Ahoy, Ladies...

Soon after I reviewed Steel by Carrie Vaughn, Slate's Brow Beat posted "A Short History of Lady Pirates" in honor of the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I thought it important to link to this as it features Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who both have cameos in Steel.

The column culls its history from David Cordingly's Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailor's Wives, which seemed appropriate as Cordingly's Under the Black Flag sailed on to the non-fiction bestseller lists with the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

For those of you looking for a jolly good pirate read on the fiction side, you should check out the Bloody Jack series by LA Meyer.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

The Pirate Encyclopedia brought to you by Snorg Tees.

It be "International Talk Like a Pirate Day," me hardies. And tonight I will swash my buckle and down my grog with my maties. In honor of this most holiest holy days, here be a book list for you:

Pirates! by Celia Rees: An oldie, but goodie much beloved by the HTC.

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World by (amazing, wonderful, just not enough adjectives to describe her) Jane Yolen because male pirates shouldn't have all the fun. Read this in conjunction with Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives by David Cordingly.

The Pirate Life by "Chumbucket" Baur and "Cap'n Slappy" Summers: The men who (un)intentionally brought us Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The Pirate Primer by George Choundas, so you be speaking the pirate speak while you be living the pirate life.

The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard. The sub title be saying it all.

The Sea Rover's Practice by Benerson Little. How else will you learn how to pillage your enemies and come along a victim ship?

To Catch a Pirate by Jade Parker: Swashbuckling, treasure and romance.

The History of Pirates by Angus Konstam et al. A bargain book that is no longer in print, it still has the pedigree of an author who used to run the armory for the Tower of London and the Key West Maritime Museum.

And although they are not out yet...

In November, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the N World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge by Edward Kritzler. Two words: Pirate Rabbis.

In February 2009, The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King. Go visit the official website.

Questions, Answers, Online, Directions, and Publicity Kits,

First things first, for the person who came to this site with the search phrase “i want to read tales of the otori for free” I have an answer for you, it’s called the library. You can find the Tales of the Otori series and many other fine, fabulous books for absolutely no money down…unless you have library fines. That I can’t help you with.

Secondly, I want this book, however I will probably have to follow the library advice I gave above for currently the funds are lacking. Ms. Kate Rothwell, add this one to your suggestions list.

Now on to the real business. On the “Online Publicity Kits: Do You Have One?” column Lynda Hilburn asked, “I have a question about the press kit. Everything you talked about is on my website, but I don't have a specific button called "press kit." Is it enough that all my materials are accessible?”

You do not need a specific button called press kit, no. Your site is laid out in such a way that if you wanted to create a downloadable PDF file on your bio page you could, but it is not necessary. Instead you should have all this information saved on your computer in a Word or PDF document that you can copy (the text and the hotlinks) into an email or just attach the document along with the pictures to your email. Save the jpegs for when you know you will be hosted on the other site so as to avoid getting sent directly to the trash folder. If you wanted your trailer included in a guest column or interview, you would send that link along with anything else you thought the writer might need. Given that most bloggers I know don’t reside in basements, but actually work full time jobs as well as blog, anything you can provide to make their job easier the better. So keep a file on hand on your desk top just in case.

Lynda’s question and my own column got me thinking about the role of Press Releases/Publicity Statements on the internet. For me they often seem to lose their impact when all I get from a subject line is “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.” That’s good to know, but what is for immediate release? Why should I care?

The impact of the title line is lost because I’m not even tempted to open the email.

Of course, I’m an odd duck, so I want to hear your opinion. Have any of you received emailed Press Release/Publicity Statements that worked? How’d they do it? Have any of you written one that has received a good response?

As always, interested in what you have to say.

Un-Book(i)ed

I’m no longer Mistress of the Ponies, Queen of the Pick Sixes, or Proprietress of the Superfectas. I’ve had to let Giovanni and Paulo go to break knees for others, and I’ve erased all the names in my book (good news for all y’all who didn’t think to the bet on someone other than the filly in the Belmont Stakes).

In other words, my reign as a Bookie is over, and my time in homework land has begun. Also, it means I have no excuse to clean my house.

Darn.

I had a dream last night that one of the regulars called, a very sweet older man who bets with a partner, and I was reading off his regular requests: morning line odds, weights of the jockeys and the distance of the race in furlongs. In the middle of reading the list, I realized that the track had something like twenty horses running, something unusual for an American track—but not for a British or Japanese race—and I almost commented that this didn’t seem like his sort of race. Instead I just converted furlongs to miles* for him and sent him on his way, turning to my cubicle mate after I hung up to crack a joke about one of the horse’s names.

I woke up to the realization that I’d absorbed way more horse racing knowledge than I’d previously thought, and I was going to miss most of those guys and gals.

In honor of my former profession, it seems only right to compile a list of books that revolve gambling of some sort. Off the top of my head I can think of two nonfiction titles—Positively Fifth Street and Bringing Down the House—and one fiction title—Get Shorty had gambling elements didn’t it?—but none of them revolve around horse racing.

Luckily I know some readers.

So know any books with gambling as a theme or element (horse racing as either wins you double points)? If so put them in the comments below.**

*Eight furlongs equal a mile.

