Not only did I get to 25k the other night, but I finished the next day slightly ahead, and today I've built up my lead so that I'm only about 500 words behind tomorrow's wordcount goal, with a wordcount of 29,537. It would actually not have been very hard to get that last 500 and get to 30k tonight, which would be pretty cool, but I'm very tired, and I think that being SO CLOSE will give me more motivation to write tomorrow before work (which is something I find difficult, on the days I work 2-11.)

I am so proud of myself for not wasting these three days I haven't been at Walmart. (I had two days totally off, and then today I worked for the newspaper, which is barely work at all. Except for the getting up at 7am part.) Basically, I'm awesome!

. . . well, not that awesome. Because, oh God, my novel is bad. It's bad, bad, bad . . . not fit for fertilizer. I'm really glad it's getting written, but God, I'm going to have some serious excavation to do to pull the very few diamonds out of this pile of stinking shit, once November is over. (I recently compared November to a month-long bowel movement. Which is a disgusting metaphor, but isn't it true, you guys?)

Now, I have to try to get myself to go outside and look at the meteors. I know if I do it, I won't regret it, but it's COLD outside, and not particularly warm in the house, so I'm worried that if I go out there, I won't be able to warm back up before bed.

Ah well. Suck it up, Emma!

Spent my day hanging out on a sheep farm! There was much knitting, and wool talk, and some sheep wrangling. (I held the clipboard to record which sheep were getting sent to slaughter. It was a little bit sobering, but I am determined to not to be a meat eater unless I'm willing to look my dinner in the face first, so . . . yeah.)

And now, it is time for NaNo! I'm hoping to hit 25k today, since it's the halfway point, and I feel like if I can reach the halfway point on time, I can reach the end on time. And I'm at the point in the story where we get the big scene that is the transition between the first and second halves of the story, which should be full of drama and hopefully easy to write.

The only pitfall I can see is that suddenly we're moving into a part of the story where the nine-year-old who's been my point of view character so far will not likely be present for many of the scenes I want to write. (I can use "In Space" to fudge a lot of stuff about this story, but I'm pretty sure that even In Space, children aren't generally present when their custody, for example, is being discussed.)

But, I also don't really want to abandon her as my PoV character, because . . . I mean, it's been pretty much 25,000 words, and that's an awfully long time to go before suddenly breaking PoV. Especially since there's no other character I'd want to commit to for the second 25k; the nine-year-old does need to come back for it. If I didn't need her later, I could see dividing the book into two parts and having a different PoV character for each.

As it is, I will just have to be creative about what I show and don't show. Fortunately, she is a pretty nosy nine-year-old. I already have her overhearing conversations and spying on things. I suppose she will continue that way. It is freaking hard to have a child as your main character, guys! Orson Scott Card got away with it in Ender's Game by making an entire society full of autonomous children, but if you're working in a world that's full of adults, there's not a lot kids can do. But my girl is determined to do it anyway.

I suspect that this is exactly the sort of thing you're not supposed to worry about during NaNo, but if I don't feel good about the story, then I don't enjoy writing it, so I need to make sure I'm comfortable enough with the format (if not the content) that I still feel it's worth carrying on.

I sort of love my life right now. I mean, there are parts of it that really suck, but there are also a lot of parts that are really fantastic and irreplaceable. And several of them are things that are completely unique to this particular place and time--I couldn't get them anywhere else. To wit:

A) The Doghouse Espresso, the little coffee shop on Main Street, is pretty much my favorite place in the world these days. I'm so comfortable here, and my brother makes me amazing coffee, and it's just such an unmitigated pleasure to spend my free time here.

B) My brother, period. We're living together for the first time in about five years, and it's been so wonderful developing a relationship with him now that we're both sort of adults. Honestly, it would be pretty miserable living where I do if he wasn't there. We share enough interests to be able to spend quality time together, and we're different enough that we challenge each other--it's basically exactly what you'd look for in a friend. Joe's introduced me to espresso--like, how to really appreciate good espresso, and also to good beer, and also to good music. Meanwhile, I've been lending him pretty much my entire Neil Gaiman collection and am getting him started on Diana Wynne Jones soon.

