Tag Archives: literature

Review: Double Feature by Owen King

Posted by —

9

Book: Double Feature

Author: Owen King

Published: March 2013 by Scribner, 419 pages

Date Read: April 2013

First Line: ”The steel-on-steel whisk of the curtain rings scraping along the rod seemed to come from the sky, and for the last seven or eight seconds of his dream, Sam Dolan found himself turning in a circle, searching for the source of the sound, but there was no one else in the vast parking lot.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 5/5 well-known indie actors brandishing a replica of Bilbo’s sword Sting purchased from SkyMall with an (ZOMG!) actual, glow-in-the-dark blade!

Review: In 2006, I found a copy of Owen King’s We’re All in This Together on the library’s New Release shelf. It was excellent. So excellent, in fact, once I finished it, I turned right around and purchased myself a copy to own (which luckily I don’t do very often, as my bookshelves are overloaded to the breaking point and there is no room in here for even one more. Not even a TINY additional bookshelf. I’ve checked. I’ve measured. NO MORE ROOM.)

I waited patiently (fine, you guys know me, I wasn’t at all patient, I stalked his author page like a creeper) to see what King would produce next, and selfishly hoped it would be a longer work – if he’d won me over so completely with his short stories (and one haunting novella), I was eager to see what he’d do with a lengthier work.

I was completely in the right to be anticipatory.

Double Feature is one of those books where you not only fall in love with the characters, you get to know them. They’re very real. Flaws-and-all real. I love characters that are just like people I’d meet in my own life. People in books are all too often either ALL GOOD or ALL BAD or they’re VERY VERY GOOD with ONE FATAL FLAW or they’re just A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING ELSE or what have you, and that gets tiresome, because real live people walking around on the earth, just trying their hardest to not screw it up too badly? We’re not all good, or all bad, or a metaphor for anything. We’re a gray area. We sometimes spectacularly mess things up, to the point of not being able to fix them. We sometimes are capable of great things. And we sometimes stagnate and just go about our day-to-day and go to work and live our lives and try really hard to keep our heads above water. That’s what real people do. And that’s what the people in this book do, and oh, did I love them for it.

Sam Dolan is a young, optimistic filmmaker when we first meet him, working on his very first production: an indie piece called Who We Are. His father is Booth Dolan, an over-the-top B-movie actor who Sam has never felt close to. His mother, Allie, has recently passed away and Sam hasn’t gotten over it yet. And then something happens with his movie, and I can’t tell you what it is, because the reveal of that was so brilliantly written that I actually half-covered my face and said, “Oh. Oh, no, oh, shit, no, really? SHIT.” And may have laughed a little, because that’s what you do when something is really, really uncomfortable. (Well, it’s what I do, anyway.)

The book moves between times; to Sam’s childhood, to years after the movie situation. We meet the players in Sam’s life: his roommate Wesley, who writes a review blog for things people send him and refuses to leave the house; his ex-girlfriend Polly who hasn’t quite settled into the ex role yet and her burly Germanic baseball-player husband Jo-Jo; Sam’s bitterly brilliant half-sister Mina; his godfather Tom, who can’t stop building rooms onto his sprawling house, even though he lives there alone; and Tess, the television producer who might just be a match for Sam’s tendency to run away from anything resembling a commitment.

These people are real, and flawed, and fantastic. You want to invite them over for dinner (and maybe hide the knives before they arrive.) You want to spend time with them, talking to them and getting to know them and laughing with them and being a part of their lives. There’s a feel of Irving to these people; that same lovable misfit quality, that same fierce love you feel for them when you get to know them. The book is also very intelligent, very witty, and very wise. And at one point there’s a little poetry, and you know how that wins me over, right? (Spoiler alert in case you don’t know: it does. It very much does.)

I sped through the book this week, because I wanted to know what happened. But that meant it was going to end. And I didn’t want it to end. So I was torn between wanting to finish and never, ever wanting to finish. I suppose there are worse things to happen in the world; I just know turning the last page made me very melancholy, because it was done.

I’m lucky enough to be going to see the author read from the book tomorrow night and will be getting my (sadly, water-damaged, as I was caught in a rainstorm last week with it, stupid rainstorm) copy of the book signed tomorrow night. The characters get to live on for one more day for me, in the author’s voice, no less. I have no complaints about that. I’ll be glad to meet up with them again.

Review: A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Posted by —

21

Book: A Hologram for the King

Author: Dave Eggers

Published: June 2012 by McSweeney’s, 328 pages

Date Read: March 2013

First Lines: ”Alan Clay woke up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was May 30, 2010. He had spent two days on planes to get there.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 3.75/5 bottles of moonshine, drunk alone in furtive gulps long after midnight, that make you think performing surgery on yourself is a very good idea

Review: I met Dave Eggers once.

It is true! He gave a reading at one of our local colleges, and after the reading, he did a book signing. He was very polite and very kind, even though he was there forever signing books and the line was very long. He wrote something like “your beautiful smile lit up the room” in my friend’s book, and that made her so happy she beamed like the sun. I loved that about him.

