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I wrote a book! A whole book. It's about 280 standard paperback pages. I've discovered that writing books isn't too dissimilar from writing software. Sometimes it just Doesn't Work for no real reason. Then you discover the reason and feel like a genius. Sometimes it flows, and you can't identify the source of the creativity because "your brain" just doesn't seem like a viable option. Sometimes you spend dozens (hundreds?) of hours on something, then go back and redo it because you woke up in the middle of the night with an idea. Here's another similarity: like software, books require a beta audience. When I started, I didn't know how to write a book. I just had a half-baked idea and a copy of Scrivener (the best software ever.) Now I know a smidgen more. I'm not sure this book is any good. It's probably terrible. I'm already writing another novel, and I'm pretty sure it's far superior. However, I'm not done learning. I want to go through the *entire* book writing process, including finding beta readers. So here's my question. Would anyone be willing to give it a read and tell me what you think? I don't need a copy-editor, I have someone for that. I want to know if the arcs work, and if the characters work, and if the dialogue works. I want to know where you got bored. I want to exterminate unneeded scenes and build up flimsy plots. In short, I need people to read it and tell me, embracing brutal honesty, how they liked it. I can offer two things: an acknowledgment in a book that is unlikely to ever actually be published, and my eternal gratitude for helping me on a journey of which I've dreamt for years. There are lots of ways to find beta readers. There are resources on Reddit, GoodReads, and publishing platforms. But I'm frankly a little intimidated by those options, and I'm just not sure I know how to find My People there. If you're reading this, we must have something in common, if only a love of puns or dark memes. I don't think that the books should be gendered. But realistically the target audience is age 30+ women because I wrote it intentionally in the Rom-Com/Women's Book Club/Beach Read genre. It involves heterosexual, cisgender relationships. But it is, at its core, a "book about books for people who love books." I would welcome feedback from anyone willing to take the time to help me with my project. Interested? Please use the form below. Tell me who you are and why you're willing to spend your precious time helping out a (probable) stranger. If we seem like a match, I'll arrange to send you an ePub for your iPad or Kindle. Okay, well that's enough being Vulnerable for one lifetime. Thanks for reading!
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Near the end of 2023, I chronicled all the books I had read that year, along with some thoughts on how important reading was to me. I find myself reflecting again. 2024 was a hard year. I left a job that I loved more than words can say. I had some personal ups and downs. Got COVID... AGAIN. I had to give up some hobbies that were dear to me.
But some neat things happened. I made incredible friendships. I wrote a book (I'm writing the second draft now, which SUCKS and is also awesome). I spent hours and hours and hours in my pool. I went on incredible trips exploring the Midwest. Now here at the end of 2024, before we are collectively forced to endure four years of heartbreak, tragedy, and ruin from which return will be slow or impossible, I decided to use my completed books as a lens to reflect once again on the past 360-ish days. I present all the books I read in 2024, with their author, how many stars I gave them, and their length, if known.
An explanation of my star rating system: 3 stars: It's fine. I might not recommend it unless someone is looking for something quite targeted, but it was an adequate read. 3.5 stars: This is the start of my "I liked this book" range. It's usually the type of book I find enjoyable, but forgettable, or I would find it really awesome except it has a couple things that monumentally piss me off. 4 stars: I not only like this book, but find myself thinking about it a lot. Perfect? no. But something about it hit right. 4.5 stars: This is almost the perfect read. I find it difficult to give 5 stars, and so 4.5 stars usually means, "It's incredible except for this one annoyance like the overuse of parentheses" or "It was a fine book but this one little thing made it absolutely stellar" 5 stars: the perfect book. Since I started journaling my books, I believe I have given six 5 star ratings. Anything below 3 stars: I resent this book for various reasons, and the lower the number, the more I resent it. I also recognize that whatever is going on in my life very much impacts how I rate a book. For example, just because something is excellent literature, doesn't mean I rank it higher than a fluffy romcom if a fluffy romcom was what I needed at the time I was reading it. I'm writing a book. There. It's out. Only a handful of people know. Only three people know the plot. Only two people have read excerpts, and I've never met either of them. In a way, I've felt like if I admitted I was doing this, I'd be committed. And while I could handle failing privately, failing with an audience isn't something I relish (does anyone?) But now here I am, wrapping it up. I'm 9,000 words away from my "minimum viable product" word goal. 9,000 words. I often write 1,000 words or more a day. I could be done with this before Halloween. I doubt it. The ending is slower-going and I don't want to rush it. I have half a dozen "to be written" chunks in the middle that'll take me well beyond the MVP word goal. And editing this will take weeks or months. You know what I never considered? When it comes to editing a book, it's not just like reading through a couple pages of a college essay. To edit a book you have to read A BOOK. Over and over! It might be terrible. It probably is. I've