**Or comment other sundry gambling related entertainment (movies! Songs!). Just build a list people. I’d hate to have to rehire Giovanni and Paulo to force compliance. Although they could probably use the work.

Meme, Meme, Meme (Part the One)

There have been a lot of memes going around lately, or maybe it just seems that way to me because I’ve been tagged with a lot of memes after a long meme dry spell. Instead of answering those memes when I received the tag, however, I’ve slacked off to do actually work, spend time in the sun or just read a book. (Also I tend to over-think memes leading to the process taking far longer than it should, and proceeded to do so these last few days outside.)

Well, the slacking (and over-thinking) is over, and I’ve decided to bundle all the memes into one post. If you haven’t answered any of these memes (from Kate or Robin or web or Mary Warner of the Bedroom Reader) feel free to view this as an open invitation to do. I’m horrible at tagging people.

First, Kate’s “Sort of Obscure Books” meme, which was created by the lovely Jennie of Jennie’s B(ook)log.

The rules:

List and describe three of your favorite books that other people might not be familiar with. Then tag five people. See, easy!

My three “not really that obscure, at least I don’t think so” books were hard to come up with because I have a habit of shouting my love of certain titles and authors (Christopher Moore! Lamb! Jonathan Stroud! Bartimaeus!) on this blog with all the fervor and conviction of a newly converted reader. Then, having shouted about them loud and long, I just assume everyone then reads these titles taking them from the realm of obscure to mainstream. Or maybe they were mainstream to begin with and I just missed it somehow because I’m less than observant sometimes. I mean, I looked at this list of “The Best Novels You’ve Never Read” and it is true. I’ve never read any of them. Sold a lot of them, but never read them.

Obviously I am a book failure.

Anyway, here are some books you might not have heard of:

The China Garden by Liz Berry. I picked up a copy of the China Garden many, many years ago (around age 14 or 15) at Powell’s not really knowing anything about it. I don’t know if I just had money to spend or it just looked interesting or what, but I must have picked it up and put it down three or four times. Even after I finally decided to buy it, I think it took me a couple of days to get around to reading it. When I did, however, I was blown away. Here was a really well-written young adult novel with strong world building and mythology. Clare was a strong heroine, and Berry expects her readers to keep up with Clare adventures into a world that draws heavily on old mythology. When I was looking to find a cover to post with this blurb, I ran across the School Library Journal review of this book on Amazon which says (among other much nicer things):

“Ordinary teens will find The China Garden overwhelming, if not incomprehensible. It is very British, full of unfamiliar words and phrases. It is laden with historical, mythological, architectural, and religious references that would baffle many adults.”

The Britishness? Didn’t bother me at all. The unfamiliar words and phrases? It is called a dictionary, my friends. And the “historical, mythological, architectural, and religious references that would baffle many adults” made me think and do research.

Oh, my gawd, Becky! A book that makes you want to go out and learn more. Oh Noooooes, not a book that forces you to think!

I really hate it when people view that as a detraction. More books should try to make their readers think and The China Garden managed to do it without being incomprehensible, in my opinion. It just requires a close reading.

And speaking of books that make you think, if for some reason you haven’t read Katherine Neville’s The Eight yet, you’re missing out. Not only does it make chess interesting, but it made me want to learn about Charlemagne and the 1790s the time period in which one of the storylines takes place). This is a thinking person’s Indiana Jones, or what the Da Vinci Code could have been in very skilled hands. Neville manages to follow two separate stories (taking place in 1972 and 1790 respectively) and wind them around a mythical chess set owned by Charlemagne purported to give the winning player immortality (or at the very least, invincibility).

According to everything I’ve read, The Eight is considered a cult classic, having been reprinted several times since its 1988 release. I known that it frequently pops up on favorite lists of people I follow, and it got quite a boost as a “If you liked the DaVinci Code, then you might like…” book (given that it is slightly more accessible to most than The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, it was a book that I would often suggest). I first learned about it in England when I picked it up at a bookstore in London. I find it far superior to the other novels I’ve read by Neville (or perhaps I was just soured by The Magic Circle) and I hear that she is contemplating writing a sequel. An intriguing, but unnecessary thing, as The Eight is strong enough to stand on its own.

The Idiot Girls Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life by Laurie Notaro (picture forthcoming), ranks up there with Sedaris for me. She tells it like it is--all of life's foibles and our own inability to avoid them--while making you laugh out loud. Oh, and we share the same lack of filter between our brains and our mouths that keep us from saying stupid/offensive/ill-thought out things.

And that concludes the end of part one of "Meme, Meme, Meme" for the moment because the phones are ringing off the hook here at work. I'll hopefully be back to answer the rest of these later.

The 2006 Challengers Answered! (After a Year and Much Out-sourcing)

Remember way back in '06, when I challenged you to a book duel and y'all took me seriously and made with your lists? And remember how I made a few suggestions and then promptly did nothing else as I moved on to the next new thing, thus re-affirming my flakiness in y'alls eyes.

Well, guess what? I'm not the flake you thought I was. Nope. I'm just really, really slow.

That's right, I've kinda-sorta completed a list of suggestions for those of you who offered up you "five books that you loved." Which means that the one or two of you who submitted your lists and still read this blog with some sort of regularity now may have something to add to your reading piles (or now have something to disagree with me vehemently about).

