Tag Archives: rant

Reading Rage: You can’t hide a self-published work under a vanity press name. Just don’t.

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hiding

I will just say that my book was published by Fancy Unicorn Pants Press and people will never know I published it myself.

Our review policy has undergone (is that a word? did I conjugate that correctly?) some changes in the recent past. I decided to stop accepting pitches from self-published authors because it was eating up an enormous amount of my time for very little return on my time investment. I changed the policy at that time to say that we would only accept books published by small and/or independent presses, because that’s kind of our bag when it comes to reviewing books.

An interesting thing happened when I changed the policy, which led directly to our new new policy (we just don’t accept books anymore). We started getting a lot of books that were “published” by small presses that I’d never, ever heard of before. Not that I’ve heard of every small press, but I’ve gotten fairly well-versed in small presses; when I see one I haven’t heard of, I like to look them up. Just for my own education–and, okay yeah, because some of these “small presses” were a tad suspicious. When I followed the Google trail for these presses, I found some interesting things:

  • Many of the small presses were vanity presses, where the author paid to have their book published. This? is not the same as being published by a small press.
  • Other authors actually made up small presses, which had only published their book, or maybe two or three selections (probably from their friends). The pages for these presses are usually nothing more than a makeshift, generically-branded shop where you can purchase the author’s book. It’s pretty obvious that it’s a fake press.
  • Still other authors didn’t even bother making any kind of online presence for their fake press. They would slap an appropriate-sounding press name on their book, but when I searched for any inkling of the press existing, I found nothing.

headdesk

Look, authors who have tried or are considering trying this–it’s really obvious when a small press is not a real press. It’s really obvious when someone starts a press (even if they’re legitimately trying to start a real press, which is only true about half a percent of the time in these cases) just to self-publish without being “self-published.” I’ve never run across this situation where I have had to carefully ponder whether the press was real or not. The evidence is immediately damning. The only way to be slick enough to pull this off is actually to fully launch a legitimate small press where you have editors and designers and you publish books for real… and then you’re not being sneaky anyway, you’re being industrious.

Pretending to have been published by a small press when you haven’t been is really annoying. For one thing, it’s totally lying, which I hate on its own. Only smarmy people and grifters lie about things that they’re representing or selling. If you published your own book, you shouldn’t hide that behind a fake press name–in my eyes, that’s tantamount to fraud. The difference between being published and publishing one’s own book is quite significant in terms of process; to indicate that you were published when you did the process yourself is to misrepresent your book. If you want to put a vanity name on  your book, then you need to make it clear that it’s a self-published book under the name of your vanity press. I shouldn’t have to go hunt through Google to try to figure out whether you published your book yourself.

(And if you’re reading this thinking “What’s the big deal?”–if it weren’t a big deal, it wouldn’t be happening in the first place; nobody would be trying to bury the self-published stigma under a fake press name.)

It was also annoying because it was disrespectful to us. Our policy clearly stated no self-published books. Even if your book has a press name slapped on it, if you self-published it, you self-published it. The fake press names were included specifically to circumvent our policy, which had 0% to do with whether a book had a press name on it and 100% to do with the differences in process between small-press publishing and self-publishing. Those authors were attempting to cheat their way into getting a review, and apparently didn’t think I would be smart enough to figure out their tactics. Because, you know, that’s exactly the kind of person you want writing a review of your book. Derp.

Dear respectable self-published authors: all of these shady jerkwads are ruining it for the rest of you. I’m so sorry you have to deal with stigma because a bunch of people don’t know how to be courteous and professional.

Here’s the deal, shady authors: bloggers such as myself put a lot of work into our blogs. We will do our homework if we specify certain policies. And we talk to each other–try to put one over on one of us, and word is going to get around to many of the rest of us. Information travels at high speed these days, and we don’t like to be tricked or lied to, so that’s information we will definitely pass along whenever the opportunity arises. So, you need to stop trying to loophole yourself out of being self-published. If you did the work yourself, own it! Don’t bury it under a fake press name. It’s rude and perilously close to fraud.

Have you experienced this tactic as a blogger or a reader? Have you bought books thinking that they were traditionally-published, only to find out later that they were self-published? What’s your favorite TV show? Leave your comments below!

I do not like the thing that you like, and that is okay.

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dislike

Also books, television, films, and clothing.

If you’ve been poking around IB for awhile, you know that I have pretty distinct tastes in books. While I’m not a total book snob (see also, my husband, who will re-read War and Peace fifty times before he will ever finish On the Road. And those are both literature), I do tend to hug the border of book snobbery fairly closely. I’m not one to take recommendations from people because it puts me in an obligatory position–and more often than not, I end up having to pretend I really liked something when I really did not. I know I could just be honest and say it very kindly, but people still tend to get a puppy-dog look when you tell them that the book they asked you to read really was not your cuppa. The look, it wounds me.

So, I get literary elitism, to a point. I do. And yeah, I am firmly in the “some books are better than others” camp–not just that I like some books better than others, but that some books actually have more overall literary quality than others. I do believe that there are certain marks of “good” writing (although I’m probably a lot less rigid on those marks than some, admittedly). Yeah, the criteria were made up by people, and yeah, they are subjective–but they have been fine-tuned by hundreds, nay, thousands of writers, editors, and scholars through the years, so I think they’re legitimate standards of quality.