C) Beer! We have a local brewery that focuses on high quality, small batch beer that is pretty much earthshaking. I don't get up there as often as I like, but my brother does, and often brings some home to share.

D) My current Internet community. I was worried for a little while after I graduated from college that after spending so much time sort of disconnected from everything except LiveJournal, I wouldn't have much an Internet community to turn to after I was away from college. But it turns out, I'm surrounded by a rich, beautiful community of people I like, who entertain and support me. Twitter has been a huge help in that; I feel like I'm having little miniature conversations with people all day long.

E) NaNoWriMo. We're far enough into November now that NaNo has become a way of life--if I'm not working, I'm either writing, or (more likely) feeling guilty about not writing. Either way, I'm thinking about it constantly, plotting about how to find writing time (and motivation). My novel is complete tripe, but, well, at least it's getting written. (Although I'm quite behind. Sigh.)

So, there are REALLY AWESOME THINGS happening on Youtube right now. And I don't mean the giant squids of anger who're always being stupid in the comments. Because, if you didn't know about it, there is a blossoming community of highly talented young musicians on Youtube! (As a matter of fact, I have been novelling to this guy's album and also his other Timelord Rock project, and it is AWESOME.)

But that's not what I wanna talk about right now. I want to talk about Chartjackers! Basically, a bunch of guys in the UK produced a single, gave it to Children in Need so that absolutely 100% of the proceeds go to the charity, and now they're trying to get it into the UK charts. Just to see if they can, and and to raise money for charity.

The best part? It is a really catchy song. Check it out:



You guys, I bought this song in the library about ten hours ago, and it is already at the top of my "25 Most Played" list in iTunes. (Granted, that probably says more about my obsessive tendencies than anything else, but hey. Also, this is a pretty new computer, so I haven't racked up lots of plays. STILL.)

Now, the thing is, if you're not in the UK, you can't help them get into the charts. But all of the money will still go to Children in Need, and you get a great song!

And I know that at least one of you actually is in the UK! thirteenthend, I know I don't know you super well, but, hey, if you wanted to pop over into iTunes and buy the song, you could be part of the extreme awesomeness that the Internet is generating!

And of course, you should all tell your friends! This is our Internet now, and we can actually make good things happen with viral videos. How freaking awesome is that?

I'm gonna brag, guys--I totally pwned at NaNo yesterday. I woke up early and dragged my computer over into bed with me and wrote 1000 words before I'd even stepped out of bed. Wrote another 800 works between visiting the coffee shop and my lunch break at Walmart. (I'm especially proud of successfully writing about 500 words during my Walmart shift.)

I also found time to run a Peace Corps-related errand in there. And I worked until 11:30. And when I got home, our Internet wasn't working (I suspect it still isn't), so I couldn't get on and brag! Very sad.

The problem is, I have to do the same thing today. Also, I am still behind, if you're figuring things at 1667 words a day--but my spreadsheet tells me that if I write 1722 words a day, I'll be fine. And I'll give it another big push on my next day off, which is Thursday. This month is anything but a sure thing, since I'm all over the place, productivity-wise, but I'm basically too damn stubborn NOT to win.

Now my lunch break is ending. Time to get back to the proofreading!

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again! I missed it a lot while I was in college, so this is VERY EXCITING for me. Unfortunately, since I have Twitter now, it's led me to neglect the LJ (whereas, before Twitter, NaNo would have sparked Much Posting here). Ah well.

Anyway, I just wanted to stop in pat myself on the back for everything I did today. I got out of bed by 9, and I had a marathon and wrote 1000 words in an hour, which at least twice as fast as I normally write, and then I hurried down to Montrose, got a polio vaccination, and ran three other errands all in time to show up at work by 2pm. Also, I wrote a couple hundred words on my lunch break.