But before you scroll down allow me a moment to explain why this took so damn long. First, my head kind of exploded when so many people took me up on my challenge. It's true. I thought I would get--at the most--five of you, and instead there were a lot, lot more. Secondly, I did try my damnedest to work on this while at the bookstore but funny things kept happening, like, you know, needing to work. So when I would come across a suggestion I would write it down on piece of paper and stick in in my pocket, then when I came home, instead of taking it out immediately upon returning home and recording the information it would stay there. It would continue to stay there, in fact, until I washed the pants and the little scrap of paper was then reduced to a little ball of unreadable mush that didn't do any of us any good.

So why didn't I work on it when I was home and unemployed? Good question. Probably because unemployment turned me into a little ball of unreadable mush, not good for much of anything. I need structure. I need something to drive me. I need that damn employment.

(Side note: this complete lack of drive is something that I always feared would happen to me if I moved back home with my parents for any period of time and the reason I turned down the opportunity to do so on many occasions despite the fact that my bank account would have thanked me.)

Turns out that it doesn't matter what this employment is, just so long as it occupies one part of my brain so the other half is free to do and work on whatever it needs to. Since I'm stuck in front of the computer for long periods of time where I'm not answering phone calls or learning the facts about horse racing (don't do it. Just don't ever do it.), I've suddenly got time to work on other things. Book related things. Like interviews and book giveaways and recommendations!

I can finally complete all those things I've promised without feeling like I'm not using my time wisely!

Break out the champagne and the exclamation marks people, it is time to celebrate. The original lists are in plain text, the books with suggestions previously attached to them are underlined and the new suggestions are highlighted in yellow (or at least they were when I set up the document). I was going to go into an explanation for each suggestion, but then my head got explode-y again and I decided to let you do the equivalent of reading the back by giving you the Amazon link. Hope these work for you, I'm interested to hear what you think.

(Disclaimer: As stated in the original post "I reserve the right to recommend the same book multiple times" because that's how most booksellers operate. )

The Challengers:

Marta:

A Confederacy of Dunces - O'Toole: Apathy and Other Small Victories or Breakfast of Champions: Kings of Infinite Space by James Hines
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Vargas Llosa
Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff – Moore
Decline & Fall – Waugh: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Persuasion – Austen: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Being There by Jerzy Kosinski


Susan Wilbanks:

Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers (characterized by humor and mystery) Laurie R. King mysteries, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Boris Akunin's Mysteries, To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome, Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
His Majesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik: Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon
In This House of Brede - Rumer Godden: Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly (admit that I cheated a bit with this and looked at the also bought on Amazon. After reviewing the different choices, Mr. Blue sounded very fascinating with its inclusing of a different religious aspects. Might also want to check out nonfiction biography, Mother Angelica.
Sharpe's Triumph - Bernard Cornwell
Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond: Collapse, 3rd Chimpanzee and anything by E.O. Wilson, or Black Bodies and Quantum Physics: Tales from the Annals of Physics

Penny L. Richards:

Octavia Butler, Kindred
Michael Berube, Life as We Know It
Anna Lanyon, Malinche's Conquest: If you're interested in reading more takes on Malinche, there's the new book by Laura Esquivel called simply, Malinche.
Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding
Lisa See, On Gold Mountain: Bound Feet & Western Dress by Pang-Mei Chang, Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong

Interested in more historical fiction:

Stolen Tongue by Sheri Holman
Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

Andrea:

Snow Wolf- Glenn Meade: John LeCarre Constant Gardener and others, Katherine Neville's The Eight.
The Sculptress- Minette Walters: The Halo Complex by MJ Rose, A Great Deliverence by Elizabeth George
Lonely Hearts- John Harvey
lost boy lost girl- Peter Straub
Geek Love- Katherine Dunn: Clown Girl by Monica Drake

Phineas Poe by Will Baer
Stolen Tongue by Sheri Holman

Cee:

1. Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver: Kingsolver's newest nonfiction--Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
2. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
3. Doomsday Book - Connie Willis: The Necessary Begger by Susan Palwick
4. An Equal Music - Vikram Seth: Possession by AS Byatt
5. The Assassin Trilogy - Robin Hobb

Susan Adrian:

1. Seen by Moonlight, by Kathleen Eschenburg
2. If I Never Get Back, by Daryl Brock
3. Suspicion, by Barbara Rogan: The Uninvited (if you can find a copy) by Dorothy Macardle, or Shattered Silk by Barbara Michaels
4. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis: The Necessary Begger by Susan Palwick

5. The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper: Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials Trilogy

Robin Brande:

1. Polar Dream, by Helen Thayer: A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu , Artic Dreams by Barry Lopez
2. Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynne Cox: Grayson also by Lynne Cox, about her adventures with a young whale when she was a child.
3. Road Fever, by Tim Cahill: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, not zany like Cahill, but a great travel narrative.
4. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
5. The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman

Christine Fletcher:

1. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
2. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
3. Nobody's Fool, Richard Russo: October Light by John Gardner
4. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton: Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
5. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

Because you are a fan of the classics:

Henry James' Turn of a Screw (very psychological) or Portrait of a Lady

Master & Margarita by M. Bulgakov

Web:

1) Lincoln's Dreams - Connie Willis: Kindred by Octavia Butler
2) Then She Found Me - Elinor Lipman: What Comes After Crazy by Sandi Shelton
3) The Easy Way Out - Stephen McCauly: The Zookeeper by Alex Maclennan
4) I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
5) Joy in the Morning - Betty Smith

Diana P:

Arrow's Flight by Mercedes Lackey
Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich
Dragonsquest by Anne McCaffrey
Face the Fire by Nora Roberts
Midnight in Ruby Bayou by Elizabeth Lowell

Allison Brennan's Trilogy The Prey, The Hunt, and The Kill
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
Covenants: A Borderlands Novel by Lorna Freeman
Hammered by Elizabeth Bear
City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

Janni:

1. A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeleine L'Engle
2. Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson: Good Girls by Laura Ruby
3. The Ice Queen, Alice Hoffman
4. Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (a play for a play)
5. Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip

Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey
The Fallen by Thomas Sniegoski
Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper
Anything by Robin McKinley

Lady T:

1)Northanger Abbey/Jane Austen
2)The Ladies' Auxillary/Tova Mirvis: Joy Comes in the Morning by Jonathan Rosen (if you want to stay with themes of change in Judaism) or Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen
3)Mammoth Cheese/Sheri Holman
4)Swan Song/Robert McCammon
5)Popco/Scarlet Thomas: You've probably already picked this up, but The End of Mr. Y by Scarlet Thomas came out in 2006

Heartburn by Nora Ephron (book not the movie)

Sue:

1. The Year the Music Changed by Diane Thomas
2. Come Like Shadows by Welwynn Wilton Katz: Ophelia by Lisa Klein
3. Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson: Dead Clever by Scarlet Thomas
4. The Goddess of 5th Avenue by Carol A. Simone
5. The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel

The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Rodney Doyle

Katherine:

1. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway
2. All Didion: Day of the Locust and the Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West
3. All Chekhov (the stories, the plays): anything by Guy de Maupassant
4. Always Cheever, but never Updike: Nabokov or Apppointment in Samara by John O'Hara
5. My Phantom Husband, Marie Darrieussecq

Paul (whose profile is unavailable):

1. Tomcat Murr - ETA Hoffmann
2. At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien: The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
3. Master and Margarite - M. Bulgakov: The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf
4. Carmichael's Dog - R.M. Koster: Kurt Vonnegut's novels, TC Boyle
5. The Kiss of the Spider Woman - Manuel Puig: Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn

Poet of Tolstoy Park by Sonny Brewer

Anything by Mario Vargas Llosa

Beth:

1. World's End, T.C. Boyle
2. A Gesture Life, Chang-Rae Lee: Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller
3. Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman: Ruined by Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
4. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris: Bleachy-haired Honky Bitch by Hollis Gillespie
5. The Instance of the Fingerpost, Iaian Pears: Did you read Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose or Bombay Ice by Leslie Forbes or Season for the Dead by David Hewson

Goddess of Fifth Avenue by Carol Simone

Jmc:

1. Persuasion, Jane Austen
2. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
3. Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie
4. The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye: Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (first in the Cairo Trilogy)
5. Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov

The Eight by Katherine Neville


Ms. Librarian:

The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri Tepper
Combat in the Erogenous Zone, Ingrid Bengis
The Once and Future King, T. H. White: Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart
On Basilisk Station, David Weber: Linnae Sinclair's Gabriel's Ghost
The Pride of Chanur, C. J. Cherryh: The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

Otterb (who shares a mind with Susan Wilbanks and should see her list):

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King: The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, favorities are Memory and The Curse of Chalion.
The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris: In This House of Brede - Rumer Godden
Pilgrim's Inn, Elizabeth Goudge
Liaden Universe books, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Michelle:

Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Use of Weapons - Iain M.Banks
Acid Row - Minette Walters: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears or Bombay Ice by Leslie Forbes or Season for the Dead by David Hewson
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Alua:

Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay: The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey: The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop
Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro
Hero and the Crown - Robin McKinley
Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman: The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper

Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear

Kate R:

1. Bartimaeus trilogy (it'll come out as one book some day)
2. Once and Future King TH White: See me telling everyone to check out the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper
3. Bottom of the Harbor (essays about old NY) Joseph Mitchell: A Pickpocket's Tale or City of Eros by Timothy Guilfoyle or A Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower
4. October Light John Gardner: Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
5. 100 Years of Solitude. Marquez

Because it is a mind trip and everyone should try a book where you can rearrange the sections and it comes with a set of instructions: Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

I hope this works for y'all because I'm a wee bit smashed after putting this together, and flattened bookseller does not bode well for further productivity.

Image stolen from the Boss Lady who has other pictures of the cohorts and such for view if one scrolls down far enough on the side bar of her blog.

Relying on the Unreliable

I'm deep in allergy hell right now, and for some reason this got me thinking about unreliable narrators (probably due to how unreliable my brain becomes on allergy meds), specifically the good, the bad and the ugly. I happen to really enjoy a narrators who lie (to me and to themselves) in movies (Usual Suspects), TV (Black Donnellys), and books (Catcher in the Rye), and I'm always on the look out for suggestions.

So bring it on: Who's the best and worst of the unreliable narrators out there? What makes them work? When do they cross the line?