I know a lot of people think Dave Eggers is a hipster god. I think he’s fine. I like him just fine, but I like a lot of authors. I think he does a lot of good work and I like McSweeney’s a great deal and know he founded it. He works a lot with disadvantaged youth. He seems like a good guy. I think I’ve only read one of his books – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – and have had The Wild Things on my to-read shelf for ages, but haven’t read it yet. I like him just fine.

Not surprisingly, I liked this book…just fine. A tiny little bit more than just fine, I guess. Just a bit under liked-it-a-lot.

Alan Clay is a consultant for an IT firm. He’s had a string of failures – his marriage, his various businesses, his relationship with his father. He thinks he’s dying of cancer. He can’t afford to pay his daughter’s tuition for her next year of college. He arrives in Saudi Arabia with his young, dynamic team of fellow consultants to present technology to the king. If this works, he will have enough money to do what he wants, send his daughter to college, take his house off the market. But in Saudi Arabia, things don’t run as Alan plans. The timeline seems to be much slower than he expects. There is no sense of urgency. Everyone is waiting for the king – but the king, much like Godot, never seems to arrive. And Alan seems to be looking at yet another failure in a long line of failures.

As a rule, I like books like this – a man pushed to the limit, at the end of his rope, a man who has to make a change or end up a casualty of life. I like them because I like to see what actions the character takes to get themselves out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. I like to see the activity. What I didn’t like about this is there was very little activity. Which is, I suppose, more realistic – life, at times, seems to be all about inactivity – but I don’t know that I want to read about inactivity.

Alan didn’t do much. He was given opportunities to grab life by the balls and didn’t even make a snatch at it. He just let things pass him by. He seemed beaten, weary, depressed, down. And I know, this is realism. I know that. But I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to say, no, not today, I’m going to win this. And every time I thought he might – nope. Same old nothing.

That being said, the writing was beautiful. Eggers’ prose is haunting and spare and evocative. I love his words. I liked the characters, and I did appreciate the realism (even if I was wishing for a little more optimism in there.) I liked reading about Saudi Arabia – I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything about that area before.

Overall, not a book I’d unequivocably recommend, but not a book I’d steer people away from, either. It was good read, a solid one, and not a waste of time. And Dave Eggers, thank you for being so kind at the book signing. I will always remember that. We waited a very long time in line and you could have been an asshat, but you totally grinned like we were the only ones in the room.

Mine says "Do not turn away from the light!" This is a signed copy of Giraffes? Giraffes!" which he didn't write, but it's a McSweeney's book, so he signed it anyway. Also, read it, because it will make you laugh so hard you have a coughing fit.

Mine says “Do not turn away from the light!” This is a signed copy of “Giraffes? Giraffes!” which he didn’t write, but it’s a McSweeney’s book, so he signed it anyway. Also, read it, because it will make you laugh so hard you have a coughing fit.

What makes a good villain?

Posted by —

36

evilvillaindiagram

Possibly more comic-book-villain than literary-villain but YOU GET THE POINT

We love villains, don’t we? I mean, we love heroes, sure . . . but a good villain really turns our cranks. They get to be wild, unconstrained badasses; they get the best lines; they get to give into those primitive human urges that the rest of us only dream of dabbling in. They get to wear cool outfits and make funny jokes. Heroes can be kind of square, but villains? Far less likely.

What makes a villain good, though? I mean, besides the badassery and the well-timed barbs. I ask because it’s entirely possible to write a shitty villain. Just being a villain doesn’t make a character awesome. So let’s explore some of the characteristics that make legendary villains.

A good villain has complex motivations.

When we find out that someone did something heinous–killed a bunch of people, for example, although that’s probably not even the worst example–for something as piddly as basic greed, I think it tends to leave a bad taste in our mouths. “He did all of that.. just for money? What an asshole.“ I feel that way about certain real-life people (cough) who go around wrecking other people’s lives because they have the mentality of children seeing how much they can get away with before they get punished. I envision a fat little Dudley Dursley type, sticking his hand in the cookie jar again and again until someone finally smacks it. That’s not a good villain at all, that’s a chump villain–they can make great characters, and even great antagonists, but as the major nemesis of a hero? I think not.

A good villain has a good back story. He or she has a reason to be so fucked up. He’s not just greedy, or bloodthirsty, or generically “evil.” Something drives a good villain; he lacks something that he’s desperate to fix or fill. A good villain would scoff at someone who gave in so easily and crudely to base desires. Common murderer? Please. Where’s the passion? Stumbling into villainy is for amateurs.

We don’t need that back story explained to fucking death, though.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, pisses me off more than when people take a great villain and, after he becomes popular, go back and explain exactly how he got so disturbed in exhausting and/or convenient detail. An example off the top of my head: Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Is it just me, or was Michael Myers a hell of a lot scarier before Rob Zombie made up some bullshit white trash background for him? The original Michael Myers was a “force of nature,” with a complex pathology hinted at through his family background and first murder; Rob Zombie turned him into an episode of Jerry Springer.

