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My goodness! October already!
It's been a busy few months around here, right?
My kids started school. Then they both got lice. I feel like my life has been an endless cycle of combing, rinsing, washing, and calling the professional nit-pickers.
I went on "The Today Show," where I talked about un-kosher chickens and sanitary napkins and why women are so hard on each other about baby weight, and how that really needs to stop. Missed it? Here's the link!
Jeffrey Eugenides, who teaches Creative Writing at my alma mater, told Salon that he didn't know why Jodi Picoult would be the one "bellyaching" about the disparity between the ways men's and women's books were treated. I emailed him to try to explain why, sending him a link to the VIDA count, explaining that the women he was teaching would likely graduate into a world where their work was less likely to be published and reviewed than that of their male peers.
After Eugenides said he wasn't presented with the Vida stats -- that, essentially, the reporter slipped in a question about gender and genre at the end of an interview, than made it the centerpiece of the interview -- I suggested that he might want to say so, in as public a place as he made the "bellyaching" remark. Not "Say you were wrong!" like I'm the Feminist Crusader Thought Police (now meeting at my house, after "30 Rock") and he's a goatee'd desperado, but just "maybe say you didn't have all of the information when you answered the question." At which point, Professor Eugenides, who'd proposed getting together for a beer so he could explain why he said what he said, stopped returning my emails...and the head of the Creative Writing department, which I've supported, with my gratitude and my yearly contributions, said, "We can't make him listen to you, now bug off and go away." (I'm paraphrasing). Jodi and I wrote a letter to the editor of the campus paper, and I'm trying to let it go. Will let you know how that turns out. Maybe some day I'll have better luck changing the mind of a man at the tippy-top of the literary pyramid, or at least getting him to think about who gets covered, and where, and how.
What else? I wrote piece for Allure about "The F-Word," about growing up fat, and being prepared with a speech for a kid who got taunted for her weight...but being completely un-prepared when that same kid used the f-word to describe another girl.
It was a hard piece to write, because it meant thinking about a hard part of my life. You can read all about it right here...and it looks like next week I might be taping a talk show about it. Of course, I got the email, and the first thing Mrs. Love Your Body As It Is thinks is, 'How much weight can I lose between now and next week?" Some things never change. Oh, and I'm working on another spooky short story that'll be available in e-form just in time for Halloween. It does not involve lice. It does involve a woman who hits the bestseller list after her husband, a Great Man of American Letters, dies, and she writes a memoir about their life together. Everything's fine...until her agent starts asking about her next book.
Stay tuned for details, and stay away from lice!
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Media blitz!
THE NEXT BEST THING -- which I am quite proud of -- came out on Tuesday.
On Friday, I showed up on "The Today Show," dishing about the book, "The Bachelor," and my summer reading list with Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford.
No, I was not offered booze.
No, I'm not bitter.
Then, this morning, I was on NPR, talking gender imbalance in book reviews, why it's tough for women in writers' rooms, and how to cast a goat for your sit-com (turns out, in Hollywood, the goats have head shots).
Here's a link to the audio:
Thanks to the helpful "Bachelorette" producers, I have figured out a way to BEND TIME ITSELF, so I can tweet "The Bachelorette" while I'm at my reading at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble, at 150 East 86th Street, at 7 p.m. tomorrow night.
The rest of my tour dates are all right here. Cupcakes will be provided, and I hope to see lots of you there. In vests. Wear a vest, win a prize!
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Lots of exciting stuff happening with THE NEXT VEST -- er, BEST THING! (Have you bought it yet? You totally should! The first chapter's right here, and here is a lovely Kirkus review!)
I taped "The Today Show" yesterday,and got to dish about "The Bachelorette," hot summer reads, and what it's like to tell your mom that your first book is going to be published, only it's called GOOD IN BED.
The way it happened was kind of amazing...turns out, Hoda Kotb is on Twitter is a fan of my "Bachelorette" tweets! So a few Mondays ago, when Em and the boys were having their Scottish games in Croatia, she tweeted "everyone must follow the funny Jennifer Weiner," and my sister, who's also on Twitter -- and have you seen her video "Eye of the Cougar" yet? -- said, "Hoda Kotb just tweeted at you!"
So I wrote back something along the lines of "OMG! You follow me!," and shamelessly begged her to allow me on her show "And vwolla!" as my four-year-old likes to say.
The segment is scheduled to air in the ten o'clock hour on Friday, July 6, but for all I know, Brad and Angie could decide to make their union legal tonight, and I could end up in Bumpsville, population, Me. But I'll keep you posted.
Also, I am wearing a LOT of fake hair in the segment. Like, Lady Godiva-length extensions. It was fun!
Tomorrow, I'm scheduled to tape "CBS Sunday Morning," where I'll be recommending five great books for summer. If you follow me on Twitter, you can probably guess a few of them already, but a few are surprises. I hope you'll enjoy the books, and that I'll keep it together on camera (no wardrobe malfunctions, no mispronouncing authors' names, spitting while talking, etc).
Then I'm zipping over to NPR's studios to tape "Weekend Edition," where I'll talk about THE NEXT BEST THING and maybe what it feels like to don the Vest of Literary Legitimacy, which my assistant found on the clearance rack of Men's Wearhouse in Philadelphia.
What else? I'm in Philadelphia Magazine, complaining about men spitting on the sidewalk (so not okay!), and how I met Bill Clinton when I was a nubile eighteen-year-old college freshman (all I did was shake his hand). The title of the book is slightly wrong -- it's THE NEXT BEST THING, not THE NEXT BIG THING -- but you knew that already, right?
Finally, because I have the most amazing publicist in the world, I am also in the August issue of O Magazine, talking about the five books that made a difference to me. There's girlhood favorites, A WRINKLE IN TIME and A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, the wonderfully weird GEEK LOVE, and the two books I picked up as a young woman that were frank and funny and honest and sexy and Add a Comment
Wow! Who knew that all you needed to do to get noticed by The New York Times was wear a silly vest?
Don't forget, today's the last day to enter the win-a-book-club-visit contest (scroll down for details). We'll be picking the winner tomorrow night.
And! When one of my Twitter followers volunteered to wear a vest to my reading, I thought,"That's worth a prize! So! If you wear a vest to one of my readings -- the schedule's listed here -- you will get a cute tote bag or beach towel (also pictured below).
Have a wonderful weekend. Keep cool. And remember the point of all these funny ads and fun contests: THE NEXT BEST THING goes on sale on Tuesday. I'm really, really proud of it...and I'd be really, really grateful if you got yourself a copy.
Time Magazine says it's "utterly engaging." Kirkus says it's unsparing in "exposing Hollywood's sexism, ageism and incurable penchant for extravagant silliness." Library Journal raves "full of warm and interesting characters as well as a wealth of insider industry detail (Weiner was a cocreator of an ABC Family sitcom), this is a must-read for Weiner's many fans and anyone who enjoys smart, funny fiction.
You can read the first chapter of THE NEXT BEST THING here...and you can order it anywhere books are sold.
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So, what if you were a novelist, hoping and praying for your new book to take off?
Why, you'd don Jeffrey Eugenides' billboard-famous vest...
And then you'd make your own billboards....
You'd buy ads on literary websites
And hope that people would notice! And that it would go viral -- or, as your mother says, "virile!"
By golly, it's The Next Vest Thing!
When a smart reader suggested showing up in a vest to one of my readings, I thought, well, that deserves a prize!
Like, perhaps, a cute tote bag!
Or an adorable beach towel!
My tour dates are all right here...and, of course, you can pre-order your copy of THE NEXT BEST THING!
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The week before your book comes out is always equal parts excitement and stress…and this week's been especially difficult.
On Monday, Tablet Magazine published a piece attacking my books and heroines for being insufficiently Jewish. Basically (and you have to understand, the article was so unkind -- it ended by comparing me to Alex Portnoy's baton-twirling dim-bulb of a girlfriend -- that I kind of skimmed it with one eye open), the author's assertion is that I'm whitewashing (goy-washing?) my characters to make them more palatable for a non-Jewish audience.
I don't think that's the case.
If I wanted to attract a mainstream, non-Jewish audience, why have Jewish characters and Jewish holidays and Jewish situations at all? Why include bat mitzvahs, Chanukah latkes and shiva calls? If I'm doing it on purpose, why not go all the way?
The characters I write are just as Jewish as I am. I was raised Reform, I consider myself observant, and I just cringe at the notion that I'm being a bad Jew by writing characters who aren't Jewish enough for Tablet's taste.
I can't do anything but be true to myself, to my own experiences, and to the stories I want to tell and the women I want to talk about.
On Monday, I sulked. "Shiksa lit?" Seriously? (A shiksa, for the uninformed, is a more-than-slightly-derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman: as in, "Oy! Adam Sandler! I loved him, until he married that shiksa!")
On Tuesday, I decided, in the grand Jewish tradition, to rap.
"I'm Jew-y as Bette Midler/Jew-ier than "Fiddler."/ And if my books are "shiksa lit?"/Sandusky's not a diddler."
"'Shiksa lit/ What is that sh*t?/I'm a Jewish locavore, and when I make borscht/ My beets (and my beats) are all locally sourced."
And now, I am offering you this deal.
Pre-order a copy of THE NEXT BEST THING. You can get it from Amazon! From Barnes & Noble! Indiebound will direct you to the independent bookseller of your choice.
Tell me you did so on Twitter or Facebook. (No receipts necessary; I'll take your word for it).
Then, I will write you a Jewish rap, thus establishing my Tribe cred to the three people who were worried about it.
First, can I kvell?
There is an amazing billboard of my new book!
My book! On billboards! Hold me!
Thanks to @AmayaWritesNYC for the picture. When I'm in New York, the week of the 9th, I'll for sure pose in front of it…but meanwhile, if any of you New Yorkers want to send me a shot of you doing the same, I'd love to post them!
