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Alabama Dame

~ Reading, writing, raising Cain

Alabama Dame

Monthly Archives: August 2016

Dean Koontz and Charlaine Harris walk into a bar …

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Rae S in Authors

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bibliphiles, book nerds, Books, Carnival cruise line, Charlaine Harris, cruising, Dean Koontz, libraries

… on board the Carnival Elation cruise ship. Fixing each other with an authorial gaze, they both begin to speak at once.

“Have you seen the piss poor excuse for a ship’s library they have on this … ?”

“Can you believe what passes for a library on board this … ?”

You just know that both authors are book nerds, so this scenario rings true. Why? Because it happened just that way between me and a newly met fellow writer on board the Carnival Elation in April– both of us non-blockbusting authors, I hasten to add. Mr. Koontz and Ms. Harris, for whom I have the utmost respect, most likely wouldn’t be caught dead on a Carnival ship when they can afford a luxury line like Crystal Cruises or Regent Seven Seas or heck, even Disney whose fares are still too rich for my blood and budget. For me it’s Carnival, where you get the biggest bang for your buck.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Carnival cruise line. It’s my sea-faring venue of choice. Where else can you get room and board, singing and dancing and drinking, islands in the sun and more, all for less than you’d pay for a stay at modestly priced hotel? Cheapest vacation there is! When was the last time you and a companion found a $110 a day hotel room in a well-appointed resort with all-inclusive meals, live entertainment, dance clubs, lounges, bars, pools, fitness center, steam room, hot tub, yada yada? It’s a good life, if you don’t weaken[1].

All except for the onboard library. Carnival ship libraries all seem to be something of an afterthought, but the Elation’s was the pits! Not the decor, just the contents. Beautiful wooden book cabinets, upholstered furniture, polished wood table and chairs … And no books. Well some books. A few. Maybe one.

I hyperbolize. But longtime cruisers know that foreign ports are only part of the joy of cruising. Ship life itself is the lure for many serial cruisers– many folks, myself included, don’t even get off the ship at familiar ports!

Cruise ships offer abundant delights for those who relish life at sea. Foodies have it all: endless buffets on Lido deck with their varied cuisine, burger spots, salad and deli bars, burritos stations, pizza joints, 24/7 soft serve ice cream; elegant sit-down dining rooms with friendly, attentive wait staff; and the for-pay steak houses and epicurean experiences that are popping up all over the place.

Gamblers have casinos and bingo. Drinkers have bars and clubs throughout the ship. Shoppers have drool-worthy stuff from fine jewelry to cruise wear to duty-free liquor. Sun worshipers have swimming, water slides, and poolside lounging. Active guests have miniature golf, ping ping, ball courts and increasingly such thrills as zip lines, climbing walls, rope courses and the like.

But bibliophiles? Pah! Book nerds at sea had best load up our Kindles and weigh down our luggage if we want to have a decent selection of beach reading. And we’re not asking for literary classics, (although I personally wouldn’t kick them off the boat.) Good solid genre paperbacks are just fine for poolside reading.

After one unsatisfactory library experience on shipboard, I got it in my head to donate some of the paperbacks spilling off my shelves and stored in my garage at home. So I called up the Carnival 1-800 number to find out how I could ship them some books. I spent a frustrating hour on the phone being passed from staff member to staff member. Amazingly, nobody could find me an authoritative answer. Yes, they would be happy to accept donations. Wait, they’ll have to ask around to find out how to do it. No, sorry, they can’t find someone to help me out. But would I like to buy my next cruise?

I sympathize. I really do. Cruise lines make no money from their libraries, and reading is the last thing many people think about when they embark on a cruise. Cruise ship personnel have a thousand priorities before stocking their libraries as they work hard to get those floating cities up and running for their paradise-seeking guests. But book lovers are a passionate population too. We are found on board every ship, just like the equally well-behaved piety nerds (yeah that’s my hand up again, sheepishly) who love rosaries on board and Mass in port. Maybe we just need to be a little more pro-active to accommodate our own cruising hobbies.

My effort to donate books ended in a question mark. Since nobody could give me a working procedure, I decided to make an experiment. My next cruise was out of New Orleans on the Elation. During my frustrating phone call I did learn that libraries come under the purview of Entertainment. I shipped a box of books cold to the Elation in dock at the New Orleans cruise port, care of the Entertainment Director.

Three months later, I boarded the Elation for my 21-day cruise. I rushed to the library right away, eager to feel that frisson of self-congratulation that comes when you do the kind of good deed where (contrary to recommendation) your right hand does know what your left is doing.

Which is how I wound up exchanging moans and gripes with a newly met fellow writer who had also made his way to the ship’s library as the cruise commenced. Nada. Nothing. My books were not there. The shelves were nearly bare. Oh, oh, oh, look! A 1995 guide to Caribbean ports. A coffee table history of DaimlerChrysler. Three well-thumbed westerns. (Yeah I took one of those.)

I sought out Guest Services but they had no luck tracking down what happened to the box I shipped. Their best guess was that since I shipped it to the ship itself rather than to corporate headquarters in Florida –where, I learned for the first time, one mails letters and packages to ship’s staff — it simply got lost in transit.