The truth is, it’s really hard to completely explain extreme villainous behavior in back story. You’re looking at a potent brew of trauma, brokenness, bad seeds, bad timing, opportunity. But a good villain also has to own what they do, or they’re chumps–writers often get carried away creating elaborate reasons for a villain to have gone bad, but in doing so, they take away some of the significance of that choice to cross the line. Letting a villain off with the insanity defense makes him more of a victim than a villain–he can be both, but taking away the choice pales him as an antagonist.

There’s also the risk that a writer will end up writing a completely unbelievable back story that’s so full of holes Swiss cheese would be envious. Over-explanation can absolutely ruin a good villain.

A good villain should be as powerful as the hero, and probably just a tiny bit more powerful.

Imagine the story of David and Goliath. Now imagine reversing them. David, although still righteous, comes off a bit of a bully if he’s the big one and Goliath is the puny one. I mean, it wouldn’t even be a story. Big guy crushes little guy, yawn.

A good villain may have started off life weak and defenseless, but if he doesn’t become strong–either mentally or physically–then he doesn’t pose any kind of challenge for the hero. There’s no story there.

Weak villain syndrome is sometimes known as over-powered hero syndrome. The villain isn’t necessarily meant to be weak, but the hero has no weaknesses at all and defeats the villain without a lot of effort. (A lot of the J.D. Robbs lately have fallen prey to this . . .) If the hero doesn’t fail at least once, the story sucks. Let’s be real. There’s not even a point if the hero can just swagger in and take care of business without breaking a sweat.

A good villain is also not predictable.

If a villain telegraphs all of his moves so that the hero can counter them effectively, well, that doesn’t make for a very good story, either. See previous point about the hero needing to fail and break a sweat and etc etc.

Good villains have a multifaceted personality.

I always feel like a villain, in a different set of circumstances, could have been a hero. They have many of the same qualities–passion, inner strength, resolve, drive–but somewhere along the way, the villain got fucked up about something. Even totally fucked-up people, though–even super-evil people–have more than that to their personalities. The Joker is a great example; everyone knows that Catwoman and Batman have a sometimes-romance, but fewer people talk about the bromance between Joker and Batman. Joker, despite being a psychopath who constantly puts Batman (and many others) in fatal danger, is also one of the few people who really, truly understands Batman; the Joker’s understanding is, of course, a little twisted . . . but it’s there. In The Killing Joke, Alan Moore explores this theme, showing flashes of humanity in Joker that we rarely see; in the final scenes, Batman tries to convince Joker that he can change his ways, but Joker, regretfully, tells Batman that this isn’t possible. (The film The Dark Knight also explores the Batman and Joker connection but doesn’t show any real vulnerability in Joker.)

Showing a villain’s soft underbelly makes the character more complex, more sympathetic–hell, even likable at times. This can cause great emotional conflict in many of us (the Snape Debates still rage on: good guy, or bad guy?) because his actions make him so unlikable. Or it can spark understanding in us, which can be disturbing as we contemplate how we could just as easily end up in the same position. Emotional connection is good, but almost nobody can connect to someone who is pure evil and little else. Purely evil people simply don’t exist; even psychopaths have a distinct pathology that goes beyond “just evil.”

A good villain needs to be his or her own entity, not just a challenge for the hero.

This ties into having complex motivations and humanity, so I won’t linger here. Suffice to say that the villain needs his or her own momentum–a villain can’t just exist for the hero to fight against. It’s like how a love interest is boring if they’re only there to further the  protagonist’s arc. We have to be just as emotionally invested in the villain as we are the hero, so he can’t just be a throwaway pawn–he needs substance.

A good villain hits our hero right in the feels.

Wanna ratchet up the tension between hero and villain? Have the villain pull off some dastardly plot that harms a person or thing that the hero holds dear, or have the villain outwit the hero and pull off an amazing scheme while rubbing the hero’s nose in his victory. The hero just went from “Gee, this guy, he’s kind of an evil bastard” to “I WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU.” A good villain is able to upset the hero, able to disrupt his whole damn life until their beef is settled.

What’s your favorite aspect of a good villain?

I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to good villainy. What do you love in a villain? What makes a villain unforgettable? Also, what do writers do wrong with villains that drives you insane? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!

 

Review: A Million Heavens by John Brandon

Posted by —

17

Book: A Million Heavens

Author: John Brandon

Published: July 2012 by McSweeney’s, 272 pages

First Line: ”The nighttime clouds were slipping across the sky as if summoned.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 3/5 songs, written by the man you loved who died, filling your mind until you can think of nothing else

Review: I am an unabashed John Brandon fan.

His Citrus County was one of my favorite books of last year, and I’m still looking to get my hands on his Arkansas (my library isn’t the best at stocking indie-published novels, and the price tag is still a little steep for my Kindle, but I’m going to break down one of these days. I’m a terrible impulse-buyer when it comes to the Kindle.)

(Also, can we just marvel over this cover? Gorgeous. McSweeney’s really excels at cover art.)

I was so looking forward to A Million Heavens, and after a few initial disappointing chapters, I thought, “it will get better. It just has to hit its stride.”

Unfortunately, it never really did.

