Read in 2013

Kind of slacked off this year, reading-wise. I try to read 1,000 pages a month, but didn't quite hit it this year. So here's this year's tally:  

3-Minute JRR Tolkien, by Gary Raymond. 160 pages.

Airframe, by Michael Crichton. 431 pages.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Kindle edition), by Lewis Carroll. 100 pages.

Ballymore Bedtime Tales, by Bob Brooks. 100 pages.

Big Russ & Me, by Tim Russert. 336 pages.

Burmese Days, by George Orwell. 263 pages.

Capone, by John Kobler. 416 pages.

City of the Golden Sun, The; by Marylin Peake. 176 pages.

Count of Monte Cristo, The; by Alexandre Dumas. 544 pages.

Design of Everyday Things, The; by Donald A. Norman. 257 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, by Jeff Kinney. 218 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Last Straw, The, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules. 217 pages.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss. 208 pages.

Emerald City of Oz, The; by L. Frank Baum. 320 pages.

Erewhon Revisited, by Samuel Butler. 170 pages.

Fisherman's Son, The; by Marylin Peake. 176 pages.

Frightful's Mountain, by Jean George. 258 pages.

Glinda of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. 232 pages.

Harbors and High Seas, by Dean King and John B. Hattendorf. 220 pages.

Last Continent, The; by Terry Pratchett. 390 pages.

Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The; by C.S. Lewis. 208 pages.

Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis. 354 pages.

Miss Pickerell to the Earthquake Rescue, by Ellen MacGregor and Dora Pantell. 158 pages.

Mr. Bean's Diary, by Mr. Bean and Robin Driscoll. 128 pages.

My Side of the Mountain, by Jean George. 208 pages.

Nixon's Shadow, by David Greenberg. 460 pages.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick. 336 pages.

Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, by Chip Kidd. 336 pages.

Peter Principle, The; by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. 189 pages.

Place Byond the Map, A; by Samuel Thews. 338 pages.

Prayers from the Ark and The Creatures' Choir, by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold; translated by Rumer Godden. 127 pages.

Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis. 256 pages.

Professor and the Madman, The; by Simon Winchester. 242 pages.

Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett. 253 pages.

Report from Group 17, A; by Robert C. O'Brien. 210 pages.

Road to Oz, The; by L. Frank Baum. 261 pages.

Secrets of Successful Fiction, by Robert Newton Peck. 119 pages.

Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, by CS Lewis. 87 pages.

Star-Treader, The; and Other Poems, by Clark Ashton Smith. 122 pages.

This Beats Working for A Living: Confessions of A College Professor. By Professor X. 160 pages.

Thulsa's Gate, by Robert Schultz. 402 pages. (Beta read)

Walking, by Henry David Thoreau, 37 pages.

What Ho, Jeeves? by P.G. Wodehouse. 234 pages.

Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy. 374 pages.

Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The; by L. Frank Baum. 137 pages.

Ze page total: 11,254 pages.

Beta Reading -- Not An Easy Task

Beta reading, we all know, is an essential thing when you've written a novel and you're worried it's not ready to publish.

But it's not an easy thing, being a beta reader.

I just finished beta reading a 400-page fantasy novel for a friend of mine. I enjoyed it. At least I think I did. The process of beta reading is enlightening to a writer, as we're more aware of the mechanics of stories and how good stories go together. But at the same time, we're more attuned to what we like and what we don't like, and telling the author this while being honest and wanting to help.

It's more than spelling errors and such, obviously.

It's pointing out where the story is lagging, bogging down, making it tougher to read. And it's also measuring praise where it's needed and deserved, to balance things out.

On top of it all, you have to remember to read for the pleasure of it. For the story. For the fun. Because if you don't do that, you don't know much about the book at all.

So it's obvious what has to be done: I have to read it again. And that may be the key to beta reading: Not spreading it out over as many readers as possible, but giving a smaller group of readers the time to read your novel more than once. More than twice, per preference, so they can read once for mechanics and the other time for pleasure.