Also, a reminder-- you can still win me for your book club! Details and contest rules here.
THE NEXT BEST THING comes out a week from today. The tour starts a week after that. You know what it's time for? Praying for no horrible breakouts between now and then, making sure my Spanx and my shoes and my Sharpies are in order, and loading my e-reader with enough books to keep me happy as I make my way from New York City to Pasadena (you can find my tour dates here).
1. BETWEEN YOU AND ME by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
I picked this up (okay, snatched it off my editor's shelf) expecting it to be delicious, dishy fun, a perfect poolside read. And it was…but it was so much deeper, so much darker, so much more than that. (It also has, hands-down, one of the best book trailers I've ever seen. I don't normally believe that book trailers do squat for selling books, but this one? Is great.
Kelsey Wade is a child-star turned star-star, a singing, dancing, world-beating show-stopper of a girl. Logan is her cousin, struggling with the usual miseries of trying to make it in NYC (the bad first job, the guy who doesn't call, then sends you thirty peonies. In January). She hasn't seen cousin Kelsey in years, until she gets the call…and quickly gets sucked into the madhouse that is Kelsey's world, standing by horrified and helpless as Kelsey slowly falls to pieces.
If you read the tabloids (and you bet I do), a lot of this will sound awfully familiar: the starlet who cheats on her former child-star boyfriend, marries one of her backup dancers, has (and loses custody) of a baby, and eventually ends up with her father as her conservator. But beyond the guess-who-don't-sue element, there are the characters of Logan and Kelsey, who come alive on the page, existing as flesh-and-blood young women, each struggling with their own past, their own families, their own conflicted feelings about fame and love and what makes a good life.
2. YOU TAKE IT FROM HERE by Pamela Ribon
As long-time blog readers may remember, there was a day when I would go to any book club, coffee klatch, mah-johng club or compulsive-gambling support group that invited me. I was a single lady, with one book and no kids, and if you wanted me, I was there.
Times have changed. Now, I have two little ones, plus a serious addiction to reality TV. If I said yes to one club, I reasoned, I'd have to say yes to them all...and so, reluctantly, I decided that, at least until the kids got bigger, I'd have to refuse all invitations.
However! In preparation for the new book, and to boost the all-important pre-sales figures (Stacey Ballis does a better job of explaining why they matter than I ever could), I am giving myself away to one lucky book club.
Here's the deal. You pre-order THE NEXT BEST THING.
You email your receipt to firstname.lastname@example.com, along with your name and address and an email address where we can reach you.
On July 1, some random name-picking computer program chooses one lucky winner, and I will visit the winner's book club on a mutually agreed-upon date within the next 12 months.
The winner has to be in the continental US (I figure, if the winner was in Hawaii, people would figure I was cheating). In addition five runners-up (runner-ups?) will receive tote bags loaded with signed copies of my backlist and some extra, fun Philadelphia-centric treats. The full rules, complete with legal language that I barely understand, are right here.
Q: But I ordered the book weeks ago!
A: No worries! Just dig up your receipt and send it in! (And if you can't find it, the honor system applies -- I am prepared to take your word that you have, in fact, ordered THE NEXT BEST THING).
Q: Do e-books count?
A: But of course! Order a hardcover, order an e-book, order the audio version (do you know that Olivia Thirlby, from "Juno," is reading it?). Whatever you prefer -- it all counts.
Q: But I don't belong to a book club!
A: No worries! Enter anyhow, and if you win,just round up five of your friends. We'll go out to dinner at a mutually agreed-upon restaurant and drink wine and talk about "The Bachelorette."
Q: But I'm broke!
A: I hear you. There is a "no purchase necessary" option, which means you can enter the sweepstakes by sending your name without a receipt to email@example.com. You can also email me a copy of your name on your local library's waiting list, and not only will you be entered, I'll ship your library a few extra copies of THE NEXT BEST THING after it's published.
Q: Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of winning? (In other words, can you be bribed?)
A: It's the random-picking computer, not me, that you'd be bribing...so sending delicious baked goods or attaching flattering Amazon reviews won't help. However, if you want to send a picture of your book club with your entry, I'd love to see it, and I'll post all the shots on a Pinterest board. Fun!
Q: Is this book even any good?
A: I'm very proud of it. It's the story of Ruth Saunders, star of the short story "Swim" (you may remember it, and her, from "The Guy Not Taken.") Ruth is twenty-eight when the show she's written gets the green-light, and she gets to cast, shoot, and, eventually, run her own sit-com before It All Goes Horribly Wrong. Plus, Ruth has a crush on her boss to contend with, her grandmother's impending nuptials to consider, and a cute little dog named Pocket. I think it's a return to GOOD IN BED form -- in both cases, the heroines are bright, damaged, smart-mouthed young women, dealing with physical issues (weight in Canine's case, a badly-scarred face in Ruth's), cripplin
Let me start by saying that I know I'm kind of an odd choice to give this presentation.
While I've been happily published by Atria Books for twelve years and ten books, I'm not a publisher…although I'm happy to share whatever insights I can give you about that part of the world.
While I've been blogging since 2002, I'm not exactly a book blogger the way most of you are. My blog is as likely to talk about "The Bachelor" as it is the latest publishing news.
So…why me? Who am I, and why am I here?
I think what I bring to the table is my own success in the world social media. I think – I hope – that I've figured out a way to use my blog, and Facebook, and Twitter and Pinterest to have an ongoing conversation with my readers, not deliver a "buy my book" monologue.
When I sold my first book in 2000, there was no such thing as social media. Stephen King's e-novella RIDING THE BULLET, which I remember downloading for 99 cents and reading on my desktop at work, was presumed to be future of e-books….and there were only the most primitive e-readers available.
Websites, weblogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Kindles, Nooks and iPads…all of these have emerged in the last decade, and publishers, authors and readers have all been scrambling to figure out how to use these new technologies to connect books with readers.
Let's start with the good news: there has never been a more exciting time to be part of the conversation about books and reading than right now.
Once upon a time, when I was a young reader, there was no conversation at all. There was instead a series of occasionally overlapping monologues, with critics, authors and readers, each in their separate spheres.
The critics would issue their edicts from on high.
The readers would discuss them, in real life and usually in private.
(That's my mom's book club, by the way. Notice what book they're NOT reading.
True story – when my first book was published, I took my mom with me on part of my book tour. I'd be in the store, introducing myself to the manager and the sales staff, signing stock, being friendly, doing my thing, and I'd hear my mother talking to other bookstore patrons. "I just read the best book!" she'd gush…and I'd smile, proudly. "It had everything – amazing writing, great plot, and it was funny." Here it comes, I would think…and I'd turn around just in time to hear my mother say, "Richard Russo! Empire Falls! Hang on, I'll help you find it!" I finally had to tell my mother that, unless she discovered that Mrs. Russo was up in Maine, pimping GOOD IN BED, she had to at least try to hand-sell one copy of my book for every one of his).
So: critics talked to readers. Readers talked to each other. And authors – well, authors were largely silent and voiceless between books. Presumably, they were holed up in their garrets or their New Hampshire compounds, working on their next opus.
Aside from a letter to the editor, a book tour or reading, visit a book club, or, if you were Norman Mailer or Richard Ford, spitting on a critic at a party, authors really didn't have an avenue for responding to criticism or interacting with readers. If an author had something to say, she said it in her next book.
We had three separate spheres – critics, authors, and readers. All of them were talking. None of them could talk to each other.
And then along came the Internet.
Suddenly, readers could talk to authors.
Authors cou
First things first: it's "Bachelorette" time!
If you've followed my live tweets of the show, I wanted to tell you that I'm moving my critique over to Entertainment Weekly's live-blog site, where I will make new friends and not to blow up your timeline (although I will continue to tweet the occasional observation…).
Watch as a few dozen improbably handsome dudes with made-up sounding names and jobs profess that they've found a magical connection! Marvel as sweet blond Emily searches for true love, or at least a gig on "Dancing with the Stars!" Drink every time one of the suitors says "journey," "fairy tale" or accuses another guy of "not being there for Emily!"
Will our girl find true love?
Will Bentley show up to ruin the fun?
Will we ever find out what a "luxury brand consultant" actually does to earn a paycheck?
I have no idea! But I hope you'll join me tonight to find out.
Then, on Wednesday night, I'm going to be at the Free Library of Philadelphia, talking to Buzz Bissinger about his new memoir, Father's Day.
Every once in a while, you read a book that's so wrenching, so gorgeously written and so hard to read that you know that it will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
FATHER'S DAY is one of those.
On an August day in 1983, Bissinger, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, author of A PRAYER FOR THE CITY and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, rushed to the hospital where his wife, who'd been on bed rest for two months, had just given birth to premature twins, born just three minutes apart.
Gerry, the oldest, was premature but fine, and is now a fourth-grade teacher with a degree from Penn, working toward a PhD.
Zach, oxygen-deprived and brain-damaged, is not fine.
"He will never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself," Bissinger writes, with characteristic candor. While Gerry studies for his degree, Zach bags groceries. He is, in short, not the kid Bissinger, himself a hard-charging, success-oriented Ivy League graduate, signed up for…and he's ashamed of his own shame. "The promise of a new Brooks Brothers wardrobe is just an illusion," Bissinger writes, of a post-Christmas shopping trip. "What I experienced with my father I will not experience as a father with my son. He is not a hedge fund trader. I should have known that by now. I will never know that by now. I can't."
In telling the story of his son's life, and the two-week road trip they took together, pinballing across America to revisit the places they'd lived, Bissinger turns his reportorial gaze on himself – his ambition and disappointments, his hopes and insecurities.
