Literary Safari

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”- Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe

I actually came pretty close to doing all of the above yesterday.

Hear. I listened to a couple of good, little songs – Cassandra Wilson on The World Cafe and an “anti-folk” singer and writer named Jeffrey Lewis who also illustrates comic-style travel journals.

See. I checked out some of Jeffrey’s fine pictures and excerpts from his published comic diaries.

Read. Some of my mental candy:

1) Humor: Supreme Court Gives Gore’s Oscar to Bush. In a stunning reversal for the former vice president, the Supreme Court ordered that Al Gore’s Academy Award be given to President Bush. (By way of Newsweek)

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a Friday discovery – the podcast review site Just One More Book (JOMB). I was so excited about JOMB that I thought, Hey, let’s find out the story behind it.

So, I emailed Andrea and Mark, the voices behind the reviews and asked them if they’d be kind enough to answer a few questions for me. I was curious about this couple that makes time to record podcasts at “their favorite coffee shop” a couple of times a week.

Here is our Q&A, slightly edited. I think that those of you interested in (a) the idea of couples working on creative projects together (b) creative uses of technology and (c) family book collections will find this fascinating.

K, my husband, and I have had many midnight conversations about podcasts, skypecasts, and books that we would like to write together. When we are on long car rides, we make up crazy stories together and come up with what-seem-like-brilliant book proposals, but then, we get caught up in our individual projects and busy schedules and tasks and plans, etc. etc. and … forget.

My Q&A with Andrea and Mark was inspiring and makes me want to go back and revisit one of our epiphanies!

Literary Safari: Just who are Andrea and Mark?
Andrea and Mark: We are IT professionals and parents of two daughters (ages 7 and 5) who are passionate about children’s books and Podcasting.

Literary Safari: How and when did you get the idea for Just One More Book? Did it come to you at your favorite coffee shot?
Andrea and Mark: Mark started Podcasting in 2005 and quickly became engulfed in the hobby. Some time later, his passion for Podcasting turned into the equivalent of a second and third job, and in June 2006 we attended the Podcasters Across Borders conference in Kingston, Ontario (Canada); an event attended by similarly passionate hobbyists. At this point, Andrea, a long-time kidlit enthusiast, decided that it was either “get a Podcast or get a divorce.”Just One More Book launched in July 2006 – an obvious marriage of two passions.The challenge was to find a way to work the recording into a normal and sustainable routine. Since our morning ritual was to catch-up with each other over a coffee after dropping our daughters off at school and before going our separate ways to work, we decided to build our recording into our routine and focus our coffee time on discussing a great children’s book from our own collection.

Literary Safari: Who is thelittle girl whose voice introduces each of your podcasts; the voice who says “Just One More Book!”
Andrea and Mark: There are actually two little girls in our intro. The opening order “Just One More Book, Dad”, is our 7 year old daughter, Lucy. The “Dad…We’re serious, Just One More Book!” is our 5 year old daughter, Bayla. The interplay between Mark, Lucy and Bayla was an actual, unscripted, naturally occurring attempt to end the reading portion of a typical bedtime wind down time. It was the obvious intro and show name, since it’s been a nightly (and, often, a morning-ly and noon-ly) refrain of our girls since they’ve been old enough to speak.

Literary Safari: How do you technically record your broadcasts?
Andrea and Mark: The early shows were recorded using the internal omnidirectional microphones of Mark’s portable digital recorder. Over time, the activity in the coffee shop proved to be too distracting for our listeners, so we invested in a pair of lapel microphones.If you’re looking for more technical information… we record straight to 16-bit stereo WAV format, each of us in a separate channel (that is, Andrea in the left channel, Mark in the right), and the recording is edited and mixed using Cubase. There is actually very little editing done to Just One More Book coffee shop recordings. More often than not, the conversation is kept intact. The Podcast is released as a stereo MP3 file (44KHz, 128-bit stereo).

Telephone interviews are recorded using Skype (computer-to-computer if the guest has Skype) or SkypeOut (computer-to-phone). Since JOMB is completely unfunded (well, it’s funded out of our own pockets), Skype makes the interviews possible.

We record up to five shows per week (not including interviews), and queue them up for unexpected interruptions in recording schedules such as vacations, work travel, and break-ins at our home.