So I get it. I do.

Here’s where the whole subject of literary elitism–any kind of elitism, really–breaks down for me: when people start not only judging the work, but judging the people who like the work. Looking down your nose at someone because they enjoy something? Not cool. Not cool at all. Like, it’s fine to say you think Dan Brown is a talentless hack . . . but, you know, when your friend just told you how much they really loved the new Dan Brown novel, that might not be the best timing.

Cue the eye-rolling here, of course. Die-hard snobs–the ones who have this problem in the first place–feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to judge others for what they enjoy. Why should they worry about another person’s feelings? They’re the ones who have to live with their shitty taste. Etc, etc. The fault in this logic, though, is that it assumes taste is built solely on the perceived quality of the work and the ability of the person to appreciate works of quality. Taste isn’t just limited to how good the work is, though. You have other factors coming into play–emotional connection, nostalgia, memory, personality, life experiences, setting, mood. Taste can be as individual as fingerprints.

Even though this is a bookish blog, I’m going to use music as an example. Music is an area where I constantly feel insecure. I actually thought about writing this post when I realized that I almost never share music on my social media. I’m friends with a lot of people who have very strong opinions about music, and a few who have made it clear that they have no qualms telling people when they have shitty taste. I’m not going to subject myself to that kind of treatment for something that I like, even if what I like isn’t considered “cool;” I have my reasons for liking what I like, and I don’t have to apologize for it. But I keep quiet about it all the same, just to avoid grief.

I never want to make a person feel that way about what they like–especially because most of us slum it in some ways. I see literary writers on Twitter live-tweeting The Bachelorette; I see those same music snob friends going crazy on Facebook over candy-pop tween book series. These kinds of things are mindless entertainment, and why shouldn’t we be able to have that without people looking down their noses at us? I have admitted freely that I watch The Jersey Shore. Yes, it’s trashy, and that’s what I love about it. I love that I can get embroiled in someone else’s dramz for an hour or so and not have to think about things. It’s kind of awesome.

I guess the overall point that I’m trying to make is that, yes, you certainly can judge things to be good or bad–but for pity’s sake, shut the hell up about it if you’re in danger of hurting someone’s feelings over it, because you can’t judge a person by their mindless entertainment. You can, however, judge someone for being an elitist asshole. I have to beg to differ with Rob Fleming/Gordon, here: it’s not what you like, it’s what you are like that matters. And if you’re the kind of person who kills the joy that someone else finds in entertainment because it’s not up to your standards, you’re a fucking jerk.

Reading Rage: Don’t Make Me Get Out My Red Pen

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Dear Self-Published Authors,

Can we chat for a sec?  Here, pull up a chair and let me get you some tea.  Tea is good for these types of discussions, right?  I think so.

Listen.  I think we need to have this talk because, quite frankly, many of you are doing this wrong.

No, I’m not talking about how you market yourself and your books (although Susie kind of has you covered in that department), I’m talking about the actual most important part of your book.  Your book.  Your writing.

Here’s the thing, self-pubs – by failing to properly proofread/edit/RE-READ your book, you’re not only failing your readers, you’re failing yourself as well.

I totally get that not everyone out there paid all the attention in English Class.  I understand that you may not have had your very own copy of your Grammar Primer that you carried around with you everywhere because you just LOVED LANGUAGE SO MUCH.  Really – I get it, swearsies.

My precioussssssssssss

I’d be willing to bet that you KNOW someone like that, though. I’d put good money on the fact that if you spend any amount of time on the internet AT ALL, you are acquainted with at least a handful of people that are complete and total grammar nerds.

“Oh, but most people don’t notice those things and if they do, they’re TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY!”

Okay, fine.  Maybe not everyone will notice.  Maybe.  But enough people will.  And those people that notice will likely either review your book, or just give up on you altogether.  Because an author that doesn’t care enough about the experience his/her readers have, just doesn’t give a damn at all.

Someone calls typos to your attention?  You are self-published, you can have that shit fixed and updated within an hour – for ebooks, anyway. To say that you “don’t have time” and that you’re “too busy” but you’ll “get around to it” is not only lazy, but disrespectful.

You don’t leave the house half dressed or looking like a cheap schlub, so why do you want to send your book out into the world that way?

“ZOMG, THE EDITORS WANT TO KILL MY BABY!”

Stop that shit.  Seriously, you stop that right now.  A good editor (even a halfway decent editor) doesn’t want to kill your baby, they want to help it be the best it can possibly be.  Why don’t you?  (And can we stop referring to books as babies?  That’s just gross.) You may think you know what’s best for your book, but if your work is full of homonyms and slipped tenses and just straight up WRONG WORDS, you shouldn’t be hitting that publish button.

 ”I’m an INDIE!  Indies don’t need to have their work polished!  It ruins that whole INDIE VIBE!”

This totally works. It’s polished AND from (an) Indie. Technically.