That's something I'll keep in mind when I send a novel of my own out for beta reading.

From the Fridge

Just a little humor to ease the tension in the days before Christmas. My wife thought it was funny . . .

"That's What Christmas is All About, Charlie Brown."

A Thousand Views

For the first time since I started blogging in 2009, one of my posts has had more than a thousand views. And it's not an old post, lying around on the blog for a long time. No, it's this one, featuring the last chapter of Doleful Creatures, my NaNoWriMo 2013 winning entry.

I have no idea why people are reading it. I can look at the analytics, but they don't tell me much. They don't tell me what key words might have brought someone to this page; whether it's some unfortunate combination of key words there that has brought them to my blog -- briefly -- or whether they're actually interested in reading the book. The absence of comments leads me to believe the former, as my typically pessimistic and cynical soul continues to take over. But I hold out hope. Wouldn't it be fun if it were Doleful Creatures drawing people to this blog. A guy can dream . . .

The Airing of Grievances . . . to the Idaho Falls Public Library

My wife thought she was doing something nice.

Something helpful.

Something honest.

Turns out what she did was a mistake.

Through a combination of negligence, our three children left our puppy alone for a few minutes with a book borrowed from the Idaho Falls Public Library. So my wife took to the Internet and found a copy of the book she figured she could take to the library and offer as a replacement.

She made the kids pay for the book, which totaled $8, including shipping.We returned a pile of books to the library Friday. My wife explained to the librarian what happened to the book, then presented her with the replacement book, identical in every detail except for the protective film and barcode the library puts on its books.

“Oh, you can’t do that,” the librarian said. “We have to charge you for the book.”

And full retail price. $14.99. Plus a $5 administrative fee.

That’s library policy. Inviolate. Because what if someone else brought in a book to replace one that was damaged that wasn’t as good as it should have been? They’d have to argue over every book. It’s just simpler to have this policy.

Simpler, maybe.

But easy to file in the big manila folder of bureaucratic nonsensicalism? Absolutely.

Here’s what galls me: My wife found the book – identical to the one the dog chewed on – for $8, including shipping. But the library had to have $14.99 to buy it from its distributor. At almost twice the price of the book my wife had in hand, ready to give the library. So when the library asks for monetary donations or a tax increase to help bring more books into the community, the tale of refusing a book in the hand while insisting on ordering one at nearly twice the cost of the one being offered will always come to the fore now. Always.

Reality for the library may be that the policy makes for less work for librarians, But what’s more important is the perception of reality: The Idaho Falls Public Library refused a good-faith effort by a patron to replace a book damaged by her own childrens’ negligence.

They did waive the $5 administrative fee. Theoretically. The receipt we got shows a “balance owed” of $5; when we called the library to ask about it, we were told the library administrator would have to approve it. We’re not holding our breath.

We were not defrauding the library. We were not offering an inferior copy of the book. We were trying to correct a mistake.

I was in the library a few weeks earlier (oh, we’re big-time library users, up until now) and heard a librarian make several calls to patrons, requesting information about books that came back damaged. Apparently all the people had done was stuff the books into the return slot and hope the damage wouldn’t be noticed. That seemed to be oafish behavior on the part of the patrons. I’m sure the librarian didn’t enjoy making those kinds of calls. I know I wouldn’t. So you’d think having someone come in, acknowledge the damage, and offer recompense right there that would have the book on the shelf as soon as it could be labeled would be a breath of fresh air.

Oh yeah. This is a bureaucracy. Fresh air is not needed. What’s important is policy. A one-size-fits-all policy that might convenience the library in some ways but in others punishes patrons who thought they were doing right by replacing a damaged book, like for like.

Now I don’t pretend to understand library cataloguing, or appreciate the superior quality of books procured from library-approved distributors. That’s a reality outside my experience. But again, it’s the perception of reality that’s important: Policy was treated as more important than people.

That’s the true crime of bureaucracy.

So we now have two copies of the book. One dog-chewed, the other pristine. The final irony: It’s not a very good book.

