The Single Life… On Kindle, That Is
My brain is ping-ponging this week. I have ideas, baby. And those ideas are running my life, even though I suspect it should be the other way around? Or should it?
I do not know.
You’ll be thankful, I think, that I came to my senses and deleted most of this post before inflicting it upon you. I was bumbling around, writing about my high school reunion (I don’t want to. Go, that is. Period.), the gigantic bruise on my behind (it’s impressive, but not post-worthy, I don’t think. Or photo worthy, so don’t even ask.), Kindle Singles, and pancakes. I was about to launch into some of the aforementioned life-running ideas and whatnot, when my brain temporarily righted itself.
Maybe we’ll chat about some of those other things another day, but for today I want to tell you about one of my new favorite things: Kindle Singles.
Hold on! Come back!
I can’t make any grandiose promises (what am I, a politician?), but I’m pretty sure this post isn’t total dullsville. If you hate books and reading, then move along. But if you like literature and stuff, hang around. I have recommendations for you. And cookies! (The cookie part is a lie. Maybe I am a politician…)
So here’s the thing. I’m a huge fan of real, hard copy books, and as long as books are printed I will buy them. There’s no denying, however, that electronic reading is an idea with some stickiness.
There was a lot of talk at BlogHer Writers about the future of publishing, specifically around this electronic revolution’s impact on the industry. Nobody has a definitive answer just yet, but it’s clear that we’re looking at boundless possibilities for content, surpassing anything we could achieve in print. Publishers are experimenting with music downloads, video extras, and tie-ins, such as games.
We’re on the precipice here, people.
It’s all pretty exciting, but I was still slow to warm to the eReader, until I spent a weekend on my sick bed, browsing Amazon to entertain myself. Kind of by accident, I discovered that you don’t need a Kindle to get content; you can download an app and get content on your computer, iPad or iPhone. Forty eight hours later, I’d read The Hunger Games trilogy on my computer and I was hooked – on The Hunger Games and on the convenience of an eReader.
We now own an actual Kindle (thanks Mom & Dad!), and by we, I do mean Mark. It was technically his Christmas present, but I borrow it. Often. I like all the free and cheap books Amazon offers, because I’m more willing to take a chance on books that I might otherwise consider risky (don’t you hate it when you pay $25 for a book and hate it? Hate is much more affordable on the Kindle).
But my favorite, favorite thing about our eReader is Kindle Singles. Do you know about these? I am in love. Kindle Singles, according to Amazon, “offer a vast spectrum of reporting, essays, memoirs, narratives, and short stories presented to educate, entertain, excite, and inform.”
Indeed.
I read a single or two each week, sometimes more. The length is perfectly suited to someone with Ping Pong Brain. Lately I’m so sleepy at night that it’s taking a mighty long time to finish reading a book. I’ll continue to plug away at full-length books, but it’s nice to read a single or two, as well, and feel like I accomplished something.
Since I love them so, I decided to recommend a few of my favorite Kindle Singles today (in alpha order, because that’s fair):
:: Cooking Solves Everything: How Time in the Kitchen Can Save Your Health, Your Budget, and Even the Planet by Mark Bittman. There’s a whole post – or two or three – coming about this one. Bittman explores ways we can improve our lives, and so much more, by cooking simple meals at home.
:: The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life by Ann Patchett. Writers, this one’s for you. I desperately want to sit down with Ms. Patchett and have a cup of coffee. She seems like a fascinating and perfectly lovely person, full of wise words and a dry sense of humor.
:: The Long Run by Mishka Shubaly. Stunning. This is the story of a man who ran his way to sobriety. The subject of addiction is close to my heart – another post for another day – and I’m drawn to stories of survival. Although Mr. Shubaly’s definition of sobriety varies a tad from my own, his tale is no less riveting. I related to him even though we seemingly share a lot more differences than we do similarities.
What are you waiting for? Go on.. download and read!
I wonder…
:: Were you an early adopter of eReaders or are you still holding out?
:: If you’re a Kindle Singles fan, what are some of your favorites?
***
NOTE: Once again, I feel the need to tell you that I am not an Amazon affiliate, nor am I receiving any compensation from Amazon or these authors. I’m just sharing this info because I like you.
read moreBoys and Books
The boys:
Karate stance, crazy leap/kick, hi-ya!
We’re injas! (Ninjas, that is.)
