You are not as smart as you think you are...

Shiny brain photo by Artem Chernyshevych

One of the hardest lessons you ever have to learn in life--harder even than finally admitting that "life isn't fair," and there's nothing you can do about it--is realizing  that no matter how smart you are, you are not as smart as you think you are.
Yes, you think, I'm smart.  I'm no Stephen Hawking but then, who is?
It is so tempting to look at someone you dislike and smugly think, He/she is so stupid.  And you might be right. But you might be wrong, too.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
My landlady asked me to help her with an essay for an English class she's taking as a prerequisite for nursing classes she's going to start in the fall. (She's acing the math class that is also a requirement.)
She asked for my help because she was confused by the teacher's instructions for the paper. She asked for my help because the instructor called her stupid and she's not, and she wanted to prove it.
English is not her first language.
It is her fourth.

Feminist (Non) Fiction Friday: The biography edition

One of the things I noticed while compiling my list of good and great biographies was that the names tht kept appearing on the list--David McCulloch (Truman, John Adams), Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs, Einstein), Ben Macintyre (The Napoleon of Crime), Robert Massie (Peter the Great), Joseph Lash (Eleanor and Franklin) and A. Scott Berg (Lindbergh) were all men. There were men who specialized in stories about businessmen like Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar's Poker) and men specialized in scientific figures, like Mike Venezia (biographies of Albert Einstein, Jane Goodall and Thomas Edison, among others). George Vecsey seems to be a go-to guy for sports bios (Martina, Stan Musial, but also a bio of Loretta Lynn). There are a lot of men specializing in chronicling the lives of interesting people. Women? Not so much.  And I was looking...

Claire Tomalin

My list--which has almost two thousand books on it--only repeats two women writers; both of them specialists. They are Claire Tomalin and Alison Weir. Turns out they're pretty interesting people in their own right.
Tomalin has been dubbed the "queen of literary biography" whose works include biographies of Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Katherine Mansfield and last year, a biography of Charles Dickens that's considered definitive. (Here's a link to an interview Tomalin did on the eve of publishing Charles Dickens: A Life.)

Alison Weir

Alison Weir, who is two decades younger than Tomalin, has focused on English royalty, and is the best-selling female historical author in Great Britain (according to Wikipedia). One of the trials she's forced to bear is that she has the same name as a sensationalist journalist and apparently gets mistaken for her enough that she has this notice on her website: 
**THIS AUTHOR IS NOT THE AMERICAN ALISON WEIR, founder of the organisation If Americans Knew.**
Weir regularly hosts tours themed to the subjects of her books, as well as day trips to Hampton Court Palace and The Tower of London.  How much fun would it be to go on one of those tours?

So Many Books, so Little Time: More for the TBR Pile

I've been compiling a list of good and great biographies for a new site that's about to go up, and have been bookmarking books as if I just learned how to read.  I expected that.  What I didn't expect is how many books I'd stumble over in the course of posting my daily story story blog entry over at 365 Short Stories.  Today's entry was by Jack Scalzi and in reading his blog, Whatever, I was introduced to Jo Walton's alternate earth history/mystery Farthing.  I LOVE alternate history and mysteries, so this book (about an alternate 1949 in which the Brits made peace with Hitler) is right up my alley.  And there are apparently more.  (Of course there are.) Here's a list of her books with a picture of her rocking a fedora like Kelli Stanley's Welsh cousin.
By the way, the story of the day is Scalzi's HILARIOUS, Hugo-nominated fantasy parody "The Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue." Here's a link to it.

Separated at birth--Aaron Sorkin and Peter Dinklage

Ever since I saw Station Agent, I've had the nagging suspicion that Peter Dinklage  looks like somebody I' know and today when I saw this picture of Aaron Sorkin on the Deadline Hollywood site, it finally came to me.  Peter Dinklage and Aaron Sorkin look alike. I have worked for John Wells' Productions, the company that made West Wing, and have seen Sorkin a couple of times.  He's got real charisma.
He's also a fantastic writer as everyone who saw Social Network knows.  (He also wrote Moneyball, a movie that was full of fine acting and great moments.)

Like everyone else, I could watch Dinklage play Tyrion Lannister the rest of his life. (Only one more episode of Game of Thrones this year?  Noooooooo.) But the project I really hope is still alive is the one based on George Chesbro's books about Robert "Mongo the Magnificent" Frederickson. The book optioned was the third in the series, Affair of the Sorcerers, and Dinklage was attached to play Frederickson.
It's a great role. Frederickson is a criminologist who moonlights as a private investigator, often helped by his brother Garth, who's a cop. "Mongo" was his stage name when Frederickson worked as an acrobat in the circus and his best friends still call him that.
The books started out very real-world, but as the series went on, they got more and more out there.  The last of the books, called Lord of Ice and Loneliness (all the books have really poetic titles) is only available in a French translation; it has never been published in the U.S.

Sandra Seamans on Sale!

Sandra Seamans' debut collection Cold Rifts is now available from Snubnose Press. And when I say it's "on sale," I mean right now it's FREE.  I snagged my copy around 12:01 a.m. and I can't wait to start reading it. Get your own copy here.

There Can Never Be Too Many Book Blogs

New Yorker Magazine enters the fray. Their blog is called Page Turner. Check it out here.

Feminist Fiction Friday: The Dystopian YA Edition

I am not a huge fan of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. I prefer her wonderful Underland Chronicles, the first of which, Gregor the Overlander, is particularly good. But one thing Hunger Games did, and did really well, is open up the market for books about young heroines who aren't torn between two lovers. Katniss Everdeen is a kick-ass character, and thanks to Collins, she's not the only one out there.

Illustration by Jason Chan

Hugh Howey's Wool (originally self-published as five separate books) features reluctant heroine Juliette who discovers the terrible secret kept by those in charge and ends up the unlikely leader of a growing rebellion. The world of Wool, an arcology that determines status by the floor, with the higher regions reserved for the politicians and those who run things, is worked out neatly. There are a lot of great characters and romance and treachery and political shenanigans. Juliette is thrown into a difficult situation and it only gets worse. it's a very satisfying read and there are clearly a lot more stories to come.
Then there's 16-year-old Yukiko, the heroine of Jay Kristoff's dystopian Japanese steampunk novel Stormdancer due out in September (in the US). It's the first book in a planned series called The Lotus War. check out this site for more information on the book and the world.
If you love that Stormdancer cover (I do), check out the interview with the writer and the artist on Tor.com showing the evolution of the image.
Lauren Oliver, whose lovely Liesl & Po is one of my favorite books, has a series featuring 17-year-old Lena, who has defied the law against love in her Portland, ME community. The first book is called Delirium; the second, Pandemonium, was published in February.
Sixteen-year-old Tris Prior is the heroine of Veronica Roth's Divergent. (The cover art shamelessly evokes the "Mockingjay" logo of Hunger Games, just in case readers don't immediately identify the book's genre.)  Book 2 of the series Insurgent, was published this month.
Graceling actually came out the year before Hunger Games (2009) but its intrepid teenage heroine Katsa is a bold woman whose particular skill is killing. Written by Kristen Cashore, who has written a "companion volume" called Fire.
YA has changed a lot since I was a YA. I love that young women have their own action heroines now. Romance is fine, but give us sword fights too!