Suite101, Marian Keyes and Other Nonsense

I fell through the cracks yesterday and didn't update. I felt funky all day, culminating in a migraine that I was able to kill with lots of coffee and some motrin (I've discovered that if I feel a migraine coming on, mainlining caffeine and inhaling motrin as fast as possible will generally work to beat it back into submission. By which I mean I'll just have a mildly bad headache and feel dizzy the rest of the evening). Worth it, because I went to see Inglourious Basterds with Jonah and I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on it for anything. Awesome, disgusting, disturbing, funny piece of film.

So! Time for the reading corner portion of this blog.

I've begun writing extensively for Suite101, which is awesome. I have 7 articles up right now -almost at my 3 month minimum after barely a week of writing. I think that's pretty cool.
The first three were posted in a previous entry (and are pretty easy to find if you click around on these next few or go to my profile).

The most interesting thing about writing for Suite is that, unlike writing for Examiner, I'm not just limited to literature. Granted, that's my forte. That's what I like -I eat, breathe, drink, dream and exist surrounded by literature, but I've found that I can write about other stuff pretty well too -which is encouraging, since I plan on applying at another writing website where you write to what they want. I'm enjoying stretching my writing boundaries -I hate feeling stagnant, which reviews were starting to do just a little for me.

I still love them, I'd still write them for a living if I could (and hey, maybe I can), but it's nice to also write about

• The Dangers of Driving and Texting
• The Best Way to Organize Notes for College Students
• The Best Study Tips for College Students
• Parent-Child Relationships in King Lear

It's still sort of centered around literature and academia, but I'm branching out, little by little. It's proving to be rather fun to see what sorts of things I can dig up doing just a bit of research -the driving/texting article in particular was pretty cool. It was also sad to come across so many websites that show horrible, fatal accidents caused by teens (predominantly girls) who were texting while they were driving. Kind of a good reminder for me.

So that's Suite! I'm loving writing for it already. It's fun to learn how to research and use keywords, format articles and get really concise. Writing 400-800 word articles is actually challenging for me, which is new. I'm not used to having to rein in my verbosity, so it's making a nice change. Of course that just means I'll get all the more wordy on here, but then I'm not really getting paid to be concise on my blog, am I?

S101 is a fantastic website. Not just because I write for it (obviously that helps, ha ha), but because they're very concerned with quality writing. The articles on there are pretty much uniformly good -there's still so much personal style in each one, but they're all informative, interesting and easily read. I've been snooping around on Suite a lot more since I got hired and I'm more and more impressed.

I'm also becoming slowly disillusioned with Examiner. Granted, I love it. I like being able to sit down and crank out a short piece on anything I want (as long as it involves literature) and get paid for it over time...but the way my page views fluctuate smells strongly of fishiness to me. Getting 5oo+ views one day and only 45 the next doesn't make much sense, especially when I update with awesome articles (if I may say so myself) just about every day. Seriously. I'm writing view-whore articles about back-to-school stuff, and it's like a snowstorm of views one day and the friggin' Sahara the next. Something is rotten in the area of my Examiner reviews, methinks, but whatever. I'm still making money (sort of), so it's good.

Yesterday I found a book written by a 16 year old girl that's won a ton of awards and actually looks like something I'd read. So I reviewed it (yes without having read it, so sue me) and I'm hoping eventually I'll pick up a copy.

It's called Legacy. Check it out.

In other book news, I made one last binging library visit. I swore I was just going in to get their sole copy of The Fountainhead on VHS (the first half of which I watched yesterday in a headache-induced half-slumber in the basement), and left with it and four books. For shame, for shame. Whatever. I'm a book whore, I really can't help it. If it has pages and text and inky goodness, I want it.

The first book I grabbed out of my towering stack of four books (no, really. One of them is a SF anthology, and it's about as big as my torso, boobs included) is Marian Keyes' book Under the Duvet. It's about her life as a writer -it's all nonfiction, so finding it in the fiction section sort of bummed me out regarding the library's efficiency, but it's not like I was actively looking for it, so serendipity was working in my favor. Reading this book is sort of like a guideline for a path I don't want to take but could see myself skirting along the edges of. Not her alcoholism or crippling insecurities, but the writing bit.

She makes it sound like fun again, which is refreshing. I've read too many things by writers who bitch and moan about writing like they have to cut off their own leg in order to get 3 words onto the page. Yeah, I know that's how it feels sometimes (I'm in college and still writing academic papers, I absolutely know how that feels), but why can't writers ever expostulate about the times when the words just come running out of the pen or away from the keyboard like they can't wait to plaster themselves all over the page? Why is it always the monumental struggle, the staring at blank paper until your forehead bleeds, the writer's block? All of those things happen, but they make the art of writing look like walking through a room filled with broken glass while drunk and blindfolded. It's not always like that. Sometimes it's awesome.

