Was doing some reading the other night about 19th century Brits, Lord Macaulay and Southey, and some interesting criticisms the former had of the latter:

"He does not seem to know what an argument is. He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents. It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them. It has never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration, that a rumor does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than ‘scoundrel’ and ‘blockhead.’"

Those old boys sure knew how to call each other jerks without calling each other jerks.

The Quest

I always find it interesting what other people are reading. Seems the paparazzi, when not busy following me, caught Bill Gates reading “The Quest” during his daughter’s equestrian competition. Daniel Yergin’s book is about the changing role of global energy on the economy.

For what it's worth, I've taken a hiatus into the land of non-fiction as well and am currently reading The Assassins' Gate by George Packer.

It ... describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier 's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.

SHOCKING: Long, boring novels are bad for book industry

Whodathunk it? Oprah was bad for book sales. And she didn’t do a lot for Rosie O’Donnell either. And don’t mention the 30 OWN folks out of work:

But despite her success as a taste-maker, Oprah apparently could not get America to pick up more books. According to a recent study, Oprah's endorsements may have actually hurt fiction sales overall by encouraging her fans to read novels that were longer and more complicated than their usual, less literary fare.

All of this also seems to say something about the incentives for the book industry as a whole. That is, it's probably not in publishers' interests to turn difficult, long novels into best sellers. The easier a book is to get through, and the quicker a reader can make it to the next title, the better it is for their bottom line.

Fortunately, my middle name is “Quick and Easy.”

Pertinear on the money ...

Seth Tupper at the Mitchell Daily Republic has a pretty accurate column on how to speak South Dakotan. I'm guilty and proud of using most of them including:

Hunnert: In many areas west of The River (see entry below) and even in some areas near The River, this is the correct pronunciation of “hundred.” Example: There’s a hunnert head of cattle down by the crick.

Pertinear (pronounced “pert-ih-near”): A combination of pretty and near, used to indicate the close proximity of one thing to another or the near completion of a task. Question: Are we there yet? Answer: Pertinear.

Thinking of those 'Under the Overpass'

Attended an event Saturday night and heard author Mike Yankoski speak about homelessness. Having attended a plethora of rubber chicken dinners in my day (though this food was excellent - bison and pheasant, mmm), it takes a pretty good speech to keep my attention; and it takes a really good speech to keep my attention for longer than 30 minutes. This guy did it.

I haven't read his book Under the Overpass yet, but I intend to. If the book is half as good as his speech was, it'll be worth it. He made me think, and that can be a hard thing to do.

From Publishers Weekly:

Yankoski's parents were right: It was crazy to live as a homeless person in six American cities for five months; fortunately, this crazy idea makes for quite a story. Yankoski, a Christian college student, challenges the reader to learn about faith, identify with the poor and find "more forgotten, ruined, beautiful people than we ever imagined existed, and more reason to hope in their redemption." The journey begins at a Denver rescue mission and ends on a California beach. Along the way, Yankoski and a friend learn the perils of poor hygiene and the secrets of panhandling. They meet unfortunates like Andrew, who squanders his musical talent to feed his drug habit, and hustlers like Jake, who gives the pair tips about how to look and sound more pitiful to get more money. Yankoski tends to moralize: "If we respond to others based on their outward appearance, haven't we entirely missed the point of the Gospel?" Still, the book features fine writing ("I awoke, rolled over and saw beads of sweat already forming on my arms. Saturday, early morning, Phoenix") and vivid stories, authentically revealing an underworld of need.

Nevermore ...

I've always been kind of a fan of Ed, and it appears John Cusack is also:

"He was a great romantic and he had a great sense of humor, and he was one of the great self-destructive lunatic writers of all time. He was the first rock star writer, first professional writer - he was quite a character. He was witty, sarcastic and very combative with other writers, he was a literary critic and always itching for a fight...He was a really lunatic kind of person - he would insult other writers and challenge them to duels. He was way out there."

Here's the story on the new movie about Edgar Allan Poe.

Where it's good to be a Golddigger ...