Oh, The Places You Will Go, Girls

I had several bookish friends growing up (Big surprise, I know), it was never just me sitting alone in a corner reading—not unless I wanted it to be. When we weren’t outside playing or composing soap operas with our dolls and My Little Ponies, we’d be draped across one another like puppies on the floor or on my bed; have staged a takeover of a table in the library, propping our elbows up on our backpacks to achieve the most comfortable reading position; or be smashed together in the bus seats, tuning out the world with words. When we were done with this book or that, we’d trade, discuss or recommend something else. Series titles, stand alone, historical, fantasy, science fiction, contemporary: it didn’t matter. We read widely and eclectically. We read because we could. Because in books you can be anyone—anything—and not have to worry about limitations.

I wish that my teachers had done more with that, shown us what opportunities were out there by telling us where to try and submit writing and teaching us the finer arts of book discussion at a younger age. Not that they were bad by any means, in fact, comparatively speaking I got a better education than my brother did despite there only being four years between us. My teachers did what they could, but with each successive year trying to make up for the failings of the last they were fighting an uphill battle as curriculum requirements, teaching styles and classroom sizes changed. While I was lucky in that I came into grade school knowing how to read—all the children from my co-op kindergarten did—I never would have become the reader I am today without the help of Miss Cleo.

Cleo volunteered for our grade school, and in my mind I always see her as this very grandmotherly woman. I have no idea if she’d had children come up through our school, or if she was a retired teacher looking for something to do, but she believed in education and the power of reading. Looking back on those years, I can’t think of a time that she wasn’t in the classroom, reading to us or with us in individual or small group sessions. She helped us build our vocabularies and ran through our flash cards. She gave us the one on one attention that we needed as we struggled over how to sound out the big words and divine their meaning through context. She loved reading, teaching, and most importantly us, which came through in every action and word. There were no “can’ts” with Miss Cleo, just “coulds” and “woulds” because all we had to do was try hard enough.

I wonder if she knew how many lives she helped and changed. I like to think she did. The volunteer award for the district was created in her honor and to this day bears her name. Because if you’re going to win that award, you’d better measure up to the standards Miss Cleo set.

I think that readergirlz, a website dedicated to celebrating Young Adult books and strong female characters and encouraging discussion with other teenage girls, would be a site that Miss Cleo would be proud to recommend. Justina Chen Headley, Dia Calhoun, Janet Lee Carey, and Lorie Ann Grover have a created a website for teen girls to “encourage teen girls to read and reach out with community service projects related to each featured novel. As well, readergirlz will host MySpace discussions with each book's author, include author interviews, and provide book party ideas, including playlists, menus, and decorations.” Each month will also have a topic—this month’s being Tolerance—and girls are encouraged to visit the links provided to learn more about what they can do to help improve their own social and physical environment.

Reading is not a solitary activity, it never has been. As soon as your laughter at a phrase or joke causes someone to ask what’s so funny or you open your mouth to tell your sister/brother/mother/father/friend about this plot or that, you’ve left the solitary act of reading words on a page behind. This need to discuss, to share creates a group activity, and is why we’ve seen the proliferation of reader blogs and sites. It’s why the entire country can go gah-gah over a book whose plot and writing—while not complex—made people feel smart and gave them something in common to talk about on the train or in the office. Reading, we’re discovering once again, is fun.

And, gosh darn it, people like it!

And they like to talk about it, finding different perspectives and thoughts. They like that they don’t necessarily have to be an expert in theory or be able to tell the difference between a Post-Modern piece and a Romantic one. They like that they can learn information while not feeling like it’s being jammed down their throats in an academic setting.

I have high hopes for readergirlz. I want to see this work and allow young women to connect across racial, religious and borderlines and celebrate their love of reading. I want to see them grow the idea and expand by offering girls links to where they can try submitting their own writing, providing a little how-to on creating your own ‘zine, and highlighting girls who personify the readergirlz ideal when these authors meet them during tours.

So on this most Suessical day, I think it’s only right to look forward to the places these woman will go and the girls they’ll take with them. I’m sure that the spirit of Miss Cleo will be along for the ride.

Horror is the new Black

Apparently Horror is back with a vengeance so don’t go saying bloody Mary in a dark bathroom mirror anytime soon. Or so implies the UK’s Independent Online in their article “Why horror writing will be big in 2007,” in interesting piece that looks at the resurgence of Horror as a viable market.

The article discusses the Horror genre from its fall due to glut in the ‘80s to its rising popularity in today’s market. Here in the States, books like David Wellington’s Monster Island and Monster Nation have done exceedingly well as have Max Brooks’ more comedic horror pieces The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. And one has only to look at the top five movie releases to see Horror is once again making the big bucks, a trend that is being reflected in a receptive publishing world. It is no surprise then that 2007 will see the release of some well-hyped horror novels from Joe Hill’s Heart-shaped Box (the author was recently outed as Stephen King’s son) to Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts (already being eagerly fought over by Hollywood).*

Despite this new upsurge in Horror love, many of these books are being released under the heading of General Fiction in the UK in an attempt to gather a wider audience. As I mentioned in my interview with writer Joe Nassise (author of the novel, Heretic, Book One in the Templar Chronicles), I (as well as many others out there) tend to equate Horror novels with Horror movies—more specifically the Horror movies that lend themselves to Torture Porn (see: Hostel, Touristas, Saw, etc). While I’m all for a good scare and something to get the heart racing, I don’t want to read a novel where the gratuitous violence becomes desensitizing. When I mentioned this to Joe he kindly pointed out that this was a rather skewed view:

“To me, horror is anything that evokes a feeling of dread or fear. This means that many books that are not marketed as horror certainly have some horrific elements to them. Conversely, it also means that horror novels have a tremendous amount of room to live and breathe in and equating them with the dull and many times plotless slasher films of the last two decades doesn't give them the credit they deserve.