Nothing is sugar-coated. There are no platitudes about God never giving you more than you can handle, no suggestion that Zach was a kind of ennobling care package sent to teach his driven dad a lesson, to grant him the gift of perspective.
But, along the way, as Buzz loses his camera and his temper, as he clings to his son on amusement-park bungee cords, confesses that the New York Times best-seller list sends him into a day-long sulk, and takes stock of his own life, and how he defines success, that is what happens.
FATHER's DAY is a searingly honest account about what it's like to be the parent of a special-needs child, a story that doesn't gloss over the disappointments – however petty – that go along with knowing that the trajectory of achievement you'd mapped out and hoped for is going to end not with a college degree and a shiny future but a job in a grocery store where Zach learns, with the help of a job coach, that eggs need to be bagged separately.
If you've seen Buzz fulminating on Twitter or on TV, or if you know him as the chronicler of athletes and politicians, this book
Oh, happy day! "The Bachelorette" premiere is still a little ways off (May 14!), but ABC has "released" the men who will be vying for Emily's hand and heart (I see the word 'release' and picture the men milling around in a cattle holding pen while producers watch over them, with whips and cattle prods).
I'll be live-blogging the fun for the good folks at Entertainment Weekly, but let's warm up with a look at the contenders.
First impressions: the producers have presented us with a delectable assortment of the good, the bad, and the intriguingly coiffed, a fine crop of guys who want to find true love, or at least the guarantee of being on a few tabloid covers and maybe – just maybe – "Dancing with the Stars." There's a heavy emphasis on the International Male (hey, who else is old enough to remember that catalogue?) – and guys with jobs we've never heard of. (Hello, Brazilian grain merchant!)
Bonus points for whoever's running the show for not bothering/offering to proofread any of the bachelors' responses. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then bad grammar, iffy spelling, and odd capitalization are a window into…something else.
So who've we got?
Arie is a race-car driver. Hey, just like poor Emily's late fiancée, and father of her child! Oh, producers, you wonderful, lovable sadists.
Alejandro is a mushroom farmer from Medellin. First reaction: sure he is. Second reaction: I'd keep him around for a while, just because I enjoy saying "mushroom farmer from Medellin."
Here's Michael. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: never date a guy you're going to have to fight for the flat-iron.
Kyle's favorite movies are "Zoolander," "Point Break" and "The Notebook." Translation: I'm funny, I'm hip, and if we start dating, our schedules will sync!
By: Jennifer Weiner, on 4/26/2012
So you want to be a novelist?
Well, there's no one path to take. Novelists come in all shapes and sizes. They're men and women, wunderkinds and retirees. Some of them are very attractive. The rest of us resent them horribly. And if there was a single magic bullet, or a list of steps to follow that would guarantee publication, believe me, someone would have published it by now. What follows is just my take on the question - a completely idiosyncratic, opinionated, flawed and somewhat sassy take on some of the steps you can take to get published. Important caveat: I have only written two books, and I'm thirty-two, which, as my mother would hasten to point out, means I am probably not qualified to give advice to anyone about anything. (Update: Add ten years, eight books, one book-to-film adaptation, and one short-lived television series that I co-wrote and co-ran). If you're looking for lessons from the life masters - people who've made long careers in the world of fiction - then run, do not walk, to your local bookshop and buy Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's indispensable Bird by Bird, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft.
If you want my advice, read on (and if you've already written your book and just want to figure out how to get it published, skip ahead to Step 8).
1. The Unhappy Childhood
The big joke in the publishing community is that smart editors shouldn't waste their time at lunches or conferences, but should instead proceed directly to the local elementary schools. There, they will carefully note the boys picked last in gym class, the girls sitting alone in the cafeteria - all of the outcasts, misfits, geeks, dweebs and weirdos - and give them some kind of small identifying tag (much like wildlife services will tag animals to follow their progress through the years). Twenty years later, the editors should track down the kids they've tagged, now hopefully grown to more successful adulthood, and say, "Okay, where's the novel?"
Why do unhappy kids grow up to be writers? I think because being an outsider - a geek, a dweeb, a weirdo, a smart, mouthy girl or boy who just doesn't fit in - means that you're naturally equipped for observing life carefully. You're not on the inside, you're on the outside - and nobody's a more careful, dedicated observer of life than a kid or teenager who's trying to figure out how to finally fit in with the in-crowd.
Also (and this is totally my own take on things, unproven by any kind of study or research), but I think that kids whose parents are divorced, separated, single, or otherwise un-Cleaver-ish might have a slight edge over those who grew up in happily-married homes. For kids, divorce is a mystery, a puzzle that begs to be put back together - what went wrong? Was it my fault? Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? All of these questions reinforce the powers of observation, the questioning spirit, the impulse to try to make sense of life that can lead to becoming a writer. Or a mass murderer, I guess, but hopefully a writer instead. So if you're a would-be writer whose parents are divorced, be happy. If you're married, and a parent, and trying to turn your kid into a writer, please don't break up just because I said so. Because by the time our theoretical young writer has figured out that fitting in with the in-crowd isn't a consummation devoutly to be wished, and has given up trying to make sense of Why Daddy Doesn't Live Here Anymore, it will be time to…..
2. Have a Miserable Love Life
Again, a crucial ingredient for the formation of a novelist - romantic humiliation and heartbreak. The unhappy childhood gives you the tools of observation. Unrequited crushes, romantic despair, a few memorable break-ups, will give you something to write about, an understanding of grief. No prospect of heartbreak in sight? I can provide phone numbers upon request. (Updated: I now know no single people. At all.
I turned in the final draft of THE NEXT BEST THING on Wednesday, and planned a girlie "treat yo'self" day on Thursday -- a trip to New York, lunch with my editor, shopping for some pretty new dresses for my spring tour dates, and Ricki Lake's reading on the Upper East Side.So there I was, happily ensconced in the quiet car (aka "heaven" to moms of small children), clicking through my Twitter feed, when I came across an interview with Lena Dunham, creator of the film "Tiny Furniture," and the new HBO show "Girls."The interview was all about Dunham's reading habits. In it, she in which she praised the movie "Clueless" and the adventures of Eloise, admitted to never having finished THE GREAT GATSBY…and, sigh, took a shot at chick lit.Asked "Have you ever read a book about girls or women that made you angry or disappointed or just extremely annoyed?" (a looking-for-trouble question if I've ever heard one), Dunham replied, "I don't have a taste for airport chick-lit, even in a guilty-pleasure way. Any book that is motored by the search for a husband and/or a good pair of heels makes me want to move to the outback. If there is a cartoon woman's torso on the front or a stroller with a diamond on it, I just can't."Cue my sigh.Here's the thing: those books Dunham is railing against? They're pretty hard, if not impossible, to find. They're not for sale in airports, they're not available in bookstores; they're not around any more now they were last summer, when Brooklynite-of-the-moment Thessaly La Salle bitched about "mind-numbing titles boast(ing) pink covers with stick figure women swinging purses and walking little dogs; in The Paris Review. You can read all about it in whatever gloating "Chick Lit: She is Dead! And We're All Pissing On Her Grave!" story's been published in the ten minutes since I started writing this blog post. Start with this one, or this one here!Here is what happened: back in the day, Bridget Jones and her sisters were a huge success. Publishers, like the let's-make-some-money business-runners that they are, saw those books selling and began demanding more, more, more! More funny stories of single girls fretting over their hips! More tales of twentysomethings with meddling moms and gay BFFs trying to make it in the big city!New imprints were born. Shelves overflowed with tomes with pink covers decorated with handbags and high heels. Business was booming. For a while, it felt like any young woman with a laptop and a bad breakup had a book deal.Then, the marketplace got saturated with those single-in-the-city stories, some of which were fantastic, some of which were not great. Readers demonstrated that they could discern between the good and the copycats. Publishers pulled back. The strong survived. Candace Bushnell, Jane Green, Emily Giffin, along with newer voices like Sarah Pekkanen and Amy Hatvany and Liza Palmer and Caprice Crane, continue to have their work printed. Meanwhile, publishers started screaming for more sparkly vampires and dystopian YA, because that's what's selling right now.So those shoes 'n' husband-hunting books Dunham's railing against? They are a straw (wo)man. Maybe Dunham took a glance at the cover of Shopaholic book, or, eek, the circa-2002 cover of IN HER SHOES, thought, "Ugh," and then, when the Times reporter asked her "what books don't you read," instead of demurring with a ladylike (and infinitely kinder), "I'd rather talk about the books I DO like," she went after the tired target of chick lit – specifically, a brand of chick lit that isn't even around to bug her any more.When I
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Years ago, I was invited back to Princeton to give a reading at the creative writing department. (Yes, for those who don't know, I graduated from Princeton, which I imagine is a subject of great shame among its stellar writing facility. I like to imagine Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison and John McPhee standing around, leafing dubiously through a copy of GOOD IN BED, saying, "Jennifer Weiner?....nope, don't remember her at all!")
So I came, I read, I fielded questions, and then I went out to dinner at a beautiful restaurant near campus along with other current members of the creative-writing staff, whose numbers currently include Jeffrey Eugenides.
I love Jeffrey Eugenides…especially MIDDLESEX. I thought it was everything a novel should be – big, and sprawling and smart and engaging, with an immediately relatable hero/ine, a book that took on family and romance history and love and did it all in a way that made you say, "No, no, you go ahead, I'm just going to read a few more pages.
I also get extremely shy and tongue-tied around big-deal literary authors I respect. This comes in part from my personality, in part from being told for ten years that I'm not a real writer and I don't write real books, just entertaining girlie fluff (and if you think it's easy to write "just" entertaining girlie fluff, I urge you to give it a try. It's actually harder than you'd think.
So there we were, a party of ten or so, sharing a delicious post-reading feast. Jeffrey Eugenides was seated a few spots down the table. I had to talk to him. I had to. There was no way I was going back to Philadelphia without telling this man how much his book had meant to me. But I couldn't work up the courage to say anything besides "please pass the salt."