Okay, now you’re just asking for a punch in the junk.  Again, putting out something that hasn’t been read, re-read, stuck in a drawer (literal or figurative, name your hard drive “drawer” or something, I don’t care) for at least a month, then read again, rewritten and gone through several rounds of edits should NOT BE SOLD.  I don’t care if you think you got exactly what you wanted on the first go ’round.  Chances are really good that you didn’t.  Or that there are areas that need to be clarified/expanded on/removed altogether.  Giving yourself this distance from your work will make it better in the long run.  Please trust me on this.

An example:

I used to follow the blog of a woman I had much in common with musically.  We listened to a lot of the same music and even liked a lot of the same books.  She was funny, and even though I thought her posts needed to be proofread sometimes, I still enjoyed much of what she had to say.

Then came the day that she announced she’d written and self-published a book of short stories.

“Whaaaa?  She never mentioned that she’d been writing!” I said to myself.

Why had she never mentioned that she’d been writing?  Because she had LITERALLY JUST STARTED.  She wrote and published this book in less than two weeks.  TWO WEEKS!  I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable.  Two weeks is not enough time to perform rewrites or give oneself any sort of distance at all.  You can’t be impartial if only two weeks have passed.

It’s lazy, and it’s rude.  Yes, rude.  You expect people to PAY for something that you can’t be bothered with?  No, I’m sorry.

I still followed her, though.

Until 3 weeks later, when she announced that she’d published both another book of short stories AND a novel.  Both of which had been written in that same three week period.

Sorry, lady.  I’m done.  I don’t have time to read the blog of someone who shows zero respect toward potential readers (and CONSUMERS).

It’s that attitude right there that puts so many readers off of self-published work.  That “I wrote it, what else do you want from me?” stance is HURTING so many of you.

We read to escape.  We read to learn things.  We read for enjoyment.  We do NOT read to mentally correct your writing.

I mean, unless you’re paying us to do so, amirite?  Why should we pay YOU for something that you haven’t dressed up in its Sunday Best?

This showed up under a search for Dressed Up Books. Might die laughing.

We shouldn’t.  And we won’t.  Or, at the very least I won’t – and not to sound like a posturing asshole, but I’m the kind of person you want reading your books.  If I like something, I make sure the WHOLE WORLD knows.  I shout it from the figurative rooftops.  I tell everyone I know why they NEED TO read this book (I know, I know, I totally fail sneaky-fuckerism, but my method works for me).  And isn’t that what you want?  For people to be…y’know, reading your work?

TL;DR

I love self-published authors, as long as they go about self-publishing the right way.  If you’ve published something yourself I WANT you to succeed.  I want as many people to read your book as possible.  Unfortunately, many of you are shooting yourselves in your collective feet by approaching the process so cavalierly.  There’s a reason books can sometimes take years to come out in the world of the Big Guys.  There’s a reason editors have jobs.  There’s a reason people look down on a lot of you.  Do us all a favour and proofread the hell out of your book to make sure it’s as strong as possible before sending it out.  And if someone brings an error to your attention, thank them and take care of it straight away.  People will respect and appreciate that.  It shows that you CARE ABOUT your readers.

What do you guys think?  Am I too picky, or do more self-published authors need to get out their own red pens?  How much of a factor is this for you when deciding what to read?  Let me know in the comments!

 

Review: Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

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Book: Accelerated

Author: Bronwen Hruska

Published: October 2, 2012 by Pegasus

First Lines: “Sean Benning had put in his time.  He couldn’t risk being caught in another conversation about ERB percentiles and afterschool activities that cost more than he made in a month.  Forty-five minutes was his limit.”

Rating: Sorry, but I didn’t like it.

(Electronic galley provided by Open Road Media)

When I first read the synopsis for this book, I thought it was something I could relate to: Sean is raising his son Toby on his own because his wife Ellie unexpectedly runs away, and the private school his in-laws pay for is pressuring him to medicate his kid for ADHD, even though he doesn’t see any of the symptoms.  Great!  The main character was a man, and I share (or have shared) at least a few of his problems.

My first impression after finishing Accelerated was, “It feels like I just read a Lifetime movie.”  After I found the author’s bio, it turns out that she is a screenwriter who has written Lifetime movies.  This was her first novel, and–all things considered–it was alright.  That being said, it wasn’t really for me, and just in case the author (or any other author) is reading this, I’d like to provide some constructive feedback.

First, not everything about this story was bad.  A few aspects were rather brilliant.  I was impressed with the way the story wrapped up, and upon finishing, I felt like there were no loose ends or any parts left unresolved.  More than once, I found myself in awe of how subtle details from earlier in the story came to have a big impact later on.  All the plots and subplots wove together into a perfectly resolved ending.

I was also very interested in the topic: over-diagnosis and over-medication of students with “ADHD” who are just normal active children.  <rant>One of my son’s teachers tried to get us to have him tested so she could get him on Ritalin, but I see the kid concentrate for hours at a time on his Lego creations, books, or movies.  I felt like she was taking a lazy way out because she was too bad at her job to get my kid interested in what she was trying to teach him, and she didn’t have the basic sense of authority to make him sit down and do his work.  I never had trouble getting him to do his homework.</rant>  I identified with this topic, and it stirred up some strong feelings for me.