So, my wordcount is behind, but I don't really feel bad. It was a full day. Trouble is, tomorrow I have to get up do it again--I need to get 2000 words at least before I go to work at 2. I think I will sleep now!

Today was snow!

I have never understood why people get excited about snow. Really. It's pretty, yeah, so if you get to stay inside all day, it can be kind of nice, but if you have to go anywhere it's a royal pain.

Despite living in Colorado my entire life, I've never driven in snow before. I almost didn't get out of the driveway, because the snow was at least seven inches deep, and more where the plow had piled it up, and my dear little Corolla couldn't handle it. Much wheel-spinning But I had learned from getting stuck in the sand at Lake Powell (the experience had a use, mizujada!) and backed the car up a good way and then picked up a little speed, and prayed no one was coming up the road, and made it out.

And on the way home, the roads were dry and the most dangerous thing I saw was a bunch of deer. And that was really good, because one of my coworkers had said that it was whiteout conditions up here, and that scared me. (The weather changes pretty quickly around here, though.)

The weird thing about this part of Colorado (especially this time of year), is that it'll snow, but the temperature won't stay down quite below freezing, so it'll snow, then melt, then snow, then melt, which makes everything very soggy and icy. (Now that I think of it, Virginia was the same way. Maybe it's just a temperate climate thing.) The icy-ness is dangerous, and the soggy-ness is just gross. Maybe that's why I don't like snow?

Well, that, and I don't ski.

(I know. What kind of Coloradan am I?)

So, I found out this morning that I need to go do some emergency housesitting for a friend of the family. (Her original sitter flaked out at the last minute.) So, that's starting tonight. They're trying to set me up with Internet from their Verizon card this time, but I'm not sure if it'll work out or not, so I may be a little scarce for the next . . . uh, three weeks.

Hopefully I'll get some writing done. Although, last time I went up there, I pretty much spent the whole time watching HBO. I think I'm gonna have to invoke a no-television rule from the very beginning to avoid that. After all, I need to get ready for NaNo, and what better way to do that than with limited Internet access?

Walmart publishes this newsletter for its employees. There are a bunch of copies in the breakroom, and the other night, I was really bored, because the book I've been reading at work (The Gangster We Are All Looking For, by lê thi diem thúy*) was boring and pretentious. And, on the cover of this particular newsletter, there was a photograph of a store manager, standing with his hands on his hips and his head held high in a field of solar panels. The article was supposed to be about Walmart and green energy, but I didn't bother opening the newsletter to read it.

Instead, I took out a ballpoint pen (all I had) and drew big feathery wings on the guy, and added the headline, "THE X-FACTOR: Mutants among us!"** I giggled, and went back to work.

Two hours later when I came back for my break, somebody had filled in my scribblings with a Sharpie, which made them look much better. They also drew over the guy's body to give him a big muscle-y chest and glowing eyes (and horns? I don't remember), and had added the headline, "We da mutants!"

I can't even tell you how happy this made me. Seriously, it was the ONE bright point of work that evening, to see that somebody else was somewhere near my own state of mind. From now on, I'm carrying a Sharpie in my purse so that I can more effectively graffiti the asinine newsletters in the break room.

I'm also sort of playing this game where I see how long I can keep talking openly about Walmart on my blogs and Twitter before I get in trouble. It's fun!***


* Who apparently is too good for capital letters in her name. And yes, I did just copy it from Wikipedia; I don't like the book well enough to figure out how to type Vietnamese diacritical marks. Even though the software I use to type in Greek can probably do it pretty easily.

** Earlier that evening, I'd been amusing myself by trying to read the French parts of a flier about pomegranates, even though I don't know French. So, this was a step up as far as entertainment went.

*** I have lots of games I play to keep myself from going crazy at Walmart. Like, I make up sordid backstories for my customers. Also, when we change watch batteries, we set them on the base of the lamp at the changing station, and then drop them into the recycling box later. So, I wait until things are really slow to put the batteries away, and then I have to recite a line of poetry for every battery I drop into the box. (It was going to be a line of Shakespeare, but I didn't like being limited to just one poet.) Also, when things are REALLY slow, I play the alphabet game. I have to find every letter in the alphabet consecutively on signs without moving around. ("Quartz" really saves my butt in this game. Also, "Timex".)