Hey, you sit here, with your head down, and I’ll jump over you!
If we pull this table over here, and stack these bean bags over here, and put this tray on top, and put this bucket on our heads, we can slide down our fort!
Me:
Please don’t point your finger-guns at people. Or any living thing. Ninjas don’t even use guns.
Get off of your brother’s head.
No, you cannot use my tray to slide down your bean bag tower. I don’t care if you have a bucket helmet. I’m not worried about your head, I’m worried about my tray.
I said, get. off. your. brother’s. head. now.
It is not funny to fart on people’s heads.
No, it’s really not funny.
Dudes, that’s gross.
End scene. Only it’s not a scene. It’s my life.
I am alone, people. The lone sane voice in a testosterone-fueled house, where danger is equivalent to fun, gross is equivalent to hilarious.
I know girls do this stuff, too; I’ve witnessed little girls go all in with the gross-out humor. But anyone who lives with boys knows that high energy rough-housing, often flavored with disgusting sounds and smells is more than a once-in-a-while activity. It’s a way of life. The jumping, running, shooting, building, burping, and farting never stop.
So we send them outside to play and enroll them in sports. We make sure they have constructive ways to burn up that energy.
Although I appreciate, and even embrace, their wild nature, I am also so grateful that my tiny neanderthals love to read. Both of my boys will happily look at books, and even more happily listen to stories, with patience you wouldn’t believe possible after witnessing their active playtime.
My guess is that nearly all young kids appreciate story time, but I’ve heard from people with older kids that reading can lose its appeal as kids grow. Some things never change, and apparently it’s still not cool to be a book nerd. While I don’t want to be Tiger Mom-like in my zeal, I do want to encourage a love of books.
One of our favorite authors around here is Jon Scieszka, who writes the Trucktown books. Both of my boys love all of the crashing, smashing silliness in Mr. Scieszka’s books. In fact, yesterday after P. finished leaning over the back of the sofa, dropping cars as though they were bombs on the fire truck below, we read Truckery Rhymes three times. We cuddled under a blanket, stopping often to talk about the pictures and compare the original versions of the rhymes to the truck-ed out versions.
I live for those moments. The moments when non-stop motion ceases, a soft cheek rests on my shoulder, allowing me to not-so-secretly breathe in my son’s subtle sweaty-yet-sweet scent… well, that’s heaven on earth.
Recently, I went in search of more information about the man behind Trucktown, hoping to order a few more books moments. My search led me to Guys Read, an online literacy program started by Mr. Scieszka. According to the site, Guys Read is focused on helping boys (young and old) become self-motivated, lifelong readers.
Research shows that boys are having trouble reading, and that boys are getting worse at reading. No one is quite sure why. Some of the reasons are biological. Some of the reasons are sociological.
But the good news is that research also shows that boys will read — if they are given reading that interests them.
I find that disheartening and thrilling at the same time. Disheartening, because I don’t want my bookworms to give up on reading; there’s not an awful lot I can do about their biology (see: farting on brother’s head). But it’s thrilling to know that there are people like Jon Scieszka and resources like Guys Read.
Perhaps there’s hope for this generation of boys.
Perhaps my guys will never outgrow the thrill of a good book.
I wonder…
:: Whether you have boys or girls, how do you foster a love of books and reading?
:: Will you push them to read even if they say they hate it? How will you combat the “it’s not cool to read” argument?
:: Do you have any great guy-themed reading resources?
** PLEASE NOTE **
This post could be a review for Jon Scieszka/Trucktown/Guys Read, but it’s not. I’ve never met or talked to Mr. Scieszka, and I am not being compensated in way, shape, or form. I just wanted to share this information with you, because I think it’s awesome. The end.
read moreWill You Still Love Me?
If I never post again? (Is it presumptuous to assume you love me in the first place?)
Now don’t panic (again with the presumptions), I’m not quitting.
But I have not had ample time in the last week to turn any thoughts into posts. I haven’t had all that many thoughts, either, to be honest. I start, stop, start, delete. It’s awful.
And that book? I had one good thought in regard to the book, resulting in scrapping the bulk of my drivel. While I’m glad I realized that a lot of what I’d written was all wrong, I’m now facing a whole bunch of blank pages. My blank brain + blank pages = a wee bit of panic.
Granted, I had some time over the weekend, but I chose to recharge and hang out with my family (I know. Crazy talk.).