Of course, despite the good qualities, the story also had a few points where it could have been better.

My biggest problem with Accelerated was the characters.  I never really liked Sean.  He was a passive hero, with no special qualities or admirable traits.  He loved his kid.  Everybody loves their kids; that’s not really anything special.  I felt like more of the problems in the story got solved by luck or outside help than by Sean’s actions.  The only sacrifice he made was to risk getting fired from his crappy job that he hated.  I would have liked to see him knowingly risk losing his art exhibition rather than have that happen to him unexpectedly as “bad shit happening to good people”.  Likewise, I was annoyed by the fact that he slept with a married woman in the opening scene, and then later he slept with his girlfriend and his wife in the same day, but faced no consequences.  That was a prime opportunity to introduce strong conflict.

A few of the other characters were weak as well.  I would have liked to understand Ellie, the estranged wife, a little better.  Why did she run away?  Because she’s a psycho?  That’s lame.  She should have had a stronger motivation that actually made sense.  It’s the same with Cheryl, the rich doctor’s wife whom Sean bangs in the bathroom at the PTA meeting.  I can’t imagine why she would want to sleep with Sean in the first place, much less in a public setting.  I would really have liked to see these characters’ motivations.

My next complaint is a bit nitpicky, but it’s a style issue.  Several times the narrative spelled out what characters were thinking by their facial expressions and body language.  The story is told in third-person limited point of view through Sean’s eyes, so I guess you can justify it, but that’s one of my pet peeves as a reader and writer.  Here’s an example: “She tried reassuring him with a smile.”  Instead of telling what she was trying to do with the smile, it would have been better to just describe the smile and let the reader interpret: “Her mouth smiled, but her eyes did not.”  To use the writer’s advice cliche: Show rather than tell.

The last thing I’m going to address is the romance between Sean and Toby’s teacher Jess.  In order for it to be appealing, I would have liked for the “forbidden” factor to be played up.  It would have made that subplot much more interesting.  But considering she was a teacher and he was a parent, their relationship was risky and entirely inappropriate.  I never felt any of that danger.  In order for it to be believable, it should have ended in flaming disaster.  He was not even divorced yet, and their relationship was completely unprofessional, so there were all kinds of external forces that could have interfered, and it might have been even more interesting if one of them had been jealous or if they’d had something to fight over.  If they had managed to overcome some of these problems in a believable way, then it would have meant more to the reader that they ended up staying together at the end.

So that is my critique of Accelerated.  If you like sentimental stories about family and a bit of romance, or if you are interested in the ADHD issue, you may actually enjoy this book.  If you’re a writer, I think there are some good lessons to be learned in plot construction, and some examples of what not to do with character and conflict.

Buy the book: (Powell’s or Amazon)

Reading Rage Tuesday: Ebooks vs. Paper Books

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Fight at The Junction, Bristol

Ebooks are better! NO, TREEBOOKS! NO, EBOOKS! TECH JUNKIE! DINOSAUR! RAAAAGE

I have to admit that, when the Kindle first came out, I was one of those snooty assholes who did everything I could to antagonize the people I knew who owned them. (Me? Antagonize people? Surely not.) “I like books,” I sniffed, looking solidly down my nose. “I don’t want to read on a device. I want the feel of paper, blah blah blah.”

In my defense, the people I antagonized started scuffles just as often. “My Kindle is environmentally friendly. Look at those loads of paper you’re wasting! You’re helping deplete the ozone! And it’s so handy. I can take an entire library with me anywhere, blah blah blah.”

Several years passed, and I remained firmly in the treebook camp. Until I bought a Kindle. Stars help me, I love my Kindle. I love it so much. I even prefer to read on my Kindle; still, I do enjoy reading paper books, too. I got a really lovely copy of a book from Two Dollar Radio that’s deckle-edged and fairly swoon-worthy.

These days, I look at the book vs. ebook debate and I wonder, what the hell was I ever fighting about? What is anybody fighting about? Why is this debate even a thing?

So, I started looking into some of the points that people make for either camp. I think some of them are rubbish. Of course, I plan to tell you why I think so. This wouldn’t be a reading rage if I didn’t go off about my opinions, right? Right. That’s kind of what I do best.

“Real books” are just better. They provide a better reading experience. They smell nice. They’re pretty and have nice cover art.

No, e-readers are better. You can store your library in them. They’re convenient. You can change font size and take notes.

This shouldn’t even be an argument in the debate of treebooks vs. real books, and I have to confess that I have probably made this very argument–hell, both of them, I’m an ebook flip-flopper–myself. It’s incredibly subjective; one person’s “better experience” may be another person’s worse experience. If you still like to read paper books, I’m super glad for you. I don’t ever want you to stop reading paper books if you don’t want to.

Me? I want to use my Kindle until it dies, and then replace it with a new one. (I’m not one to upgrade my technology just because a new version comes out. I’ll use this Kindle until the battery craps out or until it refuses to display books to me. Then I might have a little ceremony, bury it, and put up a stone book as a marker.) I like all of the features. I like, now that I’ve gotten used to it, how it only displays one page at a time. I like how I can squish into the couch and get comfortable, and I don’t have to move my arm to turn pages. None of these things, though, is an objective argument for why the Kindle is the best way to read–it’s just the way that I like best. In this case, the papercut does slice both ways.

