Favorite Christmas songs and books

What are yours? I find if I listen to Christmas songs when writing I sing along and get very little writing done. Or reading for that matter! Listening to Burl Ives right now...

And looking for holiday reads. Any suggestions? I love Christmas romances. Naughty or Nice *wink*

Interview with Mark Harmon

Yes. That Mark Harmon. Currently known as Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NICS and Lucas Davenport of USA's upcoming TV movie based on the book by John Sandford, Certain Prey.

I've read maybe 16 of the current 21 Prey stories and have enjoyed each one. I'll catch up on the newest 5 soon. Honest!

So this interview, which lasted 32 minutes (and I recorded it all!) involved others asking questions, I just filled in for a NCIS buddy who couldn't make it. She was the journalist invitee, but to take her place? I was all over that!

Some of the questions asked were about Certain Prey and some about NCIS, since it is the #1 scripted TV show out there. I'll post some of the answers tomorrow, but don't forget, Certain Prey debutes this Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 9pm on USA.

Upcoming guests

I have several authors who will be guesting on my blog in October. Because October is a time for reading! (When isn't?)

I'm not a fan of James Patterson. I did read several early Alex Cross books and enjoy them but once he started writing with others, the quality didn't just decline, it plummeted. But I like this article from CNN on How to get your kid to be a fanatic reader

I wonder what we can do to get everyone to be a fanatic reader? Hmm, the possibilities. Because let's face it, reading is fun and frankly the book is always better than the movie!

Wednesday Review: Nothing Daunted

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. I'm not big on biographies, I don't really care about the intimate details of other people's lives. But this is more of a history I guess. About real people. From the perspective of Dorothy's descendants.

Which probably makes it a biography.

In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York, for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their society luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teaching jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied—shocking their families and friends. “No young lady in our town,” Dorothy later commented, “had ever been hired by anybody.”

I wanted to read this book because of the romantic heroine nature of the story. Just goes to show we writers don't make this stuff up! There really were women like this, and only through stories such as this one can we know not everyone followed the rules.

Granted I admit to skimming some of it, but over all it was engaging enough to finish and recommend for historical (and western) lovers who enjoy a well-written narrative non-fiction read.

Wednesday Review: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

I read this book because it's going to be a movie. Or is a movie. Is it out yet? Anyway, I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan not entirely because of that. I also read it because I'm fascinated with Chinese history. The culture, the power struggles, the intricate imperial court goings on. Fascinating!

What I liked most about this story is the very real emotion of a changing friendship. Lily's self-absorption isn't necessarily evil or mean spirited, but human. It's what happens to all of us over time when we're not reminded, or don't remind ourselves, that there are people in our lives not in our immediate circle of friends and family.

We can say it's easier to keep in touch now, Facebook updates, email, phone calls, but it still requires time and effort and without that, there is no more.

The secret woman's language is something I'd recently read about but the intricacies are incredible. Not worthy to learn 'proper' Chinese, this language is over 1,000 years old and told from mother to daughter. Another piece of female bonding that is both secret and slightly rebellious.

Overall, I think the best thing about this book was that it didn't take place in the Forbidden City as several others I've read have. (And enjoyed don't get me wrong!) It was a rural town populated by the proverbial big fish in a small pond type of people trying to get by.

Did you read Sonya Clark's post from yesterday about her release, Mojo Queen? Did you enter to win a prize pack?

Books to movies

For the purposes of this, I'm talking fiction. Non-fiction/documentaries are in a totally separate category.

All this talk about Hunger Games being made into a movie (and I do mean all this talk, it's permeated everything!) got me thinking about what's lost (and gained?) by turning a beloved book into a movie/series.Game of Thrones, Pillars of the Earth, Dexter, True Blood, Murdoch Mysteries, the Stieg Larsson trilogy, not to mention the many many adaptations of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, etc. (For more try this site.)

I like to think I have a pretty good imagination and don't need a movie to show me what I've already pictured for the setting. Plus there are the drawbacks of lost scenes, composite characters, the movie/show going off in a different direction than subsequent books, and bad casting.

But there are positives. There have to be!

The number one pro I can think of is that you get to see everything on the page, all the description and background on the big screen. Or in the case of a series, the expansion of a beloved universe. But what else? If I've read the book and loved it, why would I take the chance on seeing the movie that may or may not be up to the book's standard?

Or is that the point? To see it there, to take that love of a book to another level?

100 Books Every High School Student Should Read

I feel the need to hang my head in shame however a good many of these books look beyond boring. Of the Top 100 I've read...6. Maybe 7...and then not until #18, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque . I've seen more movies but I doubt that counts. I did use #6, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a book I'm shopping around. Does that count for at least knowing the title?