Literary Safari: What do you look for in a book before you decide to review it? Do you only review books you like?
Andrea and Mark: We only review books we love. It has to be a family favourite – one that at least one of the four of us loves and can’t read often enough.We’re advocates for the underdog. We don’t often include books that have hit the big time, or that are getting a lot of push by the publishers. Having said that, we will interview anyone in an effort to promote the creative people behind great books.

We typically connect with books that resonate with us on an emotional or synaesthetic level.

The hardest part is not reviewing books. We have so many family favourites to review, that we could easily publish a few reviews a day.

Literary Safari: For a first-time visitor to your site, what podcast would you suggest they listen to first?
Andrea and Mark: Ooh. That’s a very tough question for a few reasons. We don’t map out our shows and we only listen to each show end-to-end once (when we produce it) so we don’t have a really good memory of the individual conversations. Although certain conversations stand out as having been particularly fun for us, I’m not sure how our listeners — especially new listeners — would receive them. That’s one of the big challenges of Podcasting. Because many listeners use portable MP3 players, and aren’t necessarily at their computers when they listen to a show, our listener feedback is low — JOMB is downloaded 300-500 times each day and we’re lucky if we receive one comment per day. As a result, it’s tough to know which of our shows works best for our audience.While they’re not representative of what our show is about, a great starting point for a new listener is Finding Great Children’s Books and Tips for Buying: Features of Great Books.

Literary Safari: It’s nice to see a married couple get creative together. What do each of you bring to this that the other couldn’t?
Andrea and Mark: That’s easy. Andrea picks the books, keeps up with the kidlit info, finds the guests and does the research, interview prep and promotion — oh ya, and asks them to turn down the music at the coffee shop each morning. Mark handles all the technical work (audio recording, editing and production work) and all of the interviews.

Thanks Andrea and Mark!

You’ll forgive me if I’ve been MIA for the past week or so. I’ve been mildly obsessed by a new arrival on planet earth.

Today is exactly one week and a day since my sister gave birth to her first child – a bouncing baby boy who is a bundle of joy and amply exemplifies the expression the miracle of birth.

Yes, the above sentence is replete with cliches, but you know what? This has been a week where I’ve come to understand in a new way where certain cliches originate!

Nikhil is a total magnet. I’ve been watching over the past few days how he manages to completely hypnotize everyone who is in the room with him. Hold him in your arms and you forget everything.

Babies have that magical ability. When they smile in their sleep, everyone oohs and aahs and the smile spreads. When he poohs and pees, everyone claps with delight. And, when he sleeps, a sense of peace fills up the room.

NIKHIL निखिल m Indian
Means “whole, entire” in Sanskrit.

This little baby is doing just that – bringing a feeling of completeness into our family. I suppose that’s what all babies do, isn’t it?

Click here to watch “Nikhil in the Land of Nod”

One of my favorite topics to write about is my family. Starting today, I’m going to make it a point to write more of my stories about them; I’ll title those entries “Family Ruminations.” I’d love to hear your thoughts and to get a conversation going about your own families!

Wanderlust is an inherited gene in the Nankani clan. My grandfather left Sindh (now part of Pakistan) in the late 1930s in search of his personal destiny and let the ocean waves and economic winds carry him through central Asia into the Middle East forward onto the African continent.

He finally ended up in West Africa, placing his roots down in Ghana where he opened a chain of movie theatres and imported movies from India and China for a rural audience. From Ghana, he explored the many cut-out kingdoms and new countries of West Africa, forging links with locals and other Indian expats and expanding his business over the years.

During the last years of his life, however, he wanted to go back to his source. He returned to India with my grandmother and made plans to live out his final moments in an apartment overlooking a green courtyard, where cuckoo birds crooned out daily tunes and where the sunrise and sunset could be seen from eastern and western balconies.

My grandmother, who had traveled alone to join my grandfather, Dada as we called him, was happy to be back in India. But, when Dada got jaundice and passed away, she could not stay in one place. She picked up her bags and returned to Ghana with her youngest and her eldest sons. With six children spread out all over the world – Ghana, Morocco, the United States – she hoisted her sail and began traveling from one home to the other, spending three months with each child. Every six months, she began to return to India to recharge her batteries in the presence of her guru.

