10X10 Art Show in Brunswick, Maine

Reid State Park, watercolor by Sarah Laurence

Autumn’s crisp light makes this season my favorite time to paint. For this watercolor, I drove 40 minutes to Reid State Park in Georgetown, Maine. I had the picnic area to myself as the tide was turning. After sketching the main elements, I stepped back to examine my compositing before adding paint. The landscape on paper appeared too still for a windy day. A dynamic element was needed. By luck, just then a sailboat passed by. I sketched it in seconds. By the time I’d blocked out the colors, the sailboat was a memory on the horizon.

My watercolor will be part of the 10X10 Art Show in Brunswick, Maine. The proceeds from the sale will bring artists into our elementary schools to work with children. Local businesses have donated food and drinks. Come join us Friday night!

10X10 Benefit Art Exhibit and Sale

Curtis Memorial Library and

St. Paul’s Church Community Hall (my venue)

Preview: Sept 29 5-8pm / Sept 30 12-3pm

Reception and Sale: Sept 30 5-8pm

All 10 inch by 10 inch works are framed and $200

Online Preview

L'Shana Tova! Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown.

Sunset at Lookout Point

The islands at Lookout Point remind me of floating bonsais.

Autumn’s crisp, cool air makes the colors more intense.

Painting dockside, I watch lobstermen unloading their catch.

Seabirds queue for sunset as I drive the nine miles home.

We got a new puppy!

Introducing Scout, born July 16, 2011

I figured out why puppies have to be so cute.

They sleep like howling newborns, 

but have the appetite of a teenager (or maybe a goat.) 

Then they run around your house like a toddler without a diaper.

A good puppy is a tired puppy.

Still, who can resist this fluff-ball?

Scout is a Golden Retriever from Colonial Goldens of Maine.

She joined our family last weekend at age 8 weeks.
The first two nights were rough (she was missing her dog family),
but she made it through last night without a peep.

My daughter named her after Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. 

 So far the only indication of good literary taste is chewed up paper. 

 Books and everything else are now carefully shelved.

Our Scout might prefer vampire novels.

Photos of Scout and me are by my daughter. 

 The solo shots are mine.

(Our last dog, Stella, died of cancer a year ago.)

Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell

Tigerlily’s Orchids is a psychological mystery that avoids genre clichés. In Ruth Rendell’s 2010 novel there is no “detective” protagonist; there isn’t even one central character to call a protagonist. Instead, this innovative story of murder and crime unfolds from multiple perspectives. The inhabitants of a block of flats in North London all have secret vices. It’s up to the reader to shift through the clues and red herrings.

Rendell’s characters are well developed but some were more believable than others. I had the most difficulty with Stuart, a 23-year-old loafer, who spent his free hours having coffee with a retired neighbor and taking long walks in the park. The only parts of his character that rang true to age were his womanizing, narcissism and cell phone use. The financially strapped college girls were far more believable as were the older characters of both genders. I especially liked the aging hippies, Marius and Rose, as well as Duncan, the kind-hearted retired man.

My other issue was racial stereotyping, starting with the title. “Tigerlily” (really?) is the made-up name Duncan gives to a mysterious Asian woman. The men have fantasies about her exotic “almond eyes” and submissive nature, and others dismiss her for her flat chest and “slant eyes.” Only the omniscient narrator refers to her by her Chinese name, Xue, but we never get to know her. Xue speaks little English and lives in an overheated house with three other immigrants. The rumor has it that they are growing orchids for the Queen, but their true business was obvious to me.

Rendell’s writing is understated and quietly finessed. The story unfolds at a good pace with smooth transitions despite the shifting points-of-view. The author resists the urge to editorialize or to judge her characters but instead allows the narration to stay true to the point-of-view. Hence the pedophile justifies his vice while other characters condemn it, and the alcoholic is only happy when she’s drinking. Action takes a backseat to motivation with great success.

Wikipedia credits Baroness Rendell and her friend P.D. James for upgrading the crime fiction genre from “whodunit” to “whydunit.” Rendell also writes under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine. This is the first of her books that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. Thank you, Ann, for the recommendation. I bought the ebook without compensation, but that gorgeous cover makes me wish I had it in hardback. A similar book to this one would be Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig, also set in North London with linked plot lines, multiple perspective, crime and immigrants.

