Rick Springfield: A Lifetime in Music Ltd. Collector's Edition

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I'm not really interested in turning my blogs into money-making ventures. I'm posting information about and an opportunity to purchase the small number of remaining copies of the limited collector's edition of Rick Springfield: A Lifetime in Music here for one reason: I still get emails from people asking how they can get it, and I haven't gotten around to getting a website set up. That means that currently the only option is ebay, and I don't like to offer things for sale exclusively on ebay because people end up paying too much in auctions.

I've included a little (and hopefully discreet) Buy Now button on the home page of this blog, simply to have a place to direct people who inquire. Not, of course, that it will break my heart if the occasional other visitor decides to purchase one.

Having done that, though, I realized that there wasn't adequate space to provide any real information about the book, so that's what this post is all about.



The limited collector's edition of Rick Springfield: A Lifetime in Music is a small (100 page) spiral bound book formatted for display. It's printed on 80 pound paper and contains numerous black and white photographs, many of which had never been published before. The book is based on interviews with many musicians, music writers and music-industry professionals who worked with Rick over a period of nearly four decades, including:

Rick Springfield
Beeb Birtles (founding member of the original Little River Band and former Zoot bandmate)
Darryl Cotton (former Zoot bandmate and Australian musician and television star)
Keith Howland (Chicago guitarist and former Springfield touring guitarist)
Michele "Mitch" O'Driscoll (Go-Set Magazine correspondent)
Jeff Joseph (former Zoot manager)
John Kennedy (former Icy Blues bandmate and inspiration for the 1983 song "Me & Johnny")
...and many more

Click on the Rick Springfield: A Lifetime in Music tab at the top of the page to order!

This Tagging Thing is Getting out of Hand

To be fair, Barb DIDN'T tag me for this one. No, on her blog she made the kind, understanding declaration that she wasn't tagging people because she knew how busy we all were. And then she discretely left a comment here letting me know that I was "on". Actually, the comment came before the disclaimer, but that's probably not pertinent to the story.

The questions are about books, though, so how can we go wrong?

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why? Paperback to read, hardcover to reverence.

2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it... probably The House Bookstore, which would probably be trademark infringement or something, and isn't even a very good name for a bookstore. The thing is, there used to be this coffee shop in DeKalb, Illinois called The House, and it was everything a bookstore should be. They served tea in glass pots and had worn sofas and shelves full of donated books, and my sister started the very first House journal, which grew to book after book of notes, random journal entries, sketches and poetry by anyone who passed through the place. If ever you read a book of mine and there's a coffee shop in it, it's The House, even though I'll pretend otherwise, and it will always be warm and softly lit inside and raining or snowing outside the window.

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title)... oh, man. I don't know whether I should say it. It's the last line of The Sun Also Rises, and I love it because it puts the whole book in a different perspective, but that also makes it a huge spoiler. Everyone already knows it, right? Well, I'm not taking the chance. If you know what it is then you know what I mean and don't need me to write it down. If you don't, it wouldn't really mean anything to you anyway, right?

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be... Sheldon Vanauken. I discovered Sheldon Vanauken's writing several years after he died, or I would have...err...I believe the phrase "introduced myself" is probably preferable to "stalked him until he consented to converse with me". He was friends with C.S. Lewis, another of my favorite authors, and he'd be MORE than welcome to join us, but if I only get one, it's Vanauken.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be… I answered this question once before by choosing a volume I own that has 49 of Hemingway's short stories and a complete novel in it, but I think that's cheating. This time, I'm going to pick Atlas Shrugged, because it's long, I've read it a couple of times without getting bored, and it might inspire me to remember that I could figure out a way to either get off the island or make it work for me if I remembered who I was. As an added bonus, if I did get bored I could occupy myself endlessly by removing or shifting around the randomly placed commas.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that… I would not love someone to invent any bookish gadgets at all. I would like everything but old fashioned books to be abolished.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of... oddly enough, a stranger's basement. When I was in high school I needed a copy of a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and couldn't find one at the library or regular bookstore. My mother called a used bookstore listed in the telephone book and it turned out to be a book dealer with aisles and aisles of books, many of them antique, in her basement. I still remember feeling like I'd stumbled into a treasure vault.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title)... Dagny Taggart, of course.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is… That first Anne Rice vampire thing.

10. I hate it when a book… ends. Well, not any book, but when it's a really good book I really don't want to come back up out of it, and it's almost impossible to find something to read next when I've just done a full immersion thing with a book.

I'm not going to tag anyone in this post since it's only been a few days since I hit up 8 people, but watch your comments...I might stealthily come around and invite your participation....