. . . yeah, basically, it's only been a month and my job is already destroying my will to live. It's gonna be a long couple of months.

I was going to come home and tell you guys a story about the old man from Texas I helped this afternoon, and how he wanted a small watch but his wife told him that when he wears women's watches he looks "like a homosexual", and how he also told me that he doesn't want to wear a gold band because he "sweats like a negro". And about how it's funny, because he was very clearly the sort of person who has a strong set of values--for example, I could tell he'd never have dreamed of swearing in front of me, since I'm a lady, even if he would casually drop the phrase "sweat like a negro". And about how weird it is to encounter someone whose value system is so jarringly different than mine.

I was going to, but the last hour or so at work was incredibly stressful. I had a customer who had to wait on me for the LONGEST time because first I couldn't quite help her right, so she's going to have to come back so somebody else can sort out the mess, and second, it took me FOREVER to finish taking a link out of the band of her watch (which she only bought because of the first thing I couldn't fix), and she had people waiting; and that took so long that I couldn't finish the other major project I was supposed to get done this evening, and I'm a little worried my supervisor will think I slacked off (which I didn't!), and I still had to rush to clock out in time (you get in trouble if you go over your time), and by the time I left the store, I was a big bundle of stress and run-on sentences.

Also, I yelled at my mom earlier (in public) because she said she'd go pick up my Peace Corps paperwork at my doctors for me, and didn't because she thought they wouldn't let her (because she didn't know I'd called them). Came home to find the paperwork on my desk because she went back to get it--which is a pretty significant inconvenience for her. Only, she couldn't have known but the office didn't give her the most important form, so I'm going to have to go back and get it anyway, which drives home the point that I should have just gone myself, and makes me feel like even more of a cad.

. . . so, basically, I'm ending the day feeling like a pretty horrible person. It's a terrible way to be going to bed.

When I was in Vietnam two summers ago, I kicked around a little with this Chinese girl who was dating somebody else in our group. We sort of shared the experience of being the only non-Vietnamese people in the group (though apart from that, our experience couldn't have been much different). Anyway, at one point, she confided in me that she really missed Chinese food. "You must miss American food to," she said.

And I said, "No, not really. American food kind of sucks."

And I'm sorry, but it's true. I just stumbled across this fascinating photo essay from MSN about what families around the world consume in a week (thanks, sparrow1029!), and it really drove the point home for me. I've been meaning to make a post about food all summer, so I guess this is my chance.

America--especially suburban, and, to a lesser extent, small-town, America--is a convenience culture. The American family in that slideshow is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen. 90% of the food in it is prepackaged, convenience food. Even the applesauce is packaged in individual cups. We're looking at the Hamburger Helper brand of cooking--empty the box into a pan (or straight into the microwave) and walk away.

When I rant about this, my mom is quick to point out that if both parents are working all day--a necessity for many families in the U.S.--nobody has time to cook real food, from scratch. But . . . I'm still not convinced. With a little planning, and more importantly, a little knowledge, even working people can cook.

Ever since I got home from college, I've been working on an aggressive campaign to start making things from scratch. I started with noodles for chicken noodle soup, then bread (that no-knead stuff that's been going around; easy enough to work into a busy schedule if you time it right). Slowly, we've been weeding out expensive stir-fry and spaghetti sauces, replacing them with homemade versions that taste better. I finally went straight for two of the holdouts of prepackaged food in our house--refried beans and flour tortillas.

Now, granted, my refried bean process requires attention on three separate days (soaking, slow-cooking, and finishing), but the actual time spent in the kitchen is only around thirty minutes, thanks to the wonder of crock pots. The tortillas are sort of labor-intensive, but they are a) much better-tasting than the ones from the store, and b) cost literally a fraction of what store-bought tortillas do. (Tortillas around here run about $3 for twelve. I can make 16 for about 75 cents, not counting the energy to cook them.)

