karen rutherford, freelance writer

Now, this is a neat fundraiser: Believe in Books, The Hunt for Literacy

In this annual Spring event, participants drive around the White Mountains Region of New Hampshire with family and friends chasing clues and earning points. Proceeds benefit the Literacy Foundation, which encourages appreciation of reading and literature among people of all ages.

I found this event in my Heart of New England newsletter this week.

Unrelated note: Never ever ever send a senior in high school to the state of Texas for Spring break. No details will be provided. Just heed my warning. Never ever ever.

Keyword for the next post: Escape.

As usual, the movie barely resembles the book (by Elinor Lipman and one of my favorites), but it still looks good. Besides, anything with Colin Firth in it can't be bad.

There are so many things I love about National Public Radio, but here's a particular favorite at www.npr.org: Each week, NPR presents leading authors of fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their work. There are excerpts, podcasts, and RSS feeds to it all.

Books: http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1032

Book Tour: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10448909

If you’re looking for a good cause this holiday season, don’t forget your local member station.

I love reading weekends and this one was tailor-made for it. Not quite cold, but close enough. Yellow and red leaves floating to the ground outside the picture window. A clean (enough) house. A comfy, over-stuffed chair. Two-sizes-too-big pajamas. A lap dog. And a big cup of hot chocolate. All boring and cliche, I know.

The first book I read was fiction: Feast of Love by Charles Baxter. The premise was brilliant: a man and a woman telling their very different accounts of a specific event in their relationship. But then new characters came into play and I can’t even explain what happened. What a chore. It was confusing in the worst way. Nothing felt connected. I lost the point, the purpose, the meaning. I kept thinking everything would come together and make sense in the end, but 300 pages later, it never did. I did enjoy crossing it off my to-read list and putting it in my “take to Half Price books to trade” bag, though.

The second book I read was non-fiction: A Book by Desi Arnaz. It was fascinating and surprisingly well written. It was factual and chronological to a fault, yet human, and, at times, funny. He was really just giving an account of his life and all I wanted was a different ending: Lucy and Desi together till the end just like I know Lucy and Ricky were. I wish he’d lived to write his sequel (which he was going to call Another Book).

I finished the weekend watching The Letter, a movie with Bette Davis. Over-acting and dramatization at its 1940s finest. I loved every minute of it.

It is weekends like this I know I’ll miss when I’m dead.

It’s that time of year. Fall, yes, my favorite. I also enjoy the beginning of the end of another year when I stop to think about the last months’ accomplishments and shortcomings and the goals for the next year. I even get a kick out of repeatedly figuring out where the heck my Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations are.

But I’m happiest because it’s time again for the Welty Symposium at the Mississippi University for Women. And, this year, I’m going!!!

The first time I attended, in 2001, I cried. I can’t explain why I cried – yes, I can – I was overwhelmed by the sensations of Southern academia, literature, authors and the ghost of Ms. Welty in an intimate and appropriately dimly-lit auditorium. I remember my seat; I remember the faces around me waiting for a story or two. I remember the huge, proud and protective trees outside the beautiful ceiling-to-floor window next to me. I breathed too deeply and quietly cried. It felt like home, like Love.

But that was my first and only visit because we moved to Indy the next year, and I haven’t been able to go back for this or that reason.

This year’s line-up is too good to pass up. Plus, I’ll get to drive through Kentucky to see the Fall leaves (something I’ve sworn to do since living in Indiana) and stop for a dinner with Sheila and an afternoon with Miss Hazel.

Home. Love. Mississippi? :-o

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."

I read Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love this weekend. I expected a schedule, a calendar and step-by-step instructions as the title implies, but I didn’t find that. I have an e-mail in to find out where I went wrong as a reader, but haven’t received a reply yet.

I subscribe to Dan’s e-newsletter and love his site. He’s very inspirational and positive - much like Dave Ramsey is about money management. So, I did find the book to be the same. It was full of motivating quotes and statistics, uplifting anecdotes and self-help questions. But there was no schedule to follow. He explained why he picked 48 days (biblical reference, plus 8 extra days), but had no indication of what to do when.

I hope to amend this post when I hear from him or his “people”. I think there is a workbook that accompanies the book. Maybe that has the schedule, but, for now, I’m not sure I’d spend the money without knowing.

**UPDATE: Sure enough, there's a workbook that you can purchase to accompany the book that contains a detailed plan for the reader. I should've known this. :)

For a perfect read, find Elizabeth Strout in the shelves….

March 10, 2006
Ms. Elizabeth Strout
c/o The Random House Publishing Group Publicity
1745 Broadway 18th Floor
New York, NY 10019

Dear Ms. Strout,

I never write letters like this, so please bear with me if I begin to babble too soon. I recently read a magazine blurb about your new March 14th book release during an unusually long stint in the Target EXPRESS (but I digress) check-out lane. I realized that I immediately smiled and began a better day and had an urge to let you know why.

You see, I feel like I know you. I attended the annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium at the Mississippi University for Women in 2001, at which you spoke about your life’s windy path back to writing and read selections from Amy and Isabelle. I will never forget that conference, because, for somewhat unexplained reasons to me at the time, I spontaneously cried (as inconspicuously as possible) through a lot of it.

I majored in Journalism (at the time, the only writing-related field at the school) my first attempt at college in the early 1980’s and had several, honestly many, jobs completely unrelated to writing pursuits since. My career path eventually forced me into computer-related work strictly for financial single-parent reasons. So, in 2001, I was a Systems Developer. And lost. And sad. And miserable. It was as though you were reading my mind. I had gone into so many jobs that didn’t matter, just to avoid possibly failing at the one I really felt called to do.

This day being an up-close observer of the academic world and the writing world, and present in an area of the United States full of such culture and history was the first time I realized the connection between spirituality and authenticity. And I had ignored both most of my life.

Listening to you tell us about your life and your writing life comforted and inspired me so much. I bought your book and it is still one of my all-time favorites. Only two books in my life (and I consider myself a regular, if not avid, reader) have made me immediately miss the characters upon reading the last sentence: your Amy and Isabelle and Elinor Lipman’s Then She Found Me.

The theme of the conference was “A Kindred Soul to Laugh With” and you will always be that to this fan. A writer sometimes has no idea of the lasting effect she has on even the most inconspicuous audience member. Thus, the universal tug I felt to write and tell you how much I look forward to reading Abide With Me and appreciate just knowing that you’re out there writing.

I’m so excited! A new book! And it’s in Maine (my favorite place in the world)!

Thank you!
Karen Rutherford
Indianapolis, Indiana