Give Me Learning, Sir . . .

Back when I was in high school, I participated in the ubiquitous gym class.

And let me paint a picture: I was not athletic then. Nor am I now. I was, and am, a bone-idle, out of condition bloke to whom regular exercise -- let alone something as organized as basketball or volleyball -- was completely alien.

Why do I have to do this, I wondered, every time I had to strip down to the "skins" -- invariably, all the fat kids ended up on the team that had to take their shirts off; I guess the skinny ones liked to see our man boobs jiggle.

But you know what? I did it.

I sweated through the warm-up exercises. I panted and wheezed through all the running. And though I refused to play baseball, I wasn't shunned. Nor did I get a bad grade. Because I did everything else. I even learned to like things like the warm-up exercises and pickleball.

I still regard physical fitness as important. I'm not wild about team sports, but I will go biking and walking and hiking. I try to watch what I eat.

I got something out of high school gym, even though it wasn't my favorite thing in the world to do.

So Rebecca Schuman's essay in Slate today really got my goat.

She thinks students who don't like to write shouldn't be asked to write any more. Because they hate it. Because teachers hate reading their essays. And because they'll never learn how to do it effectively, so why bother teaching them.

Yikes.

She says keeping writing in strictly English courses is okay. I assume she's OK with writing in other subjects -- history comes to mind -- but for those who don't want to be English majors or historians or whatever, writing should not be required in their college careers.

Her attitude stuns me. "They don't like to do it. It's too hard to teach them how to do it. So let's not do it." How DEFEATIST is that?

I don't recall seeing it written that what we learn in school has to be easy for us to do. Or something we'll be doing for the rest of our lives. I remember going in with the attitude -- and I get this from my father, whose schooling was interrupted at the third-grade level by World War II -- that we should learn whatever we can, even if it's hard. And he learned a lot of things, reading a lot of books and writing things down in a language that was not his native tongue. He might know what he's talking about.

I get it from this, too:

And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God.

-- Doctrine and Convenants 109:7-8

Or, if you prefer something a little less churchy:

"Give me learning, sir, and you may keep your black bread."

-- Leo Tolstoy

Let's just not treat everyone like this:

Visit Sunny Saturn

Visit Sunny Saturn, or at least think about it in the infomercial my son made for his eighth-grade science class. Makes me want to work on The Hermit of Iapetus again. But Doleful Creatures awaits. That's the one I think I can have published in the next few months . . .

Want to Code? Learn to Read First.

Dear President Obama,

I like the idea of encouraging people to learn how to code – whatever that means. I’ve tried at least one variation of coding – using simple HTML not only on this blog but in an online class I teach. I built my own websites in the early 1990s, mimicking the code I saw back then. I haven’t kept up with it much, I admit.

You know what I like better? Encouraging people to learn how to read.

I listen to a lot of young boys read. I mean a lot of young boys. And most of them can’t. They stumble over pronouncing words. Simple words. And if you ask them to explain what it is they just read, the pat answer is “I don’t know.” And they’re telling the truth, because when they read aloud, they’re saying the words, but that’s all they’re doing. They’re concentrating on getting to the end of the passage, everything else is secondary.

I can tell the readers from the non-readers at the first meeting. They sail through simple and complicated texts – and I hear them read everything from news stories to their Boy Scout manual to more complicated texts, like the King James version of the Bible. If they encounter a word they’re unfamiliar with, they sound it out, and usually get it right. They can guess at meaning, and usually get it right. And if they’re stuck, they know where to go to find the answers. They can summarize. They can explain.

The non-readers can’t do any of that. Or at least they don’t try.

And it’s not just young boys. I also can tell pretty quickly which of my college students are readers and which are not. I don’t get to hear them read aloud, but I do get to see them think as they write essays and post responses in our online classes. Those less interested in reading stand out, even more so than those for whom English is not their first language – and I have a lot of students that fit that category too.

These aren’t dumb kids. They have other talents ranging from excellent math skills, a deeper understanding of emotion and empathy, and athleticism, among others. Reading isn’t “their thing.”