Wine, I decided, would help.
I had a glass. Then another. Then a third, putting me two and a half glasses over my limit (I'm not much of a drinker). Finally, I touched his forearm and said (or possibly slurred) "I loooooved MIDDLESEX."
He smiled politely. "Thank you."
I bared my purplish-stained teeth at him in a grin that was meant to be friendly but probably looked feral.
"I read it right after it came out. Right after my first daughter was born."
This factoid was greeted with another polite smile. Please, said the look on his face, please let the poet start talking to me again. But I was undeterred. (Also, possibly, drunk).
"And, you know, even though I'd had amnio, and I knew she was a girl, I made the doctor look extra-close to be sure." (MIDDLESEX readers will remember that much of the book's plot hinges on an aged pediatrician's failure to properly recognize male genitalia when presented with it. "Because," I concluded triumphantly, in a whisper that could probably be heard in West Windsor, "nobody wants to be the mom who missed the penis!"
At that point, Jeffrey Eugenides was looking at me with an expression on his face that could only be characterized as unmitigated horror, with a soupçon of disgust. I took another gulp from my wineglass.
"Oh, c'mon," I said. "I can't be the only mom who's ever done that!"
Yes, said the look on Jeffrey Eugenides' face. Yes, you can.
So there you have it: my evening with Jeffrey Eugenides. Which, if I'm remembering right, ended with a cordial conversation about Princeton's best cupcake shop.
And I'll be back
In which two New York Times Book Review editors discuss their female trouble....
Editor One: So, you're not going to like this, but I really think we need to talk about the sexism situation.
Editor Two (whining): Didn't we talk about some lady book last week?
One: No, last week we talked about Mark Leyner.
Two: Oh. (Happily). I like Mark Leyner.
One: So do we all. But here's the deal: there's this evidence, and it's pretty overwhelming, that women's literary work is perceived, reviewed, purchased and read much differently than similar work by men.
Two: And this is our problem because….?
One: Because people are talking. And noticing. And counting how many women's books the Times reviews and how many women reviewers we hire. It's making us look bad. It might even be making people not read us. So the next time we write about Chad Harbach, or Mark Leyner's sugar-frosted nut sack, or one of the Jonathans….
Two: Please. We're the only game in town. People are going to read what we say, no matter what.
One: You do this, or I'm telling everyone how long you spent in the bathroom with that Wall Street Journal piece about James Patterson's Palm Beach estate.
Two (shocked): You wouldn't!
One: I would. And this won't be so bad. Here's my plan: we find some Times-approved woman writer and let her write an essay about the problem.
Two: Not one of those icky commercial writers? The ones who were making all that fuss about Franzen?
One: No, no, no. Don't be silly. You know we don't mention those ladies except on the bestseller list. We'll find an acceptable lady writer. Someone who's sophisticated. Genteel. Someone who writes about families and marriages and relationships and motherhood, preferably as experienced by wealthy New Yorkers.
Two: I don't know. That still kind of sounds like chick lit. Or women's fiction.
One: Can't be chick lit if it's written by a critically-respected midlist author whose books the Times reviews.
Two: Ah! Gotcha. Okay, so Elinor Lipman? Kathryn Harrison? Cathleen Schine?
One: I was thinking Meg Wolitzer.
Two: Huh. Didn't she once write an essay about reading a Sophie Kinsella book and not finding it completely odious?
One: That was a long time ago. Probably no one remembers.
Two: I don't know. She had a scene in THE TEN YEAR NAP where a lady breast-fed another woman's baby. (Shudders). I don't like breast-feeding. Or babies. Or books about mothers who breast-feed their babies. That would never happen in a Jonathan Franzen book.
One: I know.
Two: In a Jonathan Franzen book, the character would have to dig through a turd to find a wedding r
I have no idea how the New York Times editors decide what to cover in the INSIDE THE LIST column...but I like to imagine the discussion going something like this.
Editor one: Looks like Jodi Picoult's new book is going to debut at number one.
Editor two: (Blank look): Jodi Who?
One: You know. Jodi Picoult. The lady who writes books about real people facing ethical dilemmas?
Two: Real what?
One: Never mind. Look, it's a huge best-seller, and we really should say something. I mean, her readers, Times readers…lots of overlap there.
Two: Didn't we just write about some lady-book bestseller? That mommy-porn thing? Shouldn't that buy us, like, a month? And at least two more profiles of Nicholson Baker?
One: (Placating). Look, it's not like I'm saying we have to review the book or anything crazy. But this column's called Inside the List. Which means that maybe we should actually mention the books that are on the bestseller list. Every once in a while.
Two (Sulking): I don't like writing about popular fiction, unless I get to make fun of it. That's why I'm an editor at a mainstream newspaper with a diverse readership which nevertheless permits – nay, encourages – its publishing reporters to ignore most of the books people actually enjoy, especially if they're written and enjoyed by women.
One: Shh!
Two: Oops. Sorry. (Whispering) Forgot I'm not supposed to talk about that in public. (Then) Look, can't we just write about Chad Harbach some more? He was on the list!
One: He doesn't have a book on the bestseller list right now.
Two: Yeah, but he did. Remember?
One: I do. But, given that it took him nine years to write the first one, we might not get to talk about him for a bit. Now, this Picoult book. It deals with organ donation, end-of-life decisions, complex family dramas. Oh, and it's got a protagonist who lived with a wolf pack. She did a lot of research. Maybe we can talk about that?
Two (brightening): Hey, wait a minute! Wasn't she one of those lady writers who hates Jonathan Franzen?
One: Well, technically, those lady writers weren't complaining about Franzen, per se, but, rather, the disparate amounts of attention given to men versus women, and literary versus commercial fiction in mainstream...
Two: Yeah, yeah. Probably Josie was just jealous of Franzen. Can we write about Franzen?
One (Slowly): So, instead of writing about Jodi Picoult and her number-one bestselling book, you want to write about Jonathan Franzen.
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Last week Vida, an organization for women in the arts, released its second annual survey of highbrow publications and how many women they're publishing and reviewing.
The news, predictably, was not good: The Atlantic reviewed 12 books by women, 24 by men. Harper's reviewed 19 women, 53 men. The New Yorker published work by 242 women, 613 men.
The typical hand-wringing, apologizing, defensiveness and search for solutions quickly began.
I wrote a piece for the Guardian's blog, arguing that, for anything to change, women are going to have to speak up for ourselves, and one another.
And then, with my work done, I downloaded the latest popular piece of erotica that everyone's talking about and settled in for what I hoped would be a fun read.
I love a good, fast-paced sexy book. I read Judith Krantz when I was just a lass, and kept the A.N. Roquelaure books under my mattress, and can still recite more of Shirley Conran's LACE than you'd believe. I'm not looking for prose on the level of James or Proust every time I start a novel. Sometimes, I just want entertainment.
This book -- for a variety of reasons -- did not deliver.
On Sunday night, I dashed off a few snarky tweets, rolled my eyes, bit my lip, recommended a few other books, and went off to innocent slumber.
And woke up to a bit of a kerfuffle
I wanted to write back, You know who I am? I am a reader, who paid $6.99 for this book, and has a right to an opinion about it.
But other, more thoughtful responses kept coming. You threw another woman under the bus. You're being a bitch. You, with all your talk of equality and fairness. How could you!
My first reaction was to get defensive. There is, I pointed out, a difference between calling a book an unreadable piece of trash that should never have been published and taking issue with specific pieces of a story -- a story that I've paid for, and taken time to read and think about.
I never said it shouldn't have seen the light of day, or that readers don't have a right to enjoy it. I certainly didn't hunt the author down on Twitter and make sure she knew exactly how I felt about her book.
Did that make me a mean girl? Did that mean I was chucking another female author – and a first-time one, at that – under the bus?
Does standing up for women's equality, fo
The first thing you must know about me is that I am colossally fat," Arthur Opp confesses in the story's very first line. Arthur estimates his weight as somewhere between five and six hundred pounds, and confesses that he eats "whatever and whenever he wants," feasts of "Chinese food, the greased and glowing kind, unnaturally orange chicken with sesame seeds nestled in its crevices, white rice in buttery clumps that come apart wonderfully in the mouth; potstickers, ridged and hard at the seam and soft at the belly; crab rangoons, a crunch followed by lush bland creaminess; chocolate cake – nothing Chinese about it, but the best dessert for a meal of this kind, the sweet bitterness an antidote & a compliment to all that salt.".
When we meet him, Arthur hasn't been out of the house in a decade -- not since 9-11. The lovely Brooklyn brownstone he inherited was once "very lovely inside and out, decorated very nicely, O this when I was a small boy. But now I fear I have allowed it to fall into a sort of haunted disrepair." He's a disgraced former professor, hopelessly longing for a former student whom he dated a handful of times decades ago. His word is confined to the first floor of his house, his television set, and the deliverymen who bring him whatever he needs from the outside world. "I made sure to choose the after 5 p.m option when I joined, which pleases me I like to think the deliveryman might believe I work all day and am just getting home. I'm very silly in this way!"
Arthur's carefully-constructed life starts to crack open when he makes his first human connections in years. He meets Yolanda, the housekeeper he hires to get his house in order in the belief that Charlene might come back, and, eventually, the reader meets a teenage baseball prodigy Kel Keller, Charlene's son. Kel, handsome and athletically gifted, is also a misfit, also trapped, imprisoned by poverty, by place and circumstance and the burdens of an ill and addicted mother. He lives in a rough part of Yonkers, attends school in a posh neighboring suburb, and keeps his mother's secrets, caring for her even as he's furious with her for failing him so profoundly.
