Today, I am thinking about how social media strengthens my ties to people.
Facebook consumes way too much of my time, but I really like it. It has brought many friends and family members back into my life. FB opens a window into the daily lives if people I rarely get to see and allows me to share my own quotidian triumphs and frustrations.
Blogging, first on Blogspot and now on WordPress, is therapeutic. I write to work out problems and to solicit help in solving them. I can flesh out a little humor occasionally. I enjoy experiencing my friends’ creative processes and mining the depths of their knowledge.
I haven’t yet succumbed to Twitter, mostly because I just don’t see the point. Ditto for MySpace, although I see its benefit for my niece, who is a singer trying to promote her work. Wizard recently informed me he started a MySpace page, but I can’t find it. That concerns me because, although he intellectually understands what is and is not appropriate to post, he is a teenage boy and therefor a lemming. Unlike the chlldren of my August96 Mom friends, Wizard will not play by the rules of giving me his username and password and allowing me access to his page. I am not happy about that.
I had a glorious walk this morning: 3.35 miles. The weather warmed up nicely during my perambulations around the track.
However, I stopped at the cleaners and nearly asphixiated. There was a cloud of cheap perfume surrounding the clerk in that small space.
Honey, please, just dab the unguent on your wrists, maybe shpritz a little around you, but DON’T bathe in the stuff! Ugh, give me some air. ::gasp::
I am a member of GoodReads, a “free website for book lovers”. I read so much, that GoodReads conferred upon me the status of “librarian,” allowing me to annotate and edit book information on the site. Somewhere along the line, I must have signed up to receive advance copies of books to read and ultimately review for GoodReads. My first such book arrived in the mail last week: Truly, Madly, by Heather Webber.
Truly, Madly is the first installment of the Lucy Valentine mysteries. Lucy Valentine comes from a long line of psychics. Her father, Oscar, uses his aura-reading abilities to run a lucrative matchmaking agency in Boston. Oscar’s peccadilloes have landed him in trouble, and he calls Lucy to fill in for him at the agency. She works a total of three days before she meets the hunky private investigator upstairs and goes off on a wild-goose chase with him for one of her clients. In the midst of that, Lucy saves the day by using her psychometric powers to find a lost boy. The press and police get wind of Lucy’s abilities and expose them to the public. Lucy continues to solve a mystery for one of her first matchmaking clients, and the story stumbles on from there.
This novel is garbage; it’s not even good enough to be a beach read. It’s more like the bastard child of a Harlequin romance (which I have never read) and a Sue Grafton novel (which I have read). The plot is predictably formulaic: girl gets a job; girl meets a guy; they have an adventure; girl investigates a case on her own; girl somehow gets into physical danger; handsome guy and meddling family/friends rescue girl. The story is juvenile, clunky, and disjointed. Before I trashed author, Heather Webber’s work, I looked at her GoodReads page and books. We have absolutely no books in common because all she lists are crummy dime-store mysteries, the ones I usually avoid. [I will confess to a small weakness for Diane Mott Davidson's culinary mysteries, equally formulaic but fun.]
Thank you, GoodReads, for the advance copy of Truly, Madly, but no-thank-you to anything else by Heather Webber.
Another August96 Mom has joined our blogging ranks. Please welcome MusicMom67 (fka PA Mom, here) to the blogosphere. The blog is titled, “I’ll Take a Large Order of Life, Hold the Drama” and features MusicMom67, her husband and two children. She, like the rest of us, is managing a home and a job, her husband’s business, her children’s lives, while trying to stay sane and get fit. Go on over and say “hi”. Tell her Alto2 sent you!
At the prompting of Lexington Mom, I trolled through my Goodreads account and found all the books I read in 2009. Hold on to your hats, friends, it’s a very long list! It’s in reverse chronological order.
My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor
Colleges That Change Lives, by Loren Pope
Stones Into Schools, by Greg Mortenson
The New Best Recipe, by Cook’s Illustrated
A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink
Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
206 Bones, by Kathy Reichs
Prospect Park West, by Amy Sohn
Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan
Song Yet Sung, by James McBride
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
The End of Overeating, by David Kessler
The Demigod Files, by Rick Riordan
The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan
The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan
The Titan’s Curse, by Rick Riordan
The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
Anasi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
The Organized Student, by Donna Goldberg
Belong to Me, by Marisa de los Santos
Fatally Flaky, by Diane Mott Davidson
The Angel’s Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Glassblower of Murano, by Marina Fiorato
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
Audition, by Barbara Walters
Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, by Eoin Colfer
American Rust, by Philip Meyer
Finally Thin, by Kim Benson
Peace Like A River, by Leif Enger
The Soloist, by Steve Lopez
Pandora’s Daughter, by Iris Johansen
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
Dead Silence, by Randy Wayne White
24-Karat Kids, by Judy Goldstein
Eve, by Elissa Elliott
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, by Tiffany Baker
Winter in Madrid, by C.J. Sansom
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
The Interruption of Everything, by Terry McMillan
46 books in one year . . . can you imagine that?! I read one book approximately every eight days in 2009. Have you read any of these and which did you particularly like or dislike?
It looks like I’ll be reading as much in 2010 by the stack of library books on my shelf.
The residents of The Testosterone Zone have discovered a new world, The Planet Duh. Each day brings new encounters with the inhabitants and their societal rules and norms. Exploring the realms of Planet Duh will be something like Margaret Mead’s cultural studies of Polynesia. The Zone invites you to explore Planet Duh and share your anthropological insights.
Fear not, The Zone remains intact and active.