The Best Book I've Ever Read? "BEST"? What Exactly does "best" mean?

I saw a posting in a forum this afternoon asking that question--"what's the best book you've ever read?"

As always when presented with questions that are at once subjective and categorical, I became paralyzed by questions and clarifications. It was an interesting question that got me thinking, but it wasn't one I could answer with the name of a book.

The roots of my inability to answer might lie in my internal dichotomy; when I was a teenager and the most important place in my life was a little wooden desk with a blue plastic Smith-Corona typewriter on it, the walls above that desk were adorned with two black and white posters: Rick Springfield and Ernest Hemingway.

But it might be more complicated than that, too. It might simply be that "best" means something different in one moment, in one context, in one shade of light, than it does in another. What is it that makes those books stand out in our minds as "best" and stay there for years to come? I don't know. But as writers, if we can figure it out, it can only help.

The first book I can remember really falling in love with was Willard Motley's Knock on Any Door. I think that I was thirteen or fourteen when I read it, which might explain a lot--teenage girls do seem to have a penchant for good-hearted bad boys. But maybe there was more to it than that: the book was set in Chicago, the hometown of my heart; it highlighted the way the criminal justice system often does more harm than good, a topic near and dear to my heart long before I became a criminal defense attorney; maybe the character development was very strong--Nick Romano certainly seemed a flesh-and-blood person to me then, though I haven't read the book in many years.

But then, if you asked me for my favorite book, I'd probably say The Sun Also Rises without even stopping to think. The stark, unemotional revelation of some of the hard realities of human nature couldn't be more different from the tender-hearted expression of Knock on Any Door. Hemingway made me nod sagely; Motley made me reach out unconsciously and plead with Nick not to take the next step.

Were either of them the best book I ever read? I think, at least at one time, that I'd have awarded that designation to A Severe Mercy. A Severe Mercy is the only book I can recall having sent me on a truly obsessive quest for all of the author's previous works--I even tracked down Sheldon Vanauken's master's thesis! But when someone asks for the best book I've ever read, I think there's a bit of a request for a recommendation in there, a recommendation that isn't entirely subjective, and Vanauken's best-known book is a biographical account of his conversion to Christianity and the death of his young wife, interspersed with correspondence between the author and C.S. Lewis. Not for everyone, I suspect. Which also keeps me from giving the title to The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. It was a huge hardcover book, but I carried it with me on the train, anyway. I balanced it on the edge of the sink and read it while I brushed my teeth. It seemed endless and ended too quickly. It was the most artful blending of tangentially-related stories I have ever seen anywhere in literature, fiction or non-fiction. But it's a mingled biography of Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Walker Percy. Again, not necessarily targeting a broad market.

So what about some normal books, hm?

I'm in love with Jacquelyn Mitchard. I want to be her when I grow up, but it's a problem, because I'm already 41. Jacquelyn mitchard writes books that fit into the category I'd usually call "throwaway novels"--and I don't mean that in a bad sense. I've been known to write one or two of those myself. They're simply books that we probably aren't going to buy in hardcover and keep forever on the shelf in the den. They're a good read and then you move on. Except Mitchard does something a little bit special in hers, at least for me. Whenever I read one of her books, I find myself nodding at various points and saying, "Yes, that's true. That's exactly right." Sometimes it's something I've observed before, and sometimes it's a bit of a revelation. But in every book, I find myself recognizing larger truths in the actions and reactions of Mitchard's characters. I'm still not enshrining leather-bound copies of her books, but I do keep them, and sometimes I re-read them, because they're quick and easy novels full of not-so-quick-and-easy thoughts, and some of those thoughts bear revisiting.

And I see that I've neglected to mention here that C.S. Lewis is my favorite author.

I think, though, that there is a common thread. For me, it seems that what makes a book memorable is the truth it uncovers, the layer it peels away. Hemingway did that without adjectives, without emotion, with a matter-of-fact depiction. Sheldon Vanauken did it by revealing his own aversion to the truths, and carrying the reader along his own confused and reluctant path. Willard Motley did it by painting rich emotion. Jacquelyn Mitchard does it subtly, with a sentence here and an observation there, woven so tightly in to the story and the dialogue that you're free to gloss right over those truths if you want to. But for me, I think the presence of those truths is what makes a "great book". I still don't know which one is BEST.