Attended a youth basketball tournament in Lead, SD, today. Lead is about 3 miles from Deadwood and both school districts merged years back to form the Lead-Deadwood Schools. As you will note in the photos below, there's a lot of history there. Lead is famous for its gold and Deadwood for its gambling. I thoroughly enjoy both towns.



In the Lead trophy case sits this basketball from their lone hoops championship back in 1918.






Here's the gym banner that shows the founding of each school: 1895 and 1896.





Here's a shot of the "old" gym in the Lead High School. It's a Hoosiers throwback gym. Note the cement bleachers and the running track around the top of the gym.

HaugEnmail ...

a Joshua's Ladder review:

"I just finished it on my trip to Florida last weekend. It was well written and I really enjoyed reading it - I laughed, cried, smiled, felt deep emotion for the characters and couldn't wait for the next chapter. The flow of the book, kept me wondering what was next - it was a fast read because I enjoyed it so much. It was simply marvelous. Thank you!"

Story of Hitchhikers

Back in my newspapering days, my writing was pretty much limited to the facts - who, what, when, where and why - as it should be. My columns usually touched on my personal experiences, friends and family.

So, now, as a writer of fiction it has struck me somewhat by surprise that people still try to look at everything I write as some sort of autobiographical non-fiction, with my stories rooted in true-life experiences. Frankly, there's a touch of that, but mostly it's just a guy with an imagination.

Like in Joshua's Ladder, I'm not Joshua. I'm not married to an astronaut. I'm not even married to a blonde. But, I am Catholic, and I was known to frequent a bar or two "back in the day."

So, yes, I draw on some personal experiences in my writing. They say to write what you know about. But mostly it's an imagination extrapolating upon many of the characters I've met along this 47-year journey of mine.

Among my small circle of best friends, it's a well-known fact that if I am in a bar or restraunt or sitting at the Blackjack table in Deadwood, the most unique, odd and ornery people in that place will sooner or later end up sitting next to me. I seem to attract the characters, and I love it.

So it is with these Hitchhiker short stories I've written, these characters aren't me, but they are likely based on somebody I've run across in my travels. And, yes, I have been known to pick up a hitchhiker along the way.

These stories are what I call "thinkers." There's not so much a start, middle and end, as there is just a picture of time, leaving the reader to wonder how they would react in these situations, with these characters, and if perhaps they've known one or two of them in their time.

Here's an excerpt from "Hitchhiker 3 - Wendy," which you can find in its entirety in the top left corner of the site in the "short story" section. Hope you enjoy:

Yet what red-blooded male driver wouldn't want to be accompanied by a Barbie doll hitchhiker? As she leaned her head in the car, it looked like a puppy had chewed on the head of my Barbie doll. Her face was pock-marked and drawn ghost-like over obscenely jutting cheek bones that could cut glass. Her chalky look had meth-head written all over and “trouble” should have been etched on her forehead.

But I'd committed and was getting pretty good at keeping those kinds of things, so I half-heartedly muttered: “Hop in.”

“Where you going?” she chirped, setting the backpack on her lap and closing the door.

“Kansas City. You?”

“St. Louis. Going to see Mount Rushmore.”

It took a second or two for that to register in my brain and when we were on the interstate, I mentioned the obvious or what would be obvious to you and me. “Mount Rushmore isn't in St. Louis.”

Today's pet peeve: Literally.

This one has been building in me for a while and once you start listening for it, it will start bugging you too.

Take this recent quote from a news story: "We literally flew through the air."

As opposed to: "We flew through the air."

Listen. It happens all the time. It'll drive you crazy. Eventually, you will literally go through the roof.

** If you aren’t familiar with Don Meyer’s story, you should be.

And he offered his “five vitamin Cs” that help people - and communities and institutions - build character.

Concentration, he said, is “the ability to make the main thing the main thing. Genius is 90 percent concentration.”

Courtesy: “When you're courteous, it pays; when you're discourteous, you pay.”

Communication: “Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing whether to say it.”

Compete: “Don't complain, don't whine, don't make excuses. Competitors don't complain.”