E-readers are more environmentally-friendly. They weigh less and use electronic media.

I can’t get behind this idea at all, as much as I love my e-reader. Individual e-readers may not cost as many resources to create and ship as the books you can store on it, but there are other downsides. E-readers have a much shorter lifespan than a book, especially in today’s electronic consumer culture, where we upgrade our electronics far more often than is technically necessary. Ebooks are made out of plastic, which isn’t biodegradable like paper; eventually, the technology that runs them will become obsolete, and customers will be forced to upgrade devices. Books will never be obsolete as long as people can read. There are other, more sustainable materials out of which we can make paper, like bamboo; we can even make ink that is environmentally-friendly. Soy ink does well in applications with porous materials, like non-glossy paper. Plus, pulping and recycling books, which does happen in the industry, cuts down on having to fell as many trees. Books can be passed on or sold to secondhand shops, which extends their lifespan considerably–or, by using the library, you can share a book with hundreds of other people.

I also wonder about things like: are the materials for the batteries mined using slave (or nearly slave) labor? How much power will an e-reader use over its lifespan, and is the battery as efficient as it could be? I think there are many concerns when it comes to touting an e-reader as more eco-friendly. I’m not ready to leap onto that train just yet.

Small bookstores and print books are going to be the salvation of the publishing industry. 

I’ve heard this argument before, and every time, I have to think–really? I mean, I love small bookstores. I don’t want them to go away. If they do go away, though, it’s because people have decided not to spend their money there; I hate to say it, but it’s a perfectly legitimate choice for people to make. It’s not as though someone is saying, hey, you can’t exist. I personally think that small bookstores have a lot that they can offer without having to “save” them by arguing people out of buying ebooks when they’d rather read ebooks. If people prefer ebooks, or if they’re not shopping at small bookstores, then the onus isn’t on the customer to make sure these bookstores stay in business. The onus is on the bookstore to make us want to go in and madly fling our money at them.

As for print and small bookstores being the “salvation” of publishing, that just makes me laugh when it comes from publishers. Again, love me some small bookstores. (Especially ones that sell used books. If I owned a small bookstore, I’d definitely draw people in with used books.) Publishers, however, should be completely in love with ebooks, but they’re not! I don’t understand this! I’m not talking about as readers, or as preserving literary culture, but as businesses; if I were a publisher, I’d be pushing the almighty crap out of ebooks. It’s the same product that they’ve always produced (books), but now, with lower overhead and the ability to distribute infinite copies to meet demand. If anything is going to “save” the industry (and with it raking in billions of dollars, and with enough readership to go around to support dozens of small presses that are popping up, does it need “saving”? See also, The Oatmeal’s state of the music industry), it’ll be ebooks.

A computer file is not a “real book.” 

Yes, it is. They have the exact same content. Being totally unable to enjoy that content unless it is printed on paper, glued together, and bound in more paper is called a “fetish.” It’s like being totally unable to enjoy sex unless you’re bound up in duct tape and ball-gagged. (Clarification: I’m not saying that all people who prefer paper have a paper fetish, just people who totally deny the validity of reading ebooks because they’re somehow not “real.”)

I don’t have any problem with people having fetishes, really, as long as they don’t hurt anybody else. Just don’t look down your nose at someone who pulls out their e-reader. I’ve been that person, and I’m still ashamed of myself.

People who read bound books are just unhip and need to quit holding back progress.

Some technology never becomes obsolete. Is a violin obsolete? Sure, you can synthesize different instruments, but that doesn’t render them useless, or even not-as-good. Book-making still exists as a craft, even if mass-produced books aren’t quite as lovely as hand-bound or artisan-bound books.

Ebooks are too expensive and they’re not worth it at all.

Now, I have to agree with this point. Right now, ebooks are too expensive, due to a lot of factors. I don’t buy very many; however, I fully expect that to change in the future. The ebook market is new and I think that supply and demand will even it out over time, as long as prices aren’t kept artificially high to deter them competing with bound books. I believe that ebooks can be profitable at a lower price point when they’re allowed to compete fairly (as I’ve discussed here and here); I don’t think it’s inherent in the technology itself that the books currently cost almost as much as print.

Conclusion: I don’t think this debate has a winner.

In the end, it really boils down to a matter of preference, and it’s impossible to win a debate about preference. I, personally, am perfectly happy to lay this debate down and go frolic in a meadow with my reading mode of choice. Or, you know, curl up on the couch. Either way.

What do you think? Did I miss any important points? Which do you personally prefer, and why? COMMENTS.

 

 

Reading Rage Tuesday: Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

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Sorry for the profanity. Except I’m not really.

Fucking A, you guys. It’s been a hell of a week for just about everyone on the planet. I don’t know if there’s something in the water, or what, but it seems like crazy not only came out of the woodwork, it blew the woodwork right off the walls.

