What Steve Read

Never A Dull Moment: Body piercing? Extreme sports? Teen pregnancy? Welcome to the action-packed world of hi/lo books

2012-02-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

It's always nice to be mentioned in print, and even though it's indirect twice-over (my company, as part of a list), it can't hurt.

Michael Sullivan, in "Never A Dull Moment: Body piercing? Extreme sports? Teen pregnancy? Welcome to the action-packed world of hi/lo books,"
describes very recent changes in the world of high-interest, low-reading-level books for struggling and reluctant readers.

High Noon Books is the classroom materials imprint of Academic Therapy Publications. Our original focus, a quarter century ago, was on skill building, but the chapter books were an afterthought. The approach was to lower the bar to struggling readers' independent reading success by using frequently-occurring, and therefore more likely to be recognized, vocabulary.

Concern with reading frustration, and studies indicating a direct link with vocabulary familiarity, led us to recently adopt a strict vocabulary level and decodability formula for our hi/lo books. We also have invested a fair amount of time and energy into raising the interest level - the excitement - of our books through revision and new writing emphasizing contemporary, real-life experiences. It's hard to write about these with simple vocabulary, but I'm glad we're not the only ones trying.

As an exercise, take a page from the sequel of a novel you've been waiting to read. Copy the page, and have someone black out every twentieth word. That's 5% - the approximate border between successful independent reading and frustration, the fine line we're trying to walk, or rather write. Then read the page, and see how well you understand it.

Makes reading fun, right?

Unfair!

2012-02-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

It’s totally unfair of me to consider Patricia Reilly Giff’sNewberry Honor Book, Pictures of HollisWoods (Random House, 2004), alongside Tim Green’s Rivals: aBaseball Great novel (HarperCollins, 2010).

Nothing says I have to be fair, however, or that either author would benefit.

** Note: some spoilers below

Pictures of Hollis Woods is a literary novel for tweens. I’m not sure I’ve encountered anything like it till now. Sure, we’ve all read and/or avoided the sorry-for-the-poor-kid books that read like Saturday afternoon tv specials from the 19

70s. They give me a headache, probably caused by trying to digest the frosting cliché on the middling cake of a story.

And Hollis Woods, the protagonist, is the kid from those stories. She’s an orphan, difficult, twelve, vulnerable and hard at the same time, and oh, so deserving of a better life. However, that’s not how the story reads. Here’s why I think Giff’s book is a literary novel: structure.

The title means something (there’s a concept) – in this case, it’s a device for flashbacks, delicately revealing how Hollis’s past becomes her present, and Hollis’s own contribution to her story, the scenes of her life she draws to remember, someday perhaps to understand, as well as a way she can be herself while drawing, something she yearns to do, and does with remarkable skill and vision.

The current chapters all have the same title, indicating the present day, and the flashback chapters all are about the subject of a drawing, narrating the time leading into, and after, the events Hollis depicts. Giff executes this subtly and cleverly, rendering the flashback narratives in italics, and revealing just enough to keep the story flowing toward its goal.

The end isn’t a huge surprise. It’s not supposed to be. Of course Hollis finds a family. Of course it’s the Regans. Of course Josie is part of her life. None of this is in question after page 40 or so. It’s not a mystery, but a narrative of strands weaving together just as people’s lives intertwine.

This is a delicate slip of a novel, under 170 wide-lined pages, and all fitting together neatly. The characters all matter, are all recognizeable, all memorable. It’s about the easiest thing in the world to read, vocabulary aside (and that’s not too hard). If I taught sixth grade, I might assign it to the class.

So, what’s so bad about Tim Green’s Rivals? It can’t be “unfair” to compare it to a Newberry Honor Book like Pictures of Hollis Woods without being unfair to Rivals, can it?

Why, yes, it can.

Green’s a master of a different type of storytelling. There are few flashbacks. There’s no fancy structure. It’s great for baseball-crazy boys, and perhaps a few girls who don’t mind that baseball stories always focus on the boys. (There’s a strong girl character in here – hoo, boy, just wait.)

And Rivals is all about twelve-year-olds, too. These kids are doing pretty well for themselves. Josh LeBlanc is a baseball prodigy, six feet tall a bit early, and a skilled batter and infielder. He makes all the plays you want to see (if you like baseball, which I don’t , but which I started to, a little, on reading this). Josh is also gifted with insight, a great coach who is also a great father, and two awesome friends – Benji, whose over-the-top self-glorifying banter is never meant nor ever received as pridefulness, and Jaden, whose feelings for Josh lurk dangerously close to the surface of their friendship, without her or Josh ever really figuring it out.

Here’s the thing: Green’s characters all matter, are all recognizeable, all memorable. Green drives the plot relentlessly forward, which takes less concentration on the part of the reader, but with twice the pagecount, there’s a lot more story. It’s rollicking good fun, with danger, adolescent angst, athletic challenges, and clever dialog. It crackles with the intensity any successful novel for tweens has to have. But reading it is not like solving a puzzle. It’s like riding a roller-coaster.

So, what’s fair or not? In truth, I’m glad I read both books. If I liked only boyish books like Rivals, would I be open to reading Pictures of Hollis Woods? And if I favored the contemplative, sparse narratives of Patricia Reilly Giff, would I be open to enjoying the driving linear narrative of Tim Green? I hope so. The unfairness comes in part from the channeling we experience, our tribalism infecting (or shaping? I guess it matters which word I choose, and I’m not sure about my choice) everything we do or think. Even with all the clever ways these authors break boundaries, by including characters, meaningfull ones, of various tribes, in their narratives, we still read the book in a genre or demographic category.

My older son is in sixth grade. I imagine a classroom like his somewhere, where a boy reads Rivals next to a girl reading Pictures of Hollis Woods. I hope they talk with each other when they’re done.

Opposites Attract, or Likes Polarize?

2012-01-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

Trying to find an updated nickname for a US marine for a book revision, I stumbled across, first a Wikipedia page on US Marines terminology, and then by two steps, this short description of the origin of the term "gung ho."

I grew up with the term, using it as a synonym of "enthusiastic," and was eventually aware that it probably had a Chinese derivation, but not until now specifically what that was.

During the 15-year Japanese invasion and occupation of parts of China (a timespan I repeatedly emphasized when teaching high schoolers about WWII), the US maintained formal, diplomatic relations with the nationalist and communist partisans resisting the invaders. One such diplomat, Marine Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, reported on the industrial cooperatives the Chinese government set up to replace the output captured by the Japanese Imperial Army in the coastal regions.

The Chinese government agency that coordinated this industrial effort was called Gongye Hezhoushe, which might mean something as simple as "industrial cooperative." (Maybe that's what the cooperatives were called, and the agency was called something else. It doesn't matter for this story, though of course it matters in the larger picture.)

Lt. Col. Carlson was very impressed with these efforts, and took the philosophy "Gong He" (work together, i.e. for a common goal) as the motto of an elite group of Marines he later commanded. The spelling "he" in the current pinyin phoneticization of Chinese is better represented to English speakers as "HUH," an accented syllable with a vowel not unlike the "oo" in "hoof" (NOT like the "oo" in "roof" for most of us.)

At the time of Lt. Col. Carlson's exposure to the industrial cooperative spirit, the dominant romanization of Chinese words was the Wade-Giles system, in which that sound was represented by the letter combination "ho." This is the source of our pronunciation - I'm assuming you pronounce "gung ho" the way I do, rhyming with the garden tool or the female deer.

We can bring this full circle (or would this be half a circle?) to today, when the interests of the US Military have for decades been associated in the public's mind more with the Republican than the Democratic Party, and the interests of capital as well. (Don't believe the hype.) Currently, Republicans voting in primaries and attending candidate debates seem to favor the aggressive military and industrial posture of the United States of a century ago (in the midst of conquering around the Caribbean and the Pacific) - a kind of remanifest destiny. They want the US military to defend US economic interests abroad.

Our greatest economic competitor, and one of our biggest collaborators (are you reading this on an iPad?) is China, a country beset by industrial cooperation in some pretty nasty forms. (Again, reading this on an iPad?) Our hawkish citizens tend to fear this competition and favor militarism, at least, on our country's part. (The trick will be getting all the other countries to unilaterally concede our superiority.)

Therefore, an unofficial motto of our US Marine Corps, "Gung Ho!" may come to stand in part for the military adventurism favored by whoever the Republican nominee will be (note to Ron Paul supporters: ...oh, never mind, you won't believe me anyway), including the aggressive military stance his supporters will want him to take against [drum roll, please] industrial cooperation in China!

---

Now, can someone please give the justification for calling a 1980s movie about a Japanese company opening a plant in the US "Gung Ho"?

hollow writing about a hollow achievement

2012-01-17T12:46:00.000-08:00

I can't figure out what the source of the success of Huaxi village is.

Clifford Cloonan's Jan. 17, 2012 article in The Independent, "Huaxi: The socialist village where everyone is wealthy," doesn't explain how Huaxi got wealthy.

Well, not beyond founding village chairman Wu Renbao allowing farmers to grow the crops of their choice. The only way that would get them the level of riches described is if they were growing poppies or coca.

Am I missing something? The town emits socialist songs over a PA system. I think there has to be more to this story in which solid gold statues and a skyscraper in a tiny village are the product of "socialism with Chinese characteristics."

AJ Barnett - Tell Me a Story: More on characters

2012-01-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

I just read this list, and find it very helpful, if not completely surprising.

In it, Barnett compiles the elements of effective character development. What I liked in the post was how true it rang. I'm starting the fifth Song of Ice and Fire novel, before finishing a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller that just doesn't excite me as much, and alongside James Patterson (Maximum Ride series - we just fiinished #2) and Mike Lupica (Hero) for the boys.

AJ Barnett - Tell Me a Story: More on characters

I've skipped over the first two for my own writing, but at work, I edited a few series and found the pictures (#1 on Barnett's list) pretty helpful. I didn't list all the attributes, though.

I keep reflecting on the habits of the authors of my favorite books, and without access to the authors directly, I have only logic to go on. George Martin (Song of Ice and Fire) has so many characters, I can't imagine he wrote down all their characteristics. However, each one comes alive so distinctly that I am sure he has a critical list for each. You can hear it in their speech, as well as see it in the staging of scenes. In that way, Martin is very much like Jeanne Penderwick, whose books are parodied as "The Penderwicks don't do anything," but which include such deft detail and dialogue that the characters come alive off the page and do memorable nothings, rather than forgettable big things.

Anyway, worth a read. Thanks to AJ Barnett.

"Edgy" books for teens - an apologia

2011-12-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

I read and appreciated Gail Giles' defense of the darkness in YA literature.

I often think of edginess as an inducement to read, because I'm writing and editing for non-habitual readers. I imagine the 12-year-old reading at a second-grade level feeling frustrated and bored at the same time by the puppies-and-teddy-bears book she can't quite decipher, when her classmates are reading The Hunger Games.

Giles' approach and reasoning are different. She argues that teens are ill-equipped to understand the consequences to the antisocial impulses they have, and that literature offers them a safe way to explore those impulses, and those consequences. This is the antithesis of the parental clench reaction to anything adult-y, and I find it refreshing.

Please read it (follow the link above or here), and let me know where you stand.

"splat?"

2011-12-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

Susanne Lakin writes in her blog Live Write Thrive about the demise of the publishing industry, long live the publishing industry.

I like her take, that words will survive the transition to digital platforms, and moreover that writers will get more direct benefits.

And this from someone in the publishing industry!

I even think there's good news in there for publishers, however hard the short run adaptation will be.

Because my segment of the industry is school publishing, I have to think of school budgets when I think of changes in our industry. All of the parents at work bemoan the impoverishment of our local schools. We frankly don't see the iPads and smart-screens taking over just yet. Our customers are scraping together change from the couch cushions to buy our products. (Great business model, right? Sell to special ed and resource teachers...)

So, where are all these digital readers? When to publishers need to make the leap?

I think it will a be slow and halting leap, with lots of school publishers falling short of the target, but all market shake-ups are like that. How many "for sale" signs have you seen on real estate offices in the past three years?

Lakin's argument that we need to embrace the change is well taken. My arms (and eyes) are open. Now who's voting to raise their property taxes to buy tablet computers for the LD classes?

Don't all jump at once...

Why there's a James Patterson section at the bookstore

2011-12-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading the first Maximum Ride novel, The Angel Experiment, to my kids. It had annoying stylistic issues, uneven plot structure, and way too many chapters. One hundred forty something? Seriously?

Still, I can see why, when I was shopping for the sequel (at some awful chain store - sorry, Mike!), I found among sections titled "Mystery" and "Young Adult Fiction," one called "James Patterson."

I was wondering about this from a writer's perspective, as well as a reader's. Please excuse the pomposity of what follows. I am opining, and asking for you to read. It is a pompous exercise by nature, and unlike Newt Gingrich, I will own up to my pomposity.

How does a story attract readers and hold them? One attraction is familiarity, which allows for empathy. We like Huck Finn's impish disdain for authority not because it is good, but because we feel the same sometimes, even into adulthood, yearning to kick off our shoes and run away to the river.

Another attraction is exoticism. The strange world of Gethen Ursula LeGuin reveals in The Left Hand of Darkness, beginning with the celebration of the completion of a public works project in the Karhide capital, not only introduces us to the cautious, patient protagonist Genly Ai, but also to the cold, damp, and fusty civilization that evolved there.

There is also the appeal of coming to know someone new, to make a new friend (or a new self) through reading fiction. For me, one of the best was the self-righteous and lethally impulsive Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He is nettled and worried, alone and betrayed, wronged and reckless.

And here's why (aside from diligence, volume, and effective marketing) James Patterson's Maximum Ride succeeds: Patterson takes readers from ignorance of the world and people he created, through knowledge of Max, her family, and their world, into empathy. (Pompous enough yet?)

at the stage of ignorance, readers have familiarity and empathy with their own stories
at the stage of knowledge, readers acquire familiarity with the protagonist, and are developing empathy
at the stage of empathy, readers begin to feel what the protagonist will do next, and to care about the outcome

I've been thinking about making readers care about protagonists a lot. Patterson, to me, clearly has this down. Not only is Max almost instantly empathetic (there's a quick step in Angel Experiment from a tiny bit of knowledge to strong empathy), but the supporting characters are all deeply likeable, though my favorite is Nudge.

I'm a lot like Nudge in some respects, so I think the difference between my identification with her and with the other characters is based on that, whereas with Max, it's more about the convincing empathy of the situation. It's Max's situation in the world Patterson creates, more than Nudge's or even Angel's, that generates empathy.

How does someone like George R. R. Martin do this with a dozen (I've honestly lost count) characters? I'm on the third (have I lost count of that, too?) book of the Song of Ice and Fire septology (wouldn't that be appropriate?), and I am absolutely stunned at how much I yearn for the next bit of news about each of the characters. I'm even hungry for news from Theon Greyjoy!

The reason, or a good chunk of it, for this eagerness, is that each lead character has strengths I wish I had, and weaknesses I feel a need to avoid. Jon Snow is resourceful, but impulsive; Jaime Lannister is a champion, but unfettered by ethics or sympathy; Catelyn Tully Stark is proud and kind, but badly governed by those good emotions; Daenerys Targaryen is resilient and a strategic thinker, but in well over her head, and my favorite, Arya Stark, has the heart of a hero, but the body of a not-quite-ten-year-old girl. (Okay, that's not my problem exactly, but physical weakness is kind of a universal fear.)

And with each character-centered chapter, a part of the story is told, and knowledge is gained, but the characters' strengths and weaknesses make them more empathetic. And then Martin cuts us off from the newsfeed, the supply of knowledge. And we're stuck, waiting for more.

So why is there a Patterson section at B&N, and not a Martin section? Patterson tells single-narrative stories in great proliferation, allowing less polish, and inventing less of the world. He has less knowledge to convey (though he has plenty in his world), and fewer characters to bring to life, than Martin does.

I wonder if any of this will be useful in writing.

List or satire: who can tell?

2011-12-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

I used to love reading the Harper's Index. I actually read the whole magazine, cover to cover, when I subscribed. (Come to think of it, I might subscribe again. That was pretty good reading.)

The reasons I liked the Index were the latent humor of juxtaposition, the generally progressive message the list of data conveyed, and the heady feeling that there was humor out there, just waiting to be dug up, in newspaper clippings and economic statistics and other modern political detritus.

It's that sort of confusion and humorous serendipity, the feeling that we may be looking at information, or natural events, or something intended to be serious, or we may be looking at a satire of it, and we can't tell at first.

That's why I wanted to share this list of Republican actions - as Speaker Boehner promised leading up to the 2010 legislative election - to focus on job creation.

My favorite:

(110) 11-18-2011: The House is once again considering the "Balanced Budget Amendment", which sounds almost reasonable until you learn it could cost millions of jobs. Oy vey.

Actually, I just picked that one quickly. I couldn't really decide on a favorite. However, I like having a list of Congress' GOP majority's actions resolutely failing to create, and mostly even failing to address, jobs.

This isn't totally subtle, but it is a list, and it is satire. I think.

Eastern Bantu Prefixes and Stupid Americans

2011-11-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

I really meant to write about more than just the books I've finished, and not gotten too busy to write about. (I recently read Rick Riordan's Son of Neptune, the very enjoyable seventh Percy Jackson novel, but nothing irreversible happens in it, and not much is revealed in it, except for two new, kinda fun characters, so I didn't really have any reaction.)

So, in that vein, here's a reaction to something I read while doing image spec research at work. I was looking for a 14 year-old hapa boy (my older son is only 11 but would otherwise suit the character), and found that model-turned-TV-producer (I think) Tyra Banks masterminded a segment of a modeling show (I don't watch TV, and if I did, I don't think I would watch something called "America's Top Model" - I'm not even completely sure that's what her show is called) in which models adopted mixed racial/cultural identities to fit the Hawaiian hapa identity. Only, as one blogger (lost to the mist of ten minutes ago) noted, these were not ethnicities represented in any number on Hawaii. That's stupid, part one.

Stupid, part two is that it all pretty much looks like blackface filtered through a century and a half of increased familiarity with racial and cultural differences and enough political and social sophistication to know that depicting the first not-lily-white president with a bone through his nose is over the top. (Calling him un-American is still OK, though, apparently.) These depictions are very Orientalized (refer to Edward Said, Orientalism) - depictions of people as emblems of cultural and racial difference, posed in costume and makeup to be their identities.

Stupid, part three is the prefixes. One of the models adopted the hapa identity the show called "batswana/polynesian."

Polynesian peoples do have some differences among them, obviously. I felt silly going to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu over a decade ago for one of their performance/luau evenings. It was fun in a Disneyesque way, but with more poi. The creepy part to me was the way the different cultures were represented as variations on grass-skirts, dancing-and-drums, etc. It was unenlightening at best. Still, there is a word "polynesian," built from Greek roots "poly" (many) and "nesos" (islands).