Certainly horror has its share of gore and guts, but it also has the lyrical symphony that is the writings of people like Peter Straub and Caitlin Kiernan, the evocative descriptions of Glen Hirschberg and Thomas Liggotti, the action and adventure of Tim Lebbon and Chris Golden. And I could go on in this vein for hours. A few years ago Alice Seibold won the Bram Stoker Award, one of horror fictions two highest literary honors, for her novel THE LOVELY BONES, in which a dead girl narrates the disintegration of her family following her rape and murder. Aside from the fact that the book is narrated by a ghost, there isn't a single element of the supernatural in the entire work, yet it was clearly seen as horror for the feelings it evokes.”

The sentiment is echoed by Will Elliot, author of The Pilo Family Circus (currently unavailable in the US), when he says, “I find more is possible in a story when the rules of reality can be disregarded. Writing in, I guess you could call it magic realism, makes it possible to hold up a warped mirror to our world and laugh at the strange shapes reflected in it. That way fiction can be a complete escape from our world or, if you want, you can analyse the reflections and try to apply them, extracting some kind of relevant meaning.”

This “meaning,” according to the Independent, may stem from our fear of terrorism in the world at large or our apathy to it. Are we looking for an escape from the realism of today’s world or just something to give us the jolt of adrenaline to keep on going? While the answer may be different for different people I think the presence of escapism plays an integral part.

We have become a society that embraces the escape whether through reading, gaming or watching TV. Harry Potter made it socially acceptable for adults to enjoy a child’s world filled with wizards and witches and the cult success of Buffy (as well as the rise of Geek Chic) played into the need within us all to indulge our imaginations. It is fine for a “grown up” to discuss whether or not Snape is evil or proudly admit that they followed a certain Vampire Slayer before she was “popular” and Whedon became a name synonymous with kick-ass girl power. We can embrace what drove our inner child to create fantasy worlds and outrageous tales while still holding down a nine-to-five job and fighting for the American Dream.

And what is Horror but an indulgence in our primal fears (the anti-American Dream if you will) that there is someone lurking around the corner or under the bed, while allowing us to control the outcome whether by flipping to the last few pages, setting the book down or fast-forwarding the movie? With the ability to somewhat control the outcome and know that the story comes with an endpoint, we can embrace the fear, even revel in it. We can be chased by serial killers, see ghostly figures in the mirror and run from demon possession—live beyond our physical capabilities—for a few hours a time between checking email and making dinner for the kids.

Will Horror continue to be embraced? I don’t see anything stopping it. The presence of Paranormal Romance and the strength of titles falling under the Urban Fantasy setting show that Horror in its varied forms has been around for awhile and it just needs more strong stories and inventive writers to keep it strong.

Your thoughts?


Tomorrow: Watch me rip Steve Jones a new one for sneeringly lumping all Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy under what he derogatorily labels “Para Porn,” and discuss how tagging that bit (British slang connotations totally applicable) on at the end weakened the discussion of the blossoming Horror genre as a whole. I would love to incorporate your thoughts as well.


*Also mentioned in the article is Charlie Houston’s Already Dead, a novel previously released in the US in 2005 (after receiving a starred review from PW). Its follow-up, No Dominion, became available here in December 2006.

Where Did The Time Go?

Ahh! I was all set to have a semi-leisurely morning. Got up, washed my dishes from last night, made some coffee and sat down to blog…when my mom called.

(She wants “that book on nonviolent dog training.”)

Okay, cool. Phone call over. Read some articles, look at the time and—What the? How is it eight already? I was gonna blog! Prove that the Christmas season and sucked me into a whirlpool of tinsel never to be heard from again!

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Time has been sorely lacking this week because the big-wigs are coming through and the store(s) (secondary business included) must look looooovely, dahling. Which is funny, because keeping any store looking pristine during Christmas requires a pact with the dark side and a whole battalion of elves.

(And while I’m willing to get down with my own evil I refuse to wear pointed ears and a fur trimmed hat. I have some dignity.)

So here’s the book word as far as I’ve been told:

When Richard Powers is interviewed, people listen…and like. The Echo Maker has become very popular.

The true Omnivore’s Dilemma is whether or not to buy one copy or two of the Pollan book for the foodies in their lives.

Roz Chast is the name on many a comic-lover’s lips, but I cannot get the book into the store because my supplier tells me they are out at the publisher. Is this true Bloomsbury? ‘Cause you’re killing me here because only some of my customers will take the Best American Comics 2006 as an alternative.

If you read, even a little bit, chances are you will get a Barak Obama book for Christmas from someone you know (at least if you live in my town).

There’s a whole lot more like this, but I have to make with the showering, dressing and makeup putting on-ing so that I won’t scare the world. So ta-tah for now. Just remember: if there is even one sticker left on a book from a previous sale, a customer will not only find it, but use it to haggle over the price of their purchase. Doesn’t matter if it is buried behind eight other books or up in overstock, it’s like they have a nose for these things. Somehow I forget this every year.

Please add any and all book news of note (to you and/or the rest of the world) in the comments if you feel the need. Share the insanity.

Help A Mamma Out

So I cruised on over to Beth’s to see who’s Smart Bitchin’ it today when I came across Suisan’s entry. Suisan’s daughter is caught in sixth grade English hell where there is absolutely no latitude in the teaching style and it’s driving the poor girl crazy. Suisan’s devised an at home program using short stories that her daughter really seems to enjoy, but she could use a few more recommendations like:

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County by Mark Twain

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Modern Cinderella; Or the Little Old Shoe by Louisa May Alcott

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

What are you short story suggestions? As a person who adores short stories I’m interested to see what y’all come up with.

Gonna need a bigger gun: I frickin’ hate zombies

Zombies freak me out on a very basic level, scaring me more than any other horror character.

The Monster from Frankenstein? Misunderstood.

Dracula? Oddly compelling. Woman throughout history have been falling for serial killers and he must have been mesmerizing to get all those chicks.

Wolfman? Just waiting for someone with enough dog knowledge to scratch him behind the ear and rub his belly. Girl soothes savage beast.

The Mummy? Well, one could argue that he’s basically the walking dead anyway—only with handy linen wrapping—and therefore falls in the zombie category. And what a category it is! Crazed, unreasonable…rotting. Ew, and drooling. I hate drooling. And once you are turned into one of their kind you don’t gain the pale loveliness of being one of Dracula’s chosen or the ability to transform with the full moon. Nope, you begin to rot, mindlessly crave flesh and lose pieces of yourself here in there.

(But don’t worry; you didn’t really need those entrails.)

Yuck. And scary. There’s no reasoning with the brain dead.

Given that I feel this way, I probably shouldn’t have watched the remake of Dawn of the Dead the other night, but I was just flipping channels and I really feel that Sarah Polly should be in more stuff. I watched for only a few minutes a shot (every time there was a commercial break with the other show I was following), but I saw enough to remind me that a.) zombies are still the most scary monster type out there, and b.) they move a lot faster than I thought they did.

Which got me puzzling out zombie biology, which then gave me nightmares because, dude, if they are unstoppable and caused by a virus that spreads rapidly then what the hell is that noise outside my window at three am in the morning?

I’m too young to be a flesh eating monster. My coloring is much better suited to vampirism.

Where’s Dracula when you need him?

Maybe if I read the Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless, I would be able to overcome my fear of the zombie hoard. Or at least, if I read Max Brook’s The Zombie Survival Guide I would know how to fight them off. First I would need a contingency plan though. Good thing Kelly Link has a short story all about that in Magic for Beginners. A friend of mine was so taken with the story that she had us all come up with what we thought the perfect place would be to hide out in during a zombie epidemic. A 7/11 in a dangerous area (for the bullet proof glass and the food)? Maybe something larger like a grocery store? How do you protect all the entrances and windows?

These are important things to think about. The Boss, when asked, came up with an excellent suggestion, which I would share with you, but…well…I wouldn’t want to have to fight you for it should this whole zombie thing actually happen.

It’s not that I don’t like you guys and all, but if word got out on the net we might not get in.

Maybe if I read David Wellington’s Monster Island I would come to terms with my zombie fear. If I, like Gary, retained my ability to think and could actually command a zombie army? That could be cool. The power would, of course, go to my head and I would probably commit horrible acts against the still living but, hey, gotta feed the zombie army. Don’t want the troops to get restless.

Of course, the question is whether I read Monster Island or Monster Nation first (as it was technically a prequel although it came out second) since it deals with the human side as the outbreak began.

Maybe I should just read Max Brook’s World War Z: the Oral History of the Zombie War to learn how it all went down in the end, and see who let it happen. First hand accounts of the Crisis as told to the author? What better way to find out exactly what I should be scared of! Once I face the fear I can move on, right? Accept the things I cannot change, etc, etc.

Then I’ll just have to worry about the robots.

Thank goodness they have a book for everything.

So what scares you?

More Ponderings on Reading

Let’s see. Blogger’s being a bitch (and was so yesterday, so I just gave up on the idea that I might actual respond in the comments before I went to work), so I’m going to respond in a post. If you are not interested in said response—perhaps even find them tedious and dull—please scroll down to past Robin’s name:

For all who asked, the book I was reading was The Queen Geek Social Club by Laura Preble (another in my YA reads), which has a very, very engaging narrator (hence all my questions about narrators and plot forgiveness this week). As it stands now, I felt that the ending was a bit rushed and I’m not sure I followed all of Shelby’s highs and lows, but overall the first person narration kicked ass and took names. I very much enjoyed it.

I’m now reading Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, which is also incredibly fascinating and has me considering the evolution of my own close reading techniques (especially because I was so busy taking biology classes in college that I didn’t take a single Lit course). I’m now thinking of applying Prose’s close reading to Preble’s book and seeing what result I get.