I’m currently working on a multiple point-of-view mystery without a “detective” protagonist. Can you recommend any others?

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@Barrie Summy

Traveling to Europe with Kindles

Elba Island, Italy at sunset

Before leaving for our one-month vacation to England and Italy, we gave our kids early birthday presents of Kindles. Since the Amazon account was in my name, all my ebooks were automatically archived on their Kindles. When I buy a new ebook, we can have it delivered to all three devices (or select just one) for no extra charge. This had the added advantage of being able to read one book simultaneously. The kids and I had many wonderful conversations over shared books, something I’d missed since they became independent readers.

Hill town of Elba Island

 Elba Island, Italy

The Kindles were great for travel! Our bags were much lighter, and we never ran out of reading material. Since the kids’ Kindles were wifi only, we had download books before leaving home. I also uploaded our itinerary and other important documents. Kindle did the conversion via email for free. Even abroad, I could download books anywhere with no surcharge via 3G on my Kindle and then transfer ebooks to the kids when we found wifi. Wifi connections in Europe were harder to come by, rarely free and often unreliable.

Beachside restaurant on Elba Island

Even my husband, who has an iPad2, covets a Kindle now. Mine was a gift from him. Kindles handle challenging light really well. Font size could be adjusted in dim light or if reading glasses were misplaced. You can even read outside without glare, just like a real book but unlike the iPad.

Figuring out how to charge our devices while abroad took some ingenuity. Kindle Help was not helpful but, I figured out that the Kindle’s charger would work in Europe with standard adapter plugs. We also got a car USB charger. The Kindle battery is meant to last a month with wifi/3G turned off, but on vacation we had to recharge about every 10 days. Reading more hours and using Amazon Kindle case reading lights ran the batteries down sooner.

Kindles should be ideal for travel guides. We could all simultaneously reference the Lonely Planet Guide to Italy without having to lug around the heavy 900-page guidebook. I used it to find affordable hotels and restaurants and to look up historical information on site. However, the maps were illegible and several links didn’t work. Then there were formatting issues: Kindles are designed for sequential reading, not for jumping around. Also, many guidebooks, like the Michelin ones, were not available on Kindle.

Only recently published books and classics (often for free!) are available. I had chosen the Kindle because it had the most titles of any ereader on the market, but it wasn’t enough. One of my favorite novels ever, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, would be perfect for the Kindle since it’s nearly 1,500 pages, but it was not available as an ebook. My 16-year-old son bought a used paperback copy at an English bookstore in Florence and lugged that brick off camping in the wilderness too. He’s my son!

There is an educational advantage to the Kindle’s limitations. Although my son figured out how to use his Kindle to get on Facebook, it was difficult to navigate without a real web browser.  This summer was spent offline.  Usually an X-box player, my son read more novels for fun on vacation than he had all year. His favorite ebook was The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, 600-page historical fiction. To his surprise, he also liked Looking for Alaska by John Green. My son usually avoids young adult fiction, but he opened this favorite book of mine thinking it was a travel book. He got caught up in the story of a wild girl (called Alaska) and a thoughtful boy. He went on to read Paper Towns, also by John Green, but said it was too similar. On this trip, my son read more than me!

My 13-year-old daughter’s favorite ebooks were Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and the Dairy Queen trilogy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, all in young adult fiction. My daughter liked the Kindle so much that she took hers to camp. Ereaders are allowed with Wifi off, but we’ll have to charge it on visiting day. I sent her with a few real books, as a back up.

Ereaders aren’t for everyone, but I suspect their popularity will rise as the publishing world adapts to the internet age. We’re getting a Kindle for my mother-in-law for Christmas since there are limited large print books at her public library. My mother, however, didn’t like the feel of a Kindle and preferred to lug real books around Italy.  Although I love my Kindle for travel, I still buy real books from independent bookstores to read at home.

Bookstore at Portoferraio, Elba Island

Related Posts:

Review of Kindle cases

Reading a Room with a View in Florence

Elba Island