Set in New Mexico, it follows, in small, somewhat strange chapters, the events that happen to various townsfolk over a bleak winter. A young prodigy lies in a coma while his father sits by his bedside, helpless. People sit outside in vigil, for various reasons. A woman on the run from her life attempts a new start with a man with a checkered past. A lost young musician mourns the death of the man she loved, which is proving to also be the death of her muse. The mayor of the town tries to find himself through his love for a woman who is possibly off-limits. And a wolf travels through the town, trying in vain to retain his wildness in a town that’s becoming increasingly industrialized and filled with the mystery of humans.

The problem I had was that I cared about very few of the stories/characters. I found myself waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the chapters involving Cecelia, the musician, and her departed love, Reggie (who actually gets a voice and a storyline from the beyond.) They were the two characters who seemed the most fleshed-out, whose fates and outcomes I actually cared about. The rest of them, although not poorly written (Brandon couldn’t write clunky prose if he tried; the man writes beautifully) were…somewhat cardboard. Uninteresting. I was not invested in their stories, in their fates. I was reading to see what happened to Cecelia; if she would redeem herself, if she would find what she was looking for under the New Mexico stars, in the damage she found herself drawn to cause. I was reading to see if Reggie would be able to finally communicate his love for her from beyond, because he’d missed his chance when he was on earth.

I’m not flat-out panning the book. Brandon’s prose is leaps and bounds better than most people’s I read, and I will continue to read his work, and eagerly await what he publishes next. But after the wonder and mystery and magic of Citrus County, I found myself disappointed by this one. I know he’s capable of more and of better. I appreciate that he was trying something different and outside the box, and I like that he’s attempting to evolve; I just don’t think this book worked on all levels.

Death Match: Battle of the Street Urchins, Oliver Twist vs. Gavroche from Les Miserables

Posted by —

17

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Katie from Words for Worms: An Irreverent Book Blog for the Masses.

Welcome to the DEATH MATCH (insert terrifying announcer voice here). This is my first Death Match post, and I’m going to start out by breaking the rules. Instead of placing two books head to head, I’m throwing two characters into the cage. Dun dun dun!

Two enter. One leaves.

Today’s contenders are two of literature’s favorite street urchins. Who will prevail? IN THIS CORNER, Oliver Twist from the Dickens novel of the same name. A wretched orphan, Oliver possesses a goodness of heart that cannot misery cannot quench. IN THIS CORNER, we have Gavroche, a minor but beloved character in Hugo’s Les Misérables. Gavroche is thrown into the streets by uncaring parents to become the pluckiest pickpocket in Paris. Let’s get ready to rumble!

olivertwistCharacter/Book: Oliver/Oliver Twist 

Author: Charles Dickens

Published: 1838 by Richard Bentley

First Line: “Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.”

Oliver Twist is orphaned as an infant and left in the care of the local workhouse. He is subjected to unbearable cruelty at the hands of the state, and as punishment for asking for another helping of gruel, he is apprenticed out to a cruel undertaker. Oliver eventually flees to seek shelter of the streets of London, and immediately falls in with a gang of ne’er-do-wells who make their living picking pockets. Despite Oliver’s upbringing in horrifying circumstances, he possesses an infallible moral compass and a gentle heart no maltreatment can harden.

I went into Oliver Twist without having any background on the story other than having seen a production of the musical as a child. The only conclusion I’d come away with was that I would have been a better choice to play Oliver than the little boy who did. (I was unaware at this juncture in my life that I cannot, in fact, carry a tune.) I found Oliver’s tale to be heart wrenching–I was appalled at the cruelty of society and the poverty of the downtrodden. In spite of all his hardships, Oliver’s good heart is unshakable. Rather than participate willingly in activities he knows to be wrong (even if they might fill his concave belly), Oliver resists temptation and does everything in his power to remain on the up and up.

lesmisThe Character/Book: Gavroche/Les Misérables

Author: Victor Hugo

Published: 1862 by Charles E. Wilbour

First Line: “An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October, 1815, a man travelling afoot entered the little town of D—.”

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is a behemoth of literature. It may seem unfair to put Gavroche’s story head to head with that of Oliver Twist, considering that Oliver got a whole book whereas Gavroche is a fairly minor character in the epic that is Les Misérables. However, given that Hugo is (perhaps unnecessarily) verbose, our competitors have comparable page counts. Gavroche is the unwanted son of the novel’s villainous Thernadiers. Because they are poverty-stricken and care only for their daughters, the Thernardiers turn Gavroche out into the streets. Undaunted by his predicament, Gavroche sets up house inside the statue of an elephant and scrounges through somewhat morally-questionable means to keep himself alive. Despite having to hustle for his own well being, Gavroche occasionally takes in other abandoned children to show them the ropes of being a successful street urchin. He also moonlights as an informant for politically motivated protest groups.