"BaTswana," however, means "Tswana people." One Tswana person is "moTswana." The prefix gives the number and the noun class, a concept shared by Bantu languages, and not Indo-European ones. The simplest way to avoid stupidity when using a Bantu word in a non-Bantu language context is to strip it of the prefix. That would make the imaginary multiethnic label "tswana/polynesian." This is not that hard to find out. The show aired in 2009, according to the websites I read about it. I think there was wikipedia then. Right?

Which is, of course, stupid part four. Going on TV without spending ten minutes on research.

Woe is... George R. R. Martin's Guilt-Ridden Cast of Thousands

2011-11-14T00:39:00.000-08:00

George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series starts with betrayal, execution, and a subtly magical bond between animals and people. After A Game of Thrones and most of A Clash of Kings, I have to conclude that it will not let up. We join the tale when the strands are well enfolded, lines of allegiance and affinity blurred and shifting. I read the story and thrill in the narrative, and despair for humanity.

It is a very human tale, setting and animal intelligence notwithstanding. Sure, there are dragons, but unlike in Martin’s partial namesake and obvious forebear Tolkien’s great works, the motives of people, regardless of access to magical power, are the chief cause of misery.

And Martin shapes that misery like a glassblower, with hammer, tongs, and breath. He twists a character’s fond hopes into wanton disregard for consequences, another’s protective instincts into acts that must be hidden from view at the cost of war and kingdom. There are no guiltless characters. Even the most blameless are wracked by guilt for smaller injuries, perceived and real, to relatives, friends, and allies living and dead.

This would all be terribly gloomy and uninteresting if the characters did not seem so terrifically human. They are not made human by being equally bad and good, or by appealing equally to the moral compass of any group of readers. They are made human by doing good and bad things for real reasons. Prince Joffrey is an insufferable prick, for example, and hugely more important in his own eyes even than his greatest manipulators’, but the way he became that is hinted at from his introduction. Nowhere is his bad behavior blamed on his parents’ frosty marriage or the laxness of guidance for a firstborn prince, but we know the type.

The good characters, too, are bad. Some make foolish choices (Jon Snow at the Skirling Pass in A Clash of Kings, for instance. Yet they make foolish choices for intelligible reasons. I despair of Sansa Stark becoming a whole person before she is destroyed, yet Martin seems to be developing a depth there, perhaps only later to kill her off or make her a pawn in an evil scheme. (Another evil scheme, I mean.)

The Lannisters are almost wholly awful, but fascinating to watch. The narrative is full without much of the father Tywin, but he looms menacingly throughout the second book in the series, promising at any moment to burst on the scene – and burn it to the ground. The daughter Cersei never seems to begin to promise a hint of humanity without redoubling her utter awfulness on the rebound. Her twin brother is less subtly awful, yet fascinating to watch. I think other readers may like me keep hoping he gets some comeuppance that sticks.

The other Lannister brother is the most interesting by far of them. Along with the Stark bastard Jon Snow and his trueborn sister Arya, he moves the story through switchbacks and over precipices. The way the three of them literally traverse space in the narrative seems brighter and sharper as well. Many characters end up somewhere distant, but it seems Jon, Arya, and Tyrion have the most interesting journeys.

Martin is a master not only of plot twists involving a cast of thousands, but also of descriptions of place. I was looking at a service stairway in a Chicago subway on my way back from a business trip today, and realized that it was grey, grimy and worn, probably cool and dry to the touch. I realized that my own places – the places I’ve written about in drafts and stuttering starts – lack the fullness of detail that allows readers to imagine themselves doing what the character is doing.

It may be this or it may be the contingent and frail morals of the characters, and it is more likely both, that brings the impossible stories to life.

This is a more significant accomplishment in the case of the part of the story that takes place off the map supplied in the front of the first two books. I can’t decide why I think Martin provides a map, in some detail, of the small continent of Westeros, while having a significant chunk of the story take place across the Narrow Sea, as it’s called in the narrative (but not labeled on the map).

Perhaps it’s because readers are to think of the events and people there as more exotic, but that seems shallow when compared to Martin’s other devices.

It may be that Martin’s map reflects the view of many of his characters, that over-the-seas is unknown, and denies us a view of it as terra cognita. It may also be related to the prevailing view of magic.

This is one of the issues that, to me, bedevils fantasy. Because magic is so widely considered a childlike interest in our culture (at least, magic not cloaked in widely accepted religious faiths), can a fantasy writer appeal to mature audiences with stories about dragons and spells and wizards and potions?

I think the answer lies somewhere near the observation that all of these magical story elements and more exist in the Song of Ice and Fire series. However, many characters major and minor disbelieve, or are skeptical, or come to question their faiths, despite the evidence in the books of such magics. It is a world in which, to borrow phrases and concepts from Janet Rowling, the wizarding community and muggles live side-by-side, aware of each other, and often sliding across the boundaries.

I have a few more chapters left, and then I have to make a fateful decision. Do I continue to race through the available volumes in the series, ensuring that I’ll finish reading years before Martin can come out with another epic volume of this epic, or do I break the spell and read the next book in the pile? This is a hard one.

Midnight for Charlie Bone, by Jenny Nimmo

2011-10-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

This was kind of a wild guess, and it worked out. And yet...

I can't recall how I wound up with this - a gift, maybe? I didn't like the title, or the cover, and the beginning of the book didn't move me, but I needed something to read that both the boys (3 1/2 years apart) would enjoy me reading to them at bedtime. It hit the spot.

From my perspective, however, the story felt thin. It's hard to not compare two books about a timid, adolescent English boy with magical gifts escaping his unhappy home situation by entering a dangerous and fascinating magical academy. Unfortunately for Jenny Nimmo, Janet Rowling is a terrific writer, and Harry Potter casts a long shadow.

I don't think Nimmo meant to derive from Rowling's books, and there are certainly no wands or explosions, but Charlie is missing one parent, in mysterious circumstances, has unmanageable hair, and quickly makes two friends and one dreadful enemy at the magical academy.

What actually bothered me about the book was that it felt washed out, paler, thinner. It was like being in the shower when the hot water starts to run out. It's not cold, exactly, but you remember how warm it was just before.

None of the conflicts grabbed me viscerally. I felt bad for Charlie, but in a passing way. And when his uncle Paton (the most interesting character in the book) begins to exert himself, it was never heroic, or startling, just kind of a relief, that someone in the story seemed to care.

I think another unfairness in my impression is that I read the book out loud. It's a slightly different experience, and some books fare better than others. Jeanne Birdsall's Penderwick books feature very small events writ large in the characters' consciousness. In Nimmo's first Charlie Bone book, somewhat the opposite seems to have happened. Portentous events slip by, unappreciated.

As a wannabe writer, I pay attention to this, which may be why, as a reader, it makes this much difference to me. The kids certainly liked the story, and are looking forward to the next installment.

My older son just woke up and confirmed that he loved the book, and it wasn't boring for a second. So there.

Anne R. Allen's Blog: 12 Dos and Don'ts for Introducing your Protagonist...

2011-10-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

For writers, this is worth reading: a short and crisp to-don't list for final-drafting your main character's introduction. I don't just understand the points, I feel them.

Now if only I could write my darned book!

Anne R. Allen's Blog: 12 Dos and Don'ts for Introducing your Protagonist...: I've been dealing with an evil computer virus which first attacked my desktop and now seems to have killed my laptop dead. They're both old ...

update on no updates (blaming an author)

2011-10-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

It's not Lesley Hauge's fault that I haven't written about her rewarding and fast-paced book Nomansland. It's a great read. I am looking forward to the sequel. If you want something postapocalyptic about as fresh and creative as Jeanne du Prau's The City of Ember and its sequels, and are willing to get a little more grown up in the topics and treatment, this is an excellent choice. Big ideas. Absorbing characters. Fast pace. Definite room for sequels.

I can't wait.

But I have to. It's George R. R. Martin's fault. (R. R. = Ronald Reuel?) I am losing sleep over A Game of Thrones. If by any chance you have a vague liking for medievalish fantasy, can handle multiple characters and occasional ladlesful of information (mostly doled out in teaspoons), and if you like losing sleep, this is highly recommended. It's got to be about five times as long as Nomansland, and it's definitely for grown-ups, even though many of the characters are quite young, and they don't get spared.

Come to think of it, that's probably really why it's for adults. It's not the sex, or the violence, or the serious matters of state. It's that kids are in the middle of it, in one way or another. (Kids who do read the book will acquire useful vocabulary, including portcullis, bastard, gremkin, and saddle-sore. Only two of these terms are involved in sex, at least in the first 200 pages.)

Frankly, I picked up Martin's book despite the HBO series advertised on the cover, and I'm dreading seeing the adaptation. (I'm safe for now, mostly because I don't have cable.) The book is so absorbing this far that the drama is almost sure to sicken me with disappointment.

missing "e" complaint

2011-10-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

It's raining.

Herman Cain is the Republican favorite.

Steve Jobs is dead.

What am I complaining about? (Warning: I am about to complain.)

I am complaining about a missing "e" in a comic.

I followed a link from deviantart to the amazon page for a comicker I didn't know - Andrew Dobson. His new series Formera has two volumes out, and in the first, the "look inside" sample has a misspelling on the third page included. (It's probably page 2, but I can't tell if the first is a title page, the cover, or page 1).

The error? Boy falls from sky into water. Reaction? "I can't breath!"

Come on. There are twenty words to a page in this comic. Six editors had to have looked at that. The text editor for blogger (TM) highlights misspelled words!

Fer cryin' out loud!

a "makers versus takers" type email

2011-10-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

I was distressed that a friend forwarded this email:

Subject: FW: FREE STUFF....

Worth reading.

>
>
> I have never heard this said as plain or as well.
>
> Class war at its best.
>
> The folks who are getting the free stuff, don't like the folks who are
> paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free
> stuff, can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own
> stuff.
>
>
>
> And,
>
>
>
> The folks who are paying for the free stuff, want the free stuff to stop and
> the folks who are getting the free stuff,
>
> want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting.
>
>
>
> Now... The people who are forcing the people who Pay for the free stuff,
> have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who
> are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
>
>
>
> So, the people who are GETTING the free stuff, have been convinced they need
> to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff, by the people who are
> forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free
> stuff in the first place.
>
>
>
> We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more
> people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
>
>
>
> Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide
> somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The
> voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by
> electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in
> exchange for electing them.
>
>
>
> The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 231 years ago. The
> number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the
> free stuff. We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change
> that spells the end of the United States as we know it.
>
>
>
> ELECTION 2012 IS COMING
>
> A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves.
>
> I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON.
>
> Let's Take a Stand.
>
>
>
>
> Obama: Gone.
>
> Borders: Closed.
>
> Language: English only.
>
> Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
>
> Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare.
>
> NO freebies to: Non-Citizens.
>
> We the people are coming....
>
>
> Only 86% will send this on. Should be 100%. What will you do?
>

And I had this response:

People who do not pay income taxes (because they have little or no income) pay sales taxes. Many of them get “free stuff” in the form of temporary aid. Some of them get “free stuff” in the form of temporary aid that lasts a long time. This is a problem because they are consuming and not producing.

People who do not pay income taxes (because they have a lot of money, and spend a small portion of it to shield a greater portion from taxation) pay sales taxes. many of them get “free stuff” in the form of access to roads and bridges, fire and police protection, clean water, hurricane warnings and the like. This is a problem because the system that everyone else pays for allows them to benefit enormously without contributing to the system.

People who do pay income taxes make up the majority of Americans. They also pay sales taxes. Their tax payments educate the vast majority of the future doctors, engineers, and construction workers – of all of us. Their tax payments allow governments to build and maintain roads and bridges, test cantaloupes for dangerous bacteria, and inspect cost-cutting/profit-maximizing airlines’ planes before takeoff. They also own the airwaves that the government they pay for licenses to broadcasters. This is good because the people who pay the taxes by law make the decisions, however indirectly, in government.

This is where it gets interesting. The people who don’t pay income taxes (because they have enough money to shield their money) own a lot of broadcast media. They do it as individuals, as corporations, and as interest groups. They are a bit scared of the people who do pay most of the income taxes. They have a choice: fight us (hard) or co-opt us (not quite as hard). They have tools for fighting (bloody) and tools for co-option (less bloody).

I’m glad they chose the easier, less bloody route of telling you what to think. Now I am still alive to tell you what I think. I think they are filling your head with misinformation.

If there’s a class war, who won? The people who are out of work and hopeless and still sitting on their hands, or the people who are comfortable and well-fed and in control of media and government? Or, to use the original writer’s metaphor, the wealthiest are the wolves.

I have to get back to work if I’m going to continue supporting public education (my kids are in school right now), the interstate highway system (how I get to work and how my food gets to the grocery store), the public utilities commission (which helps keep electricity rates down so my boss can keep the lights on), et cetera, ad nauseam.

Stay well,

Steve

---

I think I was very diplomatic. Now I really have to get back to work!

Origin of "Humpty-Dumpty" - the coolest thing I read today

2011-09-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

In a book packager's newsletter, the origins of "dead metaphors" was the topic today. Specifically, that of "Humpty-Dumpty," which, in my coarse reckoning, isn't a metaphor until we make it one. Still, the origin - involving bad haircuts, empty theological disputes, and medieval artillery - was fun to read about, and the explanation - involving mollusks, literary references, and a drink recipe - was almost free of grammatical errors.

And afterward, Darn that Lewis Carroll! (Read the linked post. This will make a bit of sense afterward.)

Erik Asphaug's two moons hypothesis, the coolest thing I read today

2011-09-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

This is way cool. A UC-Santa Cruz Earth and Planetary Sciences professor and his grad student created a computer model to explain the mountains on the far side of the moon.

The model involves a second moon around the earth, back when earth was very new and still mostly molten. The collision that created the moon may well have created a second one, and as the moon receded from the earth, it may have come into the orbit of the smaller moon. A slow collision would have spread the material of the smaller moon around one hemisphere of the larger body, creating the mountain ranges on the far side, and possibly triggering the orbital "lock" that keeps the older side of the moon facing earth.

Astrophysics is really, really cool.

Why Steve Doesn’t Like to Watch the Movies Made from Them Before Reading the Books. [Sigh]

2011-09-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

Diana Wynne Jones’ beautiful rendition of Howl’s Moving Castle, a Studio Ghibli film I have enjoyed several times with my sons, suffered from comparison.

Miyazazi Hayao (the elder Miyazaki at Ghibli) has the advantage of order here. His version is canonical to me. Jones’ more complicated plot evokes most of the locations and characters of the film, but I can’t remember them as well as I can the ones from the film.

Maybe the problem is that I was reading the book aloud to my sons at bedtime, over a two-week period. I struggled against sleep (I’m a very good sleeper, despite lack of practice), against distraction (I’m coaching soccer now, too, and needed to climb a steep learning curve there, as well as attending training sessions and evening meetings), and against my own involvement with narratives as an editor with a messy desk in a messy office.

Whatever the cause, the result is that I remember Miyazaki’s plot from Howl’s Moving Castle, and not Jones’.

For the first half of the book or so, this is not a problem. The plot matches closely, and the differences are of sequence or degree more than of kind. For instance, Sophie’s cleaning spree inside the castle occurs in a different order in the book, but it covers much of the same ground. In fact, however much I love the film’s version of Howl’s absurdly messy bathtub, the book’s version is much richer, more interesting, and significant.

The real problem is that I can’t get the images and connections from the movie out of my head. The nightmarish vision of what’s happening out through the black door – aerial bombardment of unknown, distant cities – sticks with me, and I expect it to come back in another form in the novel, but it doesn’t. In the novel, the black door goes to Wales, which is mostly peaceful, except for a well-disguised arch-nemesis. The significance and symbolism are totally different. The black door leads to Howl’s greatest challenge in each case, but the difference is as great as the origin of the fire demon, and the character of the ending, in each form of the story.

For purists, the best thing would be to read Jones’ book first, and then perhaps its sequel, before watching the movie. For people who have great concentration and visualization skills, any order would be fine. The only wrong thing to do would be to avoid either one.

Ambiguity, not ambivalence: Fall of a Kingdom (Farsala series), by Hilari Bell

2011-09-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Book Review: Fall of a Kingdom (initially released as Flame), by Hilari Bell

(Farsala series, book 1)

From the opening hint of mythology, through the interwoven tales of characters drawing together in the narrative fabric, to the devastating end and the protagonists’ reactions, Fall of a Kingdom resists easy judgments and moral alignment. While reading, I was impressed with Hilari Bell’s careful balancing of three main characters’ narratives, both against each other and together against the incrementally constructed mytho-historical background of the book’s events.

(In a nice twist, Bell uses a real mythology to explain the fictional characters’ story.)

Bell names the chapters after the protagonist whose narrative point of view is represented in it. I recently read two novels set in space that did something similar; Bell’s version of this is the more natural feeling, why I can’t figure. (Please leave a comment if you can help me figure this out; the other two were Beth Revis' Across the Universe and Amy Kathleen Ryan's Glow.)

Two of the three protagonists – the male ones – begin as sympathetic characters; the female protagonist, Soraya, is introduced in a male character’s chapter, but soon thereafter has her own internal monologues and is shows equally appealing characteristics. This begins the complications of judging Bell’s characters, as an appealing protagonist develops faults, and a faulty one strengths.

This was the aspect of the story that most struck me after reading Fall of a Kingdom. (That, and the small matter that the library copy I read had the initial release title, Flame, making it the second book I’d read in a few weeks that had a title I couldn’t justify on its relationship to the story.) Not only did the characters interact, often without knowing, and not only did they seem to be converging on a conflict shrouded in myth, but I was sure I wanted each to prevail against the others, or better, to somehow betray their essential differences and join forces against…what?

However simplistic Bell’s world creation may prove, Farsala is a land without persistent bogeymen. Kavi hates the deghans (nobles) for their exploitation and disregard for the lives commoners, but deghass (noblewoman ) Soraya develops conscience and consideration through her hardships, and more particularly through her encounter with the desert-dwelling Suud; Soraya nurses a resentment against her peasant-born half-brother Jiaan, whose noble father (he’s Soraya’s as well – nobility passes from mothers to children) elevated him above many of the high-born; Jiaan resents the deghans he serves, but develops a modicum of respect for some of their eccentricities, while distancing himself in distaste from the peasants out of whose milieu he rose; and so the conflicts thicken.

Many of the secondary characters also appear Janus-faced in this manner, including the commander of an invading army, a child pickpocket, and a deghan who shows common sense. I look forward to meeting these six and many new characters in the sequels.