Liz Moore is neither a six-hundred-pound professor or an unhappy, too-cool teenage jock. Tall and willowy, with a thoughtful manner and Julia Roberts masses of wavy brown hair, Moore grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, the oldest of two sisters, in a "very happy family." Her mother was an English professor, her father was a research physicist who specialized in nuclear medicine, and Moore was an avid reader of everything from Beverly Cleary to Madeline L'Engle to "The Babysitters Club, which my mom was not happy about."
Living in a soccer-mad suburb, Moore recalled wishing that her mother spoke with more of a Boston accent. "All I wanted to do was be like all the other kids I knew. I remember trying to be someone I wasn't."
She played soccer: "Not well. And I would have traded everythin
Greetings from Studio City, where I've got of exciting news to report. First up: "State of Georgia" premieres tomorrow night (that's Wednesday, June 29) on ABC Family (which is NOT ABC -- it's on basic cable; check your channel guide) at 8:30 p.m.. The show stars Raven-Symone and Majandra Delfino as two best friends from a small town down South who are trying to make it big in New York City, under the benign neglect of Georgia's Aunt Honey, played by Loretta Devine.
I hope you'll tune in for the premiere....and I hope you'll stick with the show. It's been an amazing experience, shooting a pilot and then working on nine new episodes, watching the show find its feet and find its voice as the weeks went on. I think that Georgia ended up in a great place -- a funny show with lovable characters and a lot to say about what it's like to take those first steps toward adulthood. You can read more about my book-to-TV transition in the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Also, if you "like" "State of Georgia" on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, I'll be live-tweeting the premiere and posting pictures from our premiere party, as well as pictures of real-life BFFs watching the show on Wednesday night.
On July 12, THEN CAME YOU comes out. THEN CAME YOU tells the story of four women and a baby. There's brittle, wealthy newlywed India who will pay any price to have a child. There's Jules, a college senior with a few big secrets, who becomes the egg donor, and Annie, who's struggling with financial constraints, an unhappy marriage and her own ambitions, who become the gestational surrogate. Finally, there's Bettina, India's skeptical stepdaughter, who thinks the whole thing is a mistake.
The book's gotten some great early reviews, and I think readers will enjoy meeting each one of these women as they make their way toward becoming a family. I talked to Cosmo.com about how the book came into being, and you can, of course, read the first chapter here.
Last but not least, the tour! I'll be doing readings, and handing out delicious whoopie pies, in New York City, Princeton, Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City, beginning on July 12. All the details are here, and I hope to see you there!
Greetings from Bungalow 5, on my last day in Los Angeles.
Tonight, I'll pack up my office and go out to dinner with the writers for "State of Georgia." Which, by the way, got an amazing review in The New York Times.
Tomorrow, I'm on a plane to New York. Tomorrow night, I'll be live-tweeting "Georgia," which airs at 8:30 on ABC Family. Tomorrow's episode introduces a few of the show's semi-regulars, Jo's physics classmates Lewis, Leo and Seth, played by the very funny Kevin Covais (remember him from "Idol?"), Jason Rogel and Hasan Minhaj, all of whom are on Twitter…just put an "@" sign in front of their names, and you can't miss them.
On Thursday morning during the eight o'clock hour I'll be on "The Today Show," along with Harlan Coben, who writes some of my favorite thrillers. We'll be giving our summer reading recommendations, so please tune in!
Then, on Tuesday, July 12, THEN CAME YOU hits the shelves, and the e-reading devices, and I'll hit the road, with stops in New York, Princeton, Philadelphia, the Chicago suburbs, and Kansas City. THEN CAME YOU has gotten some lovely early reviews, including the coveted four beach umbrella award from the New York Post, which said, "Weiner makes the unsympathetic women compelling, and chronicles the hard-luck ladies sans melodrama. We come to care about each one."
You can check out the first chapter of THEN CAME YOU right here and look at my tour dates here. Please note: all readings will feature whoopie pies. Not because there are whoopie pies in the book (although now that I think about it, there should be), but because I like whoopie pies, and I don't trust anyone who doesn't.
Thanks to everyone who checked out "Georgia," and I hope to see lots of you on the road.
The number-one, hands-down question writers get is, "where do you get your ideas?"
Usually we mutter something jokey and self-effacing about Target or the Idea Elves, because the truth, at least for me, is, we don't know where ideas come from. They just come…and whether they arrive as an image, or a scrap of dialogue, or a what-if question, it's hard to say where they're born.
At least, that's true most of the time.
But, on Tuesday, I had an idea, that turned into a story (my first-ever horror story!), and I can chart exactly how it happened.
I spoke at an event Tuesday night, out in the suburbs, and I was driving home, letting my trusty GPS be my guide. As I tooled through the darkness, along a deserted road I'd never been on, I thought, What if this thing doesn't want me to get home?
What if it sends me somewhere else entirely?
On Wednesday morning, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had ever written a story about a possessed GPS.
A few people mentioned the great Stephen King story, "Big Driver," (it's in his latest collection, FULL DARK NO STARS). But in that story, the GPS is a benevolent presence, almost a friend to the beleagured heroine.
I was thinking of a darker kind of GPS. And then, I started asking the big writers' question: why? Why would a GPS want to do bad, bad thing?
Just like that, I had a story. An abused wife. A dead husband who doesn't want to stay dead. A gift-wrapped box in the attic…and a GPS that starts telling its new owner to make some seriously wrong turns.
This was Wednesday morning. I emailed my brilliant agent and asked, if I write this thing, like, today, is there any chance we can get it up for sale on Halloween?
She talked to my editor. My publishing house swung into action. I wrote the story…and it came really, really fast. Thirty-five pages in five hours fast.
My agent and my editor both gave me notes. I revised it late Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
On Thursday afternoon, my copy-editor, Nancy Inglis took a pass. By Thursday night, we had a cover, designed by the amazing Anna Dorfman. Everyone there hustled to get this thing formatted, spruced up, and ready for your enjoyment.
The story goes live on Monday – Halloween – and will be available for your Kindle, your Nook and on iTunes (I'll add links as they go live) for a mere 99 cents -- such a bargain!
Technology is amazing. And my publisher's great. I hope you have as much fun reading "Recalculating" as I did writing it.
Happy Halloween. And if your GPS starts sounding like it's angry with you the next time you take a trip, you might want to pack a map…
By now, people who follow publishing news are familiar with the headlines from last week's Fridayreads brouhaha: popular hashtag revealed as a business, too! Proprietors apologize for not properly labeling promotional tweets! "We may have made mistakes, but we've got ethics!" they claim.
When it began, #Fridayreads was a popular hashtag that was billed by its founder Bethanne Patrick, who tweets as @thebookmaven, as a "global community of people who come together each week to share whatever they're reading." Last week, Patrick admitted that Fridayreads is a hashtag and a business both, a business that charges publishers fees from $750 to $2,000 to host giveaways, author Q and A's, "twitter tours," and post positive tweets about their books.
Now that the business aspect is out in the open, there's another question to consider, one that's bigger than the issue of why Patrick and her colleagues chose to disclose the moneymaking component of a Twitter hashtag on a website few would have occasion to see, and whether they really believed that disclosure was sufficient: namely, why does any of this matter to readers and writers?
My own full disclosure: I found out that Fridayreads was selling services after a new online literary magazine called Book Riot ran a story that criticized me and Jodi Picoult for the crime of being insufficiently pissed about the coverage novelist Jeffrey Eugenides received (yes, this is the life I lead). A few of the Riot's employees were kind enough to tweet the link at me, just to be sure that I saw.
I read the story. Then I went to the masthead to figure out who was in charge of this new magazine, and was surprised to learn that Patrick, who I've met once and who has always been friendly to me on Twitter, was the Riot's new executive editor.
I went to Patrick's Twitter page, to see whether her new job was mentioned. It wasn't, but her Twitter page led me to the Fridayreads home page (which also failed to mention Patrick's new affiliation). The home page led me to a link to the FAQ page, and, deep on the FAQ page was the news that the Fridayreads services were for sale (the page also revealed that two of Fridayreads' three employees also have positions at Book Riot).
How many casual readers and tweeters would follow such a serpentine path, figure out how Fridayreads worked, and make an informed decision about whether they wanted to participate and be counted not just as a reader but as a potential consumer of the books Patrick was selling? My guess: not many.
In addition to posting their disclosure on a website, while most of #fridayreads happens on Twitter and Facebook, the people running the hashtag failed to clearly label promoted tweets as promoted. This is a problem, too. As others have noted, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection has rules spelling out how bloggers and Twitter users must disclose when they're paid to endorse or mention a product.
The rules make it clear that "a single disclosure doesn't really do it because people visiting your site might read individual reviews or watch individual videos without seeing the disclosure on your home page," and that promoted tweets have to labeled as such, with an #ad or #sponsored or #promoted hashtag.
I won't speculate about whether the disclosure-on-a-website and subsequent failure to label promotional tweets correctly was deliberately deceptive or merely clueless.
But I do want to talk about why disclosure and transparency matter.
On Monday, Patrick issued an explanation/apology on her website. In the com
Remember that old Andre Agassi campaign where he finger-combed his mullet and told us that "image is everything?"
Take that and triple it when it comes to ethics in book reviewing.
Readers deserve a critic's honest take on a book, an opinion that hasn't been influenced by the critic's relationship with the author or her publisher. Because the community of critics and writers is small and incestuous, with plenty of connections and lots of overlap, editors are meticulous about making sure that the reviews they run are beyond reproach.
A reviewer cannot share a blood relation or a bed with the author of the book she'll be considering. She can't have written a blurb or be thanked in the acknowledgments of the book under consideration, or have blurbed or thanked its author.
Critics can't review the work of a friend, or an enemy.