Les Misérables is a long book, but I went into it having the musical’s soundtrack ringing through my brain, and I quite enjoyed the journey. I found Gavroche to be positively delightful. His zeal for taking down “the man” is infectious, and his desire to help his fellow “gamin” endearing. He’s impulsive to the point of folly, but it’s tough to resist an underdog as jolly as little Gavroche.

deathmatch2

Now that the groundwork has been laid, it’s time for the DEATH MATCH. The rules of this DEATH MATCH are completely arbitrary and assigned by moi. Today’s DEATH MATCH will be scored with: Chimney Sweeps! What better occupation for a street urchin?!

johnny_automatic_chimney_sweep_silhoutte

Oliver:

  • Has his story made into a successful Broadway musical: 1 Chimney Sweep
  • Has the good grace to be extremely grateful to the few kind souls who help him along the way: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Beats the crap out of the annoying kid who bullies him at the undertaker’s: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Remembers his sickly orphan friend Dick once he finds a better life: 1 Chimney Sweeps
  • Keeps a firm grasp on his morals despite difficult situations: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Overall is a whiny, mewling wretch of a boy: -2 Chimney Sweeps

Rating: 3/5 Artfully Dodged Wallets

Gavroche:

  • Has his story made into a much better musical than Oliver!: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Creates a mesh within the elephant statue to keep himself from being devoured by rats in the night: 1 Chimney Sweep
  • Cares for a pair of abandoned children (without even knowing they’re his biological brothers): 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Outs Javert as a spy to the marauding students at the barricade: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Eternal optimism and moxie: 2 Chimney Sweeps
  • Gets himself shot while brazenly scavenging for bullets: -1 Chimney Sweep

Rating: 4/5 tattered French flags

I’m going to tally the votes. A little musical aside while I tally. “The Chimbley Sweep” by the Decemberists is the perfect song to have playing while you read this post. I probably should have mentioned that earlier. Sorry.

AND! THE WINNER IS! With a total of 8 Chimney Sweeps to 6 Chimney Sweeps:

Gavroche! Do you hear the people sing?!

Today’s DEATH MATCH PRIZE is…

annie

The original cast recording of Annie. The sun will come out ”Tomorrow,” boys. Seriously, y’all. I couldn’t have a literary Broadway-off without inviting Annie. “It’s a Hard Knock Life,” people!

Come back again for our next round of DEATH MATCH, where we will pit two more equally worthy adversaries against one another until the BITTER, BITTER END!

Katie Kelly is a voracious reader whose day job has nothing to do with literature and everything to do with charts and graphs. Frustrated with the limitations of professionally pithy emails, she started Words for Worms: An Irreverent Book Blog for the Masses. When Katie isn’t working, reading, or blogging, she is hanging out with her husband as they exchange horrendous puns based on obscure pop culture references. She also enjoys penguins, windup toys, and writing about herself in the third person. 

Review: The Light of Amsterdam by David Park

Posted by —

3

The Light of AmsterdamBook: The Light of Amsterdam

Author: David Park

Published: November 13, 2012 by Bloomsbury

First lines: “The ink was black, the paper the same shade of blue as a bird’s egg he had found a week before.  In their balanced elegance the capital G and B mirrored each other. Unlike most of the soccer signatures he collected which were largely indecipherable hieroglyphics–the bored scribbles of fleeing stars–this name was readable and perfectly formed.”

Rating:  Not bad.

(Electronic galley provided by Bloomsbury)

Reading The Light of Amsterdam was like reading a good painting. It was really beautiful if not very exciting.

The story follows three different characters from Northern Ireland who all travel to Amsterdam for their own reasons: Alan, a divorced college professor who gets stuck taking his skulking teenage son with him to a Bob Dylan concert; Karen, a working-class single mother who is attending her daughter’s hen party (for the American readers, that’s the UK equivalent of a bachelorette party); and Marion, an older woman who goes on holiday with her husband.  The characters all have their own past events, regrets, and scars, and each of their traveling companions is someone with whom they have lost touch.  The characters are all interesting in that they are realistic, and it’s easy to find yourself in them.  None of them are particularly heroic, but they do all grow and change.

One of my favorite things about this book was the descriptive writing style and the use of imagery.  The motif of lights popped up constantly, but the descriptions were effective and they never got old or repetitive for me; it always seemed appropriate.  Here’s a passage that I particularly liked:

She passed lots of groups, mostly of young women with their cigarettes held aloft like fire-flies in the night and shiny mobile phones pressed to their ears.  There was the chattering clatter of their heels and despite the cold their primped bodies on show with their excited voices breaking against each other before shattering into laughter again and again.

There’s a rhythm and a poetry to the words, and the images are gorgeous.

That being said, there was one thing about the writing style that annoyed me.  The point of view jumped between the three characters with little or no transition, and I found it disorienting.  Galleys often lose some of the formatting that appears in commercial e-books, so perhaps some of the space breaks were omitted.  Still, even if there had been space breaks, the author seldom used the characters’ names, instead just referring to them as “he” or “she” from the time they entered the scene, and the only way I even knew the characters’ names was from the rare instances when other characters used them.

I think some readers would complain about the lack of action or happy endings that our culture prefers, but I liked it for what it was.  There were no life-and-death struggles or thrilling high notes, but those wouldn’t have suited the kind of story that was being told.  As I mentioned above, the characters were normal people undergoing their own melancholy self-discoveries and learning how to communicate with the people in their lives in an unfamiliar setting.  If there was a theme, it’s that life never quite works out the way you expect it to.