Fall of a Kingdom is a book “for young readers,” printed something like 12-on-20 points (almost double-spaced), and written without frivolous violence or “provocative moral situations.” There is the slightly uncomfortable sense that a romance may develop between half-siblings Soraya and Jiaan, but that’s an element of many myths, from Izanami-no-Izanagi, a Japanese origin myth, to Star Wars. I think any kid in the double digits who likes adventure, magic, intrigue, and battles in good balance would like Fall of a Kingdom.

typoo

2011-09-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

I am an editor who likes translated cartoons.

This is a form of self-torture. It's not only the translations that irk, but the ad copy as well.

Today I read this sentence as part of a series review on SF-based Crunchyroll (online licensee and distributor of Japanese anime):

Throughout the series he has sudden flashes of inspiration that take over his psyche at impromptu moments causing him to behave erratically.

About a decade ago (okay, and counting, sheesh!), when I spent many happy hours grading undergraduate history papers at UCLA, I recognized this style of writing as pretense. (I was prepared, having practiced it earlier in life.)

The pretense is twofold: first, that the writer has something important to say, and therefore must use important words; and second, that the writer knows what the words mean.

I considered writing to Crunchyroll's newsletter editors about this. Taking time at work to find their email address yielded nothing useful, so I'll take a moment here to suggest the following:

It is unusual for a "flash of inspiration" to be anything contrary to sudden.
If "psyche" stands for "mind," then "mind" is a better word. (A corollary: "Psyche" means "mind.")
"Impromptu" and "inopportune" share many letters but not a lot of meaning.
This is the sort of writing that makes university teaching assistants think longingly about careers in sewer maintenance, but take the short cut of shredding students' hopes for graduating within four years.

---

On another note, I devoured Hilari Bell's Flame last weekend, and I've been contentedly rubbing my psyche's belly ever since. I think I'll write about it soon, and look for the sequels.

Amy Kathleen Ryan, Glow (Sky Chasers, vol. 1)

2011-08-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Glow is one of the reasons I love my job, and it has very little to do with it.

I get promotional emails from Publisher's Weekly, in order to keep current with teen literature, in a niche of which I publish. My niche is small and isolated, and I need PW to help me take a look around at what the age-mates of our intended readers - struggling, teenage readers who need exciting, accessible literature to help them become successful, habitual readers - are devouring. I want to know that makes them excited to read more, and what they wish they could read because of peer pressure and inherent interest.

One of the recent ones offered an advance reading copy of Glow, the third novel my Amy Kathleen Ryan. I read the first chapter or two, free online, with great interest. It coincided so closely with the setting and tone of first-time novelist Beth Revis' Across the Universe, which I read, and reviewed here, earlier this year.

Whereas ATU gripped my viscera at the beginning and subsided a bit into a simmering intergenerational confrontation and murder investigation aboard an interstellar space ship carrying humans from a battered Earth to a new home for their descendants, Glow built up from the hopes of appealing main characters into a thrilling intertribal confrontation and coming-of-age story aboard two interstellar space ships carrying humans....oh, you get the idea.

First, I am fascinated at the never-rains-but-it-pours aspect of this. I wasn't aware of any novels with such scenarios in the past decade, when I got swept up into Potter-mania, a bit late in life and in the timeline of Potter-mania. Now, with apparent suddenness, there are two.

Second, I loved the building tension of Glow. Similar to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, Glow starts by introducing deeply likeable teen characters, one male and one female, in an exotic setting that feels natural and whole, and then tears them apart. But whereas Hunger Games maintains Katniss Everdeen at the center of the narrative, Glow like ATU shifts the narrative between the two main characters. In ATU, the main characters are less positively appealing. We feel sorry for them in many ways, but we never saw them at their best. We never had the chance to get to like them, to look forward to meeting them again.

In Glow, protagonists Waverly and Kieran seem like people I would have liked when I was their age. Their reactions to events evoke sympathy, emotional investment, because they are founded on a previous identification, a founding emotional investment. Even the dangerous and damaged supporting characters look like people I got caught up with, cared about, and suffered with or because of when I was that age.

This means that when the climactic conflict occurs, so much of the reader's emotional investment is riding on it that it feels real. I felt my pulse quicken (just as advertised on the ARC back cover with the trite but applicable phrase "pulse-pounding"), even though the actual physical aspects of the confrontation were smaller than the conflicts at the opening of the second act of the novel.

After reading and enjoying Across the Universe, I was thrilled to read something in the same genre and in a very closely related setting, but when the book ended, I was caught off-guard. My wife figured this out first. "It must be part of a series," she said. (She's right, it's called Sky Chasers: http://us.macmillan.com/author/amykathleenryan.) However, it felt unfinished to me.

The Potter novels all (but one) end with the denouement of Harry returning to Privet Drive. The first two Hunger Games novels end with the tension ratcheting up in a new area. Glow ends differently, as if fifty pages had been left off the end. The conflict at the beginning isn't resolved. The new conflict is intriguing, and will probably draw me to reading the sequel. But I'm confused about the title's significance, the series name's significance, and the abruptness of the first novel's ending.

"Optipressing" - Mark Morford looks at our insides, and finds we lack guts

2011-08-24T02:24:00.000-07:00

In "How to Eat a Dead Terrorist," SF Chronicle columnist Mark Morford finds both solace and menace in our current military commitments.

Our military's frequent involvement in Abbotabad-like operations, to the tune of hundreds each year, is a stain on our moral character. The balance of drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan is itself balanced in the Know-Nothing/Bomb-Everything eschatological rhetoric of the top Republican presidential contenders and media darlings.

They revel in bombing first and never asking questions.

Morford restrains himself from tut-tutting about how we should learn more about the world in order to chart a saner course through it. He seems to doubt we'll ever get there, not as long as our leadership (and budgets) prioritize extreme violence as an everyday means to an end.

To a country with a trillion dollar off-the-books defense budget, every task seems like a Global War on Terror.

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

2011-08-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

It was hard to put the book down, but some of Lev Grossman's writing in The Magicians bothered me.

This post has SPOILERS.

First, there was the problem of Quentin Coldwater, the protagonist. He developed from a sympathetic nebbish into the kind of imminent sociopath who, after he snaps and murders a dozen people, the neighbors describe on TV as "quiet, I dunno, always kept to himself, and stuff."

He does this because he has just lived his dream, and still feels empty. Quentin comments on this himself, long before the full extent of the failure of his dreams is known. I wanted to feel bad for Quentin, but he kept reacting peevishly to events, which is, I take it, the author's intention. However, it made for an unlikeable protagonist, a non-hero (because he actually tries to be the good guy, only he doesn't really care about it, so he's not an anti-hero, and not a hero).

Second, and this is my chance to be peevish, there were all the typos and discontinuities. I know, it's not cricket for someone in publishing to go on about this, and in truth, my company's much shorter books often end up with similar, shall we say, features. It may have bothered me as much out of a desire to avoid the busman's holiday (marking up a novel I'm reading for fun) as out of any real critique of the author or, more deservedly, the editor. I wonder if the sequel (don't think I'm not ordering it later tonight from Pegasus Books) will be any different in that regard.

Third, what really bothers me is the feeling I've been successfully played. A large part of the plot concerns another set of fantasy novels, collectively known as the Fillory Books (after the fantasy land in which they partly take place), by an author named Plover. Now, it all sounds totally plausible, and there's even a bit of story about the (plain as the almost Aquiline nose on my face) interactions of Plover with CS Lewis, whose Narnia series closely parallels the Fillory books in so many ways.

There's a Christopher Plover website, wikipedia entries on Fillory...it's just so fishy.

Then it struck me. I - the fantasy book reader, the former devotee of Plover's contemporaries Lewis and Tolkien and also of McAffrey, and admirer of LeGuin and Aldiss and Atwood and Mieville and Rowling - had never heard of Plover, or Fillory. I practically lived in Middle-Earth (in middle school, of course), and dreamed the craggy mountains of Pern, and goggled at the scale and detail of Helliconia, and returned in awe after two decades' absence to the subtle chills of Gethen, but never had I heard of Fillory.

I think that's weird. I think there was never any Plover, no Fillory Books, no Chadwick children in literature.

Maybe I'll try to order The World in the Walls and see what arrives. Maybe I'll be the first to fall for it, and get a handwritten taunting from Grossman. Or maybe I'll get a dated fantasy novel too much like Narnia for me to enjoy (one of the kids enters through a grandfather clock!).

Fourth, the ending doesn't seem to fit the beginning. Maybe I'm not understanding it right. It feels like not the ending at all, which suggests that Grossman means for The Magicians and its sequel to be read as one book in two sets of covers. It's a small point, but I've read repeatedly that a novel ends with the question its readers are led to ask at the beginning. To me, this doesn't. I hope Quentin Coldwater snaps out of his funk and finds happiness. The thing is, the way his life has been going, his only hope may be a sharp blow to the head with a 2x4.

Penguin releases the hardback of the sequel, The Magician King, tomorrow.

Excuses, excuses... and manga (Toradora vol. 2)

2011-08-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Most of what I'm reading is the middle of things, so the past tense of my blog name more or less rules out reporting on it. I did also commit the folly of buying a book last night and starting it before going to sleep. It's Scene and Structure, by Jack M. Bickham. I never heard of him before last night, but I found the contents immediately informative. It's from 1993, part of a series called Elements of Fiction Writing. If you're like me, you've seen the shreds of various such series drifting about used book stores. I don't like to buy them, but I do anyway, when I feel they answer my questions. I have been struggling lately with just the sort of problems Bickham addresses, and reading only two chapters got me working on a new angle on my book.

I'm still reading (and close to finishing) the very entertaining and disappointing fantasy novel the Magicians, by Lev Grossman. It's not the novel that disappoints - it's the main character. I decided that I really don't like Quentin, and I hope he gets his ass kicked a bit more. Actually, based on what's happened in the book so far, I think the last 50 pages of the book will be very painful for him, and for me, because as much as I dislike him, I identify with him.

Work is keeping me busy as well. We just acquired another publisher in our niche, and are reviewing all of its materials in detail. We need to work all of the series - both existing stock and revisions - into our catalog and into our development calendar. In the end, I think we'll be working them into our philosophy as well. They pose a number of challenges, about reading level, about interest, about trends, and about the value inherent in the act of reading (as opposed to the content one reads). Much promise to fulfill, and much work to do.

I meant to review the hi-freakin-larious manga Toradora (story by Takemiya Yuyuko, art by Zekkyo), having just finished the second volume. The tone has changed since the first volume. There's plenty of silliness, thank goodness, but a serious consequence of the two main characters' actions in vol. 1 has arisen. The action has been replaced a little by dialogue, reflecting the change from character establishment in vol. 1 (much based on physical characteristics) to relationship building in vol. 2, which requires talking.

The setup is unoriginal for manga. There are several current or recent series with all or most of these elements. A student who looks different from the norm is treated as if his or her personality matches appearance. In this case, Takasu Ryuuji has "angry eyes," and everyone thinks he looks like a yakuza. (It doesn't help that his late father was yakuza). Ryuuji is actually a very nice guy. He lives with his inept and childlike mother (this is a theme in manga: get rid of the parents), doing the cooking and cleaning for the household, even hassling her about taking off her makeup before going to bed at night, and heating up the food he leaves for her instead of eating it cold. However, when he walks to school, people spread rumors about violent exploits and a terrible temper. It's so unfair! (another manga theme).

On the first day of school (exactly 78% of manga start then), Ryuuji runs afoul of Aisaka Taiga, a petite girl with an even more violent reputation, which she partly deserves. (Whatever her nickname is in Japanese, in the Macmillan translation, it's "Palmtop Tiger." Silly, and fitting.) However, the two soon discover they are neighbors, and that few other people will talk with them, so they develop a weird friendship that provides most of the humor from vol. 1.

The humor is raised a notch by the fact that each of them has one friend. Taiga's is the girl Ryuuji desperately loves, and can't form words around, and Ryuuji's is the boy Taiga even more desperately loves (himself a manga theme: the competent nerd). The two of them, in turn, are good friends and co-captains (another manga theme: weak plot movers) of the softball team, requiring them to bail on almost all occasions in which the four of them might socialize. This leaves Taiga and Ryuuji even more dependent on each other.

Macmillan's subdivision Seven Seas Manga picked this up, and did a nice job with the tankoubon (usually a 6-8 chapter volume) releases. The covers are appropriately shiny and keep the original design (a plus for manga fans who rely on translations), and the printing is crisp and well laid out. Many manga and comics are printed over the gutter or trimmed too far out on one side of the sheet, cutting off text and pictures. Macmillan are pros, and the difference in quality makes this a lot more fun to read. The series itself has no redeeming social value, shows pictures of teenage girls in impossibly short skirts, and makes fun of people for how they look. What's not to like?

coolest thing I read today: "A New Era for Scientists and Engineers"

2011-07-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Found on Facebook...

I read Steve Blank's announcement/contextualization of the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps, a plan to make business development native to science and engineering entrepreneurs, not to imbue traditional business thinking in them, but to recast the challenges of business as a kind of experiment.

Blank says it better than I do, and links lots of things together, so you can follow the threads of his thoughts at will until everything starts to come together.

The first piece I read from him was about the history of business in Silicon Valley, "How Scientists and Engineers got it right, and VC's got it wrong." I found it informative and enjoyable, despite the misuse of an apostrophe. I won't let my small ideas intrude on his big ideas.

coolest thing I "read" today: the future of publishing

2011-07-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

ironically, a video, oh my! but it's worth watching/reading

--found it at the Tor/Forge art director's blog!

Did I mention that sounds like a really great job?

Distracted...

2011-07-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

This is hard to explain, but I recently read a book, and wanted to write about it, but forgot what it is.

My current reading list is:
1. Gennifer Choldenko, Al Capone Does My Shirts (reading aloud with the boys), soon to be followed by Al Capone Shines My Shoes; I look forward to reading these every night!
2. Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below (bathroom reading...Robinson's novels are kind of filling, so I read the climate change-aka Science in the Capital-series a little at a time); Frank Vanderwal is finally growing on me, a bit
3. Lev Grossman, The Magicians (this is good enough to make me skip manga for days at a time)
4. various high-interest, low reading level books I'm reviewing and/or revising at work
5. political blogs that I haven't felt compelled to comment on
6. various manga

My non-reading demands are also high. The kids are in a sports day camp that cuts into my workday, I have lots of stuff due nownownow at work, and I've been getting more exercise lately.

I'll be interested to rediscover what it is I just read, and then think about whether it's worth sharing if I've forgotten it that easily.

coolest thing I read today: satirical reviews...and avoiding huge ships

2011-07-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

This collection of Amazon customer reviews for How to Avoid Huge Ships is the coolest thing I read today.

I love stuff like this.

Beth Revis, Across the Universe AND Orson Scott Card, How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy

2011-07-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

Note: I am laaaaazy. I started writing this at the beginning of the month, and I've made progress at the rate of about 20 words per day, on average. This is pretty darn lame. Still, there were some things I wanted to share about what I read, so please humor me by reading on.

One of my favorite first chapters is in Beth Revis's Across the Universe, which is her first novel. She wrapped me up in the story with her wrenching introduction/first act narrative. I liked how she really dove into the conflicts of one main character's starting point. Of course, the conflict changes, and Revis successfully balances a second protagonist, as well.

Ultimately, I found myself only partly pleased with the novel, and it's all Orson Scott Card's fault.

That because I was reading Card's well-aged How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy. This occasions an admission on my part, a somewhat painful one, considering that I read a lot, much of it science fiction and fantasy: I've never read a book by Orson Scott Card before.

Nope. Not one. Not even Ender's Game.

For those who don't know what kind of an admission this is, say, maybe you're not a sci-fi nut, or you've just been defrosted after an avalanche buried you in the Alps in the last Ice Age, this makes me howl with derision. It's sort of like living in the US and admitting you've never eaten corn on the cob, or growing up in the 70s without knowing what Farrah Fawcett looked like. That out of touch.

So why is this Card's fault? (I feel a need to justify this, after comparing him to corn on the cob and a 70s "pin-up girl".)

I work in publishing, and I read a lot, and I'm trying to write, and he really spoke to that confluence of concerns with his book. How to Write, that is. Not Ender.

Scott focuses on how a writer needs to think about readers as a segmented market, that they access a writer's work not by its ideas or its quality, but by its marketing. This makes eminent sense, and Card humorously and helpfully takes us through an abbreviated version of his own voyage of discovery on this, with substantial diversions into strategies to manage the channeling of creativity.

As a publisher and reader, his observations meet with my own experiences, but as a writer, I was surprised to find I had not put them into practice. Card specifically does not argue against breaking boundaries and opening new ground. He simply, and eloquently, shows how sales categories help customers find books they will like. The point-of-sale success of categories like "fantasy" and "mystery" leads booksellers, distributors, publishers, and best-selling authors, to think in those terms as well. For Card, it's a matter of how hard one wants to fight to get sales. If you're OK with the challenge, cross boundaries. If you'd just like to have your book read, consider living, and writing, within them.

He also offers some keen tidbits of advice. One of the ones I remember is about using offensive language. Consistent with his approach in this book, he doesn't moralize about this. He simply observes that market placement will constrict with expletives, and expand with their deletion. He advises against made-up expletives because they will break the spell the author is spending so much time and energy to create.

So, how did Ms. Revis lose me? I learned from Card (yep - his fault) that publishers respect the boundaries of genre fiction. For instance, the boundaries among romance, mystery, and science fiction. Those would be easy to see, right?

Of course, this isn't true at all, and the value of Revis' book lies partly in her ability to weave multiple levels of narrative together. There's a travelogue, coming of age (twice over), mystery, and the sci-fi setting, all blended into a single, very readable narrative. (Brava!)

My problem was that I was focusing too much on the different types of narrative to enjoy their combination fully.

The science fiction setting is, in the end, mainly a setting, however. I recall reading something from Philip Dick, shortly after he started to be recognized as more than a crank and a hack, and also shortly before he died, that in science fiction, the universe in which the story is set differs in one main aspect from our own, and the characters are principally involved in dealing with that difference.

Take Robert Silverberg's The World Inside. The premise is that on an overcrowded future Earth, people live in gigantic high-rises surrounded by open space. The novel isn't about how the high-rises are built, or why, or the political machinations needed to force people into them. It's about how people adapt to the circumstances they're in, which fundamentally differ from our own.

I like (but don't worship) that definition of science fiction. It mostly works. Across the Universe, however, may as well have been set on an island as on an intergalactic, intergenerational space ship. It would be a fascinating story in a different setting. And that only bothers me, I suspect, because I learned to look for this in a last-millennium "how-to" book.

coolest thing I read today: the wherefores of book titles

2011-07-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry Gary Dexter's blog, How Books Got Their Titles, is no longer active, but he posted 181 essays explaining book titles, which I think is a very literary and worthy thing to do. I liked his explanation of the origin of the title Pride and Prejudice (#178) very much.

I'll definitely pay his blog a visit again (after all, I have 177 left to go!), and if you're among the handful of people reading this, I guess you might like to as well.

coolest thing I read today: telomeres!