But it’s fundamental to everything. Including coding.

We haven’t left it up to schools to teach our kids to read. We read to them. We started early, with picture books, then Dr. Seuss, now others – right now, I’m reading CS Lewis’ “Prince Caspian” to my two youngest kids. And we read aloud, nearly every night, from our scriptures. We take turns reading and explaining what we read – requiring our kids to go over what they just read and using their own words to explain what’s happening.

And they’re readers. They’re up late at night reading, getting yelled at to turn off the lights and go to bed. They’re always sneaking books into the car for trips, sneaking books off the shelves to read at mealtimes. They’ll read newspapers. And magazines. And comic strips. I’m sure if I put a book on coding in front of them, they’d read it. And maybe get interested.

But the reading comes first. If it doesn’t, well, we’re slipping into Snow Crash a lot faster than previously thought. Technological achievement is highly valued in the Metaverse, but that achievement can be as shallow as it is stunning.

There is, of course, this argument:

 

Coding does require a lot of mental discipline, dealing with the concrete hidden in the abstract. Yes, a lot of what is written is drivel. But so is a lot of what is on the television. As is much of what is coded. Coding for the sake of coding, I’m not necessarily in favor of. Coding with a foundation on the ability to think and reason, well, that sounds a whole lot better.

Could coding prod a non-reading kid into reading more? I’m certain it could. But you’re going to get more coding kids if they’re reading kids first.

I'm A Scofflaw. And So Are You

I’m a scofflaw.

I’m stealing money from schools. From schools. And other important things like state parks. Roads. And all those ivory-handled back-scratchers they pass out to state legislators.

And my guess is, if you’re an Idaho resident, you’re a scofflaw too.

If you buy things online and don’t pay a sales tax – and there are few ecommerce sites out there that do collect sales tax by state – you owe the state money. And not by some new-fangled law taxing internet purchases. No, you owe the state money under a “use tax” law passed in 1965, well before Jeff Bezos was even thinking about getting bald.

The Idaho Statesman has the poop on this law here.

The math is pretty simple. The state tax commission estimates Idahoans spent $1.08 billion on online purchases in an average year, with that number growing. At six percent, that equals about $65 million in taxes. Most of that is going unpaid. In 2011, only 9,555 Idahoans paid an average of $56 in use taxes – or only 1.4 percent of those filing tax returns with the state also paying the use tax.

The Statesman skirts one issue: What happens to you if you don’t pay that tax? What are the penalties involved? Laws being what they are, the consequences appear murky, but this statute, requiring that anyone evading the tax be required to pay that tax once caught seems applicable.

But the situation gets murkier than that.

According to the US Small Business Administration – an official appendage of the federal government, businesses that conduct ecommerce are not required to collect sales taxes everywhere. Here’s the deal:

If your business has a physical presence in a state, such as a store, office, or warehouse, you must collect applicable state and local tax from your customers. If you do not have a presence in a particular state, you are not required to collect sales taxes.

Note the murkiness: Online businesses aren’t required to collect sales taxes. The SBA says nothing about whether or not purchasers area required to pay such taxes. So it appears we fall back to the state statute. And the state’s demands that the taxes be paid.

Additionally, if you’re looking to the federal government for clarification on this, that’s shouting into an empty room. The US Supreme Court decided this week not to take up a challenge to a New York state law requiring online retailers to collect state sales taxes, instead saying that job is one best left to Congress. And we all know how well that organization works.

The only thing that seems to save us is the bureaucracy. Per findlaw.com:

The sole difference between a sales tax and a use tax is the person that ends up giving the money to the state government. When it is a sales tax, the retailer is the one handing over the money, while a use tax is handed over directly by the consumer. However, collecting use taxes on small purchases often costs more than simply letting the consumer not pay the use tax. Instead, state tax agencies try to focus more on collecting use taxes for big ticket items that are purchased online with no sales tax, such as cars and boats.