never done this before. But I don't care because it's mine. Even if I have to self-publish it to get twenty physical copies of the thing, I'll do it. And now I've learned how to write a book, and I'll write another one. A better one. But beyond writing my own book, I'm a book lover. It might bleed into zealotry. I even love books I hate because the hating is so delicious. A dear friend suggested I start what the kids call a "Bookstagram," both to share my own bookish life, but also for my own works when I manage to type those elusive words, "the end." I've called it BetsysBooksies, because of course I have. I feel like I'm aging out of social media. I really like Mastodon because it's simple and old school. But I don't watch videos. I don't know how to snap. I don't do dances. I guess you can buy things on these platforms now and the privacy violations inherent in that make me feel sick. Also, the worst kinds of humans use social media to demonstrate to the literate among us why we should fear for the future. So none of that for me, thanks. But using it to connect with a community of other book nerds? I mean, okay! I'll give it a try! For years I've chronicled my reading in my book journal. A friend and I were commiserating that we missed writing, "fifth grade book reports," wherein you briefly summarize the book and then chronicle your opinions in a low stakes paragraph or two. Since 2020 I have "fifth grade book reports" for every book I've read. I'm starting my bookstagram by sharing some of those. They were never meant for public consumption. They're not well-written or deep. They're not all-encompassing or fair. They're simply my spur of the moment feelings, often dashed off half-asleep or grouchy. I'm choosing books across genres, books that I loved, and books that I hated. So. Smash that like button, or whatever the kids say. And now that I'm "out," wish me luck finishing my first ever book!  Now that Minnesota is on the map, so to speak, I'm seeing various social media posts of patronizing Minnesotans taking it upon themselves to explain "The Halloween Blizzard of '91" to an internet that didn't ask.
I understand the compulsion. For Gen X and elder Millennials, this apocalyptic storm is a cultural touchstone; a zeitgeist in and of itself. Kitschy shops and State Fair booths sell t-shirts that say, "I survived the Halloween Blizzard of '91" alongside other cultural tropes like, "I tried to ford the river but my oxen died" and "Whisky Business." And it was a legit storm. It was a Category 5 Blizzard, caused in part by the infamous "Perfect Storm." Records were shattered. The state was shut down. Freeways, infrastructure, everything: frozen, quite literally, for days. Minnesota is made to withstand snow. We know how to handle it, drive in it, remove it, and laugh about it. "Ope, blizzard with 0 meters of visibility moving in? might be a few minutes late to work. Gotta help Janice next door plow out her driveway. Those dogs of hers need to do their business somewhere!" So the fact that the halloween blizzard absolutely neutered our hardy state is telling. But all these stories are from people who lived in the Twin Cities, in the middle of the state, or Duluth up North-ish. My story is one from southern Minnesota. We got the same deadly temperatures, the same wrenching winds, and the same amount of precipitation. But ours came in the form of ICE. And let me tell you... this story only hasn't been made into a movie because Hollywood doesn't know about it. I lived in very, very rural Minnesota. Trick-or-treating was a commute with Grandma's house as the hub. In that era, there was only one day to go out and collect candy, unlike today's week-long events, and so we ignored the weather reports and drove the 15 minutes into town. Each house gave me handfuls of candy because I was one of the only kids out. My nervous parents hurried me through the neighborhood, and then hustled me home, just as rain started freezing against the windshield. When the storm yielded, everything was encumbered with three inches of solid ice. The power failed. The heat failed. We had two kerosene heaters that we moved into the living room; they generated warmth and we used them to cook ramen noodles and grocery store brand mac and cheese from a box. Their proximity melted the finish on two decorative wooden pillars, and still today at my parents' house, you can see and feel drips in the varnish: a trophy of an icy victory. About half a mile away, across a glazed and empty corn field, was the nearest paved road, and power lines ran alongside it. We stood at the windows and watched as they fell like dominos, one after another after another. We could hear the snapping of the wood and the cracking of the ice where they lay. My mom later told me that THAT was the moment she knew things wouldn't be normal for a long time. The pipes had long frozen, so we didn't have running water. My parents, no strangers to rural living, filled old milk cartons and the bathtubs overnight, while I slept with a tummy full of candy, before the pipes succumbed. No running water meant no flushing toilets. Yet Minnesotan pragmatism wins! My dad went down to the pond where in the summer I paddled a flat-bottomed duck boat and harassed frogs, chopped a hole in the ice, and brought buckets of pond water for bathroom use. Do your business, fill the bowl with groundwater, flush. Water skeeters, waiting out the long winter in the relative warmth under the ice, made the trek in with the pond water, and for weeks our toilets were filled with black bugs cheerfully zipping along the water's surface. Here's the part that should be made into a movie. The closest town— where I went to school, where we shopped, where I trick-or-treated, etc— had also lost power because the power plant went offline. The ice damaged it nearly beyond repair. It looked dire. We thought the town would be without power indefinitely. But then someone remembered the decommissioned