Consistency: “Lack of discipline will determine who wins in the end. You've got to expect greatness and you've got to accept only greatness.”

** Some people confuse North Dakota and South Dakota. They shouldn’t.

After Jeff Luptak flew from North Dakota to St. Paul with a 3-1/4-inch nail sticking out of his head, doctors told him the obvious: It needs to come out.

"If that's what you want to do, Doc. It's not bothering me," replied Luptak, 45, of Bismarck.

He seemed more concerned about the Scheels Sporting Goods baseball cap the nail had pinned to the top of his head beneath the hood of his sweatshirt. "I had to spend $300 at Scheels to get this free hat; I don't want it cut up," he told neurosurgeons at St. Joseph's Hospital before the operation that followed a construction accident last week.

** And speaking of hot nurses, check out this 90-year-old.

As a parent, you know you did somthing right when your kids start stealing your books. My latest order from Amazon arrived, including How Do You Kill 11 Million People, and sat on the kitchen counter for less than 24 hours before HDUK11M was missing, apparently disappearing into the hands of my poli sci major.

It'll turn up. And I'm actually happy to have raised a kid who wants to read it.

Like you care what I'm reading, but ...

I'm currently reading my fifth or sixth Tim Dorsey book. It's pretty mindless, goofball humor, not likely to make Oprah's reading list. Maya Angelou doesnt lose sleep over Dorsey eating into her sales numbers. Which is why I like him.

For instance, in Hammerhead Ranch Motel Dorsey has a character named "If."

He has another character who perspires "like a yak."

Dorsey also throws in an occassional societal comment:

"Sidney Spittle was the Twenty-First-Century American. He completed the nation's transition from a culture molded by sacrifice and hard work to a bunch of cranky, unobliged brats."

His main character is Serge Storms, a serial killer, crazier than most:

"Serge suddenly jumped back and made a startled yip. There it was again, his face on the front page, third day in a row. 'Manhunt Widens for Keys Killer.' Can't they give it a rest? You go and do a little spree killing and they never let you forget about it."

And he knows family:

"Lenny figured the trick to gator wrestling was keeping them fat and happy, and he fed them so much they lay around the pond drowsy all the time like a living room full of uncles after Thanksgiving dinner."

And I'm just halfway through this one. Stay tuned.

** Python latches onto cheek of Wisconsin book club member. Assuming she’s a Packers fan, I see no problem with this.

** Patrick Lalley at the Argus Leader tells Sioux Fallsians to toughen up, lest you be accused of being Iowans.

SOPApillas are safe for now!

You no doubt noticed that I blacked-out my website for an entire week in protest of the proposed SOPA-PILLA legislation.

Honestly, I don't understand it, but since when does having actual knowledge of an issue prevent people from getting on the bandwagon for or against it?

I just don't think government should legislate fried pastries. If you criminilize sopapillas, pretty soon only criminals will have sopapillas.

But, it looked like my activism, combined with other little websites like Wikipedia and Google, worked. I do laugh at Google though. What was their big contribution to the effort? They put a little black box over their logo? Wow! What effort. Reminds me of the chicken and pig's committment to my breakfast. The egg was a contribution, the bacon was real committment on the pig's part. Maybe next time Google will put a colored box over their logo to show real anger.

So, for now, sopapillas are safe. Though I hear an effort is underway to regulate Potato Oles. Now there's a fight I'll understand. Count me in. I might shut down my blog for two weeks on that one. My Body; My Potato Oles!

I ran across a couple cool websites. First, there is instapaper.com, where you can save stories to read later. It's kind of like a favorites list, but more like a handy place to come back and read stories at home that maybe were too long for you to waste too much time at work reading or too long to scroll through on your smart phone. Just click and it'll save them for wherever/whenever you want to read. Then again, if your job stinks, just read them at work.

The second is givemesomethingtoread.com, which is a site that takes the most popular stories that were saved by people at instapaper.com and compiles them in a handy list with a brief summary of the story or essay. This site I really like.