One Hundred Things

A hundred things is a lot. My friend Barb was working on her list a couple of days ago, and having a hard time with it, and I mentioned that I was pretty sure there WEREN'T one hundred distinct facts about me. So she started writing them for me. I think she was up to 27 or so when I decided to give it a go myself, but I suspected that it was a diversionary tactic designed to keep her from having to work on her own list...or maybe a warm-up exercise.

Anyway, I decided to give it a shot and I was surprised by how easy it was. After I finished the list, three or four additional things occurred to me that probably should have been on the list. I thought about looking for things I could replace, but that seemed like too much attention to give this kind of exercise. It's surprisingly interesting to do, though. I recommend it, even if you're not going to post the results.

1. I prefer old-fashioned film to digital photography.
2. I never look back after I've written.
3. It's hard for me to think sitting down.
4. I'm more from Mars than I am from Venus; it's often very difficult for me to understand what women are thinking and why.
5. I'd kind of started to believe that my dog was going to live forever, and I hate that I was wrong.
6. My health problems make me angry.
7. At 16, I described the child I wanted to have in great detail, and at 29 I had her.
8. I can't sing.
9. I sing all the time.
10. I am English, Irish, French and Danish in nearly equal parts, but I only feel Irish.
11. I am not as good a Catholic as everyone in my life thinks I am.
12 I've only had two jobs I didn't like in my whole life, and they were both part-time summer jobs.
13. I carried my dog in my book bag around my law school campus years before anyone had heard of Elle Woods.
14. I am friends with nearly all of the men from my past.
15. My first paid article was about McGruff the Crime Dog, and it took me hours to write.
16. A similar-length article now takes me about 20 minutes to write.
17. I can do well on any standardized test, even if I know nothing about the subject matter.
18. My left and right brains are nearly perfectly balanced, and I shift back and forth as to which is slightly dominant.
19. I love math, but I didn't know it until I was 30.
20. I recently lost my best friend, and it still hurts every day.
21. I have a hard time turning off my "work brain" and focusing on anything else.
22. I am happiest and healthiest when I go to mass every day...but I usually don't.
23. I am very messy.
24. I love blank paper, to the point that I keep buying it even when I have stacks of different varieties already at home and am doing most of my writing on the computer.
25. I have very little curiosity about other people's business.
26. I am very uncomfortable in situations in which there is nothing productive to be done.
27. My daughter is 11.5 and her beauty still catches me by surprise on a regular basis.
28. Tea is an important ritual in my family.
29. I've been saying that The Sun Also Rises is my favorite book for so long that I'm no longer sure whether it's true.
30. When I was in law school, I hung out with a bunch of guys who thought I was cool because I'd drink cheap whiskey straight from the bottle with them, but a lot of times I covered the opening with my teeth and didn't really drink.
31. I skipped a day of my bar review class to take my sister to see the Grateful Dead at Soldier Field.
32. People are often surprised to learn things about me that I thought were right there on the surface.
33. I write very fast--5,000 to 7,000 words a day if I'm mostly focused on writing, and with very little editing required.
34. I hate milk, but all other dairy products (ie: ice cream, milkshakes, cheese) are my favorite food.
35. I made yogurt in a high school microbiology class and have consequently never tasted it.
36. I miss my hair.
37. I had "morning sickness" all day every day for four months, and came home from giving birth two sizes smaller than I'd been when I got pregnant.
38. People mistakenly believe me to be social.
39. I have kept every drawing, craft, and note that my daughter has created in her lifetime.
40. I also have a box of drawings, crafts and notes my sister made for me when she was a child and I was a teenager and in college.
41. I am not sentimental.
42. I love infrequently, but completely.
43. I do not know why I blog.
44. The song "Hang on Sloopy" always makes me smile.
45. I love semi-colons.
46. I love water, whether it be in my bathtub, falling from the sky, or filling an ocean.
47. I pay for and start watching a lot of movies I don't end up finishing.
48. When I was writing my book, I listened to nothing but Rick Springfield's music continuously for nine months.
49. I have three full filing cabinets and I don't know what's in them.
50. I have storage units in two cities and I still can't fit everything in my house.
51. I get excited about mathematical patterns.
52. I can't help noticing grammatical errors; I don't want to nitpick, but they stand out to me like flashing neon signs.
53. When I see words in isolation, like on a street sign, I automatically read them in different directions and scramble the letters.
54. My bookshelf is full of books I will never read again, and the books I cherish are packed away in boxes.
55. I keep a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church near my desk for quick reference.
56. I once wrote 273 pages of a novel in three weeks, but then took years to write the ending.