I feel bad bitching about anything right now, because of the tragedy in Colorado, not to mention all of the other tragedy everywhere else in the world. My woes are peanuts compared to the hell those people have gone through. I have angst this week, though. I can’t help it. I’m in the kind of mood where I would just love to fucking fight someone . . . . in theory. Because in reality? I’ve never been in a fight and I would probably cry if someone hit me. Then I would play dead and hope that they would quickly get bored kicking me in the ribs.

Boxes

THIS is what came up when I searched “boxing” on Flickr. WHY DO YOU HATE ME FLICKR

So, I’m going to do a good old-fashioned rant. I’m not sure what it’s going to end up being about. I considered going ahead with my original plan–writing about the books vs. ebooks controversy–but I don’t want to write about something like that when I’m in a mood. I won’t treat it fairly and it’ll probably put bad feelings about book blogging in my brain; between STGRB and this ridiculous and utterly creeptastic Carroll Bryant situation, I don’t want to accumulate any more bad book blogging feelings.

This might end up being completely incoherent, and I’m okay with that.

THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF

Judgmental assholes that make the rest of us look bad.

If you’re a reader at all, you have had to put up with this shit at some point. Someone, somewhere down the line has looked at you reading a book and thought, well, doesn’t he or she just look all fancy with his or her fancy book-learnin’ and shit (except they probably used “they” and “their” because they eschew book learnin’). The more stuck-up picky discerning you are about what you read, the more you have to deal with this. Some of us, we’re only picky because, well, it’s just our taste. It’s not that we want to be exclusive; it’s more that the thought of reading a book like Fifty Shades makes us want to gouge out our eyeballs with power drills. It’s not meant to be a statement about the State of Today’s Literature (see also, those damn kids with their X-Boxes and their crack cocaine), it’s just us reading what we like.

There’s another type of reader, though, who is picky for an entirely different reason: somewhere along the way, they have decided that what a person likes determines his or her worth as a person. These people are ruining it for everyone. When challenged, they have to whip out their e-peens (or I guess maybe their e-readers–wait, no, it would never be an e-reader) to prove that they’re the biggest and the baddest reader ever and that you’re clearly a schmuck for daring to poison their wells of literary magnificence with any talk of popular fiction. They have to look down their noses at you to make sure you feel like you’re two inches tall for having the audacity to enjoy something or to do anything that doesn’t involve sitting in a cafe and trying to look important while reading Finnegans Wake. I hate it when people do this, because at the end of the day, we all have tastes that are less-than-caviar, you know what I mean?

Take me, for example. I may not slum it too often in the book world, but you know what?

I LIKE THE JERSEY SHORE.

There. I said it.

You know what else? Snooki is my favorite. FAVORITE.

I don’t publicize this much because of the amount of pure shit I would have to put up with for telling people that I like the show. Mainly I just cry a little to myself every time this pops up on Facebook:

To be fair, I probably shared this on IB’s wall at some point before I marathoned three seasons of the show in a week.

(Please don’t make too much fun of my love of JS. Don’t take away the childlike joy I feel when Pauly D yells “CABS ARE HERE!”)

Writer’s block.

So, I’m stuck on this rant. Fucking stuck. I was so mad earlier, and then I kind of lost my focus; I’m still totally mad but I can’t think of anything to write. I’ve passed the point of productive rage and have entered the zone where my head feels like it’s full of bees.

Apparently Conan is responsible for this. All I know is that I may have shat myself giggling.

Still, I must forge on!

My mailman can’t deliver my books properly, forcing me to go not once but twice to the post office this week.

So, this may only be tangentially about books. STILL ABOUT BOOKS.

The awesome folks at Two Dollar Radio, who basically are down the street from me, mailed me an ARC of How to Get Into the Twin Palms for my reviewy perusal. Now, I suppose I should actually be grateful that the mailman failed to deliver my book, leaving me the peach slip of drive-to-the-post-office-doom in my decrepit mailbox; when he delivered Dora: A headcase, he crushed the book into the box. He permanently scarred my book through his negligent book delivery. (He also crams in things like greeting cards–because, you know, I love it when I get cards and they look like this:

wad.

It makes my life.)

I hate getting the peach slip because I hate going to the post office. Well, I hate going to that post office. The one that I choose to go to when I have to send something is nice and it has a self-service kiosk that everyone else seems to be afraid of, which means it’s almost always available for my shipping needs. The other post office is located in the hood, because I live in the hood. The following things happen to me without fail when I go to this post office:

There is always a ridiculous line.

Someone always cuts in front of me in line.

There is always a person taking for-fucking-ever at the window when I get in.

When I leave, someone loitering in the parking lot always, always asks me for money. Always.

And because I got another peach slip while I was at the theater being perplexed by The Dark Knight Rises, I get to go again tomorrow. (Update: I wrote this last night, and my hubs just handed me another peach slip when he came in. Luckily, it’s for the book I picked up yesterday and won’t necessitate another trip to the P.O.)

Here’s what really sticks in my craw about it. I get that they don’t want to leave parcels on our porch. We live in the hood, like I said. Pizza delivery people won’t even deliver on the next block over because people run out of the park and mug them at night. Someone got shot a year ago half a block away from where I live. It’s not the most safe. Thing is, we have a screen door, which is where the postman will usually drop parcels that are too big for the mailbox but small enough to be concealed there. I almost tripped over a tiny box he shoved in there the other day; if I hadn’t seen it, I probably would have cracked my head on something and totally died (I might be a little clumsy). Books? Exactly the right shape and size to hide behind our screen door most of the time. They’re (usually) slim and compact; that space between the door and the screen door was practically invented to hide books.