I’m sure nobody cares about this but me but dang it I’m not giving up! In two weeks we’re taking a five days cruise to the Bahamas out of Jacksonville on board … you guessed it … the Carnival Elation. Since it’s a short trip I can pack a bare minimum of clothing and load up a whole duffel bag with paperback beach books. And I will! This time I will put them on the shelves myself, as is the custom when one finishes a book brought from home and wants to pas it on. I am including some of my favorites:

  • Dean Koontz’ complete Frankenstein series, with his final Odd Thomas title (Saint Odd) thrown in for giggles
  • the complete Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris with a few Aurora Teagarden mysteries to boot. Fans of Sookie Stackhouse need to meet her other protagonists, especially Harper and Tolliver
  • Agatha Christie, Rex Stout and Helen Macinnes representing the classic mystery and suspense
  • Hunter S Thompson in his later years, just because. I did find his son’s memoirs about life with HST in another ship’s library, so there’s that in their favor. Growing up as Hunter S Thompson’s son was not an easy gig.
  • A nicely annotated copy of Hamlet because … The Bard! And ghosts! Murder and vengeance. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
  • Two of the Madeleine L’Engle Austin family series.
  • Peter Kreeft’s Jesus Shock for some light but pithy Catholic wisdom
  • Etcetera

This time, Dean Koontz and Charlaine Harris will walk into a library! Along with some other of my favorite summertime friends.
————————————————————————————-
[1] “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken”, a phrase that has fallen into common parlance, was the title of a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Seth, c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life,_If_You_Don%27t_Weaken

All images property of Alabama Dame

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Flannery O’Connor: just kill me now, God

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Rae S in Authors

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book reviews, Books, Catholic writers, Flannery, Flannery O'Connor, Georgia writers, journaling, literature, non-fiction, prayer, prayer journal, southern writers, women writers, writers

peacock1

CC0 via Pixabay (no attribution required.)

It is an inescapable duty for a southern Catholic to admire Flannery O’Connor, and so of course I do. Yet her fiction is not easy to love. As with Shakespeare, the weight of the need to apprehend and appreciate a work beyond the usual pleasures of storytelling sits oppressively on the soul. It’s a responsibility to read mindfully. Sometimes you just want potato chips.  You can’t read Flannery while your watching network tv and tuning out commercials.

Her non-fiction is another kettle of fish altogether. It’s always fun to read what writers have to say when they’re thinking about writing, or  writing about thinking, or just trying to figure out their lives. Reading Flannery O’Connor: A Prayer Journal, I am comforted to discover that her journey of faith traverses a landscape familiar to my own. Early on, she wrestles with the fear that she’s no good as a writer.  She realizes that her desire to write is after all a collaboration with God, and not just a whim to go after willy-nilly. As she experiences writer’s block, she fears that the God Who gave her the gift of words has taken it away. We realize that even for a unique genius like Flannery O’Connor, the vocation of the Christian writer meshes ambition and humility in an uneasy partnership/antagonism.

She also worries about how she is incorporating religion into her stories, a prescient fear when you think about how her work was received by many critics.

“Dear God, tonight … you have given me a story. Don’t let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story– just like the typewriter was mine. Please let the story, dear God, in its revisions, be made too clear for any false & low interpretation because in it, I am not trying to disparage anyone’s religion although when it was coming out, I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to do or what it was going to mean.”[1]

Does any writer really know what he or she was trying to do or what the story means, even after it is finished? Like the child to which it is so often compared, a story bears the marks of its parentage but is a unique and living creature all its own.

To what story was Flannery referring above? She was twenty-one when she wrote that– I’m not sure she had published any stories yet at that point. She wrote her prayer journal in Iowa City where she was  attending writers’ workshops. Reading this worry of hers early on about how she wrote religion into her fiction was enlightening. She knows she might go too far and not only be misunderstood but worse:

“Please don’t let me have to scrap the story because it turns out to mean more wrong than right– or any wrong. I want it to mean that the good in man sometimes shows through his commercialism but that is not the fault of commercialism that it does. Perhaps the idea would be that good can show through even something that is cheap.”

Reading her prayer journal puts it into my head to try her stories again. Dang wouldn’t you know it I have none at hand.

She’s hilariously extreme in her address of God, finishing up her thoughts on this story she’s working on:

“Anyway it all brings me to thanksgiving, the third thing to include in prayer. When I think of all I have to be thankful for I wonder that You don’t just kill me now because You’ve done so much for me already & I haven’t been particularly grateful.”‘

Oh, Flannery!

[1] O’Connor, Flannery, A Prayer Journal, edited by W.A. Sessions, p.11
[2] Ibid, p.12

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Steve Martin’s Music history: a must for fans

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Rae S in Performers, Uncategorized

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Books

Who doesn’t like Steve Martin? I’ve been a fan since his first appearance on Saturday Night Live. I love his early, funny stuff; his later, even funnier stuff; his dancing – both his side-splitting King Tut and his beautiful turn with Gilda Radner dancing in the dark on SNL. I love his banjo-playing, his novels, his movies, his twitter feed (funny and classy). I love Steve Martin!

The music journal Pitchfork has a terrific article by the man himself on the music that’s influenced him over the decades. It comes complete with links to the music. My favorite of his movies is L.A. Story. Who knew that the film was influenced by a Celtic folk song, The Maid of Coolmore? He writes, “I was touring as a comedian, which is very isolated and lonely. I loved the dark poetry of Celtic music—especially the Bothy Band and the Chieftains. The Bothy Band’s “The Maid of Coolmore” affected the writing of the screenplay I did called L.A. Story—if you look at the lyrics to the Bothy Band song and the story of L.A. Story, it’s identical.[1]”

Just check out these lyrics and you see it right away:

MedievalWeatherVane

Medieval Weather Vane by rones/CC BY


If I had the power, the storm to rise

I would blow the wind higher for to darken the skies
I would blow the wind higher to make the salt seas to roar
On the day that my love sailed away from Coolmore.

Read the article and listen to The Maid of Coolmore. The music from the grand finale of L.A. Story is either a reproduction of or a homage to that song. So cool!

[1] Snapes, Laura & Martin, Steve. Steve Martin. Pitchfork, http://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/9742-steve-martin/?mbid=social_twitter

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