With the name of the setting in the title, I would have expected it to almost be like another character, but it mainly served as an opportunity for the characters to escape from their normal lives and take a look at themselves from a different perspective.  They went to bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, and they found their way into the Rijksmuseum and the red light district, too.  But the main focus was on the characters rather than the setting.

Overall, The Light of Amsterdam was not a bad read.  If you’re looking for something fast-paced that will keep you on the edge of your seat, this probably isn’t for you.  However, if you enjoy good poetic writing that reflects the bittersweet beauty of real life, then you’ll probably want to check this out.

Buy the book: (Powell’s or Amazon)

Top Five + Mix Tape: If you want to be a SpecOp, act kinda weird.

Posted by —

21

We’re all here because we love books, right?  Thursday Next also loves books.  So much so that she’s a LiteraTec – a member of SpecOps group 27, dealing with stolen or forged works of literature and manuscripts.

See, Thursday Next doesn’t live in our England.  She lives in an alternate England created by Jasper Fforde.  An England in which you’ll find yourself harassed by door-to-door Baconians:

“€œHello!”€ replied a voice. “My name’s Edmund Capillary. Have you ever stopped to wonder whether it was really William Shakespeare who penned all those wonderful plays?”

It’s an England that has been engaged in the Crimean War for over 100 years, and it’s also an England where one can attend Rocky Horror type live performances of Richard III.

Richard opened his mouth to speak and the whole audience erupted in unison:
“When is the winter of our discontent?”
“€œNow,”€ replied Richard with a cruel smile, “€œis the winter of our discontent.”
A cheer went up to the chandeliers high in the ceiling. The play had begun. Landen and I cheered with them. Richard III was one of those plays that could repeal the law of diminishing returns; it could be enjoyed over and over again.

It’s an England with a Time Travel Guard, it’s an England with cloned pets (Thursday owns an early model dodo), it’s an England that’s almost (but not quite) entirely different from our own.

But it’s an England (and a world) that almost any book lover would want to be a part of.  If I had a chance to live in any fictional world, I’d likely choose Fforde’s Nextian England.  My biggest problem would be the lack of cheese.

I’d love to go on and on about the Nextian world (if you’re interested in my fangirling, you can read more here), but to do so would involve spoiling things for you, and I only do that for books I don’t think you should read.  Go pick up The Eyre Affair (if you haven’t already) and we can talk more.

Mix Tape

What better choice for a Literary Detective than a playlist of songs about literature?  I’ve created this mix tape with an eye towards songs that are based on, make mention of or are  simply inspired by books.  Originally I was going to just do classics, but that was more difficult than I thought because it would have probably ended up a mostly metal mix tape.  I think Thursday would appreciate what I’ve done instead.  Even if she doesn’t, I hope you will.  You can find the playlist on YouTube by clicking here.

I tried to avoid the obvious, but some may have slipped in.   I was super tempted to just make a whole Radiohead playlist, but I didn’t give into it.

Top Five

I know I don’t usually use the same criteria for the Top Five list as I do for the Mix Tape, but this time I am.  I’m not including these songs on the playlist, and I’ll be the first to admit that this list is completely biased.  The songs I’ve picked are either by bands I love, or based on the works of authors I love.  Sorry.  My list.  I can do what I want.  [wink]

Top Five Songs Inspired by Literature

  1. Japancakes - Now Wait for Last Year  (inspired by the Philip K Dick book of the same name)
  2. XTC - Dear God  (inspired by a series of children’s books of the same name)
  3. The Cure - Killing an Arab  (inspired by Camus’ The Stranger)
  4. Rob Zombie – Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy)  (Um, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, but that was obvious, yeah?)
  5. Nirvana - Scentless Apprentice  (inspired by Patrick Süskind’s Perfume)

What about you?  What are your favourite songs inspired by books? Tell me in the comments!

Why Aspiring Authors Shouldn’t Major in English

Posted by —

46

Do you want to be a writer when you grow up?  I know I do.  When I was in high school trying to decide on a college and a major, English seemed like the perfect subject to study.  After all, English is the language I would be writing in, right?  Looking back, I think I made a huge mistake.

Perks of Being an English Major

This is exactly how my life went . . . oh, wait . . .

The major problem with majoring in English was that, although I gained some marketable skills from it, it did very little to prepare me for being a writer.  Here are some of the reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea for writers to major in English:

  • You already know English.  If you can read this, chances are you already have native or near-native proficiency in English.  Why would you spend tens of thousands of dollars on a program where you’re just going to learn more about a language you already know?  Most programs don’t even spend much time on grammar or linguistics, so you’re not really gaining any arcane English knowledge that you couldn’t have picked up while you were in high school.
  • Writing classes are required for every major.  For most four-year degrees, regardless of what you major in, you will be required to take a course in English composition.  My upper-level English composition class had students from every major in it.  Even at the most basic level of English 101, you will learn how to write an essay and you will learn correct grammar.  Best of all, one of your required textbooks will be a grammar reference.  Make sure you hold onto it; I still have mine.
  • You’re just going to read a lot of literature.  If you want to be a writer, but you don’t already read as much as you possibly can, I want you to hit yourself.  No, really.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait . . . Okay, as I was saying, if you want to be a writer, you probably already read all the time.  Something has to inspire your desire to create worlds, right?  The things you read will have a major impact on your writing style and the kinds of stories you will create.  For me, I enjoyed reading great English literature from a variety of time periods, but as a writer, I find that those were not the kinds of stories that inspired me.  I drew most of my inspiration from my leisure reading of speculative fiction–not from reading the classics.

