My Novels

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Books and more

I'm sitting here watching Oprah interrogate James Frey about his memoir, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, and it's simply excruciating. It must be terribly embarrassing and humilating to have blatant lies come back to bite you in the @ss publicly. Whoo, I sure don't envy him. Nor am I defending him when I say: "People, do you honestly believe that all memoirs, biographies, autobiographies are the complete and unvarnished truth?" Please. Even in courses taught about writing such material, there are directions on how to embellish for dramatic impact as well as using "selective" memories since obviously one cannot record EVERY event and person in their lives in one short book. However, Frey seems to have gone to extremes and created more fiction than fact. Not good.

That said, let me add that I tried to read the book, but it was so horrible I put it down. NOT due to the overly dramatic details, rather the atrocious writing. Sentences that ran on and on and on and on with "and" linking whole paragraphs as one sentence. It could have been edited, but actually needed rewriting entirely.

Now Oprah is interrogating the editor and publisher, getting a lot of runaround. Frankly, anyone who would publish that book, due to the bad writing alone, should probably be out of business. The state of book publishing in this country has gotten so poor though, that most publishers wouldn't know good writing if it bit them on the @ss.

Oprah can't seem to win on the book club deal; she's damned if she does, damned if she doesn't when it comes to current books. Maybe last season was a better idea: she only recommended classic literature. Last night I watched an older movie based on the novel, "Tess of D'Urberville" by Thomas Hardy. It was fairly good, but the book was better -- and it has stood the test of time.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

We still haven't bought the other miniature mare. The owner wants $300.00, but she did call this morning and ask how much we'd charge for boarding the mare. DH is trying to decide, but I want him to offer $200.00 for the mare; his other offer was lower. Today I drove by where the mare is, and she was lying on her side just barely out of that big mud hole in that cramped/tiny pen. I HATED seeing that, and one way or another, I'm going to make sure she has better living arrangements. Soon.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying Festus. Yesterday one of our quarter horses managed to knock a plank loose, and Festus went into the pasture with the two large horses. They got along fine, and had no problems. However, I feel uneasy when he is in there without supervision, so I kept an eye on him until DH got home and repaired the fence. Now if the mare, Ginger, comes here we'll have more secure quarters for them both. They will have the smaller stable and older red barn to use, as well as a big lot for now. Eventually, we may fix the front part of the pasture just for them. IF we ever decide to breed/sell miniatures (and we're undecided about that) they could have half the 5-acre pasture.

I'll close today by posting several photos.


The two Quarter horses & Festus


Harley checks out Festus


Old church I saw on our Sunday drive


Another old church in nearby small town

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