It pointed me to stories like:

Here Be Monsters
They did it for the simplest of reasons: adventure. Three friends, on a drunken dare, set out in a dinghy for a nearby island. But when the gas ran out and they drifted into barren waters, their biggest threat wasn't the water or the ocean—it was each other

The Immortal Horizon
Over twenty years later, that man, the man in the trench coat—Gary Cantrell by birth, self-dubbed Lazarus Lake—has turned this terrain into the stage for a legendary ritual: the Barkley Marathons, held yearly (traditionally on Lazarus Friday or April Fool’s Day) outside Wartburg, Tennessee. Lake (known as Laz) calls it “The Race That Eats Its Young.” The runners’ bibs say something different each year: SUFFERING WITHOUT A POINT; NOT ALL PAIN IS GAIN. Only eight men have ever finished. The event is considered extreme even by those who specialize in extremity.

The Atlantic has a story recommending nine books for readers and writers. The excerpt below from No. 9 touches a bit on one of my reasons for sticking to the old pulp and ink versions.

How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren:

"When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it -- which comes to the same thing -- is by writing in it.

"Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake -- not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.

"Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him."

And who am I to argue with GK?

"Anybody who can turn out a good story is probably smarter than half the corporation executives in America and a good deal more honest."

-Garrison Keillor

Beauty is in the eye of the e-book holder

I'm just not one them.

Apparently, though, a lot of you are. According to the UK telegraph, 1 of every 40 adults received a Kindle for Christmas. Supposedly, Amazon sold a Kindle every 30 seconds during the five weeks before the holiday.

Then there are Nooks, I-Pads, Sony readers, and probably even John Deere has jumped into the e-reader market.

I'm happy for those of you who have e-readers. It's just not for me yet, and for all the same reasons you've probably heard ad nauseum.

And it's not that I'm a technically declined person (though our IT guy at work might say otherwise). Frankly, I've been on the cutting edge of the techno craze, from computerizing the sports information duties at Augustana College in the 1980s, to digital photography at my newspaper while others were still using clothes pins to hang wet photo prints, to being one of the earlier ones posting e-books at smashwords.com.

It's been almost a year since I first uploaded Joshua's Ladder to the Smashwords site, followed it up a couple months later with Amy's Ladder and then a couple short stories. They've been downloaded over 3,000 times to various e-readers. And that's not counting Amazon, where I didn't post Joshua's Ladder until, I think, June.

It would be very difficult for an indie author like me to get that kind of exposure back in the day of hawking a book to publishers and the subsequent torrent of rejection letters which are common in the biz. And selling books out of the back of my car wasn't really an option either (ever seen the size of a Miata's trunk?)

So you folks go on reading any way you want. Heck, I'll write novels on a chalkboard if people will read it.

As for me, I'll stick to reading the old-fashioned books ... at least until they quit printing them.

Free stuff!

I'm starting off the new year in a good mood, so good in fact that I've decided to reward five lucky readers of this blog with a free copy of Joshua's Ladder. I figure if you're so bored as to be reading this stuff, then you deserve it. There is a catch though, as there is with anything free.

No, you don't have to sit through a promotional video. You have to (or I humbly request you) email me a picture of you reading the book in your locale, or if you live somewhere boring, go somewhere exciting and take the picture there. I'm especially hoping the dude or dudette who reads this in Alaska (yes, I can tell) requests one.

When I owned/edited/cleaned my weekly newspaper in Tea, SD, we had a deal cleverly called "They're reading The Champion in ..." and people took pictures of themselves reading the paper all over the world. It caught on so much that a lot of other newspapers stole the idead, much like I stole the idea. We even had the "Person of the Year" - nobody would ever think up a clever promotional tool like that.

So, here's the dealio. You send me an email with your mailing address and I will send you a free copy. Then, sometime, email me a picture of you reading it so I can post it here.

My email address is: markhaugensd@gmail.com.

The first five emailers will get the free paperback, postage and handling on me. Just do it! (See how easily I think up these things clever advertising ideas.) After you've read it, send it to a friend if you liked it, or to somebody you don't like if you didn't, and they can do the same thing. Maybe it'll catch on. Maybe it won't. Either way, it's your fault.

Happy New Year!