Sheila's Guests and Reviews

When Shelfari closed and Goodreads absorbed its reviews, I found myself landed with tons of new shelves on my Goodreads page. Every tag was now a permanent link between (some of the) books I'd read. And the books I'd so carefully shelved before were now scattered among the morass. One tag I'd used on Shelfari but not Goodreads was "literary," which got me wondering, what did I mean when labeled a book that way. Is all writing literature? Do the books I labeled literary somehow have more literary merit? Or maybe it's lit if it's character driven and just fiction otherwise? Which then begs the other question, what is "just fiction"? I remember when I was growing up, I graduated from the children's to the adult library, aged around 10, and delighted in those yellow backed Golancz science fiction novels. My granddad read James Bond adventures and Westerns, so of course I read all of those too. Mum and Dad had library books hidden under the be...

While I was in England my brother gave me a copy of my Granddad's memoirs to read; I learned how a well-edited memoir can make a really fascinating, informative and uplifting book; and I'm hoping to use those lessons to improve a novel I've been working on. So here's my unpublished review of an unpublished memoir--who knows, maybe D will publish it publicly one day and let everyone else read it too: Look Back in Joy, by TW with DC I’m really not a great reader of memoirs, but this one grabbed my attention, and not just because the authors are my Granddad and my brother. The format offers an interesting mix of voices, information and research, which really makes for an interesting read. TW was born, just about, in Victorian times; he describes his childhood in the early 1900s with a very honest eye for interesting detail. Meanwhile DC, born nearly four years before me and well-practiced in researching history, has checked Granddad’s facts and researched the world around ...

My Mum had pizza and ice-cream for breakfast, or perhaps it was lunch, or dinner, or tea instead. It's hard to keep them straight in your head when you're flying around the world. I gave her a cheese sandwich. My Mum's head's nodding. She'll fall asleep soon, probably not in her bed. It must be time for dinner. My Mum's flown half-way round the world with Christmas in her cases and love in her eyes. Life is good. She's over there resting in her chair, and me, I'm typing, blogging, over the moon.

Off to the airport, saying goodbye, waiting lines stretching from here to the sky, stuffed dogs and real dogs and children that cry; he's flying; I'm saying goodbye. I saw my son off on the plane this morning, and I'm missing him already. The lines were incredible, but at least he made his plane.

He's been to Texas, to LA, to work, to a job interview and a wedding, all in the last few days. And today he got up for a 6am flight; he's yet to go to sleep. So the first thing he says when he sees us, after six months away, is "They do have Starbucks in Portland don't they?" They do. Coffee's good. And now we'll go shopping.