    How to Read a Book

    Fortunately, there’s a whole book on the subject.

  • Studying other subjects gives you a different perspective to write from.  I really enjoy reading a book with realistic details about careers, hobbies, and interests outside of my own scope.  It provides a kind of escape from my own mundane life.  I don’t know much about business, law, or science, but I think books that revolve around these topics are fascinating.  Michael Crichton is a good example of a writer whose expertise in scientific fields translated into fascinating science fiction stories involving everything from biotech to mutant gorillas.  All I’m saying is you don’t want to be the kid who writes about writers writing.  Only Stephen King can get away with that; he breaks all the rules.
  • English programs don’t teach job skills or business sense.  Let’s be honest: most writers are going to need a second job while they’re writing that bestseller.  On a resume, you look about as smart as the French exchange student who got good grades in French.  What’s more, in order to succeed as a writer, you’ll need to know how to be an effective communicator and an effective promoter.  You would think that writing letters or e-mails and writing fiction go hand-in-hand, but they don’t.

I don’t necessarily want to discourage aspiring writers from majoring in English.  Plenty of successful writers have been English majors.  However, it’s important to realize that an English degree will leave gaps in your education and skill set.  If I had to do it over, I would have picked a journalism or business major instead, and I would have also joined up with the school newspaper and a few other clubs that interested me.  Get out and try some things that are outside of your comfort zone, because fiction writing is about characters overcoming conflict, and you won’t know about conflict until you’ve faced a challenge.

Maybe you’re planning to major in English anyway, or maybe you’ve already got an English degree.  What was your experience with an education in English?  Leave a comment!

You should read this: The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon

Posted by —

16

Book: The Polish Boxer

Author: Eduardo Halfon (translated by Daniel Hahn, Ollie Brock, Lisa Dillman, Thomas Bunstead, and Anne McLean)

Published: October 2012 by Bellevue Literary Press

First line: “I was pacing among them, moving up and down between the rows of desks as if trying to find my way out of a labyrinth.”

Rating: 4.85/5 pirouettes, which may or may not mean anything to the Gypsies

(Advance reader copy provided by Bellevue Literary Press)

I would like to preface this review by saying that I am half in love with Eduardo Halfon now, and I’m eager to see his other work translated into English–like, tomorrow. I will buy them. I will.

I don’t know what I was expecting of The Polish Boxer. The offer to read it came by way of me pointing out the book Inukshuk to Amy, which I thought she might enjoy; Bellevue Literary Press said, hey, would you be interested in reading The Polish Boxer? Amy passed it along to me, and I’m so thankful for this bit of happenstance.

The blurb on the back of the book is a bit misleading. The summary describes it like it’s a book of unrelated stories–well, partially related because they share the same narrator–but gossamer threads run through the book, tying the stories together into a work that reads less like a book of short stories and more like a memoir by Anthony Bourdain mixed with tones of Kerouac. Halfon, the narrator of his own book, reads like a man with an unsettled past and a slow fire in his guts. He is a man who is easily haunted. He might be just a touch jaded.

It’s unclear how much of this work is fiction and how much is true. We know some of it is true–maybe all of it, there’s no disclaimer or classification that I can see. It doesn’t really matter. The Polish Boxer is gorgeous. When I read the title story, I was sitting at a coffee shop with my husband, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I got mist-eyed even though I was sitting next to a busy intersection where people could totally see me cry. (If I had been at home, I would have bawled.)

Halfon’s characters (and it feels weird to call them characters because I assume they are real people) all enchant the reader–Lía, who draws her orgasms; Juan Kalel, a brilliant poet confined by life in a tiny village; his grandfather, who always told his grandchildren that the number tattooed on his arm was his phone number, so he wouldn’t forget it–but the one that sticks with you hard is Milan Rakic, a half-Serbian half-Gypsy pianist who introduces himself to Eduardo in a bar one night. Rakic is the focus of three major stories in the collection (plus a small interlude), and with good reason: he’s captivating–or, at least, Halfon thinks he’s captivating, and shows us that side of Rakic. We fall down the rabbit hole with Halfon, who eventually finds himself in Belgrade, seeking out the wandering pianist in the book’s longest story, “The Pirouette”. We come away emotionally upturned, and that’s okay.

I still feel steeped in Halfon’s language and imagery. I want to wrap it around me like silk. I want to submerge myself like it’s a bath of warm cream, and maybe swim around a bit.