So why does our postman always deliver them like a jerk? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS.

This rant is over because it’s time for a stiff drink or five.

Usually, I end these sorts of posts with a range of discussion comments. Today, though, I’m making it FREE RANT DAY. Rant about whatever the hell you want* in the comments and we will commiserate. It’s been a shit time for so many people and we need to get this out of our system. So tell me what’s been bugging you lately. I’ll listen.

*Whatever the hell you want as long as it’s not hateful toward people here, or groups of people (did you know that when my banned book post got freshly pressed, there were actually anti-Jew rants in the comments? For really real. You can go skim them; I left them up but they’re, erm… slightly modified, shall we say? Some of these comments were cray cray to a previously undiscovered power).

Reading Rage Tuesday: Books that I liked (until I didn’t).

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Reading

If this book gets any worse, I’m going to hurl myself into traffic.

So. I have to confess, I’m not feeling very ragey today. I’m not feeling ragey at all, actually. I am feeling kind of happy. It’s a gorgeous day outside. Just for you guys, though, I will try to get myself into a proper ragey mood.

(frowns)

(clenches fists)

(thinks about all the things that make me mad, like people who get in my way at the store with their huge stupid shopping carts, or people who drive like morons and almost make me have a car accident, or, there was this one time that I was at Kroger and there was a sign at the deli that said cheese was on sale but it rang up regular price and then I told them it was on sale and it seriously took them TEN MINUTES to walk five feet over to the deli and check and then they told me it was NOT on sale, but it WAS, I read the sign, and I got so mad that I walked out and left all of my groceries at the U-Scan and then my husband and I had a fight in the car so I ragequit and walked like a mile to get home and it was hot and I was really tired. Also, douchey acoustic cover bands.)

Okay, I think I’m ready to go.

When I settle down to read, I’m making a serious time commitment. This isn’t a 30-minute television show, or even a 90-minute movie, but a book that could take me anywhere from three hours to three days to read. I’m no great finisher of books that don’t grab me; if I think a book sucks within the first few chapters, I’ll put it down and I won’t feel bad about it. No sweat–I always have a mountain of books waiting to be read, and even if I don’t, I can walk to the library for even more books. I don’t get mad at books for sucking because I have no compunction tossing it aside. I don’t get mad at all.

Unless.

Unless I do like the book. Unless it’s good enough to get me halfway through. Good enough to get me three-quarters of the way through, and then BAM! The author ends the book with a load of suckitude, usually within the last 10% of the book. Then? I’m mad. I’m super-mad. I’m Hulk-green sneaky-hate-spiral ripping-out-of-my-clothes-because-I feel-the-need-to-tear-them-to-shreds mad. This might be the thing that makes me rage the most about reading, and I get pretty ragey sometimes. In case you couldn’t tell, or anything.

It’s like this, but with reading.*

What books pissed me off in their final moments? Well, I’m glad you asked, because I have a list for you. Naturally.

NOTE! WARNING! CAUTION! ACHTUNG! HEY, YOU!

Because of the nature of this post being about the ends of books, it’s going to be spoilery as fuck. None of these books has just come out recently or anything, but if you haven’t read the book and you think you might want to read the book, do not read the bits I wrote about the book. You never know when a spoiler might ninja out of the paragraph and land in your eyeballs. Also, this post is about books that made me hate them rather than books I thought didn’t make sense. It’s an emotional reaction. I say this because I know I’m going to bitch about books that people like; I’d like to explain now that I still hate the endings even if I understand what the author was going for, so I can hopefully circumvent the “BUT YOU DID NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED!!1!” comments.

I understood. Still hate.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Someone in my book club recommended this book to me and I read it on her suggestion. I read it even though it was a doorstop and even though it had the Oprah book club logo plastered all over it, which gives me hives.  Now, I thought that A Fine Balance was a fine book, well-written and all of that. In case you haven’t read it, it follows the story of several characters: a woman, Dina, a woman who has spent the past twenty years of her life doing whatever it takes not to have to move back in with her dickhead brother (who would definitely qualify for the list of characters I’d like to punch in the face); Maneck, a young college student who comes to board with Dina; and Ishvar and Omprakash, a father-and-son duo of untouchables who have come to Mumbai to seek work as tailors. As fate would have it, Dina needed to hire tailors, so they all eventually ended up living together as one big strange family. They grow to love each other, in their own ways. It was nice. I got a little verklempt.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. In fact, everything basically went to hell for everyone except Maneck, who got a job and got the fuck out of there.

And hey, listen: I know a lot of stories about India take turns for the worse, in books and in real life. I know that I’m sitting here in my couch on my fat American ass and that for me to boo-hoo about a sad story from a country I’ve never visited reeks of privilege. Even though Mistry systematically took every. single. thing. away from the characters that was at all good, and even killed a few off, I was coming to terms with it by the end. I was. I really was. Even though I hated it when Dina had to move back to her brother’s house, even though I hated it that Ishvar and Om became beggars, even though I hated it when Om lost his balls because someone cut them off, by the end, I was able to deal.

