do I do? Check out the online world, news, favorite book blogs, regular blogs, Twitter, etc and then I log off and curl up with a book. Then I nod off immediately. My brain has had enough reading, time to tune out, and I do. Book falls to floor and I take a great nap. Unfortunately, I wake up to say out loud, "how the hell can I have a book blog to write for and not read??"

The book I posted, The Winter of our Disconnect, is a book I picked up a while back. Wait, no, I bought it so quickly when I found it in the book store I nearly killed myself trying to get home to read the whole thing in one sitting. It was one of those books that pushed me to clean out the superfluous crap of my online life. I set about to go online briefly and get off in one hour so I could read. It worked for awhile but it was too difficult for me to maintain. I wanted to be Susan Maushart. I really did. However, I think about this book every. single. day, does that count? No.

I want to be free from the hassles of logging on, if Susan Maushart can do this, so can I. Well. I can certainly try.

What the book is about:

An American, Susan Maushart, and her children live on the west coast of Australia.  I believe she is freshly divorced from her Aussie husband (that part is fuzzy) and going at it as a single mom. Situations pushed her into making a decision. No online life. For ONE year. One year. Can you imagine her kids and what they had to say? She pushed it to the nth degree, and the outcome was not only entertaining, well thought out and encouraging, but honest, an honest push to look at your own addictions. Even if one cannot commit the way she did, we can certainly have days where we think of her extraordinary efforts and cheer our own selves on to take a day off for a book, a game, a walk, time with family, friends, that place that's called, Real Life. That thing that seems to be boring compared to our online lives. 

I apologize for the crude review, but I think it speaks volumes. Get offline and live. Read. Find time to enjoy your life. Everyone will be online when you get back. I promise (I swear Internet people never leave, they simply cannot which, in turn, makes them the best of people who wait for you when you go on sabbaticals, my people are phenomenal with this, very forgiving..) Set goals, read eleven pages a night, throw your phones and tablets in another room and sit down with a nice cup of tea and read. 

The feeling I experience when I go off the Grid: overwhelmingly wonderful. It's work to make time for a book, it didn't used to be, but it is. That is how our lives are now, hard and very distracted while living most of the time on the Grid. So we must work around it. Not rage against it as most of us want to do, but to put all things in perspective and actually take time off. 

See how you do, I am going to do it myself, I need to catch up on many books that are silently, patiently waiting for me. And I can't wait to meet up with them.

Buy it and keep it by your side, and then go out and buy all your Interwebz friends the book and tell them to never ever lose it. 

A Thank You, to the members of my book group

After I joined Facebook in 2009, it was a bit boring. I mean, there were lots of fancy quizzes to tell you what Disney character you were but there wasn't much in the search bar when it came to things I wanted to check out. Like books (of course.) So I thought about things, (rather quickly, I am a Gemini after all) hmm a book group! The groups were taking off (sort of) and having a group of my friends and family would be the greatest thing.

Here was my very tiny little goal list: 

1. We would talk about books.
2. We would become closer and get to know each other better when it came to what we like to read. 
3. We would find books for one another and talk even MORE about books.
4. We would learn to like other genres, after all, I had learned to like other genres so would they!

That was as far as I got. So I mustered up some bravery and made up my group hooking in my two best most sane buddies (one an editor the other a past corrections officer among many other things) .. the kind  of women that if anyone got out of hand, they were the body guards of all bad book people. I chose well. And they are still there to this day. And never had to bounce one person out of the " book bar."

The first to vamoose was some of my family members which was SO forgivable. Seriously. I was pissed for five seconds but book people are weird, lets face it, some are not into socializing about books. They want to go sit in a corner with a blanket, all the lights off and never discuss ONE book they have read. But these people of mine, they will give you every single book they have to borrow.. They are good people so I forgave rather quickly. 

Some people said they left because I put up obscure books. And I was. I mean, I may  have read every Patricia Highsmith book or some off the wall indie writer(s) and raved on and on about it, but they were not into it. "Where's Janet Evanovich? J.K. Rowling? JAMES PATTERSON???" I was at a loss. So my friend post corrections officer said, "you need to get with the people. Your books are too hard,  too out there, man." I took her advice. 