Around here, cost is the primary factor that's making me press the from-scratch style of cooking. But the benefits go far beyond that. Cooking things myself allows me to control the amounts of fat and sodium that go into my food. Sodium is an especially important one--prepackaged foods are lousy with it, and it's really so simple to make delicious foods with entirely reasonable amounts of salt. Canned soup is an especially bad offender, and soup is so easy to make! Ditto for broths--I routinely make chicken broth, and I save all my veggie scraps to put together a delicious vegetable broth, which I use in soups and whatnot--all much lower sodium than what you'd get in a can. (As a bonus, the veggie broth is essentially free!)

(Digression! One other thing about our diet, which isn't so much tied to the from-scratch ethic as it is to the "living below the poverty line" ethic is that our meals are very heavy on dried beans and rice. Dried pinto beans, for example, are pretty much the cheapest form of protein you'll come across. I picked up a 25 lb. bag of pintos at Safeway for $14--and that's without going to any sort of bulk food supplier! In addition to protein, beans are also packed with fiber and vitamins, and can be cooked in a bazillion different ways. This summer, I was heavy on vegetarian curries and chilis, but as winter approaches, I'm moving more towards refried beans and casseroles with green chili sauces that contain more animal fat--which I process myself by cooking whole chickens and making broth from the carcass, rather than buying bags of breasts. If you HAVE to eat meat, at least use every bit of it.)

The other thing that depresses me so much about the American food photo is the appalling shortage of fresh foods in the photo. I see one little bag of grapes, and a few tomatoes, and a couple bags of salad greens. (Yes, even our GREENS are prepackaged!) Compare that to the photos from India, Mexico, and Turkey, which are just packed with fresh fruits and veggies. I mean, even the U.K., birthplace of toad in the hole, for God's sake, has more fresh food in the photo than we do! Is it any wonder we're fat? God.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you can trace almost all of the problems with America's diet back to a fundamental lack of involvement with our food. When you're cooking for yourself--especially under budget constraints--you naturally pay more attention to things like fat and sodium, because you can control them. (You may also learn, as I did, that it is possible to make dishes that are utter powerhouses of flavor without using very much fat, and often no animal products at all.) We're simultaneously busy and lazy, and between those two, we just don't pay attention to our food.

It's not easy. Sometimes, it means giving up a little bit of precious spare time; my days off turn into cooking days, and often the first thing I do when I get home from work is throw together some tortillas or set some beans to soak. But it's worth it. My family is eating healthier, for less money, and producing less waste (environmental bonus!). Win, win, win!

Thesis: Customers are assholes.

Evidence: This afternoon, I was concentrating on some inventory task, when a very fat man in one of those motorized carts whistled at me to get my attention. (This already flustered and irritated me: I am not a dog.) I asked if I could help him, and he started gesturing, making a squeezing motion with his hands, then pointing at his ears and shaking his head.

At first I assumed he couldn't speak English (he was dark enough to be Hispanic), but it gradually dawned on me that he must be deaf, and I grew steadily more flustered as I tried to understand his sign language. I even asked him if he could fingerspell, since I have sort of an understanding of the ASL alphabet. He just kept pointing at his ears and gesturing.

Finally, he mimed writing. Lightbulb! I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and watched, very earnestly attentive, as he painstakingly began to write--veeeery sloooowly. "C a n . . . y o u . . . t a l k."

"Uh . . . yes, I can talk." He points at his ears. Maybe he needs to find hearing aid batteries? Louder--and more confused--I say, "Yes, I can talk!"

And then he bursts out laughing. "So can I! I was just kidding with ya." And he continued to ask me where he might find a ketchup squeeze bottle.

So, I ask you, Livejournal: Where does confusing and embarrassing someone who is trying to help you, and wasting her time and energy, get funny? I was humiliated, and furious, and frustrated, and when he showed up later to pay for his damn ketchup bottle, I wanted to refuse to speak to him.