I’ve often wondered why she didn’t just pick one place to live, and tell her children to visit her there, the way my maternal grandmother, Meme, has done. Meme has not left India since 1988. In contrast, Nani, my father’s mother, is on a plane every few months.

It must be the wanderlust. Nani loves to travel on airplanes in business class. She enjoys staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. Although she tries to convince herself that she must be a puritan at her age, she is not. Sometimes she pretends that she doesn’t really need to go anywhere and that she would be content to live in India but then, before we know it, she tells us that she must leave because she needs to have some dental work done in Morocco – because that is where her dentist is located. And, when she gets to Morocco, she tells us that she needs to have her eyes checked in India – because that is where her optometrist is located!

I always tease her about it, but I’m growing to understand her more and more. We Nankanis need frequent and regular changes of scenery, of air, of land, and of water. We thrive on change and relish those moments of departure and arrival. We delight in looking at the many stamps on our passports and in gazing at maps and pinpointing all the places upon which we have set foot.

My father was the same way. His old suit bag illustrated his wandering spirit perfectly. Black leather, it was stamped with stickers from all the airlines on which he has flown. Alitalia. Green and white. Air India. Red and white. Ethiopian Airlines. Red, green, yellow. Ghana Airways. Red, green, yellow. Singapore Airlines. Mustard yellow silhouette. British Airways. Red and blue. The list (and colors) can go on and on.

The stickers are peeling; they stick to and stain my hands. But I still love looking at the suit bag because it reminds me of all the places to which Papa traveled. Each of the stickers has its own story.

Papa traveled for business most of the time. But, sometimes I think that really, he made his business make him travel. If he had wanted, he could have started a company that allowed him to stay in one place. He could have been content with a chain of retail shops that allowed him to purchase goods from local vendors in Ghana. But, no, he chose instead to expand his company into an international import-export company, sourcing out vendors in the Far East. Over the years, he visited Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, the Phillipines … more places than I can count on my fingers.

Papa told the best stories about his travels. One of these days, I should try to write them down. Perhaps in the first person as I recall them. …

Natalie Angier has a piece in the Science section of today’s New York Times: “How Do We See Red? Count the Ways.”

First it was the title (clever play on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet # 43) that caught my eye. Then, the illustration, which is by Serge Bloch, one of my favorite illustrators (who I also had the pleasure of working with for an issue of Writing). So I started reading and learned many interesting things about the power of red in biology and cultural history. (If you want a summary, you’re not going to get one. The article is worth reading, hence this second link!)

So, we all know that there are all these universal cultural references that hinge on red: the STOP sign, traffic signals, and red roses for LOVE, for example. But, this quote in particular caught my eye:

“Our visual system was shaped by colors already in use among many plants and animals, and red in particular stands out against the green backdrop of nature … If you want to make a point, you make it in red. … In the evolution of language, red is without exception the first color word to enter the vocabulary. ”
~ Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, a philosopher at LSE and the author of “Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness”

The above remark made me sit up and wonder whether if we were to trace the origins of red marginal comments made by legions of teachers, professors, and editors throughout various cultures and time periods, would it lead back to our primal connection with the color red? (I wish I had the time to research this

I’ve always been a non-fan of the use of red pen to mark up students papers and friends’ writing – I personally find it harsh, loud, jarring, and painful to read comments in red ink. But, if so many people do it, does that mean that they believe that it is the strongest way to make a point and get a reader’s attention -or has it been proven to be so?

I’ll admit that after having worked in a magazine setting for the past 3 years, I’ve also taken to using a red Sharpie now and then, not because I find it to be the most effective way, but because some people look for the red pen marks as signals of areas of proofs that need the most attention. Plus, when you use the ‘comment’ feature in MSWord, it automatically plunks in your comments in red. There’s no getting around it in the digital medium. Last week, when I taught a writing workshop, I also used it to teach revision on screen because that was the most striking color my software provided me with on my Tablet.

I’m not saying anything new here, really. I’m just wondering: If we had to choose another color to make a point in written feedback, what color would we choose? Would purple or green ever have a chance of becoming the new red, at least when it came to the tools of editing and marking?

—————

Somewhat unrelated/related (depending on your perspective): Here’s the great cover Serge Bloch did for Writing last year!