2011-07-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

But you can't read it, unless you get the Chronicle on your iPad or on shredded trees. Or wait till Wednesday at 3pm for this link to work.

I wasn't a science guy in college, but I'm not sure why not. (Hint: math.)

This is pretty cool, though. The ends of chromosomes fray with cell reproduction and stress, and when they're gone, you die. (Yikes!)

It's as if the non-coding ends of chromosomes were the fraying fringes of carpets. They absorb the damage and stress of pounding feet, and yet the carpets remain whole, until the fringes are breached.

See why I wasn't a science guy? Still, cool stuff.

More about telomeres here:
Wikipedia
Kimball's Biology Pages
Science Daily

coolest thing I read today: tvtropes.com-ANVILICIOUS

2011-06-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was working, really, trying to find useful details about gangs for a story I'm editing, and found a television tropes result...always worth following if you have an hour.

I wound up at "anvilicious" which has a fairly plain meaning about obvious messages thinly disguised as or in entertainment.

My concise definition has its merits, but there's just something about browsing tvtropes. Don't forget to click on the examples buttons below. It's a clunky interface, but the interwoven content will have you opening a dozen simultaneous tabs in no time.

Dorothy Hodgkin: a life, by Georgina Ferry

2011-06-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin seems like the kind of person who merits duelling biographers, Every page of Ferry's dully titled, well-ordered, and crisply phrased seemed packed with Hodgkin's own energy. From a young age, Dorothy Hodgkin, born Crowfoot, seems to have been working at an accelerated rate, driven by curiosity and enabled by intellect and good fortune (her encouraging and liberal family, her family's fortuitous financial circumstances, the contacts and possibilities presented to her), she left her biographer the happy task of way too much to write about at once.

I felt at times an unhappy comparison with my own accomplishments, or more precisely, with my own drive.

Hodgkin (1910-1994) is principally famous for mapping the structure and composition of a few major organic molecules, especially penicillin, vitamin B12, and human insulin. She did this through a field of physical chemistry I had not understood at all prior to reading Ferry's account, x-ray crystallography.

The process involves triggering crystal formation in the target molecule (I really have no sense how this is done), isolating crystals of it, firing x-rays through the crystals, and catching the refractions on photographic paper. The crystal is turned a number of times and new refractions captured. Careful analysis of the patterns leads to testable hypotheses in some cases, and with numerous follow-ups, even complex molecules can be mapped - not only the composition understood, but the locations of atoms, and even arrangements of electrons. Considering the finesse of the task, or the stark differences proceeding from small chemical changes, this is quite a difficult and a useful endeavor.

Hodgkin was also notably a magnet, a catalyst, a principal cause. She should be equally famous for her ability to charm and convince people to give her, and other scientists, often women or non-Europeans, opportunities. She broke (and trampled to dust) several barriers, or stormed the walls with the first wave (she was the third woman inducted into the Royal Society). Once established, she made her laboratory a site of cross-pollenization, a platform for unattached scientists, and the development of new ideas. Her own work and the work she inspired, supported, and often (later) funded, opened up fields of inquiry.

This brings me to my motivation in reading this dense and informative decade-old biography. I was trying, and I failed, to find the source of a quotation I'm probably misremembering. It may go like this,

The value of a good bit of work is that it inspires imitation, and is soon eclipsed.

To me, that encapsulates quite well the attitude of the Nobel Laureate Hodgkin. I began to be interested in her story principally to check this quotation. Having now, finally, finished reading the book, I can't say I'm much closer.

However, I have enjoyed reading what feels like intellectual history raiding the land of biography.

MORI Kaoru's Bride's Story (manga)

2011-06-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

I love this book. I read unlicensed scanlations of it online, and considered buying Mori's earlier series, Emma, just to support her, even though the story didn't captivate me.

So I was thrilled when Yen Press came out with a (hardbound!) collection of the beginning of the story, and immediately bought vol. 1. I can't wait for vol. 2.

What makes this so captivating? First it's the art. Mori draws in a shojo (think: really big eyes) style, but way off to the extreme of detail and style. There's none of the sparkly silliness, the super-deformed comedic moments, the school-uniforms-and-cherry-blossoms sameness of her art, or her subject.

Bride's Story is set around the Caspian Sea in the 19th century, with Russia and England pursuing their "Great Game" in the area, which impinges on the story subtly at first. Mori draws scenery like an Italian Renaissance painter, with details of hills stretching out to the horizon. I've never been to the Caspian Sea region, but now I want to go.

She also paid exquisite attention to details of costume, architecture, and material culture. Even were she to have gotten the details wrong, you can't help on reading this to admire the wealth of detail. I'm inclined to think she got it right, at least mainly, because of the elements that ring true to me, but I really don't know.

The story is full of challenges, difficulty, and warmth - even romance. (Yes, it's really a shojo manga!) But it's also full of action (at first, and often, provided by the bride of the title), which makes it look and read more like a shonen manga, for boys. But at its heart it's far more serious. It's really a grown-ups' story, or at least YA. The action and themes are mature, including the marriage in question (what's shocking to readers is the youth of the husband; what's shocking to people in the story is the age of the bride), and the relations between different groups of nomads and townspeople.

I've read through chapter 10 of the scanlation (which I am now avoiding because it's licensed in the US), and will definitely invest in the remainder of the series.

Sticker Shock - it's more than just the price of the car

2011-06-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

This morning's NYT editorial, "Sticker Shock," makes one great point, and I think misses another, with this central assertion:

Labels [in this case, about car mileage and emissions] can help consumers make better choices. But Detroit and other manufacturers make big changes only when regulators force them to.

The value of this insight is plain, and often denied by market fetishists. If we're going to have competition in a high-volume consumer setting, the least the consumer needs is good information about the products she is consuming. Can you assess the safety of the eggs you buy? Do you test the processor speed of a computer before purchasing it? I will make better (more market-oriented) consumer choices when I have useful information. How else can the invisible hand act but in the light?

That said, I think there's a bit missing to the editorial, and it's about how the market regulates itself. There's a kind of ecosystem for products that drives the producers to change, or not. That ecosystem contains market forces and government regulations. The market forces are undeniable. That's why the world buys so many Toyotas, despite recent problems (which have reduced Toyota sales).

But what I think is wrong with the statement I quoted, and with the general perception of market forces and manufacturing, is that producers in one regulatory setting react less well to the market forces than producers in another. That is, the reason American producers (as the editorial states) withhold information, and other consumer-centered improvements, is that the regulatory environment in the United States permits them to survive that way.

No longer forced to compete by hunting, the US car industry has become tame, living hand-fed in the shelter of regulatory neglect.

Companies that respond without that insulating blanket develop more fuel-efficient, lower-emission cars. They do this without the appearance of government regulation.

So the anti-regulatory crowd in the US has it exactly backwards. The denial of sensible regulatory pressure on auto (and other) producers IS the market distortion. Sensible regulations allow consumers and producers to act rationally in the marketplace.

The Case of the Left-handed Lady / An Enola Holmes Mystery, by Nancy Springer

2011-06-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

I always prejudge a book by its cover. This gets me into trouble some of the time, and keeps me out of quite wonderful reads much of the rest of the time, but it is hard not to do.

One of my hats at work says "art director" on it. I have a sympathy with, well, myself, for the above failing.

This said, and while I very much liked the particular cover (I know of three) of The Case of the Left-Handed Lady that I borrowed from the library, I actually picked it up because of the author and the subject matter. How crazy is that?

Nancy Springer is a fine writer of middle grades fiction. She has written a number of stories about horses, one of which I reviewed recently, and which was part of the reason I picked up this one. The Enola Holmes mysteries suppose a teenage sister of the adult Sherlock, who experiences sleuthing in Victorian England, as they said of Ginger Rogers, "backwards and in high heels."

Springer has done a great job in this second (perhaps third) novel in the series of defining a character on the go, and describing her universe in digestible, almost unnoticeable chunks. I intend to copy her to the letter in my work, one day. We meet Enola in mid-dissembling, and chase her through her adventures doubly fraught with the dangers of discovery and societal disapproval as well as murder and the damn smog.

It's a nice piece for someone who can follow the deceptions (they're not hard), and comprehend the differences between Victorian England and the reader's own society. Springer deftly assigns the lead character to the task of tut-tutting those elements of modern American self-image that had roots in the novel's time, but had not come to pass.

I can't guess a word count, but this would be a nice step up for a fourth to sixth grader who's not yet feeling confident, or reading quickly, enough for middle teen novels of 80k words.

Incarceron/Sapphique - Catherine Fisher

2011-05-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

I read the first volume on a business trip (to exhibit at the International Reading Association Convention, no less), and fell instantly into the world Fisher creates. When I got back, I bought the second volume on the way home from the airport. I finished it the day after my Florida flu fever broke.

Part of what held my attention so thoroughly was the mysterious nature of the world itself. The central question of the book is, really, its setting. All the previews will tell you that Incarceron is a prison world, and the main characters are a prisoner and the Warden's daughter. This is good enough to get going, but the way Fisher repeatedly trips up the reader, with possible red herrings and genuine deceptions, keeps the story building tension even though the action could hardly have started sooner.

I felt the resolution fell short, however, and it's a bit of my sci-fi>fantasy prejudice showing through. I like to know, at the end, what happened, and to have reasons and causal relationships. Much of fantasy relies on the unknowable (exception: the highly rational and organized magic of the Harry Potter universe), whereas at least some science fiction relies on rational, if not naturalistic, explanations.

For those not burdened with my predilections (and are they even reasonable?), this short series is a detailed tapestry of interwoven narratives (talk about omniscient perspective head-hopping...but it works!), glimpses of imagined sacred texts and histories, and a deep, changing, meaningful world for deep, changing, and meaningful characters to inhabit.

Maybe my reservation of praise over the plot resolution has to do with the fact that I've rewritten my own first chapter (again) based on the experience of the first volume alone. Totally unfair of me. These are great fantasy.

The Boy on a Black Horse, by Nancy Springer

2011-04-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

I'm editing books on horses, targeted for teen girls. Actually, I fought for the series, came up with the characters, the setting, and most of the plot outlines, found an artist, leveled the manuscripts, and I am now supervising the artist I selected while finishing the editing process and commissioning the cover design.

The problem is - well, problems are - I'm not a teenage girl, and I don't like horses.

I rode one once, for maybe half an hour. Then I was in a hospital for a few days. That was over three decades ago, and even with Facebook, I don't recognize most of the people I went to grade school with. They post these nice pictures, and I think, "who's that?" with almost every name and face.

The horse's name - the one that threw me: Brandy. Yes. I can remember that.

So I'm not a devotee of the genre, it may safely be said. I thought it might be good to check if we were doing it right, and last week I finally checked out a somewhat dated book by a fairly prolific author of girls' fantasy books, mainly with horses, and dove in.

It was great! Springer is one of those authors who, like Suzanne Collins, believes in grabbing the viscera in the opening lines. Nothing, for me, starts off like The Hunger Games. But Springer's The Boy on a Black Horse starts with that same, simmering power, the feeling of loss, and promise of danger.

The first time I ever saw him I was pretending to write in my daily journal in language arts class but actually drawing a horse--the head and neck had come out run-in-the-wind gorgeous, but I knew I would never get the rest of it as good--and when the door opened I looked up like everybody else, and there was a strange boy walking into my life.

Every part of that opening works. There's suspense, questioning, romance, mystery, characterization... I can see where, over the next few paragraphs, Collins has done Springer one better, by showing the near ends of all the final threads immediately, and quickly turning dread into relief into panic. This doesn't progress like that, but instead quietly, calmly introduces Gray Calderone's motivations and history, about at the pace a real person might on meeting someone new, and coming to trust them.

Anyway, the purpose of reading this book was not to enjoy it, though I really did. It was to check on Copper Canyon, my series of short books for struggling older readers. (I say "my" - I'm not the author, and Deb did a great job, but for the purposes of writing a high interest-low reading level book, I have to take out every word or phrase and replace it with another. I call it "fossilization." Not the most promising verb, but a good metaphor for the process.) I am pleased as much by the comparison as by the research. Now I get to go back to the editing, and not worry whether the books will be enjoyable. (There's plenty else to worry about in publishing, anyway!)

Seeing clearly - multiculturalism and its discontents

2011-04-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

I won't write today to complain about the New Know-Nothings or the Amurrica-Firsters or the millionaires and wannabes who pine for silly things like Whites-Only schools. I'm not even complaining (except about how hard putting contact lenses in turned out to be). I read with interest an article in In These Times at the Optometry Clinic at Cal--that's the University of California at Berkeley to people who don't recycle alumni fundraising requests--while waiting for said contacts.

It struck a nerve with me. More things are doing that lately. Probably about to spout off on some poor, unsuspecting person. Still, I've been a bit quick to anger.

This nerve, however, did not bulge in my neck or cause comical wavy lines to indicate steam escaping from my ears. (No. Those comical, wavy lines are hair.)

John M. Davis' piece, called "Still Separate, Still Unequal," reprised a theme I used to entertain thoughts of writing on. Come to think of it, I guess I'm doing that here.

Davis (in the March, 2011 issue, and online dated March 2, 2011) writes that progressives have allowed the original genius of ending school segregation to stand for the entire project of social equity. By insisting that only schools desegregate, we've missed the point of total desegregation, which is to undermine the attitudes and affiliations that channel wealth and power in this country by racial categories.

Descending a generation further from Brown v. Board of Education, progressives allowed themselves to become protectors of a new inequality, one not of power but of softer privilege, the privilege of recognition, of official sanction. (It's this, really, that right-wing buffoons like Newt Gingrich complain about--having to celebrate the achievements of the disabled, the dark-complexioned, the left-handed...) By so doing, we not only unnecessarily tweak clown noses (clowns with bullhorns, and lobbyists' phone numbers tucked into their oversize shoes), we reify difference.

And the consequences of the two together are greater association of poverty with melatonin, greater differentiation between rich and poor schools, and a current trend toward abandonment of desegregation in public schools at all.

My feeling is that Davis leaves out progressive malaise. Maybe that's not the right term. Maybe it's decency. Progressives these days, and as far as I can tell since around the time left-wingers in the US stopped lobbing explosives at plutocrats, tend to fight against the maelstrom of right-wing power and publicity by steering straight for our goal. We then fight against the greatest concentration of wealth and media ever known, a concentration concentrated on concentrating political power to a degree almost never known. (You remember, the "permanent right-wing majority" to be reached by redistricting, media and campaign deregulation, and a constant state of fear.)

Just as progressives cringed when President Obama proposed Bob Dole's health insurance reform plan and the Republicans called it a socialist takeover casserole with a side of death panels, I feel progressives should not have pushed hard only for school desegregation. Doing so set the battle lines too close to the status quo ante.

What we need to do going forward is push for the (sorry, but I'm getting the munchies) whole enchilada. Don't let the fact that a pasty-white guy wants it with "manchamanteles" red mole sauce distract you from Davis' doctrine, and my corollary. Progressives should push far to the left of what we think we can get. Be honest. If it were 1954, would we want school desegregation alone, or social desegregation and economic justice? There's always going to be pushback, whether against school busing or against recognizing GLBT citizens in the social studies curriculum, so why not legislate morality, and start the battle there? Certainly the right wing wants to legislate morality, now that it means something other than outlawing sexual and racial discrimination! Why should the left be any more timid.

Well, it's because timid is sort of like nice, at least nice to bullies, and that's what we've become. Nice to bullies. That approach draws the line at the question of who gets my lunch money, rather than what all the bullied kids in school plan together in resistance.

I saved money!

2011-04-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

And you can, too! Now, using the power of the Internet, you can sample terrible first chapters of promoted new books, and know for a solid fact that you will never willingly spend a dime on them!

I saved $15.99 by reading the first chapter of The Gift, by Brian M. Litfin. It's the second book in the Chiveis Trilogy, which was news to me. Not important news, but news nonetheless.

Foolishly, I had followed the link under this promotional text, which I received in an email, a sponsored email, from Publishers Weekly:

Hundreds of years in the future, war and disease have destroyed civilization as we know it. Much technology has been discarded and history is largely forgotten. Slowly, the few survivors have begun to build new communities, and kingdoms now prosper in a kind of feudal order. But the Word of God has been lost for centuries.

Hokey, right? I mean, the come-on is almost unreadable. I admit that I followed it out of morbid (as in, How bad can this really be?) curiosity.

It's bad, in an almost delectable, look-how-I-did-all-the-bestsellers'-tricks kind of way.

There's longing (the main characters used to be royalty, and now they're refugees!), pathos (a nightmare, a snake, and obeisance to the will of "Deu"), romance (a beautiful princess, a daring prince, and a small tent), adventure (a small tent...that's as far as I got), and lots of unexplained crap, like how life reverts to a Harlequin novel's version of the Middle Ages after the collapse of civilization, and why the men do the manly patrolling with swords and the woman does the cooking and cleaning.

There's also a real disregard for language, both in the specific Riddley Walker kind of way, in which novelist and children's story stalwart Russel Hoban imagines an almost impenetrable post-Apocalyptic patois, and in the generic people-don't-actually-think-or-speak-like-that-you-idiot kind of way.

This cries out for an example. Here's the first paragraph:

Anastasia lay awake under a bearskin cloak, listening to the alien sounds of a land far from home. The stub of a candle hung from the ceiling of her leather tent, providing enough light to chase away the nocturnal spirits, but not the heaviness in Ana’s heart.

Notice the similarity to the start of The Hunger Games. Only, that was good. This has imagery (check), evocative vocabulary (check), and vacuous nonsense.

Why a bearskin cloak? What does that get us in the first sentence?

And what kind of sounds does one expect in "a land far from home?" Also, she just crossed the mountain to get there, so how far is far? Are the birds different? Does the wind moan or cackle? What are the sounds?

How does one hang a candle? Wouldn't it burn the string? Maybe it's the kind that burns upside-down!

And oh! the heaviness in her heart! Why is it there, you ask? "Read on!" says the author. "I'm not telling!"

In other words, we learn nothing useful or particular in this first paragraph, except the limits of Litfin's imagination, or of his patience for rewriting.

I'm being really harsh and sarcastic, I know. And after only suffering through a few pages near the beginning.

By contrast, Suzanne Collins hits us with this scene of the heroine waking up to loss:

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

The bad thing about reading this paragraph is that now I want to read the Hunger Games trilogy again.

I should really thank Mr. Litfin. First, he helps show that there is a range of quality in fantasy books published today. I had thought I was slipping, falling so easily under the sway of Suzanne Collins, Rick Riordan, Dave Barry, and buying from the promo chapter Beth Revis' Across the Universe. I am reassured of my own continued ability to discriminate gold from dross by the bile welling up in my throat.