Generally, reviewers are required to disclose any relationship – any at all – that they have with the author. Did you ever work at the same university? Judge a contest together? Win the same fellowship, sit on the same panel, attend a writers' conference at the same time? The editors want to know, because they want to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, of log-rolling or score-settling or a review that is, or even seems to be, ethically tainted. They want their reviews to be fair, and to look that way.
Among the list of thou-shalt-nots is a rule that's so basic that editors could be forgiven for not even mentioning it: thou shalt not take money from the publisher to promote the book you're reviewing.
That's why it was surprising to find the Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishing Bethanne Patrick's review of Joyce Carol Oates' book THE CORN MAIDEN…the same book that Patrick, wearing her #fridayreads hat, had done a paid giveaway of the month before. (Full disclosure: Joyce Carol Oates was one of my creative writing professors in college, some twenty years ago).
Patrick was assigned the review in August. She turned in her review in October. At some point between October and November, she negotiated the promotion with Oates' publisher.
Star-Tribune Senior Editor Laurie Hertzel said in an email interview that at no point did Patrick disclose that she was doing a paid promotion for the book she'd reviewed. Hertzel said she "did not know about the financial relationship (between Patrick and Oates' publisher) before the review was published."
In fact, Hertzel said didn't even know that there was a paid component to Fridayreads.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following the Fridayreads saga, and who know that Patrick, who has been doing paid promotions ranging from $750 to $2,000 since March of this year, chose to disclose that fact that Fridayreads is "a hashtag and a business both" halfway down a FAQ page on a website, as opposed to on Twitter and Facebook, as FTC regulations require, and did not label promoted tweets as such.
When all of this was pointed out, by me and other writers, Patrick essentially threw up her hands and pleaded ignorance. Things moved fast, steps were skipped, the Internet's a big, confusing place. Maybe she didn't do everything right, but she didn't mean to mislead anyone and she's sorry if she did.
Which is the same line she's repeating now that the book review-promo conflict has come to light. "I'm in new territory here," she
Why isn't this woman smiling?
Back in the summer of 2010, some female writers (including me) used the occasion of the orgy of coverage around Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM to make a point that seemed obvious to anyone paying attention: the New York Times does not do a very good job at covering women writers.
After a tsunami of indignation swelled across the Internet – a tsunami that, unfortunately, was directed not at the Times, but at the female writers who dared to complain about its policies -- Slate.com confirmed the problem: of the 545 books reviewed between July 2008 and August, 2010, 62 percent were by men, 38 percent were by women…and of the 101 books that were reviewed twice in that time period, 71 percent were by men.
Did the Times do any better a year after FREEDOM?
To quote Reverend Lovejoy of Simpsons fame, short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but. No male writer received the kind of saturation-level combination of reviews, profiles, think-pieces and mentions that surrounded Franzen's new book...but if you're hoping for equality, the paper's got a long way to go.
I counted the number of novels and short-story collections that were written up in the Times, mostly because fiction is what I write, and what I read. Numbers first, analysis at the end.
In 2011, the Times reviewed 254 works of fiction. 104, or 40.9 percent, were by women, and 150, or 59.1 percent, were by men.
Of the works of fiction that got two full reviews, 21 were by women, 22 were by men.
Of the works that received one full review plus a mention in a round-up, 5 were by women, 11 were by men. (This can be largely explained by Marilyn Stasio's weekly round-up of crime novels).
Finally, of the works of fiction whose authors were reviewed twice (either with two full reviews, or review plus roundup) and profiled, one was a woman and ten were men.
The men who received two reviews plus a profile were David Foster Wallace, Albert Brooks, Julian Barnes, Kevin Wilson, Nicholson Baker, Tom Perrotta, Russell Banks, Jeffrey Eugenides, Haruki Murakami and Allan Hollinghurst.
The only woman who received two reviews plus a profile was Tea Obreht (who also received a mention in the TBR column).
J. Courtney Sullivan (a former Times employee), received a full review and a round-up mention, and was featured in the "Sunday Routine" column, where she discussed her preferred brunch, her work habits, and her favorite dog park.
Sullivan also appeared in the "Inside the List" column, wrote a book review, and published a piece on her hobby -- dollhouses.
Ann Patchett was reviewed twice, and was
Every once in a while, you read a book with such well-written, memorable characters that you know you're going to remember them forever.
Macon Leary in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, Dolores Price in SHE'S COME UNDONE, Olympia Binewski from GEEK LOVE…all of them have their own specific voices, and their own unforgettable journeys.
To that list, add Arthur Opp, the unlikely protagonist of Liz Moore's first novel HEFT, about a lonely man and a teenage boy making their way out of the wreckage of their lives..and toward one another.
HEFT is a wonderful oddball of a book. I loved it, and I think you will, too…and if you buy the book before or on Monday, February 20, I will send you a signed copy of one of my books for free.
Here's the deal: treat yourself to a copy of HEFT, which is available at your favorite independent bookstore, online retailer, and wherever books are sold. Yes, e-books count. Yes, foreign readers are welcome (it'll just take a little longer for your books to arrive).
On Monday, tweet a picture of you and the book, or your receipt, or the title page on your e-reader, under the hashtag #HEFT. Not on Twitter? Post the picture to your Facebook page, or post it on mine.
Then, send an email to jen AT jenniferweiner.com with your name, which book you want, to whom you'd like it inscribed, if at all, and where you'd like us to send it. I'll send books until we run out, which won't be for a while! You can ask for a book for yourself, or for a friend, or you can donate it to your local library, school, prison, hospital, shelter, wherever.
And come back tomorrow, where I'll have an interview with Liz Moore.
View Next 25 Posts


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The University maintains multiple Nortel telephone systems servicing over 5000 lines in various buildings throughout University City main campus, Stiles Hall, 11th Street Family Health and Sacramento's Center for Graduate Studies. The university has also implemented Voice Over IP as a way to expand services to new buildings, such as the Law School, Sacramento, Monell, 3600 Market Street to name just a few.
If you are experiencing trouble with your existing voice service email us at email@example.com. Be sure to include in your email detail of the type of problem you are experiencing including the phone number and station with the problem. Examples of phone trouble: no dial-tone, static on the line, calls not going to voicemail, etc.
To request new telephone service or move existing telephone service please use the form below:

subset: commoncrawl


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Kährs Master Range includes three floor collections, for home and commercial application.
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text: Hey guys. Yep, this is the dvd player that the companies don't want you to own or know about. I am gettin rid of this because I have a PS2 now and do not need another DVD player. This one I have has the loophole menu and everything, allowing you to take off macrovision and the such. It has only been used a few times. I got it last year for my birthday, opened it when I came to school this semester, and got s PS2 Ocboter 26th. So I am getting rid of this because I do not need 2 DVD Players. I am asking people to make me offers for this, but the LOWEST I will sell it for is $250 + shipping. Email me at [email protected] if you are interested in purchasing it. Will accept money orders or paypal. Thanks guys.


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Francis Tuttle FactSheet 1 |
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Fact "We prepare our customers for success in the workplace." 405.717.7799 • francistuttle.edu Sheet HEFNER PARKWAY MORGAN RD. MAY AVE. PENN AVE. WESTERN AVE. COUNTY RD. COUNCIL RD. ROCKWELL AVE. MACARTHUR BLVD. MERIDIAN AVE. PORTLAND AVE. NW 178th NW 164th NW 150th MEMORIAL RD. KILPATRICK TURNPIKE NW EXPRESSWAY NW 122nd W. HEFNER RD. W. BRITTON RD. WILSHIRE BLVD. NW 63rd NW 50th NW 39th NW 36th NW 23rd NW 10th RENO AVE. LINCOLN BLVD. MARTIN LUTHER KING AVE. Francis Tuttle Campuses Francis Tuttle serves high school students from six partner school districts including Crescent, Deer Creek, Edmond, Millwood, Putnam City, and Western Heights. Additionally, hundreds of adult students attend classes in the daytime and evening on a part-time or full-time basis. The district is named after Dr. Francis Tuttle, who is recognized as the architect of the area school technology center model in Oklahoma. He also served as the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education from 1967 to 1986. Enrollments, 2011-2012 Career Training programs....................................................................................2,616 Business & Industry training............................................................................16,121 Adult & Career Development classes..............................................................9,256 Total Enrollment..................................................................................................27,993 Student Organizations Business Professionals of America (BPA) DECA Family, Career & Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) International Society of Automation (ISA) National Technical Honor Society (NTHS) SkillsUSA BIS served 182 companies during 2011-2012 Francis Tuttle Board of Education Suzette Northcutt Rhodes, President; David Gillogly, Vice President; Buddy Sanford, Clerk; Kurt Loeffelholz, Member; Bob Turner, Member; and Tom Friedemann, Superintendent/CEO. Business & industry services (BIS) Training is customized to the unique needs of business or industry in areas which include: Partnerships Revised 11/7/12 Francis Tuttle has three campuses: Cooperative Enrollment Agreements Oklahoma City Community College Oklahoma State University - Oklahoma City Oklahoma State University - Institute of Technology Reno Campus 7301 W. Reno Avenue 405.717.7799 25 acres Rockwell Campus 12777 N. Rockwell Avenue 405.717.7799 81.5 acres Portland Campus 3500 N.W. 150th Street 405.717.7799 22.5 acres • CADD • Computer Software Training • Customer Service Facilitation Skills • e-Business Assistance • Government Contracting Assistance • Internet-Based Training • Leadership Development/Management Development • Lean Manufacturing/Lean Enterprises Training • Personnel Selection/Job Profiling • Quality Initiatives/ISO • Safety Training and Planning • Small Business Development • Strategic Planning • Stress Management • Team Development/Team Leadership • Technical Training FRANCIS TUTTLE TECHN OLOGY CENTER HAS RECEIVED 14 GOLD STAR SCHOL AWARDS FROM THE OKLAHOMA ASOCIATION OF TECHN OLOGY CENTERS, DEMONSTRATING EXCELENCE IN EXEMPL ARY PROG RAMS DESIGNED TO MET COMMUNITY NEDS. Francis tuttle has 13 national board certified teachers • Authorized Prometric Testing Center • Careers Unlimited/Non-Traditional Training for Women • Center for Municipal Excellence • Central Oklahoma Workforce Investment Board • Construction Industry Development Council • Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerc • Oklahoma Department of Commerce • Oklahoma Energy Resources Board • Oklahoma Quality Award Foundation • Oklahoma City Community College • Oklahoma State University–College of Engineering • Deer Creek Chamber of Commerce • Edmond Chamber of Commerce • Edmond Economic Development Authority • Edmond Downtown Community Center • Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce • Hispanic Chamber of Commerce • Leadership Oklahoma • Oklahoma State University–Oklahoma City • Oklahoma State University–Okmulgee • Project HOPE • Project SEARCH • Security Certified Program (SCP) • South Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce • State Chamber of Commerce • Leadership Oklahoma City • Microsoft Ofice Specialist Test Site • Northwest Chamber of Commerce • Oklahoma Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence • Oklahoma Blood Institute • Oklahoma Christian University – College of Engineering • The Oklahoma Academy • The Oklahoma City Community Foundation • The University of Central Oklahoma • The University of Oklahoma–College of Engineering • TOP Program
Object Description
Okla State Agency |
Career and Technology Education, Oklahoma Department of |
Okla Agency Code |
'800' |
Title | Fact sheet |
Authors | Francis Tuttle Technology Center. |
Publisher | Francis Tuttle Technology Center |
Publication Date | 2012-11-09 |
Publication type |
Fact Sheet |
Subject | Francis Tuttle Technology Center. |
Purpose | A brief overview that details key information about Francis Tuttle Technology Center programs, services and structure. |
OkDocs Class# | E2260.1 T967f 2012 |
Digital Format | PDF, Adobe Reader required |
ODL electronic copy | Downloaded from agency website: http://www.francistuttle.edu/Media/Website%20Resources/PDFs/FactSheet.pdf |
Rights and Permissions | This Oklahoma state government publication is provided for educational purposes under U.S. copyright law. Other usage requires permission of copyright holders. |
Language | English |
Date created | 2013-04-01 |
Date modified | 2013-04-01 |


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Tuesday, October 9, 2012
POLICE are hunting for a car which was seen making away from Chatteris town centre moments after an attempted burglary this morning.