57. I used to do a lot of writing on the train back and forth to work, but now I can't stay awake long enough.
58. I am surprised that I like my daughter's mice.
59. I prefer not to think about people reading what I write.
60. I don't care much about stuff; I have a painting on my living room wall because my sister brought it over and hung it up, and I'm still using the stereo my mother bought for me in 1985.
61. When I read, I skip over descriptions of rooms and locations entirely.
62. I love lightly salted rice cakes--not as a diet food or a "lesser evil" or anything like that...I eat them on purpose.
63. I didn't get my driver's license until after I graduated from college, and then probably only because my parents bought me a used car for graduation.
64. Two years later, I'd driven across at least ten states alone (but for my poodle).
65. I hate volleyball with such an all-consuming passion that I am suspicious of anyone who plays it.
66. I still collect Hot Wheels.
67. I still have the teddy bear I got just before I turned two, in 1968.
68. I was a political activist in college.
69. I once ran a welfare advocacy clinic.
70. I worked three jobs simultaneously while going to law school full time.
71. Once every couple of years or so, I suddenly think of my best friend from law school and really appreciate anew the friendship that we had and the fun and mutual support we shared...but I don't get in touch with him.
72. I miss paper letters. Email is okay, but I loved writing and receiving handwritten letters in the mail.
73. I gave up voting after GWB was elected for the first time.
74. I love soccer, but I haven't been to a game in years.
75. My library books are always late.
76. I like to read in the bathtub. If the water would stay hot and life didn't intrude, I'd stay to finish the whole book.
77. I hate meeting new people with my hair short because I feel it gives the wrong impression of who I am.
78. I improvise.
79. I say what I mean--it's a big waste of time and counterproductive to try to read between the lines and figure out what I "really mean"--I really mean what I said.
80. A nurse tried to "hold back" my birth until my mother's doctor arrived to cover her own mistake, and without the intervention of a young intern at Jackson Park hospital in Chicago, I might have been brain damaged.
81. I haven't really given any new music a fair listen since the late 80s or early 90s.
82. I tell my daughter every day that she's exactly who I always wanted.
83. Getting caught in a downpour makes me laugh out loud.
84. In high school I got physically ill whenever I had to give a speech.
85. I've made a good part of my living as a teacher and public speaker.
86. I do not like poetry.
87. I love to discover people who are better/stronger/faster than I am in intellectual and professional arenas and work to keep up with them.
88. In my teens and early twenties, I avoided shorts because I thought my legs were fat; now that they really are I couldn't care less and wear what I want.
89. I didn't go to the dentist for 22 years.
90. I love to throw things away; I check my coupons hoping that they've expired so that I can clear them out.
91. I only own one pair of jeans, and that only because my mother insisted that everyone needed at least one pair of jeans and bought them for me.
92. I have as many vacuums as I have carpeted rooms in my house.
93. I am afraid of spiders to the point of possible phobia, but other bugs don't bother me in the least.
94. I love Neons. I can't think why anyone would want a whole, real, grown-up car when we could all have these friendly little high-mileage, easy to maneouver, practically free cars.
95. Every Monday when I'm dragging my garbage can up the hill behind my house at 6:00 a.m., I wish that I was married.
96. I have had two dogs who were well and truly mine throughout their lives, and I feel disloyal to both; each of them deserved to be the best dog a person ever had.
97. I don't have an artistic or decorative bone in my body.
98. I don't care in the least if you dislike me for who I am, but being misunderstood makes my brain explode.
99. I have been a lawyer, a receptionist, a hostess in a restaurant, a business college instructor, a curriculum developer, an author, a journalist, a salad prep girl, a telephone solicitor for the American Heart Association, a teacher trainer, a stay-at-home mother, and a night auditor in a hotel.
100. I'm madly in love with my kid. That probably sounds trite and overlaps with half a dozen other things I've said, but anyone who knows me would probably agree that it's my defining characteristic.

Cover Art Expose at Novelish.com

I really, really, really need to be asleep, but I couldn't resist a quick note to share this fascinating post about duplicate cover art at Novelish.com. Seems stock photograph has its downsides, and one of those downsides is prominently on display right now, with side-by-side images of various novels with some...err...familiar-looking images on the front!

It's definitely worth a read purely for entertainment value, but it raises larger issues as well. Are these publishers getting sloppy, or is it okay to duplicate cover art? Does the association with one book help to sell a later book that uses a slightly altered version of the same photograph? (And if so, might some of these duplications be calculated?) As authors, how do we feel about stock photography that might be recycled again and again becoming the "image" of our books?

It's a topic we could explore all night, but I'm going to keep it brief for tonight in hopes that some others will weigh in