Second, I keep worrying that my own writing is just a waste of time. Will I ever finish? That's in doubt, but I feel much better about trying now, seeing that my puny, incomplete draft of a chapter is so much more readable and interesting than this.

And third, if book publishing is really about to disappear (right as I get started in writing, and less than a decade after I switched to a career in publishing), I can take comfort that it's not really so bad, because this will be part of what is lost.

Last, does it really matter that, on trying to find the market price for The Gift by searching "litfin chiveis," I discovered that he "was born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in a Christian home as the son of a seminary professor, pastor, and college president," and that the series revolves around the loss and rediscovery of Biblical knowledge?

Nah. It's bad enough in its own right. Thanks, Mr. Litfin. You've done me a favor. I'll use the money to buy several pounds of coffee from Trader Joe's, I think.

digging a deeper pit

2011-04-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

From a Facebook/middle school friend:

"Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither."

nerd alert!

2011-04-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

I just received delivery at work of Carlo Cipolla's 1962 book The Economic History of World Population. I don't know why, but I get really excited to read analyses of history I did not anticipate. Cipolla is also a great writer, at least in my limited experience, and I was pleased to find this book of which I had been ignorant only a week ago. Actually, I found it in Stylish Penguin and Pelican Book covers at Abuzeedo, an entry in Brazilian Paulo Gabriel's graphic design blog. I think he's even nerdier than me!

Life as we Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

2011-04-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm slow to read this, and a bit perplexed by its success.

It's not that I don't like the book. On the contrary, I was riveted. I just found its plot development contrary to what I figured the target demographic was moved by.

This is good news on two fronts: first, that publishers are finding success with more than one formula for this age group (teens and young adults); and second, that teens and young adults (and I) are moved to read more than one formula.

As for scenarios, this one is a doozy. It starts a bit lackadaisically, but changes drastically. I find the slow set-up the confusing part. My feeling is that the diary format allows for greater latitude in developing an identification with the main character. That, and good writing. Pfeffer holds our attention without the global catastrophe striking in the first chapter.

When it does strike, it brings out some of the current political debate. First, the main character Miranda is frustrated with the behavior of her newly fundamentalist Christian friend. She feels shut out, and confused at her irrational behavior. I was watching for signs of a reversal in Miranda's opinion. None, as of the first book, but it's a three, and possibly four book set. (See Pfeffer's blog, linked at right.)

Second, Miranda's mom disses the president, and although he's not named, he lives in Texas, and she calls him a dimwit or the equivalent. Not too much guessing needed.

Third, and most important, Pfeffer neatly encompassed a minor part of the current government shut-down debate by showing how things fall apart. Every family turns inward, and in their isolation are exposed to great risk. Without mediating authority, contact with others also is a risk.

This paragraph is a spoiler, so don't keep reading if you don't want to, but it is only the resumption of some level of politicla organization that promises hope and saves Miranda's family at the end.

I thought that fit nicely into my developing sense of Pfeffer's politics. I intend to read the next two (or three) books in the series with an eye to her evolving opinion. It's just the sort of thing that raises my interest in a book, at least one that holds my attention with good plot and character development like this one.

For now, the book closes with Harry Tuttle in "Brazil" about to rappel off the highrise apartment wall, thumbs-up "We're all in this together, kid."

Great. I feel just like Sam Lowry.

I was thinking of re-reading Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series...

2011-03-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

...when the great and terrible Web intervened.

I followed a link about plot development - I couldn't resist the tone of ridicule - and found Nick Lowe's mocking 1982 "educational" essay, The Well-Tempered Plot Device.

Lowe takes down Donaldson, Susan Cooper, and JRR Tolkien (and several I don't know) for obvious plot devices, and proposes, tongue-in-cheek, a more appropriate manual for science fiction and fantasy than the usual how-to-write-a-good-novel. He proposes a how-to for cheap plot devices to get books into print and keep the sequels coming.

This all makes me feel better about struggling to write. I thought perhaps I was a hack. I thought I was taking clichéd approaches. I thought I was wasting my time. On reading Lowe's hilarious piece, I think now that I have been avoiding the simplistic plot devices he accused, almost two decades ago, of cheapening the genre I'm trying to contribute to.

I think I feel a little bit better.

Reason, facts, logic; or: a distemperate exposure of my biases

2011-03-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

Svelte troglodyte Ann Coulter (TM) claims in a pathologically misleading and anti-brain-function blog post March 16, 2011 that radiation has beneficial health effects.

She went on Fox's O'Reilly Factor to talk it up on St. Patrick's Day. Not that anyone with a conscience would have been watching except to debunk it, or because we're forced to in public places. Or to induce vomiting.

One part of this was brought to my attention, and I read it (whence the applicability to my blog), and now, after wiping the contents of my stomach (carrots? when did I eat carrots) off my computer monitor, I feel like doing the easiest thing in the world, debunking right-wing idiocy.

Not that it matters. Right-wing idiocy is spewed from high-pressure hoses in every home in the country, in bars and airport lobbies, truck stops and hotel rooms. We're soaking in it, a kind of reverse-Palmolive that you really shouldn't let get under your fingernails.

Here's the paragraph that got me. Ready the buckets!

Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and professor emeritus at Harvard, told The New York Times that it's been hard to find excess cancers even from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly because one-third of the population will get cancer anyway. There were about 90,000 survivors of the atomic bombs in 1945 and, more than 50 years later, half of them were still alive. (Other scientists say there were 700 excess cancer deaths among the 90,000.)

Now, that just cries out for attention, doesn't it? Knowing a very little (but vastly more than the entire blowhardosphere on the right) about Japanese history, I was able to search for the term "hibakusha cancer statistics," and immediately came up with a dandy first page of links. You see, "hibakusha" is the Japanese word for the survivors of the only nuclear attacks ever carried out in the history of the world. (And let's keep it that way, chickenhawks!)

Reading just the first one, from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, the first paragraph is:

Increased risk of cancer is the most important late effect of radiation exposure seen in A-bomb survivors. For cancers other than leukemia (solid cancers), excess risk associated with radiation started to appear about ten years after exposure. This was first noted by a Japanese physician, Gensaku Obo, in 1956, and it led to continuing comprehensive analyses of cancer mortality and to the creation of tumor registries by the city medical associations in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And the rest of the page is filled with similar references. Here's a paragraph and a table from later in the same article that reference the data collection, scope, and results of one form of direct study that seems to directly contradict Coulter's source and conclusion:

I think I'm able to read from this that a study spanning four decades in Hiroshima and Nagasaki found 848 cases of certain cancers above the expected norm, out of a total of 44,635 patients observed, concluding that exposure to the bomb blasts and environmental effects accounted for a 10.7% additional risk of these types of cancer.

I decided it was about time to meet Professor Moeller. It was easy to find one possible source of Coulter's column, because it contained several of the same quotations and bits of data she uses.

Remember: Coulter's point is that radiation is good for you!

The point of the article ("For Radiation, How Much Is Too Much?," by Dr. Gary Farr at www.becomehealthynow.com) - the conclusion - is that it's not possible, despite the opinions of Prof. Moeller, and despite the increased cost of assuring lower radiation exposure, to discount a linear relationship between radiation exposure and cancer risk.

Here are five paragraphs from the article. The first is from the middle of the piece, and it describes the linear relationship. The next four are from the end, and contain the conclusion of the article.

Scientists usually rely on a mathematical model in estimating radiation risk. The most widely used model is known as the linear-nonthreshold dose-response model. It assumes that there is no safe dose of radiation and that the risk of getting cancer or genetic damage increases along with radiation exposure.

A recent report, issued in June by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Risks, is 287 pages long and devoted entirely to evaluating the linear-nonthreshold model. It explains that the council "has sought to leave no significant aspect of the subject unaddressed."
Its conclusion?
For lack of a better model, it recommends keeping the linear one.
"There is not conclusive evidence on which to reject" the model, the report says, adding that "it may never be possible to prove or disprove the validity of the linear nonthreshold assumption."

So where are we? It's fairly simple to see that a nonspecialist, nonjournalist, working stiff on his lunch break can come up with viable counterarguments. However, the pathological liars on the right keep propagating lies. They are paid well, live in a cushioned world, and have lots of low-information fans.

And they are screwing up the world as fast as they can cash coal industry* paychecks.

[*Substitute, or add, the corporate villain of your choice.]

So what do we do? They want to kill public education, workers' rights, our only domestic source of reliable information, consumer protection, the public safety net, and access to affordable healthcare. They don't want death panels. They want starvation in the streets.

For my part, I feel like walking away and muttering "Bastards, bastards!" under my breath. Maybe I'll throw in an occasional "¡Sinverguenzas!" for flavor. I just don't look at that as a long-term solution.

A very mild-mannered person I've known since, well, forever, as long as I'm concerned, recently commented to me she thought we might be near a tipping point. I didn't mention mobs with torches, and neither did she, but I did think it.

Here's a note about teapartyism and the whole anti-intellectual, fsked-up, the-one-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins attitude, versus capitalism with a conscience. I heard it on the radio and found it at Democratic Underground:

A few months ago a German manufacturer was being interviewed on one of our cable business programs. He was obviously very wealthy so the interviewer kept on about all the taxes he was paying in Germany. The guy just didn't seem interested in talking about it, but the interviewer would not let it go. Finally the German said. "I just don't care about the taxes I pay". The interviewer was speechless for a few seconds and then blurted out, "But why don't you care"? The German thought for a couple of seconds and replied. "Because I don't want to be a rich man living in a poor country".

I think I'll buy a pitchfork.

---

update 3/21/11: OK, it's not only me. There's a general projectile vomiting reaction: http://leftaction.com/action/ann-coulter-go-fukushima-yourself

Someone proposed a collection to buy her a one-way ticket to Fukushima. That's just cruel. You know how the TSA treats people with one-way tickets!

Great Historical Images - Library of Congress...and of course manga

2011-03-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

Quick! Before the Republicans defund it and tear it down, in the interest of saving money, and give the no-bid trillion dollar contract to their buddies, check out the LoC's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.

It's full of fascinating (I don't use the word lightly) glimpses of US history.

For a book reissue I'm working on, I have to find an image of the Klan from the 19th century. There are a huge number from the early 20th.

There are also a lot of lithos and cartoons, depending on the era. Here's one about the Klan, from the early 20th century: "Like the moth, it works in the dark." You can download high-res images for free. If you're publishing them, you have to check the copyright status.

I used to love stuff like this when I was teaching. Now I somehow find my way back, for work and purely for interest.

All this is to say that I've been reading for work mostly these days. I'm still enjoying, but slowly, the biography of Dorothy Hodgkin. I'm holding off on new fiction novels till I finish. But I am indulging in comics. My favorite new one is Bakuman. I've read vols 1-2. It's kind of a kick in the pants for us wannabe creative types. (It's about two driven 15-year-old kids who start publishing manga with a major publisher, and it's very enjoyable, except for the nagging feeling of relative inadequacy reading it engenders...)

reading from the blogs - anatomy of racist hype-mail

2011-03-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

I get this crap all the time. Some people I otherwise respected and like have bought into the whole padded bandwagon of right-wing hysteria in this country. And when one misses something, others seem to fill in the loony/racist gap.

So I followed a link on the right side of this page, yes, that's it - the "urban legends" one. That goes to snopes.com. Today's click brought me to a frustrating demonstration of our current political landscape, and a reasoned, fact-based refutation.

The Pigford case was about racial discrimination at the USDA, and if presented with some facts omitted and some included, some rearranged and some distorted, makes it look as if Glenn Beck has a point when he fulminates against the uppity negroes running the gummint. ("Gummint" is a Molly Ivins trademark. Racist hysteria is widespread among social "conservatives," whom I call "post-integrationists," in the US.)

Fortunately/unfortunately, the case is more complicated. Fortunately because it means that Shirley Sherrod and Barack Obama did not conspire to rob the Treasury of $1.25 billion. Unfortunate because the refuted argument gets wide circulation among my former principal and beloved aunt and uncle.

Snopes is brilliant, but ineffective against the nightly chalkboard-enhanced rants of our country's premier fascist cheerleader.

just received: Revis, Across the Universe; Mihara, The Embalmer vol. 2

2011-03-03T11:09:00.000-08:00

Mail-order book addict confession: I like bookstores. I never have the time to go to them, or almost never. I also like reading. A lot. So I order online. Probably too often.

I was happy this morning to collect my new books from the shipping dept. at work. I read the first chapter of Beth Revis' Across the Universe (sci-fi, romance, suspense, who knows what else?) last fall on a promo site, and felt the same electric tension (with more wrenching of viscera) as in Collins' Hunger Games novels. That is to say, a heckuva lot. It will be a struggle to put off reading this till I've whittled down the rest of my reading list.

Also in this shipment, a book I've already read, but for free, illicitly, online. I decided I wanted to own The Embalmer, which Tokyopop publishes in the US, and was having trouble getting vol. 2 from the publisher, so I ordered a used copy. There's a small dent in the cover, but it's otherwise fine. Mihara tells a somewhat unusual story about a pretty darned unusual character, since most Japanese are cremated instead of being buried in caskets. The art and some tropes are typical of seinen manga - the market segment of men over 20 or so. What I read before made me feel like committing to this series. Good thing most seinen manga have short runs. (The top selling shounen (boys') manga, like One Piece and Naruto, run above 200 chapters, that's dozens of $10+ volumes.)

delightful, atypical - Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks

2011-02-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading The Penderwicks aloud to my six-year-old son. I am floored at how great a read it is, and at how much he (loves Legos, Star Wars, "handball," and inappropriate anatomical references) and I (love sci-fi, manga, African history, and control-freak strategy games) enjoyed this book, page by page and line by line.

It's the story of a summer of rather safe, but not dull, adventure, and very innocent romance, featuring four girls and their several crushes, pets (a dog and a very tame father), allies, and nemeses. The setting is old New England, rural, and perfectly free - just right for kids, though alien to my own, with their dawn-to-dusk routines and constant adult supervision.

What makes this story so readable? For me, I found the characters easy to differentiate by voice. This isn't always the case. In too many books - whether for children or otherwise, the voices that occur to me (especially important when reading to a sharp-eared first grader!) are hard to keep track of.

It's all Thomson & Thompson, if you know what I mean.

Birdsall's characters - all four girls, two boys, five supporting adults and a dog - all have distinctive voices. Nobody needs to think whether Jane is talks like an officious oddball - her dialogue demands it. And Skye can only talk too loud most of the time. There's just no two ways about it. I love that about this book.

I think also that the pace of events is just about perfect. There's always something that makes my stomach lurch a little, or would, if I was one of the main characters. And despite the obvious gaps between them and me, it's easy enough to identify with them. They're like different facets of a good person, anyway - impassioned, righteous, creative, shy, bold, analytical, athletic, dreamy, caring... I felt through most of the book as if we had known the Penderwicks for some time.

This is a great book to read aloud to younger, beginning readers, and I'm going to recommend it to my dragons- and swords- obsessed older son, as well. When he puts down the most recent Goosebumps. I'll post his reactions if I get them.

---

I was happy just now to discover two things. First, that I spelled the author's name right, and second, that she has three Penderwicks books. Go see!

Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero is like the Stanford Band

2011-02-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

There may be imperfections, and you may not gravitate to the style, but it’s hard not to appreciate the finesse and power of Riordan’s seventh YA novel, a return to the world of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, with new characters (and old), familiar and novel conflicts, and a fraction less snark. Admission: I actually miss the clever chapter titles.

So what is this about the Stanford Band, and from a Cal grad? I’m not a fan of football, or marching bands, but I still always pay attention when I hear about the Stanford Band. (Plus, did I mention, I went to Cal and UCLA?) The reason is they’re always entertaining, not just because of their skills as musicians, not just because of their skills as a marching band, but also because of their irreverent antics. I remember them participating in a San Francisco Chinese New Year parade decades ago, when I was a volunteer, and the major domo, dressed up as an 8’ tall redwood tree, twirled around almost constantly to spread the costume’s branches. The band was goofy, inappropriate, and justifiably the center of attention. A spectacle on a spectacular stage.

Riordan puts on a parallel performance in The Lost Hero. [Spoiler alert: if you don’t want to find out anything about the story, why are you reading this? That said, there are a few spoilers below.]

The story focuses on three new characters: Jason, Piper, and Leo. Like Percy Jackson, who starts off The Lightning Thief solo (albeit with a satyr sidekick), these three are misfits. And, typical of a Riordan novel, the first sentence starts the novel off with a bang.

Jason wakes on a bus in the desert, surrounded by teenagers, and holding one girl’s hand, not knowing where he is, why he is there, or even who he is. It won’t surprise Riordan’s veteran readers to learn that this is because of the Mist that obscures the reality of gods and demigods from mortals. Apparently, it also affects demigods and satyrs, to a lesser extent.

Because, until that moment, and contrary to almost everyone’s memory, Jason had only moments before arrived on the bus.

Riordan stitches together a narrative that a lesser author would have cheapened, based on the dubious foundation of information hidden from the reader. It’s not cheap. It’s the Benz of “and then he woke up and saw it was all a dream” tricks. And it works from beginning to end. (This is the reason for the Stanford Band analogy.) Riordan weaves the memory loss theme into scenes from beginning to end, not in any visibly contrived way, but as the driving force of the plot. He pulls it off with as little visible effort as marching band formations at halftime, all precise, woven, and integrated with the music.

Jason wants his memory back; the only characters who know about his past aren’t telling, and are boldly manipulating him (guess what – they’re gods, duh); and the only way to satisfy the gods and find out threatens to kill Jason. Or worse.

(Way worse. It’s Riordan, duh.)

There are buildups to increasingly tense conflicts all the way up to the crisis, and even in resolution, the tension builds. The themes repeat and grow in strength as scene progresses to ever louder and more densely-packed scene.

Where The Lightning Thief took several chapters to complete the focal trio of characters for the series (Percy, his goofy guardian-satyr pal, Grover Underwood, and his difficult, antagonistic, brilliant future girlfriend, Annabeth Chase), Jason is in his compatriots’ company from the first paragraph, and the three, even without knowing of a connection, fit together well – eerily well – from the start. This will make every threat to their continued friendship (or survival) all the more powerful. It’s a fast start, and a nice refinement of the Riordan approach.

The most tenuous Stanford connection is Riordan’s obvious familiarity with the landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of my favorite books are set all or partly here: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is set largely in San Mateo (!); many sections of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt take place in his alternate-history Bay Area; Joanne duPrau, a Pensinsula resident, brings characters in the third Book of Ember up the Peninsula and (almost) into a post-apocalyptic, ruined San Francisco. For Riordan, it’s the location of the Titans’ stronghold (above Mt. Tamalpais, which he abbreviates as many locals do for the non-locals), and has something to do with Jason’s still-obscured path.

Riordan even works in Walnut Creek and Mt. Diablo. Nice. I’m kind of waiting for my backyard to show up.

