Unrelated: books
The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad was a notation in a New York Times Review of Books, and its review sounded interesting enough. Picked the novel up the other week, and it’s, ahem, interesting. The author’s purported roots as a slam poet shine through, too, with lyrical word play.
Food items:
Grace’s brother, nominally, Uncle Alberto, is a good cook. “Oh man, don’t tell him then he gets impossible to deal with!” Anyway, Sunday night, he fixed, among other things, some of the tastiest Acorn Squash I’ve ever had. Wireless was running in his trailer, so I attempted to write down the recipe and fire it off to my own Ma Wetzel. Cut the acorn squash in half, and cook it face down in water for 15 minutes. Turn it over. Cook it face up for fifteen minutes. Sautee some red peppers and some onions, then add the mixture, plus a can of Mexican corn, and it’s great.
Unfortunately, the recipe didn’t get out with all the right details. So Ma Wetzel calls, “You want Acorn Squash?”
Just trying to help my little vegetarian friends – that all.
Speaking of Vegetarians:
A couple of weeks ago, my little Pisces friend Linda handed me a manuscript for a book she’d “ghost-written” (that’s a little in-joke, see, she claims it was channeled work, ghost-written by her.) Linda was busy handing out several copies of the manuscript for review, suggestions, and so forth. I think she told me I was probably the most literate of the preview readers. I don’t know about that. A degree doesn’t mean I’m literate.
I toted the manuscript around with me, and I finally got to reading it at the airport. The first dozen pages or so, I’ve got a number of minor corrections, dangling modifiers noted, incorrect use of a word, a few agreement issues, a singular subject but a plural pronoun, nothing I might add, that I’m not guilty of myself.
But I had about two hours of uninterrupted time to really read, coming back from El Paso, and I breezed through the bulk of the manuscript. I quite worrying about editing remarks, and I paid more attention to the style. Even more important, I wrapped my mind around the content.
When it’s published, I’d push this book. It’s simple, straightforward. No plot. A little bit of self-promotion, but then, the book is about how to deal with certain issues. It’s not fiction, and I kept thinking I recognized some of the clients mentioned.
Quick read, short on style, no big words, nothing earth-shattering, but it deals with ticklish self-help subject that needs a simple, straightforward, no BS approach. Which, despite its lack of style (or fishing & Shakespeare allusions), makes it a rather good book. Excellent book.
By the time I got done with the first 80 to 100 manuscript pages, I wasn’t paying any attention to subject – verb agreement, but I was underlining key concepts (inner child, past life, current life, issues) instead. Which, to me, makes the text even more important.
Nope, I’m not an editor, nor was I being paid to critique the text. What I found, as I worked my way through it? Valuable lessons, packaged in a succinct, easy-to-read format. No fancy, high-blown, psychological model, no tale that was too far out, and no message that was a little too buried – something I’m sure I’m guilty of.
The “self-help” genre is one that frightens me, as does the too esoteric spiritual texts. But from my own point of view, I’m liking this one manuscript.
Really unrelated:
Little points, like the Capricorn making afternoon coffee, while the moon was in Capricorn, perhaps a little bitter about something? Then there was the dog riding on the back of the kayak, the smiling jogger, and a sure sign of the coming apocalypse:
