Rebecca West, Churchill, an artistic challenge, and harvesting honey: newsletter, June 22, 2018

This newsletter was emailed to everyone on Jim’s email list (3,263) on June 8, 2018

Our lives these days seem to go in lots of different directions at once. Some folks are bothered by that, saying it doesn’t allow them to focus and concentrate. In my life, however, I find it interesting and exciting. Last week we pulled honey off of our beehives, I participated in an artistic challenge, I started two or three new books and continued on a couple I have been reading already — and there is always the writing, particularly for this newsletter.

I hope you enjoy some of the things I’ve been into.

Here’s hoping for a wonderful, idea-filled weekend for all of us.

Important: Remember to open the images or click on one of the links so that my email service will record your engagement and you will stay active on the list. Thanks.

Harvesting honey

I mentioned in last week’s newsletter that we were set to harvest our honey from our beehives last weekend. We do that once a year, and the day we do it is the most physically demanding day of the year. All of that happened for this year last Friday. The result was 11 gallons of honey or about 140 pounds. We have four hives and took some honey off of three of them.

Generally, the harvest was a satisfying one — but, as I said, physically demanding.

The harvest consists of three events: taking the honey off the hives, extracting the honey from the combs, and cleaning up. Each has its own challenges, but taking the honey off the hives is the hardest part. That was done during near 90-degree heat and wearing the protective clothing necessary to keep from getting stung.

I’ve included lots of details about each of these parts of the process in this post on JPROF.com, in case you’re interested in finding out more. The post also contains a two-and-a-half minute video that I made some years ago about how bees make honey; the video has information about the harvesting process.

Going for the audio – first

Let’s see: It’s hardback, paperback, ebook, then audiobook. That’s the natural sequence of things, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

A growing number of authors are rejecting this sequence and going straight to the . . . audiobook.

That’s what this recent article in the New York Times says. It uses non-fiction author Michael Lewis (Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt; The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine) as an example. Lewis just sold his latest work, a contemporary political narrative, to Audible, the audiobook publisher and retailer.

And Lewis has a deal for more works in audio.

Mr. Lewis is part of a growing group of A-list authors bypassing print and releasing audiobook originals, hoping to take advantage of the exploding audiobook market. It’s the latest sign that audiobooks are no longer an appendage of print, but a creative medium in their own right. But the rise of stand-alone audio has also made some traditional publishers nervous, as Audible strikes deals directly with writers, including best-selling authors like the historian Robert Caro and the novelist Jeffery Deaver. Source: Want to Read Michael Lewis’s Next Work? You’ll Be Able to Listen to It First – The New York Times

And because it’s audio and not print, some new possibilities open up. Instead of narration, there can be drama. Audible is actively look for original works to buy or commission.

As part of its push for original stories, Audible is commissioning one- and two-person plays, and recently awarded grants to 15 emerging playwrights. In May, it announced a deal with the actress and producer Reese Witherspoon to develop audio originals.

If you are an audiophile, this is all good news.

Rebecca West’s debut novel is The Guardian’s reading group selection for June

The Guardian’s online reading group is exploring Rebecca West’s first novel, The Return of the Soldier, published in 1918.

The Return of the Soldier: an incendiary, formidable debut | Books | The Guardian

The book was a ground-breaking work, according to Sam Jordison, the group’s director:

On the way to (an) unsettling conclusion, West packs in all manner of subversion. There are hints of lesbianism and adultery, as well as the eternal taboo of incest. She undermines the idea that women should exist merely to promote men’s happiness, and she pours gelignite into the foundations of the class system by making her narrator, Jenny, a terrible snob.

But while this was West’s first novel, she was already a well-established author and essayist in Britain’s early 20th-century literary constellation. West of born in 1892 and came of age as women suffragists — and suffragettes, the more active and sometimes violent wing of the suffrage movement — were attacking the male-dominated institutions that controlled much of daily life.

West wrote for the feminist week Freewoman and the Clairon, and she joined in many of the activities of the suffragists. Her writing went beyond those publications in both Great Britain and America, so that by 1916, George Bernard Shaw wrote of her, “Rebecca West could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely.”

In 1912, she reviewed H.G. Wells‘ novel Marriage and called him “the Old Maid among novelists.” That review provoked an invitation to lunch from Wells, and the two became lovers the next year. They had a son, Anthony West, during their 10-year affair, and after their affair, they remained friends until Wells’ death in 1946.

West’s life had many twists and turns, which we’ll explore later, but she always continued to write both fiction and non-fiction. President Harry Truman once called her “the world’s best reporter.”

Meanwhile, check out the novel and the reading group. The novel is a short one (about 200 pages), and The Guardian’s commentary and discussions are enlightening and intelligent. You can get a free copy of The Return of the Soldier here at Project Gutenberg.

Giveaways and offers

The Prolific Reader. Kill the Quarterback is listed there along with some other great mysteries.https://theprolificreader.com/mystery”

Independence Day Celebration — Books about Freedom. This Instafreebie group giveaway has some fantastic books by an excellent group of independent authors (including . . . ahem . . . me). You will find something to add to your summer reading stack.