OK, so I didn’t work the analogy very hard, but The Lost Hero has ensured that I will continue to pay attention at every mention of Riordan’s ongoing Olympians books. In fact, channeling the Oracle, I can foresee that I will be spending the next three to five years waiting for the next installment, with annual weekends of ecstatic consumption. Yeah, this one is worth the price of a hardback, kids.

brief note on abbreviations

2011-02-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a lot more for work these days, even in off hours.

Come to think of it, doesn't that make them on hours?

For example, we're going to issue a new edition of an older series of books with few changes other than illustrations. I'm reading to get good specs and to check for easily correctable mistakes.

While reviewing proofreaders' marks on some galleysa few minutes ago, I left myself a note "STET cf BLK cc." Yikes! Do I actually think like that?

Well, this is how I actually think: I decided I had to look up cf, just to make sure I wasn't leaving myself a note I'd be [more] embarrassed to read later.

That's when I found The Guide to Punctuation, by Larry Trask, at Sussex University in the UK. Specifically, I read with some geeky pleasure his page on abbreviations. While over a decade old, and written primarily for British, not American, writers, it's still crisp, useful, and utterly dismissive of diversions from accepted practice.

Geeky writer types will love this stuff.

---

On another note, I'm really (!) enjoying my new old CD. It's music I listened to on vinyl back in college, and I had no idea it existed on CD. It's Sheshwe: the Sound of the Mines, from Rounder Records. It's all in South Sotho, of which I understand maybe half a dozen words, and I just love it. Accordions, electric bass, drums, bells, and lyrics I don't understand, and it totally moves me. I'm a South African music geek.

What Do Children's Book Consumers Want?

2011-02-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

What Do Children's Book Consumers Want?

This article was good news. I work in school publishing, focusing on trade-style books for older, struggling readers.

Also because I want to write for this market!

Briefly: Just finished Priscilla Galloway's The Courtesan's Daughter. If I was still teaching Western Civ in high school, I might assign it. I'm depressed, though. She's won several awards, but written only a few novels, and adapted another. She spent five years writing this, and is a grandparent. Also, I got the book for $1 or so at a library sale. It's marked "DISCARD" in the ifc. This brings up issues for me... especially since it's a well-written historical novel with a likeable, and admirable, teen female protagonist.

Not sure how late I want to stay up writing, tonight. Maybe I'll read comics. (Just got Mihara Matsukazu's The Embalmer...)

Updates (For the Win)

2011-01-22T17:13:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading Cory Doctorow’s For the Win.

Among its strong points are the quick and vibrant character-building (who can’t like a Jewish American teenager who adopts his online persona Wei Dong, or a tough preteen girl from a proto-industrial slum near Mumbai who adopts the online-gaming moniker “General Robotwalla”?), including some quite late in the book who just take off (the autistic gamer-mathematician cum Coke executive, the sexy/subversive Chinese talk-radio host) and like fourth members of a relay squad, finish the race at full steam.

For the Win is also relentlessly political. Few of the white-hats are right more than a little of the time, and some of the black-hats change headwear at some point, in a quiet corner of the stage. I liked that about the book. The politics were pretty unequivocal, and much to my liking: anti-authoritarian, collectivist, gradualist. The characters navigated their worlds as explorers, sometimes bold and reckless, sometimes cowed and cautious, from world-changing/life-or-death decisions to choosing the right words for talking to a loved one.

The action swirls around the online gaming industry, and it is presented very much as an industry. For outsiders, the initialism MMORPG, for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, is a more accurate term than online game, which could be pinochle or chess or Global Thermonuclear War. It gets to be an industry because, in order to seduce more players to join and spend real cash, the game companies entice them with prizes. Players exchange prizes for in-game currency. They also exchange prizes AND in-game-currency for IRL (In Real Life) currencies. On exchanges, with millions of IRL-rupees and drachmas and dollars traded from IRL hand to IRL hand.

So what happens when a lot of money changes hands quickly? Organized crime/industry. China and India are (in the story and, presumably, IRL, but that’s one of the things I like about the book – I can’t quite tell where fantasy and reality diverge) major centers of industrial-scale “gold-farming.” The MMORPG game worlds spawned a class of players who tried to trade in-game rewards for enough money to live by, or even get rich by. These were the original gold farmers. But where there’s money, there are bosses, and the bosses pounced on the gamers in internet cafes all over the world, recruiting/intimidating them to join their companies, with conditions closely mirroring those of sweatshop laborers in the same countries.

This is one of the main connections of the book, and it’s an interesting one. I have never been to an internet café, and aside from a text-only MMORPG in the mid-90s and a very short dalliance with Apocalypse Online, I am not an online gamer. I don’t know if this is true, but it reads really well, and that’s the point. That, and the fact that Doctorow weaves in cogent economic and cultural descriptions and explanations, as well as dialog in a few scenes (in the film studio trailer in Mumbai, for one) which make the case for a strong parallel.

This is well worth reading, and you can legally own it for free. You can also buy a copy. Doctorow, who as far as I know makes a living from selling the books that he writes, also gives all of them away for free. He advocates permanent, flexible ownership of the electronic files by whoever wants them, free of charge. He argues that piracy is less of a threat to him than obscurity. And he makes the cogent point that, for a few bucks, people who enjoy his books can have nice printed copies of them, if they so choose. Should we check back in a few years to see how this plan is working for him? In the meantime, he has half a dozen books out, and based on the strength of this one, I’m setting aside a few bucks for deployment in the battle against Cory Doctorow’s obscurity.

My cute cat died at the beginning of the year. Sophy was a flame-point Siamese, with a nice, round head (none of those anteater-snout Siamese for us!), a loving felinality (she groomed everyone and everything), and pale blue eyes. She was 11, and died of kidney failure. I’ve let the book reviews slide for a bit, even though I’ve still been reading.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

2011-01-12T01:32:00.000-08:00

Two or three months ago, I had not heard of China Miéville. For much of December, I traveled footsore and unsheltered through New Crobuzon, gawking at the scale of the place, retching back its fumes and toxicity, cowering from the menaces great and small that stalk its crumbling alleys and corridors of power, and gradually incorporating a handful of its residents into my real-world-view. I was never sure if the city was Babylon or Bangalore, Paris or London, none or all. For a while, the city seemed to be the main character of the book – certainly New Crobuzon is more than a setting. I think by the end, I have figured out who the main character is, and accepted it – this is a remaining tradition inside the fluctuating field of storytelling conventions Miéville has assembled, the one that the main character of a novel learns from mistakes.

The one who made the biggest mistakes and lived is the main character.

The work is monumental. Bas-Lag strikes me as a parallel to Middle-Earth, aimed at older readers in the current century, but as rich, textured, surprising, and merciless as Tolkien’s creation. It is so large, and in the remainder of Miéville’s works, populated by only one minor character from Perdido Street Station, that I am too daunted to pick up Iron Council or Scar. But it is a work of monumental creativity, of intimate detail and broad sweep, of great weight and light and variation. What daunts me as well – as a wannabe writer – is the thought of my world and my characters and my scenes placed alongside these.

My first impression of New Crobuzon is that too many of its residents are adjectives. I was able to forgive the city this impression, however, when I realized how much work these often-denigrated citizens contributed in the story. The world is so large, detailed, and central to the main characters’ understanding of what’s going on, and consequently the reader’s, that less description might leave the reader guessing and filling in gaps with assumptions not suited to the plot. In fact, I found myself struggling to throw off the oppressive yoke of a few misperceptions as I read through the book.

The names of things are so evocative, cat-and-mousey crisscrossed references and dead-ends in half a dozen real and imaginary languages, archaic words with real meaning strewn misleadingly among them, I give myself a break on the misunderstandings. I read of the garuda, and pictured ganesha, and had to unpicture elephants for hundreds of pages. I had New Crobuzon organized like Paris, and never rid myself of the scale, barely overcoming the east-west transposition (the rivers in NC flow west to east through the city). Neighborhoods, rivers and train lines sound like absurd cognates and mistranslations, mondegreens, or the results of auditory processing disorder – Salacus Fields, Bonetown, The Canker, Griss Twist, Sobek Croix, Spit Hearth…

I don’t know if the cleaning construct had eyes.

My misunderstandings pile atop one another. I think I have a mental image of the khepri, and then I google people’s drawings of them, and I’m astonished all over again. I had been thinking of Lin as cute, seeing increasingly through Isaac’s eyes…

I actually finished the book days ago – a week, maybe, and at the bookstore this weekend, I almost bought The Scar, also set at least in part in Bas-Lag, like a junkie unable to let the feeling die away completely before the next hit. (Don’t worry, mom – that’s only a literary reference.) It scared me a little to try to write about it. At a distance, having finished two other books and read hours aloud to my younger son (no, not PSS, but Karen Hesse’s unconventional Stowaway, very appropriate for kids a couple of years older than him, and not too bad for him), I thought I could observe more about it, or at least admit to being overwhelmed.

The only real observation I have is a political conjecture I’m far from answering. I know Miéville ran as a socialist MP in England, but I can’t decipher whether Perdido Street Station is a warning tale of the slippery slope of tolerance (with a very long fall, I thought more at first, less as I read past the halfway point), a celebration of anarchy, or unrelated to the spectrum of human political alignments – on earth, that is. New Crobuzon seems to get by on a mixture of totalitarianism, corruption, and momentum. The mayor (with the great name Rudgutter, and a gruesome and sad method of dealing with a medical problem) strives to rule with an iron fist, but corruption is… the adjectives “rife” and “endemic” need to be blended and raised exponentially, and true to a French historical annaliste worldview, which I suspect Miéville at least partly shares, the majority of events and situations proceed without deference to authority.

I will probably have to read this again someday, and I both dread and look forward to the dangers that entails. Just in case, I’m bringing along some scissors.

Oh, and here's a great fanart of Isaac dan der Grimnebulin, the fascinatingly flawed protagonist, by an artist posting as Evan Dahm.

reading the Constitution

2011-01-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

Having actually done this, I was of several minds when the new Republican majority in Congress decided to spend the public's time doing this in front of cameras. I think Americans should read an annotated copy of constitution, showing and perhaps explaining the amendments. I also think the Tea-Party caucus chose to do it for the purest of motives, short-term political gain.
- From the Government Printing Office
- All text included (without annotation) from 'Lectric Law Library, also other great links
- From Cornell Law, with annotations and web-friendly organization

- From Yale Law, in web-friendly organization, with great links to other founding documents

There's a NY Times editorial from today on it, criticizing the decision to read only the current version, and leaving out the excised portions.

Oh, and happy new year. I finished reading two books, and I'll write something about them soon.

Don't think...

2010-12-27T11:30:00.000-08:00

Don't think I'm not reading just because I'm not blogging!

I generally read something through at work, or until my 6-year-old son interrupts me at home, or until I fall asleep over it an hour after his bedtime story and the dishes (usually...OK, half the time) are done.

At work, I'm looking for new writers. (I know - I want to write, but I don't have time to write on the schedule we're looking for!) I found a site called fictionaut, and a few stories there really stuck out in a good way. I'm sure there are more.

This one, "Too Old for Their Age," by Liz McClendon, left me wanting more. It feels like a novel starting, to me. I like the characters, and I want their situation explained, and their relationship elaborated. But it ends. And I can't leave a comment till I've been accepted as a member. So I thought I'd link to the story here.

What I like most is that it runs smoothly. I don't notice I'm learning about the characters and their situation until I have already assimilated the information. Is this what "show, don't tell" means? It should.

Literature, Plugged In

2010-12-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

This (Literature, Plugged In) is an illuminating look at a digital adaptation of literature to the emerging technologies and markets for literature. I read it with interest for work (I work in school publishing, and we're facing the digital challenge ourselves), but I'm encouraged by the outlook for long-form fiction, which I want to write and read, in a heavily mediated future.

Kodansha Comics Announces New Titles

2010-12-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

Kodansha Comics Announces New Titles

This is good news for Japanese-impaired manga fans.

The recent collapse of US-based manga licenser-publishers CMX, Del Rey, and other smaller houses looked like a killing blow for the American consumer. In the absence of licensing, hungry fans turned increasingly to unlicensed scanlations for their fix.

Now Digital Manga and Kodansha are announcing expansions, licensing pickups, and new titles. Very good news.

Scanlations (scans + translations) probably undercut licensing by leeching off the market for translations. They may stimulate consumption long-term by developing the appetite for the content. This does not feed mangaka. And the publishers weren't too happy about it, either, so they got together about a year ago to curtail the illegitimate distribution of existing content with added translations.

I have long been of the opinion that the American publishers should hire off some of the better translators, letterers and cleaners for American licenses of the titles. But Digital Manga's model is one I was thinking more recently was smarter. The iPad especially looks like a good platform for manga. It's about the right size, and with touchscreen and wireless connectivity, comfortable and effective as a viewer. It's color, unlike the Kindle, and it multitasks, with lots of entertainment already associated with it.

Plus, scouting, editing, printing, warehousing, marketing, shipping, reprinting, and later discounting long serial publications with fluctuating and unpredictable markets is a challenge. Adding the translation, licensing, and cross-cultural barriers to that meant that few manga were getting published in the US. And only the proven hits with proven market success were getting here at first.

The presence of titles like Genkaku Picasso (DMP) and Sayonara Zetsubo-Sensei (DelRey, now Kodansha USA) demonstrate that quirkier visions can find market in the US.

Now, American manga fans, it's up to us. We actually have to stop downloading scanlations for these and pay the proverbial piper. I know what Christmas presents I'm asking for.

Diamond of Darkhold - Jeanne du Prau

2010-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

I just finished the fourth Book of Ember last night. It's a brief interruption of my growing ~~interest~~ enjoyment of Mieville's Perdido Street Station. That's fantasy for adults, and it's like a trilogy of YA fantasies all together. With lots of sex. Alien sex. And decrepit architecture. It's very worth a read, but it requires several, so launch with caution.

The Diamond of Darkhold brings the Ember tetralogy back to the two main characters' arcs. The third book, Prophet of Yonwood, was an enjoyable standalone, an extended diagonal flashback explaining obliquely (kind of a shallow trick, but an enjoyable read nonetheless) how the world of Ember came to be.

It's also on some level an elaboration of du Prau's social criticism, which is not complicated in the Books of Ember, but is appropriate (I think) for the YA reader.

Still, it departs from the storyline, and though enjoyable in its own right, left me a bit cold because I was eager to either find out a lot about what happened to our world so that it became the world in Ember, or what happened to Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow after the end of People of Sparks.

Diamond of Darkhold satisfies the second goal best, and does it in a style that I think may be du Prau's alone. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but the Ember books have a slow/quiet/small feel to them. It's not that there isn't danger, that characters are dull, or that the events have only local significance.

In fact, what I'm feeling may be the afterglow - the dull, orangey afterglow - of the movie City of Ember, which I saw before reading the book. I hardly ever do that, and this is partly why. I loved the movie, and the books, but I can't disambiguate them. The movie has a gloomy, washed-out feel, with dull echoes and worn edges to everything. Bill Murray is brilliant, though physically wrong for the part of mayor, and the screenplay (except for a large creature) sticks very close to the book.

The movie stayed with me when I read the first book. For Sparks, Yonwood, and most of Darkhold, I was able to generate my own visuals, but I am not sure what influence the movie may still have had.

What I mean by slow/quiet/small is really about the characters, anyway. I like Lina and Doon. They are thoughtful, considerate, quiet, and brave. They remind me of bookish kids I either studied alongside or much later taught.

They contrast starkly with a similar age pair from Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry. Lyra is all impulse and anger and bravado, while Will is emotionally shackled to his dependent mother, mentally ill and under her pubescent son's protection. Everything Lyra does is larger than life, and the world is (or rather, worlds are) crowding around Will with immeasurable menace.

Lina (not "Lynn-uh" but "Line-uh," almost rhyming with Lyra) and Doon face dangers and obstacles in an intially much smaller universe. It's almost claustrophobic. But even when they emerge, the wide world is somehow narrow (constrained by travel on foot, their Emberite imagination, the limited horizons of everyone around them?).

I'm not sure I'm putting this clearly. Possibly because I'm not seeing it clearly. I'm anxious to read a book of du Prau's outside the Ember universe to see if that feeling carries over.

crossing paths: Philip Dick in Marin

2010-11-23T14:12:00.000-08:00

Just read a review in NYT about Philip Dick's third wife's memoir/bio, The Search for Philip K. Dick. Anne Dick still lives in Pt. Reyes Station, about 25 miles from where I work, and about the same distance from where I grew up, all in Marin County, CA.

Turns out my favorite book of his, one of my favorite novels, The Man in the High Castle, was from his short residence in West Marin.

I've also lived in Berkeley, which he made his home many years before I did, and in LA, where he preceded me by decades. He sets many of his earth-bound novels and stories in the Bay Area. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" a short story that became an almost equally fantastic movie, was set in an alternate San Mateo.

Dick's writing is unfriendly. He was beset with psychological burdens, famously paranoia and addiction, but I learned from this review agoraphobia as well. He wrote on a typrewriter in a shed in Pt. Reyes Station, a shed he called The Hovel. He remembered in an interview I read awhile back that he had a psychotic break on his way to the shed one day. That was the source of a trilogy for him.

Married and divorced three times, deceased in 1982, his now-adult children coping well (reportedly) with the strangeness of their home lives and their father's posthumous success, addicted to mind-altering drugs...I don't consider the trade-offs worth it. I am confident he did not so much choose to pay so dearly for his art. And he wasn't particularly successful in his lifetime. What would have happened if he had?

The way he wrote - I call it "unfriendly" for lack of a better term. It's not sloppy, but he passes up opportunities to sweeten it. I'm reading a lot of very clever YA fantasy these days. I'm especially happy having read Suzanne Collins. Like Dick, Collins writes in The Hunger Games about a dystopian, bleak future.

So what's different?

I think with Collins, I could see the weave. It's not that it wasn't skillful - quite the contrary. I just felt that I understood what she was accomplishing, paragraph by paragraph. With Dick, it's never very clear. Information is a character. It changes its moods. It gets sick, dies, goes away, or betrays the other characters. The effect is very unsettling.

Was that the result of planning? Did Dick hide the cogs of his plot more effectively than Collins? Did it have cogs? I wasn't the same reader for their works. Maybe I should read Martian Time-Slip. I gave my aunt and uncle my copy of The Man in the High Castle. (They gave me Alas, Babylon - not a PKD novel...damn, I have a long reading list!) I wonder if the difference is in the reader.

Any PKD fans out there want to tell me what I'm missing?

90% creative, not dragged down by 10% derivative/silly

2010-11-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

It's not exactly fair of me to criticize Tamora Pearce's Song of the Lioness series. First, it's been out since I was in high school. Second, it's written for 15 year old girls. Third, I'm nowhere near publishing, so she couldn't return the favor.

But this isn't about fair, and anyway, I'm going to recommend it pretty highly.