In that advice I mixed different genres as well as that was still a major goal for me. I was a straight up NYT bestseller reader until I discovered travel writers, bios, autobios and Sci Fi. I wanted everyone to read what I read and well, that's just not going to happen. Not at first, anyway. It took a few years to hook people in, just to "try" (please? I begged) and they did.

The group grew due to my editor bodyguard friend, she worked at a university and knows quite a million and a half readers (not really, I am so lying,  the group is at two hundred) but she did bring in the heart of the group. The post corrections officer followed with her friends and family. It grew and grew and friends invited their friends and it's a great bunch of people. I have met people who ended up being my good friends. It's rewarding. 

And it's a lot of work. I was posting books a lot, probably five times a week until I realized that I was not having much fun on the other side of Facebook. I made a pact with myself. Book postings on Wednesdays and Sundays and in between days, articles and such from my Facebook book page list. I had more time to post cat memes and what I ate for dinner. Like the rest of the world. I even fit in Fat Mum Slim's photo of the day. Photography became fun as well.

There are a lot of things I have been into but this group has been the most rewarding. I have implemented the no snobbery policy (which they are the least snobby people I know so that wasn't even an issue) and staying on topic as much as possible though.. we got into The Cheesecake Factory the other day. At least it was under a cake baking book I had posted.

I forgot people in the beginning and I regret that. People, like me, read the NYT bestseller list or headed right to the top books at B and N or we read nothing else, but in that I had to change, I knew that there are so many wonderful books from other countries, fiction, non, coffee table books, informational, quirky, and self-helpy. And so much more. The greatest part of the group besides fast friendships (and a mascot that is a WereHedgehog (see? we even have a shapeshifter thing going on)) was the members who tried other genres. That, to me, was a wonderful thing.  

And they run the group whether I am there or not and I love that so much.

I am saying thank you to them today, to every single member, related to me or not. You have made this group the most fun area of my online social life which has seeped into real life. You are the best, my nerdy book friends, the very best.

Merci.

PS the photo is a book (of a series) that my editor buddy loves, that is why I used that particular book in the photo, next photo will be all about my post corrections guard buddy. I promise. x Probably along the lines of Janet Evanovich.

Ditching the Facebook app for reading

This is one of my photos from Fat Mum Slim's Photo of the Day Album.. The sad part was the first year I did FMS (when I took this photo) it was with a 3G iPhone. Many good photos killed by the furry 3G camera.

 I hope I can re-do this photo.  In fact, I have to leave Middlesex out as my husband was not amused that I wasn't "savvy" enough to pick up on the fact that Middlesex should be in the middle not near the bottom. He is right. 

On to the point..

I had to make a few decisions about my online life. It's very easy being out with a bum post-surgical foot to read all the book blogs I love, spend time on Facebook, Word Chums as well as other places I love to read. I will be going back to work at some point and I think I need some reading time. And blogger time.

I made some crazy changes (take a deep breath, I did these things, not you, it's okay.) 

I told my FB book group that I had to slow down on posting books. I planned to post a slew of books once during the week then once on the weekend. On the other days I will respond to their posts and such. I think I need to pull back a bit even though it is truly one of my best book ventures I have ever started..

Then....
I took Facebook off my phone.
I am FACEBOOKLESS when I am out.
Today was pretty good. I went out, took my Kindle and spent a good hour and a half reading.
I felt no pressure.
No temptations to reassure myself that the Facebook world and all my friends were intact and alive.
They are tough critters, they do not need me worrying all day right?

I thought, hmm if I want to have a book blog I really need to READ. 
No kidding, Cheryl.
So here we are. I have reviews I can catch up on old reads that may fill up some posts until I get my current three books completed.

That's my goings on.
See you this weekend.

Facebook fun with lists

Facebook was teeming with a copy-paste-and-annoy-all-your-book-and-non-book-friends-fun-thing that asked people to list ten books that meant something to them.