The thing is, we’re only half back to school here. I have one little friend at home for another week. Our preschool always starts after Labor Day, meaning we have two and a half weeks between the start of big kid school and the start of preschool. Today, I’m launching a campaign to change that.
Because I have almost zero free time until preschool starts, making an organized phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, and petition-signing campaign impractical, I just have to hope our Preschool Powers That Be happen to read this post. In the event you are reading, Preschool Powers That Be, I offer the following super compelling reasons to start school sooner:
- My youngest child misses his older brother terribly. Going to preschool a few days a week would take his mind off his troubles, so why wait until after Labor Day? Let’s start preschool when the big kids go back to school.
- I am the world’s lousiest
playaplay-er, as in I am not great at getting down on the floor and playing cars or trains or cowboy-pirate-robot wars for hours. Some play time every day? You got it. Six hours a day, five days a week while we wait for big brother to get home from school? Uh, no. - And finally, the reason I know our preschool will find the most compelling… I don’t have time to blog. Or write. Or think. I used to work some in the morning, but now I’ve lost more than half of that time (we leave to walk to school around 7:15 and before that there’s the whole please eat your breakfast and brush your teeth and put on your clothes what are you doing in your room if you’re not getting dressed and why haven’t you brushed your teeth and no, I don’t think an underwear hat is a great idea deal; not a ton of peaceful working time after about 6:15 a.m.), and then I used to squeeze in some work at nap time. But now nap time is fractured and crazy due to the after school routine. We have not found our rhythm. Why bother getting a routine now, when it’s all going to change as soon as preschool starts again?
Therefore, I believe, Preschool Powers That Be, that your open arms and open doors should welcome our youngest school-goers as soon as their older siblings return to their own hallowed halls.
I have good intentions to not only write, but also read and comment on other blogs. You know what they say about the road to hell, though. I am paving the heck out of that thing this week. I’ll be back, though, I promise.
But first, there’s a miniature pirate in pajamas who needs a snack.
I wonder…
:: How long does it take you to get in the groove once school starts? How long until you’ve found your rhythm?
read moreMy BlogHer Post, A Redux
I can’t confirm this, but I may be spending some time in a location with high temperatures that are lower than Austin’s low temperatures (did you follow that?). And I may have limited internet access.
I’m not saying any of that’s true, but if it were, I might run some golden oldies instead of new posts.
Here’s a post from a year ago, when I didn’t go to BlogHer. I re-read it and saw that I seemed pretty committed to going this year, but that didn’t happen. I think that says something about my commitments, but I prefer not to explore it.
In honor of all the BlogHer wrap-up posts floating around out there this week, I give you a recycled post. Fancy, right?
*****************
I’m all out of the funny. If you want to roll on the floor, go visit Kludgy Mom. Gigi’s post kills me and I enthusiastically second her thoughts.
Me? I’m watching the Hallmark Channel hoping for a good cry. Golden Girls just came on and the theme song incited weeping. Pathetic. Let’s all roll our eyes and hate me for a second. Okay. Done. Now, let’s talk BlogHer.
I’m not going, but I’ve been playing it real cool. In fact, until this week I haven’t even uttered the word, BlogHer.
Yes, I’ve been secretly checking out possibilities of scoring a ticket for sale. I’ve debated getting a flight to NYC and lurking around the conference, hoping for a scalper with a BlogHer ticket. Nothing says, Hey, she looks like a nice woman who probably has a really great blog! I want to meet her, for sure! more than skulking, uninvited, around the periphery of a NYC hotel.
The simple explanation for my non-attendance is that I’m new to blogging. Wonder, Friend is coming up on five months old. Holla! No? I thought I would try it out. I’ve always wanted to be able to shout, Holla!, and sound cool. I’m over that now.
Since I’m new to the game, BlogHer wasn’t even a blip on the radar until the tweets started flying around about a month ago. I mean, I’d heard of it. I’m not a shut-in or anything. But I thought it was only for real bloggers. Turns out, anyone can go. Anyone! Even me. Except, as has occasionally been the case in my life: I’m a day late and a dollar short.
(Lots of dollars short, actually. Are you aware that in addition to the plane ticket, the hotel, and the conference admission, there are a few other things I need in order to properly do BlogHer? This post by Mommypants, detailing the BlogHer necessities, is hysterical. Go read it. Funny, yes?)