I just finished the tetralogy. The fourth book is Lioness Rampant, and it struck me about 2/3 of the way through that the way Pearce was tying up loose ends was also ratcheting up the pressure. The ends looked so much in doubt at one point that I actually consulted the publication information in the front to make sure (this was a reprint) that this was the last book.

Cheating, I know! It just made me appreciate how skilled Pearce was back then, and she's written at least a dozen novels in the two decades since Lioness Rampant.

The series is also interesting because the main character ages considerably over the four books. Unlike Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, who each age a year per volume, Alanna of Trebond ages a differing number of years per volume, and grows from an adolescent in the first to a mature adult, about thirty, in the last. Would a YA publisher go for that now? I wonder, because it starts with adolescent concerns and progresses to very adult ones (though in no way graphic).

The genre of the series is swords and sorcery type fantasy, crossed with adolescent romance. Pearce combines them well, for my taste, and weaves in many good stories and believable if not especially creative environments and situations.

In fact, it is the lack of imagination (keeping in mind this is a quarter century old series) that I kept thinking about since I started reading the series. The titles of the books, the names of the people and places, the political organization, the geography... I frankly found it a mark against the book, and "world building" is supposed to be key now (years later) in fantasy fiction.

Did Pearce calculate that the story would be more convincing and appealing - to both editors and readers - if it echoed our world so literally? Was she reacting to a fantasy work (or works) that went too far in the creative scenery direction back then?

The end result is that the story is very enjoyable, but I keep noticing the light skinned people who live in castles in a cool-winter land where women have some rights traveling to the southern deserts where nomadic warrior peoples with Arabic names who war against each other and really oppress their women. People to the east of the northern kingdom raid the borders, like "Huns" attacking the Franks. There's a body of water stretching east to west across (to the south) of which live black people. And in the distant east, there are the tallest mountains in the world, with ancient spirits in ~~the Tibetan Plateau~~, I mean the highest passes. It's as if the world shrank to half its size, and traded the bulk and space for magic.

So that's what I meant by 10% derivative and silly. And I can't even tell if I should be emulating that instead of mocking it! Pearce is still writing. Maybe I'll ask her.

For my own writing, which I'm putting on hold to take care of a non-writing project through 2011 - or at least I think I am - I wonder how much my world building will help the story. I've imagined a solar system and home planet with very different dynamics and physical features to accommodate an otherwise unlikely celestial event and a distinct story setting.

I wonder if it's a waste of time. (It will be if I never finish, of course, but assuming I do, will the rotation of the heavenly spheres matter?)

Now I think I will finish the adult fantasy novel I'm reading - Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

I'm also just about finished reading Little House on the Prairie to my younger son. He can only take so much of it before dozing off. I can only read so much about "savages" and wild Indians and their antics before editing as I go. It's nowhere near as racist and misanthropic as Barrie's Peter Pan, but Laura Ingalls Wilder's version of the Euro-American settlement of the Plains gives plenty of opportunities for people of my political orientation to cringe. I've decided mostly to leave in the original language, and try to make clear that different people, even within the story, see things differently. That honesty is in the original, whereas the savagery and shallowness of the "redskins" in Peter Pan is assumed and built upon, rather than asserted and discussed as in LHotP.

Jeanne du Prau's Prophet of Yonwood (spoilers)

2010-11-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

The third book in the Ember books is oddly satisfying. I read it over a twelve hour period including two meals, playing with the kids, and cleaning the bathroom. It's not especially challenging in length or style, but readers accustomed to the subject of the first two Ember books will be taken for an unexpected ride.

The story takes place in a small, rural town, beginning with the vision of a local woman who becomes a cult figure (in a coma, no less), and the arrival of a city girl beset by the problems of the world (mounting international tension and government repression), the problems of her family (her father is always away on secret business and her mother is stressed out), and the problems of adolescence.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the three goals Nickie has for her trip to Yonwood, when she and her aunt leave the big city (Philly) to clean up and sell her late great-grandfather's house, which has been in the family for a century or so.

Nickie is tired of the inhumanity of life in the city, with its dangers and callousness, and yearns for the good life in the countryside. And the house does not disappoint. It comes equipped with memorabilia, a stowaway with a dog, and plenty of purpose.

And aside from du Prau's depiction of scared people's reckless willingness to believe and follow (reminiscent of The Wave, televangelism, and the early stages of The People's Church), the strongest points about this are Nickie's to-do list, which she completes in due time, and the way the book fits, by the end, into the series. It's not exactly as it seemed on page 1, but pretty close.

City of Ember fit so well into a movie that I was expecting something similar of this and The People of Sparks, but the scenery is less stark and obvious (I mean it in a good way - the setting of City of Ember is one of the appeals to me). This is more subtle, clearly a sequel for interested readers - and it will satisfy them - but not as inherently interesting as the first.

Also, it answers more questions that it leaves open. However, it does leave some intriguing ideas unfinished, having to do with parallel worlds, and the purpose of the Builders.

Having read The Prophet of Yonwood, I'm a lot less sure of what I'll find in book 4 of Ember, but definitely looking forward to it.

denouement: Eva Ibbotson, Journey to the River Sea

2010-11-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea is the model of a good middle-grade adventure. There's a sympathetic lead character (plucky, troubled, different, kind, resourceful...), a patient, powerful, and wise adult, a few adventurous (eventually) cohorts, and some really petty villains. There's great scenery, the potential for small dangers, and real betrayal.

You could read the book if you were uptight, and never have your buttons pushed. (Well, maybe if you're really, really uptight. I hope not.) And it wasn't boring, slow, or shallow at all. That's a really nice trick.

The cover of the volume I have is like all the other Eva Ibbotson book covers I've seen - a bit soft and impressionistic, somewhat feminine. Clearly the covers are aimed at girls. But the story would be enjoyable by boys a little past the Beverly Cleary level of adventure, and maybe to more adventurous ones as well. Journey to the River Sea is set in a realistic, Victorian past, with scenes in England, on the Atlantic, and mostly in Brazil. The landscapes, riverscapes, and social situations are detailed without being overwhelming or tedious. The plot chugs along reliably like a small riverboat, with sudden turns and eddies that end up changing everything.

I think I'll send a copy to my niece, who's in third grade.

Eva Ibbotson, born in 1925, passed away in October of this year, leaving at least a dozen books for us to enjoy. Start as I did with Journey to the River Sea, and I think you'll follow me to the rest of her works not long after.

Read about a few of her books published by Penguin.

brief thoughts on heroes, YA, and adult fantasy

2010-10-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm at a conference and don't have much time, but I was just reading China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, and things are heating up but slowly. It's been an interesting, engaging, simmering start, with no particular direction.

And, aside from being enormously impressed at the descriptions and inventiveness of the story so far, that is what I noticed. All the (effective, enjoyable, successful) YA fantasy I've been reading has a fast start. The Forest of Claws and Teeth, for instance, starts in the title. There's a confrontation involving two main characters (I'm trying not to confuse them with Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow of duPrau's Ember series, but I just did), and then the world falls apart. Fast.

But that's not even the whole picture. What's missing from PSS and other grown-up works (Years of Rice and Salt, Stone Raft) I've read is the dream. In each of the YA fantasy novels, the main character, the protagonist, has a dream. Lina dreams of her imagined city. Katniss Everdeen dreams of keeping Prim safe. Alanna in Songs of the Lioness dreams of doing great deeds as a knight.

And now I'm late for the exhibit hall. Cheers.

politics, more Shadow Children, and self-doubt

2010-10-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share this article I read about Jerry McNerny's (CA-14) opponent in the November election. Harmer is a Tea Party-branded extremist who, according to this Mother Jones article, wants to abolish public education.

I've said it before, but when will progressives and half-way decent people stop - just STOP - writing dystopian and apocalyptic novels that the right-wing then uses as instruction manuals?

Orwell, 1984, Dick Cheney.
Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, Christian fundamentalists.
Haddix, Shadow Children series, Harmer.

See what I mean? I'm sure you could add to the list.

Finished Margaret Peterson Haddix' third Shadow Children series. Good world creation. Interesting characters. Multiple points of view. Short novels. I like the combination, and she's a serious enough writer to make the short fiction format a powerful vehicle for this drama-with-a-message series.

My own writing is stalled. I'm remaking my world. I was struggling with logical inconsistencies that no amount of verbiage was going to effectively paper over. I needed to resolve (and am still working on) how the world got the way it was, to ease readers' suspension of disbelief.

Haddix' The Shadow Children, et cetera

2010-10-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

[This entry contains some partial spoilers for Margaret Peterson Haddix’ Shadow Children series and whatever else I feel like writing about.]

Last night I finished the second of the Margaret Peterson Haddix Shadow Children series. Between them, Among the Hidden and Among the Impostors measure up to the word count and time investment of about one Hunger Games or Percy Jackson novel. Still, they’re good reading, with a believable what-if near-future setting, a sympathetic and complex lead character in Luke Garner, and a structure, so far, of one new person to trust and lose in each book.

Luke Garner is actually pretty likeable. He reminds me the most, recently, of Carl Hiaasen’s lead character in Hoot. The problem with both is that they’re a bit too “everyboy.” Hiaasen’s character – I read Hoot two weeks ago – is already anonymous to me. The story stands out because I like the situations he gets into, and the supporting characters are pretty interesting. Officer Delinko is probably the best developed, and as he started out the Scarecrow of Oz (“If I only had a brain!”), any changes in his character were almost bound to be for the better.

Hiaasen is well known as a talented writer, and I enjoyed the book a lot, but it’s funny how the main character doesn’t actually change much, and only the villain, Dana, and the inept adult character, Officer Delinko, either change or retain their memories in my mind a month after reading. I bet it’s not Hiaasen’s fault – I have a pretty spotty memory. The real point for me, as a wannabe Hiaasen, is that the book was enjoyable, but not especially gripping or moving, and since that is what I want to write, I want to observe the differences.

Let me try a list of them. In the sort of YA adventure/fantasy I enjoy most and want to write,

The protagonist is treated with gross unfairness (a la Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, or Frodo Baggins).
The reader shares the protagonist’s emotional commitment to outcomes in the book.
The stakes are high – not just social but vital. (This corners me in the adventure-fantasy genre, I suppose).
The protagonist experiences increasing setbacks, self-doubt, and danger throughout the book.
The protagonist cannot escape his or her circumstances except by confronting the dangers as they mount.
The protagonist has a special skill or strength that allows her or him to overcome, but it is not sufficient.
The protagonist survives, but loses something important.

Luke Garner is partway toward this ideal. Haddix paints him convincingly into a corner, and then teases us into thinking he’ll get out, only landing him from the mixed-metaphor-proverbial fire. I guess the frying pan was in the corner, or something like that. Whatever the semantics, we follow Lee from bad to worse, to tantalizingly hopeful, to the depths of despair, and a faint but costly glimmer of hope, all in 150 YA (that is to say, short) pages.

---

I also just read and really enjoyed Jeanne duPrau's City of Ember. It's so calm compared to the Hunger Games, that I almost didn't think I was enjoying it. What a strange feeling! Every page was satisfying to read, and the characters of Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow are really sympathetic. Maybe it was just my reading, but I felt so much less tension than when reading these other books.

There's also the problem of having seen the very good movie adaptation before reading the book. Does anybody else feel this way?

Parental nonunits in children's literature

2010-09-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

Agent Nathan Bransford commented on Leila Sales' Publisher's Weekly post about absent parents in children's/YA literature. He points out that it's common in classic English-language lit, giving examples from Roald Dahl, L. Frank Baum, and others.

He also points out the fractured and imperfect nature of other present parental units in literature.

I had noticed something similar in teen demographic mangas. It seems that the first step in almost every case is to eradicate or hobble the parents. They're workaholics, alcoholics, dead, as good as dead, working overseas, divorced and irresponsible, or otherwise irrelevant.

Bransford defends the Rowlings of modern literature (whose teenage characters are orphans) against the charge of laziness by recalling how exciting it was as a young reader to follow the adventures of other young people taking on adult challenges, and winning (or surviving).

He also admits to writing a book about a young character with absent parents. It strikes me I am doing the same. I've decided (after reading The Hunger Games trilogy, with the lead character's parents variously dead, half-dead, absent, or powerless) to base less of my work in progress (wait, that's a stretch...) on orphanhood.

But the lead's parents are still dead and gone, and now I have Bransford's "In Defense of Dead/Absent Parents in Children's Literature" to justify my folly.

Blogure (like failure, only more public)

2010-09-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in part because I love to read, and hate to forget. Specifically, I hate to forget where I read things I found interesting.

So it didn’t help when I read Carl Hiaasen’s YA novel (yes, my Indian name is Reads Like Teenager) Hoot. noticed something interesting about it, and then my sister-in-law gave us the Hunger Games trilogy.

(Brief note on Suzanne Collins’ awesomeness for now: [drools] the excitement surrounding her series is justified by the craft in the first 50 pages of the first book. 2^nd brief note: I am so glad I didn’t start reading until I had all three books in hand. It would have driven me nuts to have to wait!)

So what’s the blogure about? Hiaasen’s really funny, and Hoot is, well, a hoot. It works on so many levels! (Read that in Homer Simpson’s voice, and if you get the reference, congratulations! You are my loser twin.)

But I noticed something a character did that didn’t make sense. And it irks me, because so much of the book seems so effortlessly good, so effective without resorting to patterns (the overlapping cascade of crises of a Rowling book, or, in a slightly different pattern) Collins’ series that I so want ro finish this very minute). Hiaasen manages to push the conflict in irregular and unpredictable directions – well, I didn’t predict them, any way – without any rupture from our current, real-life way of doing things.

(This is not to detract from fantasy and sci-fi, where coming up with new rules is part of the fun. Sure, it lets the author advance the plot by revealing a rule that doesn’t exist in our experience – the Quarter Quell in Collins’ Catching Fire, for example, or the traditions of the Triwizard Cup at Hogwarts – but that can only work if it’s credible, and if the reader is invested in how the rules affect the characters. Collins and Rowling ace that one.)

So I’m considering contacting the eminent Floridian, Mr. Hiaasen, and asking about this late turn of events in Hoot. It’s going to be awkward for me, because I don’t know is other work, I’m not published (Heck, I can’t even get a pair of chapter past myself!), and it’s a lousy way to introduce myself… [imagines]

Hi, Mr. famous author, I’m some jerk who read your latest book, and I think you screwed up on suchandsuch a scene.

See? Tone’s all wrong. Hard to make a good impression.

So that’s what’s bothering me. After reading Hoot, I thought about this, and then I got all three Hunger Games books dropped in my lap, and I devoured the first two, turned into one of Collins' zombies, and forgot what I meant to insult Hiaasen about.

I guess I'd better just keep my observations to myself.

Testing School Testing

2010-09-20T13:30:00.000-07:00

Susan Engel, a professor of education and psychology at Williams College, published an op-ed in the NY Times today calling for, to coin a phrase, data driven testing.

While I like her points about the narrow "read" of standardized tests on student's abilities, and agree that better measures of students' abilities and teachers' effectiveness could be used, I have three problems with her solution.

1-cost

Professor Engel is realistic about this, in an offhanded way. She scolds the reading public for accepting "expediency" as the reason for sticking with the current tests. She calls them easy to administer, which would mean that they're also cheaper than less easy alternatives. (Probably - except that testing companies are for-profit enterprises, and the schools have been their captives, especially since NCLB.)

In the current slashing and burning of school funding, I think the case for more expensive tests will be laughed out of the court of public opinion, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphors.

2-non-standardization

When I was teaching, I remember being scolded about how I just didn't understand parents' concerns, and that standardized testing was a way to be fair to parents and allow them to correct problems in their children's education. I've seen it used as a bludgeon by the state, and by other sources of funding dependent on test scores, but not as a tool by parents.

The testing methods Professor Engel proposes sound great to me, as a former teacher, but nearly impossible to score equitably across states, districts in a state, or even schools in a district.

With so much currently tied into score comparisons (teacher promotion and retention, school restructuring, to-the-top racing), there's little realistic expectation that the standardized test will go the way of the carbon-dated.

3-range of skills testable in multiple-choice

Professor Engel makes one more assertion I'd challenge. I could enumerate more problems with standardized, multiple-choice testing than she does in her piece, because that's not her point. However, it is possibly to test higher-level cognitive functions than simple memorization.

The way she puts it, "students are quizzed on the specific formulas and bits of information they have memorized that year," but I used to work in assessment, and I am pretty sure we managed to design assessments of other cognitive functions than memory.

By allowing students one correct choice, two viable distractors, and one clearly wrong choice, and by asking students to do more than remember the year of the Gettysburg Address, it is possible to access their judgment, understanding, analytical skills, even a portion of their creativity, in tests that - to repeat the professor's accusation - are expedient.

I don't think that describes most tests public school students take for their states, and I don't like them to come only at the end of the year, so I'm hardly an advocate of the status quo in testing. (In fact, I used to work for a very good little company that sold formative testing services - helping teachers track student achievement throughout the year - until it was swallowed up by one of the big five, no - four, wait - now it's three major educational publishers in the US.)

I think I will talk about these "alternative" - maybe the term I'm looking for is "better" - tests with my kids' principal. I bet the good teachers are already doing things like this in their classrooms, and since there's little to no chance of the states and federal government replacing completely-filling-in-the-appropriate-circle with Professor Engel's much more interesting and educationally meaningful tests, I think that's where the better testing will stay for now.

Tamora Pierce, In the Hands of the Goddess

2010-09-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I finished In the Hands of the Goddess, the second of Tamora Pierce's vintage (but not tired) tween swords-n-sorcery fantasy series Song of the Lioness. As with the first book, I found world-building and names to be unimaginative, and description inexplicably weighted toward eye and hair color.

Still, the story succeeds on its own terms. Alana continues to learn how to become a knight, and works toward the feared Ordeal that will mark her achievement. That makes a nice structure for the book and for the series. She also has interesting developments with various royalty (all interesting individuals!), rough soldiers twice her size who come to respect her skills, and a goddess.

The outcome of her various concerns is never assured, and the quality of every main character's -um- character is well more than two-dimensional.

As an adult, and a wannabe YA fiction author, I read this with a critical eye for craft, and come away pretty impressed. It's not high art, and it's not as good or original as much else you'll find, but Pierce really nails her character development, and once she gets past the decorative descriptions, they really come alive. I'm especially fond of Sir Miles, whose intentions are opaque to me, but whom Alana trusts at every turn, and of the knight Alex, once squire to her archenemy in this book.

Pierce also does a great job with battle scenes. She doesn't dwell on numbers and formations, but focuses believably and vividly on personal experience, including a very effective rendering of the fog of war. Maybe if you study Medieval crossbow tactics as a hobby, or reenact Hastings every even year, you'd be dissatisfied, but from a general fantasy perspective, this really stands up.