It was for our research issue, and please do go ahead and notice that the grade “A” is in … red pen … as is our logo! (I know, I know …)

I just got home from a full day of jury duty. I’d like to re-baptize this civic duty as “the waiting game.” That’s pretty much what you do. Wait to be called. Then, wait to be picked. Then, wait to be questioned. At least, that’s what day one was like for me. (Except, truthfully, it wasn’t so bad. How often do we actually get to just sit? Nobody can expect anything else or more of us, except to be where we are. That’s a gift, if you ask me.)

I can’t talk about the case or the rest of my fellow jurors, but I can say that I was impressed by a couple of things at the court:

1) The Clerk in Charge: He was extremely thorough with his instructions and gave us regular updates on what was going on: “A judge may be needing 70 jurors in the next hour…” His desire to be specific came from his experience sitting in jury selection rooms once upon a time and not having a clue as to what was going on. It was refreshing to see a person in authority trying to remove some of the red tape bureaucracy.

2) The Wireless Workstations: Granted, the laptops all had quirky keyboards that maaaaade wooordds loookk liiike this, but still … it was great to have access to e-mail during the day! Each person is granted a 20-min block of usage, and there are even work stations for those who want to bring their own laptops. At first, I wished I had mine, but later, I was somewhat grateful not to have lugged it all the way downtown. It gave me time to read. And, read I did – I finished last week’s New Yorker, a galley of Mitali Perkin’s First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, and judged a stack of Ann Arlys Bowler poetry contest entries.

3) Pleasant and humorous court officers: I was reading a book in the courtroom in the late afternoon and one of the officers said, “As you know, there is no reading allowed in here.” (Yes, I’d seen the sign but …) …. Yikes, I immediately shut my book and started stuffing it into my bag. … “Oh, you don’t have to put it away!” he laughed. “We don’t expect you to just sit here and stare at the walls.” … Pheww. I was relieved.

But I was also surprised at my reaction to his stating the rules; my reaction to authority. In fact, I got to thinking about how organized and methodical the whole thing was. What is it that prompts us to obey the rules? To be back at 2 pm when we are told to be back at 2 pm? To speak softly and recycle our newspapers? To uphold a code of confidentiality at the end of the day? I don’t think it’s so much our fear of authority as perhaps our respect of it? Or, is it a little of both?

Anyhow, I’ll be going back tomorrow to find out whether I was picked for the case for whose jury my name was selected. For now, I will hunker down in the warmth of my living room and be glad that I don’t have to go back outside into the frigid air for another 12 hours.

Update: I wasn’t selected to serve on any jury. Back to normal life, full of many to-do’s.

I’m really excited about Just One More Book, a podcast blog about “the children’s books we love and why we love them.” It’s a thrice-a-week series recorded by two fans of kid’s lit, recorded in their favorite coffee shop (in Canada).

I love the concept – and the experience of hearing the clink of silverware, the whoosh of the cappucino machine, the crunch of the toast … all while listening in on a conversation about books. The best thing is that the concept works. The reviews go in depth, the conversation is refreshing, and the books I’ve been (quite literally) hearing about are worth checking out.

As I write this, I’m listening to Andrea and Mark review Taiwanese author Jimmy Liao’s The Sound of Colors. Translated from Chinese, this book is a “journey of the imagination.” It combines illustrations with poetry and “follows the journey of a blind woman who is traveling the world through the subway and is imagining the world around her.” (Also nominated for a Cybil.)

So, while A & M are reviewing the book, their toast is brought to the table. … “Oh, there’s the toast,” says Andrea. (And, I think: Oh, I want to grab my cup of coffee and a muffin and join them! I so want to be a part of this book club!)

Andrea and Mark go on to analyze the images and the words and bring them to life for me, as they flip through the pages, before I’m even at the bookstore. They also point me to Alvina of Blue Rose Girls who has a fascinating story to tell at her blog, about the acquisition of this book.

Now, I just wish I could snap my fingers and have this picture book fall out of my computer monitor.

Of course, while I’m listening to this review, I’m reminded of the conversations I used to have in the lunchroom with my colleague and friend Pooja. We swapped reads regularly and waited for the other to finish and then, dissected and dissected. There was something about the in-person dialogue, over a cup of tea, that was tremendously satisfying and energizing. Maybe we should submit a guest review to One More Book. (How about it, P?!)