It went like this:

I have been challenged by XXX to list 10 books that have stayed with me for some reason. Don't think too hard. They don't need to be the "right" books or even great works of literature, just the ones that affected you in some way. Tag 10 friends, including me, so I can see your list. I would like to see lists from: XXX x 10

This was my list. Hard to make up a list when you love a million books but I just spouted out books from my memory file to my finger tips:

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
2. Little House on the Prairie (The Long Winter mostly) Laura Ingalls Wilder.
3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
4. You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr
5. We Band of Angels by Elizabet M.Norman.
6. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
7. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
8. Revelations in the Bible. (as well as other books)
9. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
10. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
11 Every book by my author friends. (I know I am cheating here.. but it's only fair)

Then we took it a step further. Why do they mean something to us? 

It took it to a higher realm and boy howdy we had fun. 

So I wrote this: 

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis At first I read these books when I was young for fun then I found a Narnia companion which solidified my faith even more, such great books as they can be read on several levels. Which, to me, is genius.

2. Little House on the Prairie (The Long Winter mostly) Laura Ingalls Wilder. LOVED Laura and family as they taught us to get out there and go for your dreams .. the grit and determination and love they had for the land and each other to survive through all the elements of wanting to live on the prairie is phenomenal. This book in particular is a true story of what to do when life hands you a blizzard! I felt their chill and their determination to stay alive until the spring.

 3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
THIS book was painfully long and yet after all was said and done when I closed the Kindle I wanted more. So much more. I read this over Christmas into the new year and didn't pay much attention to it then all of a sudden that strange feeling overcame me that I was reading one of the great American novels, which sounds crazy but I think some would understand what I mean. That world she created so dramatically and wonderfully through words will always stay with me.

 4. You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr
Why this resonated.. a couple move to Cali, she holds a book club for directors and producers (they want ideas for movies and she wanted to bring literature to the.) It's about a marriage, faith (Jewish) and finding our way back to where our heart lies in our faith and how it fits into our marriage. And books, lots about books.. brilliant story.

 5. We Band of Angels by Elizabet M.Norman.
This book is a book that every nurse should read. It's the historical story of military medical professionals (focusing on nurses) who had an idyllic deployment to the beautiful Philippines. WW2 breaks out and their world shatters as they have to run for the jungle. From there, their heroic efforts (while very ill themselves) in aiding the physicians in everything from wound care to surgical procedures in the wild eventually hiding out in a cave will never leave me. These people are the truest form of nursing and heroism.

 6. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
You can love people from afar on the premise of sharing books in every sense. It's a love story but the love is based on literature.

 7. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
I have yapped about this wonderful comic/narrative book about depression ad nauseum. If you have depression and/or simply need to explain it to others because they just don't get it, buy it for you and for them. It's perfect. 

 8. Revelation in the Bible. (as well as other books)
I love to know what is going to happen even if it's in symbolic language. This prompted a deep investigation into what was being told to us by God with our future. I am nosy like that.

9. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Society. The book resonates today, how we can absolutely manipulate other humans through class distinction and within that class a single subtle look. One of the best books I ever read/ This is about why we have social norms and how they hurt us on so many levels. 

 10. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
When I stopped reading for a while this was one of the books I bought used that took me to Spain a bookstore with the most rich characters and plot ever. I can't even recommend it enough I would give everyone a copy if I could. It was a perfect book to jump back into the literature world. 

 11 Every book by my author friends. (I know I am cheating here.. but it's only fair) I have good friends (and a husband of a friend) who have written books, they have stuck to my ribs, heart and soul as I know the authors and their friendships. It's like they sat me down in a coffee shop and told me a story. Love them all.

I had to cheat there, I do love them all but needed to be fair. 

The second part of this exercise was fun, not everyone participated as for one, it totally constipated everyone's wall with all the tagging going on but the lists! The lists were amazing, books I never heard of, books I wanted to re-read, and books that said BUY ME NOW DAMMIT! I was subdued into a vast gratefulness to be surrounded by book lovers from all over on my social networking home.