Alana is disguised as Alan for most of the book, and manages to juggle budding romantic interests (I won't say with who) despite this. It's a real balancing act, and the stress of it is worked nicely into the plot.

This doesn't crackle with freshness or originality on many levels, but the series offers a believable and positive female lead, one I would have gladly read about had I ran into this series when I was of the right age.

A few years before Pierce published the first of these, I was reading Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, to which I compare this. McCaffrey invested more in world-building, which I like, but less in character development than Pierce in this series. Both are very appropriate for tween readers of fantasy.

There is a bit of graphic violence and (socially accepted) teen drinking, though not to excess, in Pierce's series. I know this can be an issue for some parents. I would feel comfortable with my 9 year old son reading this. (He just finished the Eragon trilogy (Paolini), is close to finishing the Amber Spyglass (Pullman) - which has gay angels, and the Hobbit.)

"Muslims versus Jews" email

2010-09-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

I love my aunt and uncle. But they watch Fox.

They recently sent me an email you might have seen going around comparing Muslims and Jews, centering on the number of Nobel prizes each group has won, and on vague, misleading or inaccurate, and ridiculously decontextualized generalizations about propensities toward violence.

Have you seen it? Here are a few gems:

The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.

There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.

Note the artful use of capitals, the clever repetition of the phrase "NOT one single." Just in case the meaning of "one" was unclear.

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

OK, I'm not sure it's metonymy, but I wanted to show off by using the word. Probably the above phrasing is just laziness. The whole UK debated this? A quick search online turns up debunkers and promoters of this meme. I guess people just pick a side and run with the facts that fit their conclusion. The analysis on Snopes does a good job of confirming the predictable - that this is a tempest in a teacup, and a much more interesting and less alarming piece of news than the fantasy version. It boils down to one school reconsidering the teaching of controversial topics in a history class in light of a study on the effects of such teaching methods.

It's almost comforting to think of the world in Glenn Beck diagrams instead. Certainly, it's easier to understand between commercial breaks. It settles my stomach to compare my commute, my sore knee, and my credit card debt to Adolf Hitler.

Back to my massive wimp-out. I wanted to send this reply to the whole mailing list, but I really hate getting emails like that, so why send one? .

So here's the reply I didn't send.

---

I feel that the intended conclusions of this email are unworthy of anyone with humane intent. I am sure I will see the contents recycled and repackaged as part of an equally loathsome accusation of the imaginary international Jewish conspiracy.

And in the meantime, several thousand emails will be concocted and forwarded around the circles that receive these contents gladly, condemning me for my beliefs, calling me inhumane, stupid, a coward, a criminal, un-American, and counting the achievements and crimes of people somehow like me, and what will that prove? (After all, I am a member of the most despised minority in America!)

Remember, you and I are citizens of the only nation in the world to have used nuclear weapons against humans, and in both cases the targets were, or were surrounded and outnumbered by, large cities.

Our nation recently launched a war to bring down a dictator it had supported and armed, in reaction to an attack with which he was in no way connected, predicated on the spurious charge of a direct connection, killing a million or more people, and displacing tens of millions.

Our nation legalized, regulated, and promoted slavery, and for a hundred years after the end of slavery, resisted legal equality for the descendants of slaves.

Our government practiced genocide against the original inhabitants of the land, and confined the survivors to tiny, resource-poor outposts.

Men mistreated women, Europeans mistreated non-Europeans, Christians mistreated non-Christians, Catholics mistreated non-Catholics (and other Catholics who were unable to defend themselves), and Californians produce more trash, smog and greenhouse gases per capita than almost any other population on earth. What right have I to even live with such a record as a male Californian of European and Catholic descent?

Some Irish in San Francisco murdered Chinese laborers a century ago. My children are Irish and Chinese? Should they hate themselves, fear themselves, or forgive themselves?

Thinking of people as groups first and individuals second is the source of too many problems to count. Please find in your heart, draw from your belief system, or discover in the support of your friends and family, the will to be better than this.

Practice peace.

Love,

Steve

---

OK, tell me, was that "practice peace" just a little to goody-two-shoes? Yeeikes!

I Can’t Remember All That! – Working Memory Deficits

2010-09-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Adrienne Akinsete posts on a Special Ed group on LinkedIn, and had a nice post about working memory and comprehension I just read today. She describes usefully the exchanges between working, short-term, and long-term memory that go on in successful readers' minds. It made me think about the conceptual load I'm trying to control in my development of high interest-low readability books for struggling readers. She cited a lot of research that now I feel obligated to chase down... I mean, intrigued.

Found in Translation: Soccer and Basketball Manga

2010-09-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Phew! Brief hiatus, in which I read another Tamora Pierce book (comments TK) and attended a Scottish cutural festival without drinking any ale.

For today, I just read Jonathan Bethune's Found in Translation: Soccer and Basketball Manga, where I left the following, incriminating comment:

I didn't know Captain Tsubasa had such a long history. I agree - the eight year run sounds like a good addition to manga libraries.

For my part, the sports series I would love to see licensed and translated in the US is Urasawa Naoki's tennis drama, "Happy!" The main character Umino Miyuki's grit, shown wonderfully in her facial expressions and body language, and her frustrating stoicism both make for a great combination of sports and drama.

It's definitely a seinen manga, but there's a romantic theme that probably cut into the purity of its fan base in Japan where, I read, it suffered by comparison with Urasawa's immediately preceding sports series, "Yawara."

Umino's name, Miyuki, which means "happy," gives the series its somewhat overbearing irony, in that (as far as I've gotten with the amateur translations), she isn't.

If I win the lottery, I'm going to have somebody translate this for me. It's that good.

I'd welcome more sports manga that looked and read different from "Eyeshield 21," which has a silly name and a skimpy premise, with underdeveloped characters, little story line, and spazzy art, or "Beach Stars," which is cheesecake volleyball (hmm, the word "skimpy" applies here, too), and exploitative of short people! (I'm tall, but I still disapprove...maybe not enough to keep from looking, but still I disapprove.)

Beth Revis, Across the Universe, first chapter

2010-09-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Not sure where I got this, but it was last Friday, and while cleaning up my computer desktop, I stumbled across chapter 1, "Amy," a kick-in-the-guts first chapter by Beth Revis (visit her blog here) that has me looking up the author, linking to her website, and trying to figure out why I have wasted my time with the milquetoast that passes for sci-fi in the rest of my reading list. I hope the rest of Across the Universe satisfies like this chapter.

Her website links to the publisher's page, and it seems it's due in Spring 2011, part of a three-book deal.

Nice! I can't wait.

On word counts and novel length.

2010-09-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

I slept last night, so no reading or writing. It's been hot, and I just can't do weather-changes, work-and-commute-and-kids, and writing all in one day. Most of the year east of San Francisco is just fine, but we finally got some summer, and it's killing my writing.

Just to throw what remains of my writing goals (I'm suppressing a "Ha!") into further disarray, this interesting piece by Colleen Lindsey about length of fiction manuscripts. The long and the short of it is that my (see the writing page - go on, click the link at the right) writing goal of 100,000 words by year's end might be either WAAAAAY off, or dead-on. I was planning to revise, but I decided on 100k words because that's the approximate length of the first Harry Potter book, and I thought I would be hard-pressed to find a better model for the breakout YA fantasy novel than Janet Rowling's.

Makes sense, right?

Colleen's piece shows why it doesn't, but leaves wiggle room for me to keep striving.

Maybe some iced coffee tonight after the school open house will get me back on track.

Fantasy cover chart (from Orbit)

2010-08-31T13:48:00.000-07:00

I love this. This is a chart of fantasy cover art topics. Bad news for unicorns, good news for the new category "Damsels (no distress)."

For work, I sometimes review cover art of popular books to help plan our covers. I've never yet seen someone else indulge in statistical abstractions based on the same thing. A kindred spirit!

(And all I can think is, "What a loser!") :)

America's Honor is Found In Its Ideals

2010-08-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

I was checking out the political sites today and liked America's Honor is Found In Its Ideals by Ed Brayton at scienceblogs.

Brayton spells out the familiar but timely premise that America's ideals have been the goal, and our execution of them an imperfect but generally improving reality.

I like - but I'm not sure if I agree with it exactly - his assertion that America is living up to its ideals better than before. While we do have more widely and evenly spread and more formally defended rights, we also have taken increasingly devastating military actions abroad. I'm pretty sure sending a disproportionately large number of our second-class citizens to first defend colonial rule and then institute a new protectorate in southeast Asia was in keeping with the high ideals on which this country was founded.

Anyway, you should check it out, too. It's like a salve, which I need after having my honor so ineptly restored.

just picked up from the library...

2010-08-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

I was at the library Saturday, and I started reading...

- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (out of nostalgia for history of science, and because it's been so long I've forgotten which arguments are Kuhn's)
- David Macaulay, Castle (I've been wanting to read this for years, and since the kids are sharing a room, it's good to have material that bridges their age gap)
- Tamora Pierce, In the Hand of the Goddess (because I just finished the ineptly titled and yet very enjoyable Alanna: the first adventure, the first Songs of the Lioness book)

online manga going legit?

2010-08-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

I read manga. A lot of it, actually. I recently started buying it again because I was looking at so much free online manga. The group of publishers who organized to stop free distribution of manga have it right. I'm hooked - now it's time to start charging me for content. (Before the web, I collected manga. I have boxes in the garage. Maybe I should sell...)

I hope they'll start paying creators better in the same move.

Manga creators and fans may get an interesting break from the publishers' stranglehold, though. In After Scanlations: Manga Publishers Look to Offer Legal Digital Access, Kai-Ming Cha tells about several publishers' (Yen, Viz) and distributors' (Crunchyroll) plans to offer paid access online.

This is where the publishers have it wrong, I think. Yen's "Yen Plus" will only offer Yen titles. Viz will offer the much more appealing (to me) catalog of Viz titles.

Would you pay a fee to a music label for access online to its signed artists' work?

That's why I think the iTunes model (I've been going on about this for awhile) - which I'm encouraged to read Crunchyroll (currently distributing eons of anime content for low to no fees) is building a manga reader. They're not publishers, so they just license the content they think will work and for which they can get the rights.

Best of luck to 'em.

By the way, since computer screens are landscape, and manga pages mostly portrait, will the reader be capable of rendering the page legibly in the space available?

Alanna (Song of the Lioness, book 1)

2010-08-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

by Tamora Pierce

I read stuff written for kids. Well, teenagers. I find a lot of it more satisfying and worth my effort than littratoor written for adults. I not only slum around in genre fiction, I choose what's published for people less than half my age.

Tamora Pierce's name leapt out at me from the teen fiction shelf at the library Saturday. I'm a regular because my house doesn't have any good spots for tutoring, and as much as I like my students, I don't want them sitting on folding chairs next to my slumping, half-full rice sacks.

My own kids were busy using the computers to play a mind-numbing dragon-fighting game the library staff have given up on banning, so I had a few minutes, and found a fun read.

Cons before pros:

Ms. Pierce does not waste her writing talent on creating interesting names - not for her characters, nor places, nor objects, nor the books themselves (though agents and publishers may have had more of a hand in enforcing the dull verbiage squatting on the cover of this book). That said, there is considerable storytelling talent inside.

Alanna: The First Adventure is the opening salvo of four novels. My guess is they're adventures. And feature Alanna. Really - are there no more interesting things to call the book?

Too little other than hair and eye color is disclosed about characters when they are introduced.

Oh, and there were three typos.

The Pros:

This was a fun, fast read, with well-defined and interesting characters doing things that mostly mattered. Pierce put in a lot of plot twists that, while not shocking, kept my attention, and didn't fall into too much of a pattern.

Yes, it's a story about a plucky girl, magic, sword-play, thieves, horses, ruins, knights, and cross-dressing, and who hasn't read a dozen of those this past year, but at least there are no vampires!

The pacing is just about right for an upper elementary to middle school reader, and the words and situations are suitable for anyone whose parents got over what's in the Harry Potter series.

All in all, a bit formulaic, but successful anyway because the author had a clear idea of her characters and their stories.

An admission:

I might not have borrowed and read this book if it hadn't been about twelve year old fraternal twins who get separated and have adventures. That's about the extent of the commonality between this book and what I'm writing (if you can call 300 words a day writing), but it was enough to snag me. It might not mean the same to you, but if you have a ten to thirteen year old girl (or boy - Alanna's a good character for both) in your life who is looking for an adventurous read, and who hasn't said she (or he) was sick of fantasy, this is a promising start to the series.

satisfyingly wonky Foriegn Policy article on Chongqing

2010-08-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

I get Foreign Policy magazine updates monthly by email, and if you are anything like me...

Wait, let's parse that. Twentyish years ago, I taped NPR programs and stored them, cut out foreign affairs and public infrastructure news stories and stored them in binders, categorized and underlined, and wrote lots of (mostly unpublished) letters to the editor of the SF Chronicle.

...then you'll be able to appreciate this cooooool one - "Chicago on the Yangtze" - on the growth of Chongqing in western China, and what it means historically, economically, and for the evolution of national politics in China.

Even my inner SimCity geek (filed away so long now I no longer see every freeway interchange and building crane as something I can affect with a sweep of the demolition tool or the zoning tool) loved the bit about the land pressure, multiple bridges, and swallowing up of suburbs (impossible, for the record, in any version of SimCity I've played - are you listening, Electronic Arts?).

Anyway, the current edition of FP also has intriguing articles I might yet read on urban versus suburban futures, how cities are replacing nation-states, and prospects for economic development and diplomatic gamesmanship in the Arctic.

Hotel California

2010-08-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

Ever have a song you liked decades ago flit through your mind for a moment and then stay there, gnawing at your every thought process, till even breathing became hard to accomplish, and you simply had to find out what the lyrics were, or meant?

Yeah, that's what the Internet is for.

For me, it was the Eagles' "Hotel California," at least today. Tomorrow (if I'm not so afflicted more than once today) it will be something else, probably from MC-Lyte or Iron Maiden or Daniela Mercury. I have been an ardent fan of all of these. Fortunately, I have never subjected myself to the discognitia (my new word!) that would inevitably result from listening to more than one of them in any single day.

The nice folks over at Wikipedia (Hey! That includes me!) inform me that the Eagles had something specific in mind when writing the lyrics, and it appears I should be sorry I missed it, or maybe not. And that dopey interviewers got smacked down for trampling on art by asking what the lyrics meant.

Which is another thing the Internet is for. (Not getting smacked down for asking a question. I hate that.)

Anyway, if by this time you are not already humming along to the same internal soundtrack I've been enjoying for the last couple of hours (do people raised with only digital music technologies repeat the same lyrics in their heads like a broken record as we analog babies do?), then there's no point continuing about this, because you're not likely to care. And if you are so afflicted, then you'll be motivated to look it up on your own.

Just don't follow any of the links to covers of the song, or you're done for the day, no matter what you were up to - working, studying, breathing...

The Years of Rice and Salt

2010-08-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

by Kim Stanley ROBINSON

This was a great read, long but worth the effort. I was pleased and not surprised to find that my fellow San Francisco Bay Area resident Kim Stanley Robinson earned a Ph.D in History. After all, I had been slogging through his series on sudden climate change (or Science in the Capital) series, in which his attention to philosophical and cultural connections and distinctions almost overwhelm his palpable descriptions of place. (His descriptions of place would be cinematic if they did not also trigger the sense of heat or scale or sound that they do - they're beyond cinematic.)

While I was impressed with his character and plot development in Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below, something about the protagonist, Frank Vanderwal, nagged at me. It was as if he were more than one person - not inconsistent, but too busy and inventive. I've struggled to figure this out for a year now, and only after reading The Years of Rice and Salt am I satisfied with my own explanation. I think our discomfort with change and violations of convention - our inherent, visceral conservativism - makes it unrealistic that a person could withstand, never mind thrive on, as much thwarting of social norms as Vanderwal seeks out and/or causes.

My reading list is long, and my hours short, and my distractions many and effective, so I have little tolerance for books I am not enjoying. (That's where all my bookmarks go - the middle third of books I regretfully gave up reading, like The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood or The Stone Raft by José Saramago.)

But Rice and Salt was a different matter. For one thing, it's an alternative history, and despite the odiferous sludge I've forced down my optical gullet because it was classified as such, I have a soft spot for the genre. It's also fantasy on a grand scale - like The Lord of the Rings or Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. You can read it just for fun - that is, if you're a weirdo like me who is entertained by philosophical discussions and historical (or alt-historical) narratives. The fun part is the thrill-ride adventure many of the characters experience.

In a way, Robinson has packed a roller-coaster into an encyclopedia. It's a pretty cool read.

The book begins with the premise that the bubonic plague has killed 99% instead of 33% of the peoples of Europe. It covers over seven centuries of the subsequent history, and occupies six of the seven continents. (Okay, five of the six, since a depopulated Europe is even less of a continent than the Europe of our reality.)

How Robinson weaves this into a narrative is the second premise. At first, the reincarnation scenes - which are all fascinating, and used to move a meta plot along - struck me as a little too enthusiastic, as if Robinson wanted to share the joy Buddhism with his readers. I now think I was hypersensitive to a fault I am guilty of - becoming a fan of what I study - and that Robinson treated all of the characters and cultural traits and civilizations he touches with balance and fairness.

Okay, maybe not the Hodenosaunee. I can cut him that much slack.

The Years of Rice and Salt is divided into ten "books," each the length of a novella (I think), for each of the reincarnations of the group of characters. My favorite were the first book, which prepares the reader for the sweeping geographic scope of the novel, "The Alchemist," which I think collapses a bit too much of our real history into a few characters in the alt-history, but does it in a compelling and enjoyable way (I especially like the parallels to Niccolo "Tartaglia" Fontana, intended or otherwise), and "The Widow Kang," which is a bit long, but seems to have been the first written.

There was a point in the middle, set in Mecca, at which I realized how much I appreciated the research and thought that had gone into Robinson's work. And he published it during a time in America when thinking critically and openly about Islam, about empire, about the justifications for war, about the interplay of civilizations, was considered unpatriotic and dangerous. And it was probably partly from this consideration that I gained an appetite for the rest of the book, about 400 pages then remaining, of which all were a rewarding read.

There was also, for me, a personal/geographical indulgence. Robinson and I live near San Francisco and San Pablo Bays, where he sets a few key sections of his narrative, including the most straightforward part of an exciting and nuanced chapter, an odd and perhaps unintended echo of Gavin Menzies' idea about Admiral He's treasure fleet. The section in question seems to have been set within a few miles of where I grew up. As with the use of Mount Tamalpais as a location in the fourth (?) Percy Jackson book, this made me feel an unearned and silly pride, but it was still fun.

Poor Frank Vanderwal. I couldn't believe the range of actions he took in the parts of the Science in the Capital series I read. If only he were reincarnated, I could apparently have accepted almost anything!

This was my favorite book in years.