He pissed me off so much, I thought it would be worth the time to write a LJ post about it before collapsing into bed after an unexpected 16 hour workday. (Not Walmart's fault, for the record.)

I changed the quotes in my LJ profile. It's always weird to change my LJ profile. Every time I turn around, I realize the person it describes isn't the person I am anymore. It's very nearly to the point where I'd like to do away with it altogether, but I do like sharing a couple quotes that describe my state of mind at this point in my life. (Apparently, my state of mind post-college has a lot to do with children's books.)

I also took out a bunch of really dated interests, and added new ones. I actually really like that 'interests' feature on LJ. Interest lists make such an interesting collage of a person, you know? They're always the first thing I look at when I look at someone's LJ profile.

Anyway, there's that. LJ is a sort of weird place, these days, isn't it? You have all these big name social networking sites out there, and what with Facebook and MySpace and Twitter getting so huge, LJ has sort of fallen back into the shadows a little bit. I was talking to mizujada about it once, and we concluded it has something to do with the fact that LJ is aimed at relatively long-form posts, not the little snippets employed by Twitter and Facebook. It takes a lot more energy to write up a LJ post than to drop something in Twitter. Also, now that I have a Twitter (middlemuse, if anyone's forgotten), I feel like my LJ posts have to actually have substance, because if I just want to whine about work, or gush about some link I found, isn't that what Twitter's for?

(Oddly enough, back when I first started blogging, when I was a teenager, I used my blog as an outlet for anything I thought might be too tedious to share with my friends on instant messenger. As blogging philosophies go, this one is not a winner. Just sayin'.)

In honor of Banned Book Week, I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye at work this week. I wasn't forced to read it in high school the way a lot of people my age were, and now that I'm out of college, I'm sort of trying to catch up on some of the important works of fiction that I somehow missed during my formal education.

Anyway, today one of the men who works in maintenance told me that after I read it, I can go shoot somebody, because loads of assassins have been obsessed with it. "The guy who killed Kennedy was really into it, and the guy who killed Lennon was really into it, and . . ."

. . . sigh. I was hoping that by reading it in the break room, I could explain to people about Banned Book Week and the importance of avoiding censorship . . . but he was too interested in what he had to say about the association between the book and murderers to hear anything I said about censorship.

Ah well.

Actually, I guess I'm not much better. I associate The Catcher in the Rye with the Five Iron Frenzy song "Superpowers" (which has the line, "I sometimes feel like Holden Caulfield").*


* This song has even more complex associations, because a month or two ago, I was in Goodwill, and was shocked to hear it on the radio. Usually the Goodwill radio plays oldies--lots of Beach Boys and Elvis, that sort of thing. So, it was really damned weird to hear FIF in there. REALLY.

Last night I went to bed at 8:00, and got up at 6:00, and I was STILL exhausted. Family drama REALLY takes it out of you. I hope I feel better rested tomorrow, but if I don't, at least I know it's my last Walmart day until Thursday.

I'm going to try drinking green tea at work tomorrow instead of coffee. We'll see how THAT works out. Possibly it's an experiment that's not well suited to my fifth consecutive day of work, but, eh.

Walmart finally has me working again. This is good, because I need the money very badly, and because I was kind of getting bored and crabby sitting at home with nothing do do*. This is bad, because . . . well, when was the last time YOU spent eight hours inside a Walmart?

It's led to a strange realization, though: even though I traditionally hate getting up early, I would much rather work the 7-4 opening shift than the 2-11 closing shift. Sure, I have to get up at six in the morning, but I get home by dinner time and I can spend the evening doing whatever I want. If I started work at 2, I wouldn't really be able to relax the same way. There would certainly be less wine involved.



* My definition of 'nothing' includes: learning how to sew; failing TWICE at making meringues; cooking shitloads of meals, including the world's best refried beans and some homemade tortillas; plus the usual knitting, spinning, and reading. I do not do 'idle' very well.

