I’m writing my poetry lecture for my Gotham online class and came across this page on Pulitzer prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks

. I admire Brooks so much.

Does anyone else have pet peeves and hate to discuss them? Right now I’ve got two, and I’ve just got to discuss them because They Are Everywhere.

The first is cell phones in cars. Now, okay, driving down the freeway or on a street not absolutely clogged with cars and people, and you’re bored, and you gotta talk to someone, so you make a call. I try to avoid it, personally. If I’m alone, I’d rather listen to a book on tape or CD (right now I’m listening to The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri) than hang on the phone in the car. If my son is in the car, or my husband, hanging on the phone is just plain rude and I wouldn’t do it.

But on the skinny streets of my town, when I see women and men in Mercedes and trucks or SUVs, especially, hogging up the street, turning corners, or backing up–yes! backing up or making u-eees–I want to scream. Sometimes I do, in fact, scream.

The other thing that’s been driving me a little nuts is e-mailed Christmas cards. Now, sometimes, it’s someone’s birthday and you’ve forgotten to send them a card or you don’t have their address and you e-mail a card. I’ve done it. Sure, why not? But when I receive an e-mailed Christmas card, I’m sorry but I tend to hit delete. (The exception this season was the one I received from Kim Dower, the sweetest book publicist ever. Her artist-husband created a cute cartoon and I printed it out.) And when I’m one on a list of about a million who’ve also been mailed said e-mailed card, I’m offended. It’s almost worst than no card at all.

Technology can be a wonderful thing, but it can also bring out the obnoxiousness that we’ve all got buried within us, don’t you think?

Thanks for letting me rant.

Here’s the online link to my article

in the January 2006 issue of Writer’s Digest on getting Pen on Fire published.

…this just in from Publisher’s Lunch:

Fifty-nine-year-old Paul Torday’s debut Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, the story of a middle-aged scientist and his involvement with what initially looks like an impossible project: to introduce salmon into the Yemen, to Helen Garnons-Williams at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, at auction, for publication in February 2007, in a two-book deal, by Mark Stanton at Jenny Brown Associates (world).
katie.white@orionbooks.co.uk

It is interesting why Torday’s age was printed. Maybe meant as an encouraging word?

Visit www.publisherslunch.com

There are a few authors whose books I pretty much love, without question. Everything they write, I love. I’m promiscuous that way. Chris Bohjalian (not a surprise to anyone who has read my book. T. Jefferson Parker. Now I’ve a new one: Anita Shreve.

I just finished Fortune’s Rocks, an astounding book with much complexity (sounds like something she’d say, or something the judges would say on Iron Chef).

Prior to that, I read Seaglass, which I also loved, and prior to that, The Pilot’s Wife. Yes, I loved that too.

When I started Seaglass, I learned that Shreve intended it to be one of three books in a trilogy, but not your usual trilogy. What all three books have in common is the house the main character lives in, a wonderful, rambling beach cottage in New Hampshire. They were written out of order, too.

And now I’m reading A Wedding in December. I just love Shreve’s writing.

Are there authors whose work you pretty much love, no matter what they write?

I don’t eat Jello–haven’t for 20-some years–but I love this use of Jello

.