Thieves smashed their way through the front door of Chatteris Post Office, in High Street, at about 3.45am. Police were alerted by the alarm sounding.
A considerable amount of damage was caused, but nothing was stolen.
The post office was cordoned off this morning while investigations were carried out.
Det Insp Dave Murphy said: "A car was seen making away and we are carrying out local enquiries such as viewing CCTV, but I would urge anyone who has any information about the burglary to contact police."
A Post Office spokesman said: "Post Office Ltd can confirm that an incident took place at High Street in Chatteris on Tuesday October 9. Thankfully no-one was injured in the incident.
"Post Office Ltd will also be supporting police in their efforts to apprehend those responsible. We would urge anyone with information to come forward and contact police as soon as possible."
The spokesman said it's a little premature to say when the shop will reopen but will do so as soon as possible.
The attempted burglary comes 48 hours after a similar incident at Chatteris Working Men's Club, in Station Street. Offenders smashed their way through a door between 1.15am and 2.10am on Sunday but nothing was stolen. The alarm also sounded.
House-to-house inquiries have already been carried out in connection with the incident. Police are also appealing for witnesses to come forward.
A police spokesman said the two incidents are not being linked to any others seen across the Fens in recent weeks.
The force also said there was a break-in at the Sportsman pub in Fairview, Chatteris at 2am on Sunday (October 7) but that nothing was taken.
CONTACT: Det Insp Murphy on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.


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The surrounding area is known as 'rambling territory' due to the large number of walks available. There are several signposted walks that start from the village.
The town itself is home to a village shop, a traditional pub which serves great food and a coffee shop.
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by Jermy Leeuwis | genre: HipHop | posted on December 24, 2010
I have read positive feedback about this song and we have to agree. This joint have received some well deserved attention but didnot make it to the top. A pity... Click on the 'play'-button and enjoy! I give it . |
Listen and/or watch the music video using the RED 'play', 'watch'-button or play/watch-links.
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How do you keep clusters running....
Many of your questions may have already been answered in earlier discussions or in the FAQ. The search results page will indicate current discussions as well as past list serves, articles, and papers.
Jeff Layton laytonjb at bellsouth.netThu Apr 11 13:33:58 PDT 2002
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lightdee at netscape.net wrote: > Doug J Nordwall wrote: > > >On Wed, 2002-04-03 at 13:04, Cris Rhea wrote: > > > > What are folks doing about keeping hardware running on large clusters? > > > > Right now, I'm running 10 Racksaver RS-1200's (for a total of 20 >nodes)... > > > > Sure seems like every week or two, I notice dead fans (each RS-1200 > > has 6 case fans in addition to the 2 CPU fans and 2 power supply > fans). > > > > > >You running lm_sensors on your nodes? That's a handy tool for paying > >attention to things like that. We use ours in combination with ganglia > >and pump it to a web page and to big brother to see when a cpu might be > >getting hot, or a fan might be too slow. We actually saved a dozen > >machines that way...we have 32 4 processor racksaver boxes in a rack, > >and they rack was not designed to handle racksaver's fan system. That is > >to say, there was a solid sidewall on the rack, and it kept in heat. I > >set up lm_sensors on all the nodes (homogenous, so configured on one and > >pushed it out to all), then pumped the data into ganglia > >(ganglia.sourceforge.net) and then to a web page. I noticed that the > >temp on a dozen of the machines was extremely high. So, I took off the > >side panel of the rack. The temp dropped by 15 C on all the nodes, and > >everything was within normal parameters again. > > > > > > My last fan failure was a CPU fan that toasted the CPU and motherboard. > > > > > >Ya, we would have seen this on ours earlier...excellent tool > > [snip] > > We use Clusterworx, which isn't open source (from Linux Networx), but it goes a step further than Ganglia. It uses lm_sensors and a power control > box (again from linux networx) to actually shutdown a node if it is getting > too hot, and the event parameters are all tweakable. It's always a good > idea to have some kind of cluster monitoring software installed, but it's > nice to be able to setup event triggers in your software in case something goes wrong and you're not around. You can set a shutdown temperature via the BIOS on most decent motherboards. You can also easily script this up if you have some power control unit connected to a node that you can talk to (e.g. APC's stuff). All of the stuff you need it available as Opensource. You can hook all of this together with Ganglia if you want. In fact, Matt has announced (or hinted) at the next version of Ganglia that will start to have a number of new features built in (but not nodal shutdown if I remember correctly). Jeff Layton > > > ---- > David Henry > Synergy Software, Inc. > lightdee at netscape.net > > __________________________________________________________________ > Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop at Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/ > > Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
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| Pirates Help With Shop With a Cop December 12, 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Gaby Sanchez helps Triadelphia Middle School sixth-grader Leona Camp check out at the Target store at The Highlands this morning during the Wheeling Police... more »» Manchin Backs Bipartisan Budget Deal December 12, 2013 WHEELING — Sen. Joe Manchin said he will support the bipartisan budget deal reached Tuesday evening by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash. more »» Ormet Workers Take Signatures to Kasich December 12, 2013 CLARINGTON — An eager contingent of Ormet Corp. retirees, displaced workers and family members headed to Columbus on Wednesday to present 9,000 petition signatures to Ohio Gov. more »» Report: Plan To Cost $14M December 12, 2013 CHARLESTON — Expanding a Medicaid program that allows a person to remain at home instead of receiving care at a nursing home would cost the state more than $14 million a year if it were to cover... more »» Critics: Voter Data-Sharing Bill Misses Opportunity for Change December 12, 2013 COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state's top election official sees a bill aimed at keeping Ohio's voter registration database up-to-date as a missed opportunity to also let residents register to vote online,... more »» Thomas Dalrymple December 12, 2013 DALRYMPLE, Thomas E., 67, of Smithfield, Ohio, passed away December 7, 2013 in Noblesville, IN. He was born March 3, 1946 in Wheeling WV, son of Eric and Ethel (Core) Dalrymple. more »» Raymond Gwennap December 12, 2013 GWENNAP, Raymond Lee, 80, of Colerain died Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at his home. He was born November 3, 1933 in Wheeling, a son of the late John C. and Hilda M. (Yates) Gwennap. more »» Todd Hayes December 12, 2013 HAYES, Todd J., 46, of Glen Dale died Sunday. Visitation Thursday from 2-4 and 6-9 p.m. at Grisell Funeral Home & Crematory, Moundsville. Funeral services Friday at 1 p.m. more »» Penny Miller December 12, 2013 MILLER, Penny Jean, 52, of 8th St., Moundsville passed away Wednesday, December 11, 2013 at Reynolds Memorial Hospital. more »» Robert Miller December 12, 2013 MILLER, Robert Mitchell, 24, of Wheeling, WV passed away on Monday, December 9, 2013. Visitation Friday 2 p.m. until services at 4 p.m. at the Mullenbach Funeral Home, Follansbee. more »» School District's Snow Plan Eyed December 12, 2013 Ohio County Schools Superintendent Dianna Vargo said her decision on whether or not to postpone or cancel school on wintry mornings is based on road conditions at 5 a.. more »» Residents Speak Out About Animal Shelter December 12, 2013 The animal kill rate for 2012 at the Belmont County Animal Shelter was 51 percent, as 340 of 664 dogs kept there during the year were put down, according to figures provided by the Concerned Citizen... more »» City Shows Off Plan for Future December 12, 2013 Although it will be several months before it's actually implemented, Wheeling's next comprehensive plan is beginning to take shape. more »» Water Numbers Examined Ahead Of Council Vote on Rate Increase December 12, 2013 City officials spent nearly two hours explaining why a water rate hike is necessary as Steubenville City Council prepares to make a decision on the increase. more »» $6.5M JMHS Bond Sale OK'd December 11, 2013 The Marshall County Board of Education unanimously approved the sale of $6.5 million in bonds at a . more »» Give Lawmakers Maps for Project December 12, 2013 The abuse legislators at both the state and federal levels sometimes take from the executive branch of government surprises us. more »» Prevent Teens From 'Sexting' December 12, 2013 More than 30 St. Clairsville High School students may be in big trouble because they were involved in "sexting" — using cellular telephones to disseminate sexually explicit picture. more »» Close Bank Accounts No Longer in Use December 12, 2013 In Washington, government spending is discussed in terms of billions and trillions of dollars. A million bucks isn't even enough to merit decimal-point mention in most agency budgets. more »» Benwood Officials Play Santa Claus December 12, 2013 During their last meeting for this year, Benwood City Council members and other municipal officials had to work around quite a bit of clutter in council chamber. more »» Improve College Graduation Rates December 11, 2013 Fewer than half of the students at state colleges and universities earn bachelor's degrees in six years or less, West Virginia legislators learned this wee. more »» When Music Is Beautiful, Disturbing December 8, 2013 "Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!" — From Bram Stoker's "Dracula. more »» Remember Ayn Rand When Dealing With Iran December 8, 2013 In "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (1946), atheist Ayn Rand's remarkable analysis includes three characteristics of compromise, to wit: 1. more »» New Moundsville Businesses Planned December 8, 2013 Two new businesses are schedule to open soon in Moundsville. more »» Property Taxes May Be Affected December 7, 2013 What would we in this area of West Virginia do if as much as one-fourth of the local funding for our schools, municipalities and counties was wiped out? It is not beyond the realm of possibility,... more »» What's In A (Special) Name? December 7, 2013 Just about everyone in my family has one or had one at some point in their lives. Not all of us appreciate nicknames, but sometime they just stick. more »» Park's Paige Selected State's Top Defender December 12, 2013 WHEELING — Geremy Paige's eyes lit up as though he had just seen an opposing runner breaking through the line of scrimmage. For perhaps the first time it was Paige that ended up being floored. more »» Ben's Big Season Still a Bummer December 12, 2013 PITTSBURGH — Ben Roethlisberger's numbers have never been better. The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is on pace to smash most of the team single-season passing records he already owns. more »» Rowney Returns to Nailers December 12, 2013 WHEELING — The Wheeling Nailers received forward Carter Rowney from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Wednesday. more »» Pirates, Morton Agree December 12, 2013 PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Pirates and right-handed pitcher Charlie Morton have agreed to a three-year, $21 million contract. The 30-year-old Morton went 7-4 with a 3. more »» Devils Top Riders In Season Opener December 11, 2013 By SETH STASKEY For The Intelligencer ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The last time St. more »» | What's HotMost CommentedTop JobsNews-Register SubscriptionsDelivered 7 Days Per Week1. Easy Pay - Home Delivery Subscriptions $13.50 2. Easy Pay - Mail Delivery Subscription starting at $30.00 3. Home Delivery Subscription starting at $15.82 Online Newspaper Ads"Out There"December 12, 2013 No, it wasn't an armadillo, Scott. Co-worker Scott McCloskey has been spreading the tale that I had an armadillo in my kitchen. It was an opossum. A baby. Just a bab. more » Latest Blogs
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Patient Information(937) 208-2048
Patient Financial Services(937) 208-2777(800) 544-0630 toll freeMonday-Friday 8:00 am - 4:30 pm
Medical Records Department(937) 208-2806 Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 9:00 pm
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Take an assessment to see if you are at high risk for breast cancer.
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Make a donation to our fund for cancer screenings and diagnostic testing.
Find a doctor by searching online or calling (877) MVH-HLTH.
Free patient blogs that connect friends and family.


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GERALDINE DANIELSON 1944 - 2012 Peacefully after a courageous battle with Lung Cancer; it is our deepest regret that we announce the death of Geraldine Danielson on Thursday, June 21, 2012, our 68 year old mother passed away in Winnipeg at the Grace Hospital. Geraldine will be forever loved and sadly missed by all of us; her 91 year old mother Della Holmes; brothers; Denise, Gary, and Allen; sisters, Beverly and Penny; daughters; Kimberly, Tammy, Shawna, Tara, and Jennifer; son, Cory; grandchildren; Melissa, Dillion, Leah, Raine and Monty (twins), Hailee, Leland and Kaia; and not to mention two great-grandchildren. She is in heaven now with her other son Sonny and father Clarence Holmes. For they will walk with us throughout our lives until we meet again. Geraldine was a beautiful person who only thought of her family. She enjoyed being with her kids and grandchildren at all times. She worked at Kub Bakery for many years before she retired in 2009. She then devoted herself to her family. Thank you again to all the family who helped her while she battled with lung cancer. God saw you tired, When a cure was not to be. So he wrapped his arms around you, And whispered, come with me. You didn't deserve what you went through, So he gave you to rest. God's garden is beautiful, He only takes the best And when I saw you sleeping, So peaceful and free from pain. I could not wish you back, To suffer that again.
As published in the Winnipeg Free Press on June 30, 2012
Share your memories and/or express your condolences below. Fields marked with a * are required. All others are optional.
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Duke's Creek Marina
Full service marina on Lake Anna. Can meet all of your boating and camping needs. Boat rentals and convenience store to help with those items you may have forgotten. Launch site, pontoon and fishing boat sales, storage and rentals. Camping sites available on the water with bath house facilities nearby.


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(page 1 of 2)
Once upon a time, families lived in close proximity to one another. When there was a special occasion to be celebrated, traveling wasn't an issue. It's a much different story today, however — families are spread all over the map and often can't attend every function. It is because of this that new traditions have evolved.
Dear Wedding Guru: "Several years ago, my very closest friend moved across the country. Nevertheless, I feel as close as ever to her. She asked me to be her maid of honor for her wedding, which will be held here in her home state. I'm delighted to participate, but distance has created the first of what may be several issues. I told her I'd like to throw a shower, but it's just too costly for her to fly home. I'd like to somehow work this out even though she can't make it. Any ideas?"
(Our answer on next page)
» More on bridal showers
» More from The Wedding Guru
» Submit a question to the Wedding Guru
» Hudson Valley Weddings 2012
Congratulations — you're involved in a wedding! Tying the knot shouldn't put knots in your stomach, so whether you're the blushing bride or hubby-to-be, an attendant or a guest, Wedding Guru Judy Lewis can answer all your need-to-know questions about your nuptials.
Judy Lewis is the founder and Web mistress of HudsonValleyWeddings.com, the one-stop resource for services and products, promotions and specials, a Regional Bridal Show schedule, Wed Shop, and links to money-saving and wedding-related Web sites. In her spare time, Judy loves to compose poetry and create collages. She currently resides in Kingston with her husband and business partner, Jon.


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Grade normalization, the process by which grades are distributed throughout the range of possible marks according to suggested percentages, is a standard grading practice at accredited law schools throughout the country. This statement describes the reasons for such a grading procedure and demonstrates the manner in which it is implemented at St. John's University School of Law.
Grade normalization, based principally upon faculty experience in evaluating student performance, is intended to ensure fair and just grading of students based upon their academic performance regardless of the particular course taken, the section to which assigned, the degree of difficulty of the examination, and the identity of the professor teaching the course. It prevents disparity in grading between sections and divisions, and from year to year. This is essential if students are to be fairly ranked and law school averages capable of being compared. Grades determine academic honors and are a substantial factor in determining such things as scholarship assistance, law journal memberships and participation in other co-curricular activities.
Furthermore, to be reliable a grading system must be consistent over a period of time. Grade normalization enables prospective employers to compare the academic achievement of one year's graduates with those of other years, and thus to develop confidence in relating St. John's grades to the employment process.
Guidelines on Grades for Students as of April 2008
Substantial, not literal, compliance with these Guidelines by each professor is expected. These Guidelines are applicable to all first-year courses, and to all upper-level courses of 30 or more students.
In addition, the faculty has adopted a mean grade range of 2.95 to 3.05 for all first-year courses and for all upper-level courses of 30 or more students. This mean grade range is mandatory for all first-year courses in the day division (and the same courses in the evening division, whenever taken), except for Legal Writing, Legal Research and Writing, and small sections of required first-year courses (fewer than 30 students) for which a mean grade range of 2.90 to 3.10 is mandatory. The mean grade range of 2.95 to 3.05 is recommended for all upper-level courses of 30 or more students.
The extraordinary grade of A+ is limited to not more than 1 student or 1% of the students in a course, whichever is greater.


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Single Developer License free online support, source code and same version updates Commercial license for a single developer. Allows unlimited runtime distribution on any number of applications and servers for a single developer. US $149.00 Organization Wide License free online support, source code and same version updatesCommercial license for an entire organization. Allows for unlimited number of developers within a single organization to use these tools. Allows for unlimited runtime distribution to any number of applications and servers. US $499.00
Version 1.25 - Jan. 3rd, 2013
Download the latest release of the Web Toolkit including source code. (.NET 4.0 or .NET 3.5)
Install individual Web Toolkit components directly into Visual Studio using Microsoft's NuGet component packaging.
Directly access our current Subversion Repository for the latest code in between releases. (VS 2012, 2010 or VS 2008)
Requirements .NET 4.0 Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer 2010 Sql Server Express/2005/2008 (for demos only)