So I missed it this year. No more playing it cool. I’m a small, tiny bit jealous of all the bloggers who will get to put faces with web sites. And then there’s the location. New York City, the hometown of my soul. The parties. The staying-in-a-hotel-without-the-kids. And, obviously, the chance to talk all things blog with people who are as weirdly attached to this forum as I am.
Aaagh. Yep. Jealous.
BlogHer, prepare yourself. This is one mama who is planning a blogging boondoggle next August.
read moreI Love to Read and I Hate Stomach Bugs
There is content in this post. To get to it, you have to make your way through this over-sized picture of the books on my bedside table.
{I know! The books on my bedside table! Things around here just get more fascinating every day, don’t they?}
Add this to the long list of things I don’t get: Why my only options for uploading this picture to my post were GIANT or teensy. (I went with GIANT – or was that already perfectly clear?).
And now I’m going to be really honest with you. I had a post in mind, it was about reading (see? there was a point to the enormo-picture), but it was so boring I fell asleep while writing it. Then my five year old revealed that his stomach hurt, and promptly started throwing up. After that, not even my post could induce sleep for any of us.
After a day spent disinfecting every surface of our home, washing mountains of bedding and clothes, rendering my hands raw from compulsive washing, I’m pretty sure of two things:
- God should have set things up so that vomit is never necessary, particularly for children. It’s such a cruel sickness, particularly for those in charge of the cleaning up.
- There is no salvaging my post about reading.
I did write another post about reading – about instilling a love of books in your children – and it’s over here today, at the Reading Kingdom blog. So, you know, you could go read that.
I do have a question for you, though. And you’re just going to have to use your imaginations and pretend you read a thoughtful post from me, all about teaching kids to read.
I realize that I send them to school for that sort of thing. It’s not my sole responsibility to teach them to read, thank goodness, or we’d be breaking the chain of literacy in the Stevens family. But – and correct me if I’m wrong here – one of my jobs as a parent (after cleaning up vomit and before it’s not polite to do that in public), is to help further their educations.
As we prepare for our oldest to start kindergarten, we want to set him up for, at the very least, moderate success (we’re not crazy helicopter parents or anything. yet.). I think we’ve done a great job of sharing our love for reading. Both of my boys love to listen to stories and often choose to “read” on their own. But I don’t know where to take it from here. Should we be doing more?
And that has me wondering…
:: What kinds of things do you do to encourage reading at home?
:: Do you know how to teach someone to read?
:: Is teaching them to love reading as important as teaching to read? For me, the two go together, but I’m guessing that’s not the case for everyone.
read moreGoodbye, TV
I feel a bit lightheaded and at odds with myself. My dear friend, the television, is taking a forced leave of absence.
Granted, this was all my idea and the TV is just going along with my wishes, but still. It hurts.
I don’t – I swear – watch that much TV. But I do watch, and it’s no secret that I love it. Every night, without fail, I sit down to watch a show. Or two. Usually I do other things while I watch, like read or work, but my attention is so divided that I neither accomplish anything nor actually catch the entire show. Talk about a colossal waste of time.
This week some things have been wearing on me:
- My to-do list is outrageous. Outrageous, I tell you.
- I feel tired. Way more tired than a reasonably fit 26 37-year-old should feel.
I wanted to pretend that I was blameless in this scenario. I prefer blamelessness. Don’t we all? The truth, however, is that I need to be a better steward of my time. For my family, for myself, for my work.
That’s where the TV comes in. Or turns off. You know what I mean.
I have a DVR after all. I am not required to watch television on a deadline. {Although if there is anyone out there who wants to give me a TV-related job, I could revoke this decision and begin watching immediately.} Assuming, however, that I do not get a TV-related job, I will keep the idiot box turned off and let the DVR do its thing. My plan is to have a little down-time to chill with my beloved television once every weekend. That’s reasonable, right?
So why am I telling you this? Because that’s what I do here. I tell you stuff. Whether you care or not. But also, I need you to know and help me stay honest. I’ll feel so guilty if I cheat now that you all know my plan. {Perhaps I should try this same method for the stopping-of-the-eating-of-cookies?}
Keep me honest, friends. Help me stick to my no-tv-go-to-bed-at-a-reasonable-hour plan, won’t you?
I wonder…
:: What’s your best time-management tip?
:: What are your tricks for getting to bed at a reasonable hour?
read more
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