FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

But, first - check this out!  This little book journal is featured on AOL's Book Page right now.  I just discovered this fact by doodling around over there to see what was on offer.  It's on the Book Clubs page, when you get there click on "AOL's Book Lovers" and there is The Biblio Philes!  Did you know about the book interest pages here on AOL?  I didn't, until I discovered the links on Random Readers' book journal.  I'd love to have this bring some more readers around to visit here, and comment, leave: suggestions, book thoughts, favorite authors, wishes, lies and dreams.  any old thing.

Some books I'd ordered arrived today - always an exciting event.  My brother-in-law was loving this one, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, so much that I decided I had to have it.  Besides, I teach writing!  And often have punctuation quandries of my own.  This book was a great best-seller in the UK and is now also one here.  It's sub-titled "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation."  Sounds dull and boring, no?  No.  It's quite wittily and engagingly written, as it would have to be to become a best-selling punctuation manual. 

I'm mulling over John Scalzi's weekend assignment, whether to bite or not.  It's to tell a tale of a personal celebrity encounter.  I do actually have several, but the one that stands out is with Annie Dillard.  It's not very nice, either.  So, I'll continue to mull for a while before I decide whether to write it up. 

I finished FlashBack, the mystery novel I mentioned yesterday, while waiting for the AC in the Matrix to be fixed (a blown O ring, allowing the freon to drain away).  It's truly not worth discussing.  The best I can say about it is it had great local color.  Began in Burgundy, France, spent quite a while in North Africa, returned to Paris, then wandered off to Eastern Europe.  The Morocco section was my favorite.  Made me want to catch a plane immediately.  Even though it involved a lot of nasty violence. 

LATER:  I've decided to forego the telling of my Annie Dillard story.  I still love her writing, even though I think she may be nuts.  Instead I'll tell my "first celebrity crush" story, as that was one of the weekend assignment options.  It happened when I was nine years old - my mother took me to see Peter Pan on Broadway, with Mary Martin in the title role.  I fell in love.  With Mary Martin, with Peter Pan, with Broadway, with The Theatah.  I came out of the theatre in a total daze, setting my brandnew handbag down on the sidewalk when I knelt down to tie my shoes, getting up and walking off leaving the purse behind me.  By the time my mother realized what had happened it was too late.  It was, of course, long gone.  I went home, saved up my allowance until I had enough to buy the cast recording of Peter Pan, played it until I knew every song by heart (and I still do), read everything I could find about Mary Martin.  Then went on to read everything I could find about every Broadway play that had ever happened.  There was a kind of yearbook that was published about every year of the theatre in New York, I don't know if this is still true.  Eventually I had taken every one of them out of the library and knew every actor, actress, singer, dancer, playwright, director and everything they'd ever done.

From that nine-year-old play-going on through college, I had but one ambition:  to act.  And act I did, in high school plays, in college plays and musicals, in USO performances for the troops during my junior year abroad in France.  I gave up the idea of trying to make a career of my passion, due mainly to parental horror at the idea.  I've done a little acting since then, in amateur groups here and there, but in recent years haven't had time for it.  There are times, even now, when I regret listening to my parents - I never see a play or a musical without wishing I was up there on the stage, not necessarily with my name in lights - the chorus would do just fine.  And I followed Mary Martin's career and life to the end, and mourned her deeply when she died.