power plant. It had been offline for YEARS. Decades! In the '70's the new power plant had been built and so the old one was unhooked and there it sat. Minnesota is sticky; people tend to find a place and stay put. Or if they leave, they return. And so that's how the city was able to find a couple of retired, elderly men who had worked at the old power plant decades earlier. Those men remembered the systems, remembered how to bring it online, and because it was effectively abandoned rather than torn down, were able to use it to restore power to the town. The town came back to life on the backs of a long-decommissioned piece of infrastructure that no one had gotten around to removing, and a group of old union guys. How is this not a movie starring Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine? I was five years old at the time. I was shielded from a number of horrors. While the nearby town's power was restored thanks to the heroics of a few retired workers, in rural Minnesota we didn't have utilities for over a week due to the toppled lines. The roads were cleared after about three days, and so many rural folks headed to town for hotels. Looters were quick to take advantage of the situation, so we stayed put in our Fortress of Solitude. My sister was 15, and this was the era of Big Bangs, and so no electricity meant no hair dryers. True suffering! The local AM radio station was asking listeners to call in with their survival tips. We were tuned in via a battery-powered radio in the kitchen when we all realized my father was mysteriously absent. This realization hit just as we heard his voice crackling from the radio, explaining how flushing toilets was easy if you had access to an axe and a standing body of water. He ended his PSA with a targeted insult at those who hadn't supported his small business in the past. I was delighted, "daddy is on the radio!" My mom and sister still shrivel in embarrassment thinking about it. When Governor Walz talks about the hardiness of Minnesotans, our pragmatism, grit, and resilience, this is it. This is normal. This is Minnesota. Yes it may come with water bugs decorating your toilets, but that's just part of the adventure. We love it here, even though 30 years later we still clutch our Diet Mountain Dew over a slightly singed hotdish, peer out the window at the darkening sky and say, "Oh jeez, looks like snow's comin'. I'd better run to Hy-Vee and get some milk, eggs, and butter. Betcha it's not half as bad as dat Halloween Blizzard of '91, tho." This is the goodbye letter I sent during my last week at Apple.
Hello! After almost 15.5 years, my time at Apple is drawing to a close. My last day will be Thursday, April 18th. If you know me, you’ll know I’m rarely at a loss for words. Yet I struggle to find vocabulary when trying to express how much Apple has meant to me. When I was about 13 my parents had the gall to take me on a road trip in a deeply embarrassing, wood-paneled station wagon. Happily we were the proud new owners of a Blueberry G3 iBook. In the backseat of that tan monstrosity (you know the type… with the third row of seats that faced backwards?) I hunched over the blue clamshell like a witch at a cauldron, ignoring the passing landscape and cringe-worthy parental oversight. My teenage angst sent me exploring deep into the bellows of Mac OS 8.6. This port in the Trapped-In-A-Station-Wagon-In-Nebraska Storm is where I fell in love with Apple. I began telling grownups that one day I (me! A little girl from a small town in Minnesota!) would work for Apple. I didn’t always believe in myself, but my parents did, moving heaven and earth to get me opportunities and hardware. While my career trajectory perhaps got its start thanks to imprisonment in a wood-paneled station wagon, some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my dad’s lap and drawing in MacPaint. This is all to say that Apple has shaped who I am from the very beginning. And just because my employment with Apple ends Thursday, the incredible things you all do ensures that Apple will continue to transform my life, and the lives of so many others. I’m very excited for what I have coming up next, but for now, thank you. These past 15 years and five months with each of you have been a joy and a privilege. I can’t believe I’ve been so lucky. Sincerely, Betsy Langowski I read a lot; I read literally every day. Sometimes for decadent hours. Sometimes for only a few minutes snatched at bedtime. Since November of 2020, every book I've finished I've chronicled in my book journal with what I call my "fifth grade book report" (nomenclature thanks to my friend Bekah!) In my terrible mathematician's handwriting I scrawl out a brief summary, my thoughts on the book, and a rating. I also capture how I found the book and what else was going on in my life, making it an odd sort of diary via the novels I devour. Here's a sample:  This is The Collected Regrets of Clover (a lovely book) that I read at the end of October, beginning of November. Apparently while reading it I visited my parents, participated in OrangeTheory's "Hell Week," and had a nice dinner out at The Brickhouse. I gave it 4/5 stars, though in retrospect I think it's more deserving of 4.5 (a hard feat). For anyone who is looking for books to read (or avoid) I thought I'd provide a list of all the books I read in 2023 with their ratings! I have been woefully negligent in updating my review blog, souloflit.com, but I'll add a few choice reviews there too over the next {insert time period that feels realistic}. Also, please remember that my ratings are not absolute judgements of quality. For example, a well-done work of chick-lit may score high for excelling at its craft or delighting me in the moment, while objectively being of lesser quality than a well-renowned novel I thought was boring. Put another way, sometimes the right trashy book finds us at the right trashy time.
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