Live, from London... The Golden Notebook

I stumbled upon THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK PROJECT while stumbling through last week's Chronicle of Higher Education. Today, the book went live, with seven women, fine writers and thinkers all, collaborating on a 'close reading' of Lessing's classic. Their aim? To get beyond the two-dimensionality of web discourse. This is a fascinating new take on the Book Club; if succesful, I envision further applications of the Kindle and its ilk (hey, we've got iphones, why not iKindle's with text-messaging for simultaneous readers?). And since google wants to make literature public domain, then perhaps if.book London and Apt, the sponsors of this literary experiment, will find a profitable niche. It's like google groups, but sooooo much better...

Anyway, fascinating to me on many levels (this IS one of my fave books, so I will be following over the next 5-6 weeks, perhaps even chiming in once my current obsession is finito).

THE WRITING... I'm in NaNoland. Doing very well, thank you - clocked in 17,250 words at the close of this morning, and starting a new section tonight. Gave literal and figurative birth to one of my adult characters, told from his mother's POV, which had me sobbing in my coffee yesterday. The flow comes and goes, but mostly goes...

THE READING... Could not finish SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS. I really wanted to get through this novel, I loved the premise, but... it was just too precious. You know? I'll pick it up again, maybe it's me... finally, I'm reading what every other woman read eons ago - EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Excellent story, great structure, great prose, even has me laughing out loud, but... is it me or must we all travel to a country that starts with "I" or "Provence" or swelter "under a Tuscan sun" to find ourselves? If so, I am in deep doo-doo, because I have young children and bills to pay on my mere Baltimore house (nope, I don't own a Manhattan flat AND a NY suburban home, got nothing to cash in) and, by golly, it just seems there's plenty of space here to find myself. I do my yoga and my chanting on my wee mat, get my spiritual fix at my UU church and in my garden. Guess I'm in a snippy mood - getting tired of self-indulgent memoirs, though I guess that is what a memoir is... I'll finish for the writing alone, and the hopes my cynicism, like my inner editor, will take a hike.


LISTENING TO... SPIRALLING by Keane (Perfect Symmetry). You sift through my fingers... did you want to start a war? start a family? be in love? and FLOAT by Flogging Molly. Electro-celtic.

Peace, Linda