Honestly
Kinisi 20
WHITE OSSIPPEE
What I’m encountering in a raft of ebooks
As an author of ebooks, I’ve been lately engaged in an orgy of reading works by my fellow Smashwords writers. Admittedly, many of my selections have veered toward writings that reflect topics in my own novels – hippies, yogis, subway riders, millennials, Buddhists, Greek-Americans, and the struggles of new adults, especially. Still, it feels good to get a sense of what others are up to, and their formatting does give me a better sense of my digital options.
As I do so, I often leave brief reviews as a guide for other readers with similar interests. You have no idea how much these mean to a writer, so let me urge you to do the same whenever possible. As one responded, just knowing that she was heard was warm and welcome affirmation.
Just because many of these books are what the big imprints would deem “not viable for commercial publication” does not mean they lack value.
One of my favorites is a two-part memoir by the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who wound up in Nebraska somewhere around the turn of the 20th century. Her candor and details, however simply told, strengthen my understanding of what I present as Cassia’s ancestry in What’s Left. I dread to imagine what would have happened to the memoir in an attempt to jazz it up for wider sales. We should feel honored being allowed in behind the doors of a particular family history so honestly revealed.
It’s something like visiting artists’ studios or art galleries rather than going to the big museums. The scale’s definitely different.
One thing I’m finding is that I apply a more laid-back standard in reviewing these volumes. Yes, they are cheaper, for one thing, but I also read these more like manuscripts than finally processed books. I’m looking especially for freshness and energy, the edge often absent in the book industry. Remember, the big houses no longer nurture talent in the hopes of reaping a hit five books later. Everyone has to start somewhere, and this is where the action is now. Besides, even commercially published works these days aren’t particularly well edited. Alas.
Still, I’m having some common complaints, the pet peeves of an aging copy editor.
“Grey” instead of the American “gray.”
“Towards” rather than the American “toward.”
“That” instead of “who.”
Punctuation errors, especially with single and double quote marks.
Short stories posing as novels. Admittedly, I’m frugal, but these short entries are rarely worth the same as a fully fleshed out book.
To see what I’ve been reading, go to the book reviews at my Jnana Hodson at Smashwords page.
Got any favorite ebooks to recommend?
The falls downtown after a day of heavy rain
As the supply chain breaks down
First, it’s chicken, as we discovered trying to reserve thighs for the local soup kitchen. Our usual supermarket can’t guarantee us it can have them for Thursday.
(Let’s not start a run on the stores, though. They should be smart enough to be limiting purchases to one per customer or so by now.)
Next will be pork, apparently, followed by beef.
Blame the Covid-19 outbreaks out in the big-producer lands. Workers too sick too work.
I’m wondering about eggs, though many of those are grown locally. I hope.
What do you suppose those protesters out in Michigan are going to do about this?
The latest buzz … or lack of it
A local beekeeper group reports that 47 percent of its members’ hives died off over the winter, something largely blamed on a virus I’m dubbing Cobeed-18.
Alas, ours was one of the ones that didn’t make.
Uncertainties over the human Covid-19 outbreak, meanwhile, puts repopulating the hives in question. New colonies are trucked north from the Deep South, and who knows how long before things in that regard are back to normal.
Everything’s up in the air, except that some things aren’t.
Entering a photographer’s private world
Her father’s photographic trove gives Cassia the pieces she eventually assembles into a massive picture puzzle of his world. It spans some big changes in his own life, as well – especially regarding her own family.
In my novel What’s Left, this task also means she has to master some now obsolete technological skills, including reading photographic negatives, where blacks and whites are reversed, moving around in a dusky darkroom, using a photo enlarger, and developing glossy prints in trays of chemical liquids she’s mixed on her own. (My, have those things changed thanks to digital photography!)
Two more years of THIS?
We were wrapping up yet another committee session on Zoom and trying to look ahead to our next one when one member made an unsettling comment.
Said he, “I don’t expect to be out of this (self-isolation) for another two years, not until they have the vaccine in place.”
He’s a retired medical professional, and the other (now unretired) one in our group didn’t correct him.
It’s a gloomy prognostication, not just personally, I’ll admit as senior with a pre-existing condition, but as one considering its dire social consequences as well.
I was going to say the quip hit like a ton of bricks, but considering that the emotional impact had more of a slow motion effect, I’ll say like a ton of hay (hey, a ton is a ton, right?).
So much for dashing our hopes.
I think I’ll go listen to “Casey at the Bat” again, the poem with the phrase “but there is no joy in Mudville.” As if we’ll ever again have baseball, either.
Your turn to whine! I’m all ears.
Crystalized sweet
On the old carriage road
Jnana's Red Barn 