So that's why I'm liking Keyes. She's not a great writer, I don't think, but she's funny and refreshing and honest. I'd totally recommend checking her out, whether you're a writer or just need some laughs. She writes about pretty much anything -from her alcoholism to buying a house with her husband (who she calls Himself) to getting free samples of makeup. It's a cute book.

That's all for today folks -I think I more than filled the space that would have been taken by yesterday's post and hopefully I've given you a few things to read or think about or argue over (even with me).

Tomorrow we'll have a Twilight-related bit. Fans are interesting people.

The Library at Night and healthy eating

I finished reading it last night! Wow that took forever to read! (Okay, so it took like a couple of weeks, that is forever to me. I can barely remember back two days ago, so shut up already). It was totally worth going through it slowly though...I'd start it all over again right now, in all honesty. I wish I was as well-read as Alberto Manguel (I also wish my name sounded that cool). He conveniently includes a "non-canonical" list of his favorite books at the end of TLaN, which I think is awesome.

Yes, I'm going to read all of them. I'd read a few that were on the list...but not too many. Less than 10% I'd bet. Sort of depressing, given how much I read, but he's had a lot more time to read than I have!

Also, listening to Queen makes me want to watch Flash Gordon. No, I'm not kidding. I'm hitting up the library after I leave Panera to see if they have that or the movie version of The Fountainhead. I know that a) they won't and b) the movie will probably bug the hell out of me since it won't be as good as the book, but it's Gary Cooper playing Howard Roark. I can't resist that. I just can't.

In other news, I wrote a review of a book about eating healthy smoothies and how good it is for you. I figure since I now have doctor's orders about cooking all my own food at school this year due to severe food allergies (essentially I'm allergic to everything ever*), I should probably start looking for cheap healthy ways to not starve to death. Also this book just came out it and looks pretty good.

*Seriously: I'm allergic to artichokes, MSG, preservatives (including formaldehyde, which is in a surprisingly large amount of foods) -which are ubiquitous in anything that isn't a raw vegetable essentially and soy, which is also in everything. I'm not kidding. It is so hard to avoid eating this stuff (minus the artichokes, they're pretty easy to spot), and it really restricts what I can eat, how much I can eat and where. It's not like I get instantly sick eating stuff, but if I have high concentrations of any of those things within a limited time period, it does not end well. So now you know.

Also, I wrote a bunch of stuff on Suite101. Okay...so I wrote 3 articles and put them up. But still! That's 3 articles! I'm working on a fourth and rewriting a previously written piece about another book by AJ Jacobs (who I love), so I'll have plenty of stuff to start putting up. The Suite articles are

• Writing Good Book Reports (like you couldn't use that at some point in your life)
• Religious Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter (why didn't they have this written when we were in high school?)
• Social Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter (see above)

The ones I'm working on will be of

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Oh yes. It will be awesome.) and
• The Know-It-All (which you should go read right now, because I said so)

Words, words, words.

Because it's David Bowie as Jareth. And because I could.

Well, here I am -back from the birthday high of yesterday. It was an excellent day. Presents were opened (awesome, awesome presents, I should add), coffee was had and dinner was consumed -followed by dessert and more coffee. It was a good year to turn 20. I got a new coffeemaker for school when we did Festivus with the Shoemaker clan-along with Coraline, candles and some blank books to write in-so you know it's a good day when that happens. Coffeemaker (and coffee to go with it), money for books (remember The Library at Night? I'm still reading that, actually -slow going right now because I've been leaving the house more often. Weird.), a thing to sit my Mac on so it stops burning my legs (I actually have what appears to be a burn mark on my left leg from using my extremely hot laptop for long periods of time. No joke), a t-shirt that says "Han Shot First" (he totally did) and a game called Literati, which will be opened and played with great gusto at some point today.

Okay, enough of me being as excited as a little kid about all of my neat gadgety and/or papery presents, on to my next item of interest. Last night, as a mental change from reading The Library at Night, I started reading my copy of The Time Traveler's Wife. I felt that was fitting, since the movie came out yesterday and Eric Bana is in it. Yummy. I will see the movie based on him alone, whether or not I like the book. However, and this is an early judgment since I read 6 pages before I fell asleep, I think I'm going to like it. Niffenegger's clear prose and familiar yet elegant style centered me very firmly in the book. The characters feel like people I've known or could know and the story itself just seems interesting. I'm sure the movie version isn't going to do it justice (when do they ever? Seriously. Name a few), but it's worth seeing anyway I'm sure.

When I write my inevitable review, it will of course be on Suite101 as opposed to Examiner, which I'm now stocking with articles written more to attract a lot of fast hits than anything else...people aren't appreciating my lengthy literary reviews on there. So I'll put them somewhere that they might be useful -hopefully. We'll see. It's hard to know if people read about literature on the internet. I do, but that could just be because I write about it online. And because I'm a nerd.

Regardless -once I start posting to Suite, I'll start giving you links. In the meantime, my Examiner is still going to be updated 3 or 4 times a week (maybe), but it won't be the stuff you're used to seeing.