However, there are a number of states that have stepped up their enforcement of their use tax laws and are now trying to make their state residents pay the taxes that should be paid. However, these states are still hampered by limited resources as well as the complexities involved with tracking down minor purchases and demanding that a use tax be paid.

,

But to answer Mr. Incredible’s question:

Did I do something illegal?

The answers appear to point to yes.

Hand in Hand: Scouting, Online Instruction Making Each Other Better

I sat in the Deacons Quorum room, waiting.

The young man giving the lesson quietly slipped out a borrowed tablet, got it ready to play some videos. Two other young men sat in chairs near the window. Sat is a loose word for Deacons; one sat conventionally, feet on the floor, the other sat with his legs pulled up onto the chair, knees tucked under his chin. He had something in his lap – LEGO figures – he was showing to the other boy.

Two other boys leaned their chairs against the wall. One of them realized with both the president and the first counselor gone, he, as second counselor, was in charge. He called the group to order.

I am their Scoutmaster, but in the fuzzy leadership links in the LDS Church between the Aaronic Priesthood and the Boy Scouts of America, my role at church is uncertain. Tuesdays are my days to shine and campouts and merit badge pow-wows are my territory; Sundays belong to the deacons quorum adviser. Who was not present.

The lesson commenced. The boy giving the lesson resembles my own: intelligent, obsessive, smug in his abilities and eager to challenge his cohorts to read a long list of scriptures, to guess the identity of the general authority speaking – Jeffrey R. Holland – and to repeat several times with joke that we look under our beds for devils and demons, while devils and demons look under their bed for Jeffrey R. Holland.

The boys by the window weren’t listening. The LEGO figures were more compelling.

The boy who took charge appeared to be asleep.

The other boy challenged everything the young man teaching said, finally blurting “Why does everything have to be a competition?” throwing the boy teaching off his game. He tried to recover by bringing up the Elder Holland joke again.A bishopric member poked his head into the classroom, looked at me. “You alone here?”

“Apparently so,” I replied.

He took a seat. As it was Fast Sunday, he wanted to make sure the fast offering routes were assigned. They were not. One boy lamented he wanted to sing with the choir after church and thus couldn’t do fast offerings. Another said since he’d volunteered to help pass the sacrament at a retirement community that afternoon, his obligation to fast offering collection was nullified. Three other boys just stared at the brown leather envelopes in the counselor’s hand.

Eventually, they decided amongst themselves that they could do two of the five routes. The leader went to find conscripts from the teachers and priests quorums for the other three. The lesson recommenced. With the Elder Holland joke.

These are my scouts, I thought. On Tuesdays, they’re noisier. There are others there who don’t regularly come to church who add their own individual elements of chaos and decorum, often at the same moment.

As I watched them, Wood Badge training kicked in. This kid challenging the teacher isn’t one who comes to scouts regularly. But when he does, I thought, our Scout team will go from norming to storming again – the team dynamic they’ve figured out (the norming, everything’s working normally) in his absence due to football practice will be upset and they’ll have to learn how to work as a team all over again (the storming, as in thunder and lightning) as he comes in, not knowing where to fit in, not knowing how the team has worked before, and with the team not knowing what to do as he attempts to fit in and his attempts are interpreted as disruptions.

I sat there with them, terrified.

Not because of anything that happened in the classroom. This wasn’t my first experience with this knot of Deacons on a Sunday. The boys always teach the lessons. That one kid always brings LEGOs and those two always sit by the window, distracted. The second counselor almost always looks like he’s asleep. And if the kid questioning everything isn’t there, another kid who does the same thing is.

But because I’d seen it all before. Somewhere. Deja-vu.

The Scoutmaster Handbook tells us this: “A new Scoutmaster is likely to approach his troop with self-confidence. He anticipates that his enthusiasm will excite his young charges to get the most they can out of Scouting.”

I can do self-confidence and enthusiasm. As can just about anyone any bishopric would call as Scoutmaster, providing he meets the basic requirements: He appears to be breathing, is likely to pass a background check, has not been openly heard swearing,  and is also on the bishopric radar after the ward paid for his Wood Badge training.