Stolen from deadvole!

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

I'm not very good about posting here anymore, am I? You should probably blame my awesome friends, who hear most of the ideas and stories I have to tell via instant messenger, which means I'm not left with a strong urge to write about them here on my LJ. Also, when I'm not stressed out, I have less to process here.

Anyway, I feel like I should record the information that I am now officially a Sales Associate at Walmart in the Jewelry Department. I have . . . mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I need the money very badly. (Living on $200 a month all summer was . . . interesting.) And my coworkers in the Jewelry Department are all quite pleasant and fun. In fact, the work atmosphere is surprisingly pleasant, at least on the human end.

But then, you've got the corporate end. And that's not so fun. I've had to sit through hours and hours of what they call CBLs (computer-based learning)--it's basically a Powerpoint slide narrated by a very bored voice actor, with a quiz at the end. Some of them are to convey important information (like how to pierce ears or operate a cash register), but a lot of them are just corporate policies for convincing the employees that Walmart cares about them. For example, they REQUIRED me to go in and work up a 'career plan' for my time at Walmart. Sam Walton said, "You don't have to leave Walmart to change careers." . . . seriously, the rest of my life at Walmart? I would rather stab my eyes out.

Then there's the obvious downsides, like spending eight hours inside of a Walmart. Brr.

( What's going on in the rest of my life, in list format )

Despite the fact that I was very intellectually exhausted after that honors degree of mine, this summer's reading efforts were actually fairly productive. I don't read as fast as most people in my peer group (intelligent young nerds), and I'm very bad about rereading things instead of finding new books. (I've read Ender's Game and all the sequels about eight times since I discovered them early in high school. And that's a lot of sequels.)

So, all things considered, the fact that I have five books to share with you guys at the end of the summer is doing pretty well. I read a few other things, including a reread of the last three Harry Potter books, but here's the good stuff. Since I'm in the process of refining my worldview, and since I'm falling back into my homeschooler habits (reading to edify as much as to entertain) now that college is over, I'm going to try to give a sense of what I got from each book, as well as just offering my recommendation.

( Five books I loved this summer )


What's the best book that each of you read this summer?

Plato was a fool.

Today, I spent my afternoon reading Paper Towns, by John Green (it was excellent). At some point, I moved out into the front yard and laid down on the grass. I read half the book that way, on the cool grass, with the breeze and the shade. It was beautiful.

At one point, I rolled over, and caught a glimpse of the clouds up in the sky, and I had to stop and stare, even though the sky was so bright it dazzled my eyes. It was so perfect, with the wispy, fluffy white clouds moving slowly against the blue, blue sky, behind the dead branches of a cottonwood tree that our neighbors should have trimmed. They looked like towers of a castle on a hill.

As I kept watching, some large bird made a dark shape very high up, and I watched as it grew smaller and smaller, a little black speck against the white of the clouds, until it disappeared behind the leaves of an elm tree.

And I thought, Plato was a fool.

Every one of those clouds was perfect, all on its own. They weren't echoes of some perfect Form of 'Cloud'. The very concept of such a Form is an insult to real clouds. There's no such thing as a bad cloud, or an imperfect cloud; every cloud functions exactly the way that it should. They don't need to aspire to an idea, they just exist. They're just being clouds.

I feel the same way about almost everything. I looked up into the branches of the cottonwood tree, and it was perfect, too, it was being a cottonwood, and doing the cottonwoodiest job of it that it could. Don't try to tell me there's a perfect Idea Cottonwood that this cottonwood is a mere shadow of; it's your Idea that's a shadow.

And it's the same with beauty. Lying there on the grass and listening to the wind in the trees, and watching the birds fly past, and smelling the grass--that is Beauty. Not a reflection of something transcendent; Beauty itself, literally in the flesh, right there in my front yard. What a tragedy to experience something beautiful and think, "Well, that was a nice glimpse of something I will never truly experience until I manage to transcend this mortal realm."

Stop looking for the forest when you're already surrounded by the trees!