As for the rest of you who commented:

Kendell, I looked up The Last Mortal Man and it looks really cool. I don’t tend to read a lot of SciFi, but I just might pick this one up. Please let me know if I should recommend it to customers.

Jackie, feel free to quote any and all odes to coffee from this blog. I probably won’t even remember it was mine.

Jules, I can always use more friends. Especially those who have blogs like yours, which reminds me, can I nominate books for the Cybils?

Trish, welcome to how my mind works. At one time, it was books before coffee. But then again, at one time I was a morning person. I wish I knew what happened.

Robin, I’m so glad that I ruined blue tooth technology for you as well. Think of it as an excuse to walk around with a big ol’ smile on your face.

For the rest of you:

Are you close readers? Do you need the tags telling us that someone is shouting, etc, or do you thrive on the showing (to the point that you worship at the alter of Raymond Carver)?

And, if you feel like digging a little deeper, what made you the reader you are?

I never took an English Lit class when I was in college. Later, when I was just taking classes to keep my brain occupied, I took a couple from the local university, something that could finally explain post-modernism and the different schools of theory. Before then, my only Lit classes were in Spanish, a painstaking process for me wherein I translated word for word trying to discover the true meaning of Lorca and others because I’ve never quite gotten my brain to kick over and just think in another language.

Well, that’s not true. I have, but it is usually when I’m drunk, just about to fall asleep or dreaming (I’ve had whole dreams in Spanish), that my brain relaxes enough that I don’t have to translate everything in my mind. My fault, I’m sure, for never going abroad for very long and forcing my brain into doing my bidding.

But even though I’d never taking the Lit classes that my friends—the English majors—did, I think I had a pretty good handle on the basic concept of New Criticism (the study of the words value by its placement on the page alone without weighing it with the aspects of the author’s life and back ground) due to all the plays I read during Theatre and one Spanish translation class I took.

In plays, you’re given the basic setting and the dialogue. The setting is open to interpretation (Shakespeare can be moved through time and space, each casting a new meaning to the words being spoken), so you only have the words to go on. What do the characters say about themselves in the dialogue? What do they say about others? What hints do they give you about their pasts that the writer does not specifically say?

Open to interpretation? Sure, but so’s anything you do or say since you have the weight of all your knowledge and background making itself known. It’s the reason we’ll all read a book differently.

The Spanish translation class made it clear that it is damn hard to translate humor and irony (so if you know anyone who can do it, go buy them a huge dinner). We would labor over the meaning of each word—to directly translate, or just translate the expression—fighting to capture the meaning without losing the author’s rhythm, meaning, and humor. After hours with our dictionaries, we’d come together and compare before the start of class. That’s a phrase meaning what? I didn’t know. Oh, you rearranged the words like that? That flows so much better.

Each word placement in each sentence was treated with the utmost importance.

And in the end we still didn’t get the irony, reading so closely that we missed the meaning of the piece.

So how about you? Do you read closely, or not at all? And if you do, what do you say to the naysayers that claim that anything non-literary would fall apart under close examination?

How much do you need to be told?

Retell Me A Story (She Makes With The Excuses Again)

Remember back when I posted everyday and y’all were like, “Won’t this girl ever shut up? And what’s with these y’alls anyway, I thought she was from the West Coast? This weird hybrid of southern slang and valley girl ‘likes’ gives SoCal a whole new meaning.”

Well, that? That was the honeymoon period known as the happy time when they kept pushing back inventory and there were no major holidays, and that time is now over. Cyborg mania stayed up for so long last week (and made its rounds to a surprising number of other places) for the simple reason that the heat is on. That’s right: we had inventory, bigwig visits, and employee training. Oh, my!

At one point as I was rushing around trying to pull missed returns so that I could then go receive my new shipment, my trainee looked at me and said, “You must go home exhausted.”

Honey, you have no idea.

The thing is, this really has nothing to do with you guys, unless it was your books I sent back or didn’t have time to up-sell because I was running around like a mad woman. Inventory, bigwig visits and employee training are a necessary evil because we’re not all popped out into the book world, fully formed and knowledgeable, to spread and knowledge and light, nor are the customers and their sometimes sticky, kleptomaniac fingers.

Where was I? Oh yeah, long week, vacation not coming soon enough, brain functioning on dying power cells.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard it all before so move on, bitch.

Got it.

So let’s talk about something else. On Friday I pulled out a book that is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland called The Looking Glass Wars that is now making its U.S. debut, and it got me thinking about retellings that have become famous the last few years. Whether it is simply taking an alluded to character like Geraldine Brooks’ March or more intertwined with the original like Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, it seems like we have embraced this fanfiction-type send-up to the stories that intrigue us. Are we really seeing more of these retellings taking place or has this been a long, ongoing practice that I’ve missed by eschewing English classes for Biology in college?

Talk to me people, because I really do believe this is becoming popular. I mean look at all the retellings and continuations of Pride and Prejudice that exist today (from Darcy’s point of view, the marriage saga, and the resulting daughters’ books), and let’s not forget Louis Bayard’s Mr. Timothy. So what is the power in retelling a story from a different point of view? And what are the downfalls? Why would someone attempt it in the first place?

And what are some of the great retellings out there?