But the Scoutmaster handbook goes on to say, in the same breath and with that same self-confidence and enthusiasm: “Learning about the characteristics of boys, how to motivate them, how to deal with their behavior, and how to help them with their problems will give the Scoutmaster the insights necessary to enjoy working with his Scouts.”

Oh woof. This is something respiration and a mild financial obligation can’t cover.

Wood Badge taught me enough to know that “learning about the characteristics of boys” goes much beyond pigeonholing them into categories: Smug, self-confident yet awkward in social situations; At ease in social situations but prone to sweating and stumbling when called upon to pronounce words with more than three syllables; Distracted LEGO aficionado; Thrall of the LEGO aficionado; Avoider of responsibility unless it’s easy; and the inevitable Scout Camp Slob. Wood badge taught me that learning the boys’ characteristics meant finding ways for them to learn, to accomplish, to lead, despite the challenges they face from broken homes, aversion to schoolwork, or fixation with Danish toys.

Wood Badge taught me it’s okay to let the boys lead and to let them make mistakes; the Scoutmaster Handbook cautions me against “falling into the trap of controlling the Scouts’ experiences and doing everything for them.” Wood Badge taught me it’s better for boys to try and fail and then try again than never to bother trying because “the Scoutmaster did it for me.”

Wood Badge taught me that old saw from Lord Baden-Powell himself: “Scouting is a game with a purpose: the game is a fun and exciting program, and the purpose is to become better adults.”

To become better adults.

Funny, I’ve heard something like that before.

Part of Brigham Young University-Idaho’s mission statement reads “Prepare students for lifelong learning, for employment, and for their roles as citizens and parents.”

Different words. But the same thing.

All this time I’ve been concentrating on how the training I got at Wood Badge could help me be a better online instructor at BYU-Idaho. Part of me now sees this as a two-way street, as there are elements of our online teacher training and the experience of teaching diverse groups of online students will help make me a better Scouter.

As I sat in that Deacons Quorum room, I thought not of Scouting, but of my students at BYU-Idaho. What am I doing in class to, as the Scoutmaster Handbook advises, to make my classroom a safe place? To think ahead? To recognize students as individuals? And then conversely: What am I doing with my Scouts to encourage them to live gospel principles, to provide a quality education for Scouts of diverse interests and abilities, and to maintain a wholesome academic, cultural, social, and spiritual environment?

Should my goal be to squeeze my scouts through the eight hours of community-based service they need for their Citizenship in the Community merit badge, or to show them that there are community-based organizations who need service from every person, including Scouts and Scout leaders, so those organizations can concentrate on serving the public?

Should I sign my Scouts off on the Personal Fitness merit badge because they‘ve stumbled through three months’ worth of push-ups and mile walks and bookwork, or because through example they’re seeing how fitness now will pay dividends well into the future that for them may as well be a million years from now?

One hand can learn from the other. My role as an online instructor at Brigham Young University-Idaho has as much to learn from Wood Badge as my role as Scoutmaster has to learn from my teaching online English students.

So I took two of those Deacons – my Scouts – on their fast offering route, forgetting that when I arrived at church, my first thought was: My son is home sick; I don’t have to do fast offerings today either. We talked about the wind, the cold, the coming snow that might make our camping trip the coming weekend a bit more interesting. I reminded myself that one of those boys was in charge of planning our upcoming court of honor as he works on his Communication merit badge; I’d better follow up on that on Tuesday, lest the court of honor go unplanned and his experience fulfilling those merit badge requirements goes unfulfilled.

I also noted the need to plan ahead for my Foundations English students. They’re starting work on their group projects, with some of them already expressing anxiety over the mistake-makings of their peers. As I remind them I’m not a fan of group work myself, I also mention, casually – about half of what I do in my full-time job as a technical writer involves working with groups. Work doesn’t have to be pleasant to be necessary.

A game with a purpose.

Preparing students for lifelong learning.

One hand complementing the other.