The Polish Boxer is sexy; it’s moving; it’s a little bit in the gutter, but it’s looking up at the stars. I don’t ever tell you that you must read a book, but I’m strongly urging you to pick up a copy of this one. It may become one of my all-time favorites.

 

 

 

Poetry Inspiration: An Inauspicious Beginning

Posted by —

13

This post, and two more, are part of a short series leading up to a blog tour that I put together for Amy. I asked her to write about her poetry inspirations, and how she came to be a poet in a time when people sometimes look at you a little funny when you tell them you’re a poet. (Then again, maybe they always looked at people a little funny for that?) So, over the next two Fridays, plus this one, we will have a poetry post from Amy. Yay poetry! Yay Amy! – Susie

Many years ago (and many and MANY a moon ago), I was going to be a doctor. I know, right? Please try to control your laughter. I went to college with every intention to major pre-med. No, I don’t know what I was thinking, either.

After a semester of science that nearly killed me (high school science, surprisingly, is quite a lot easier than college science! Well! Who knew!) I knew I had to change my major. I thought long and hard and made lists of what I loved in the world and the list boiled down to three things:

  • the ice cream in the college dining hall
  • theater
  • creative writing

You could have all the ice cream you wanted for like a DOLLAR. It was the BEST.

Since you can’t major in ice cream (well, I guess at some schools you can major in culinary arts, but I didn’t want to MAKE food, I wanted to EAT it, and that’s not a major – wait, is that a major? it isn’t, right?) I went for a double-major in the other two. Yes, it was slightly ill-advised, as neither of these things are something that puts food on your plate as an adult. Or, I suppose, ice cream in your bowl. But I didn’t like doing anything else. And I was 18. Like YOU didn’t make choices based on whims and fancies at 18.

Now, I went to a pretty liberal college. You had a lot of options, creative-writing wise. Your major was in creative writing, but you had a concentration: fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, poetry. (Some people were VERY driven and made up their own major, like “Nonfiction Playwriting Poetry” or something, but that seemed a little too hippy-crazy for me.) I’d tried a little bit of everything, here and there. But poetry was my love. It always had been, ever since I skipped ahead in our textbook in high school and discovered the (sadly, quite brief) poetry section. Just the basics, there – Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Shakespeare – but reading those poems on the sly while the rest of the class was sucking the life out of “A Rose for Emily” or “The Most Dangerous Game” gave me the most delicious thrill in the chest.

Even looking at this makes me a little nostalgic. And a little sad. They weren’t very good, these textbooks, you know?

I started writing poetry on my own, but it didn’t look much like the poetry in the books. It was such a release, though. It felt right for me, in a way that my stumbling fiction and playwriting didn’t. (I still wrote a hell of a nonfiction piece, though, if I do say so myself.) So when it came time to choose one of the concentrations, I dabbled in a playwriting class, I took a fiction class that was a lesson in humility (I’m really not very good at that at all, something the other students were all-too-eager to point out), but it was poetry that sucked me in and didn’t let go. And I was good at it. And I loved it. How often do you find something you’re good at, that you love? When that happens, you have to hold onto it with both hands. It’s almost a sin if you don’t.

The degree didn’t do me much good (other than to teach me how to workshop a poem, I suppose, and introduce me to some excellent poets, and how to self-edit, both my criticism of others and my own work) but surprisingly, I continued with the poetry. Why surprisingly? Well, I have the attention span of a toddler. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of things I’ve picked up and put down over the years. But poetry, for some reason, stayed with me. Even though it’s never been the cool kid at the writing table; even though it’s most definitely not the most commercial of them. Sometimes months will go by and nothing; sometimes everything will inspire me. I still love reading poetry; it still gives me that thrill in the chest to find the perfect poem that hits me in just the right way. I don’t think this is a whim I’ll get over like quilting or gardening. I think this one might be here to stay.

So, while most people have their a-ha moment where they realized I AM A POET, I had my complete and utter boredom in high school English class and reading ahead in the textbook, and discovering this whole new art form I’d never really looked at. When most people chose majors in college because they were thinking ahead for a career and such, I wasn’t as prescient and chose something I loved (whether or not that was a good idea, I still can’t tell you. Probably not, but at least I loved it.) Not a very impressive beginning for a poet, right?

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to talk about two poets that inspired me, as a poet, and choose one of their poems that really give me that thrill in the chest; that showed me that hey, what I was doing WAS real poetry, DID have worth; poets that helped me form the raw materials that I had into something a little less raw and a little more focused (I won’t be arrogant enough to say they honed it completely – are we ever right where we want to be, craft-wise? I don’t know about all the other writers out there, but me, personally, I know I’m not.) We’ve talked about poetry before, but it was kind of an overview: this one will be shorter and a little more concise. (I promise they’ll be shorter than this one. Promise, promise.) It’ll be kind of a peek behind the curtain and kind of a poetry post all rolled into one. And maybe you’ll find a poem you love, and maybe it’ll remind you of a poem you read, once, that you loved, that moved you. What else can we ask of words, than to move us and to transport us? My introduction to poetry might not have been very auspicious, but where it’s taken me is just where I want to be, and I’m happy to take you all along with me for a little while.