Until Maneck threw himself in front of a damn train.

Maneck had been developed the least of all the main characters. His re-entry in the epilogue, as a pair of outside eyes, served a powerful purpose of showing us the situation from an outside perspective. In my opinion? That was enough, given that the book had largely been about Dina, Ishvar, and Omprakash. I had to re-read the paragraph where he killed himself three or four times just to get it into my head that it actually happened. Really? This had to be the capper of the book? Maneck endures a sliver of the hardship that the others endured, yet he’s the one to off himself. Lovely.

I get why he killed himself, I do. Thematically, that is. I understand what Mistry was going for. I just thought it was a shitty way to end the book. The book was already depressing as hell, and I felt like he kicked me while I was down. Then pissed all over my face for good measure.

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

I am no great fan of Peter Carey. I picked up Oscar and Lucinda because, at the time, our book club was abuzz about him. Like Balance, O&L is another book where the author presumably got paid by the page, because it’s solid. It started off slowly for me, and I should have listened to my reading instincts; I could have put down the book and walked away from it, but I didn’t. Eventually, as Oscar grew up and we met Lucinda, it got its hooks in me.

Their approach-avoidance romance became terribly, frustratingly sweet as the pages flew by. Carey put one more obstacle, and one more confusion, and another and another between them as they tried so hard just to be able to love each other like two normal human beings might. The build-up became intense. Finally, the last, greatest challenge stood between Oscar and Lucinda: the delivery, through treacherous land, of the glass cathedral that Oscar had built for a man that Lucinda had been close to, thinking it would win the love of Lucinda (who, of course, loved him already). (Never mind that having church in a glass cathedral would be the most excruciating religious experience ever, especially after it sat a few hours in the sun. I’d rather have church in my car; at least there’s air conditioning. And a radio.) They made a wager concerning the whole of Lucinda’s fortune, a wager designed to bring them together in the end. A wager that Lucinda made of love.

The journey was harrowing. They arrived at their destination. The glass cathedral had been erected on a barge–I can’t remember why, I’ve rageblocked quite a bit of the ending–and it sat. A reader held her breath, waiting for the fulfillment promised by every single previous page in the book. Here it is. The moment. The verge.

In true heroic fashion, Oscar fucked and married some other woman that he just met, fell asleep in the floating cathedral, and drowned. The kicker is that, because of the wager, the bitch also inherited all of Lucinda’s cash. Shameless hussy 1, Oscar and Lucinda 0. Reader -123981723918723.

I will never read Peter Carey again.

Fuck you, Peter Carey.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

(Possible molestation trigger warning? I don’t really know how triggers work for everyone. It’s not graphic, but I don’t want anybody to feel icky from my blog.)

Boy goes to high school. Boy makes friends. Boy has first sexual encounter with his close friend; boy freaks out. Boy has a dream-memory about his favoritest aunt forever molesting him, thus explaining the freak-out. Boy goes to hospital and gets all better. Book ends.

Girl hates book.

I know, a lot of people love this book. LOVE it. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I do not. I feel like I got cheated out of the most important part of the story–how Charlie grows and changes after he has that horrible realization. We do see some character growth from Charlie during the novel, but once that bomb hits and Charlie has a big-deal breakdown, everything seems to get wrapped up a little too quickly. “Oh yeah, my aunt used to molest me on a weekly basis and stuff, but I forgive her and maybe I’ll even make some new friends at school next year! Yeah!”

REALLY?

I also have a hard time believing that the family would have told all of Charlie’s relatives so that they could send flowers and junk (although I can’t remember if they specified that they told the fam all of the details or just that Charlie was in the hospital). “Hey, remember Aunt Helen? WELL. Apparently she was a huge pedo, WHO KNEW?” Those are the kinds of things that families tend to keep private, not just out of embarrassment but out of respect for the person going through treatment. Many victims of molestation like to keep it on the down low, especially at first, because they’re still struggling with fresh feelings of humiliation, shame, and all of the other components of that wonderful emotional cocktail that arises from sexual abuse. Of course, Charlie seems to be flying through all of that at record speed anyway, so maybe it’s not an issue.

Honestly, too? The book didn’t need  the molestation. At all. The best parts of the book dealt with Charlie’s struggle to stop reacting to his life and start participating in it. The feeling of being a wallflower is something that many young people can relate to, especially when they’ve just started high school. Charlie didn’t need an explanation for his being socially awkward–and if you’re going to create an explanation, Jesus, what a thing to throw out of left field. I think the molestation took away from Charlie’s story, frankly–partially because I feel it was handled so badly in the narrative, mostly because it was a distraction from the real point of the story.

I AM SORRY THIS POST WAS SO LONG.

As you can see, I have so much rage for this topic. What about you? Tell me what books you liked until you didn’t. Or defend your favorites if I put them on blast. Or tell me something that pissed you off at work this week. Leave it in the comments below!

*Image by Allie Brosh. I wanted to put the credit up there in the caption, but I felt like it disrupted the narrative flow. SORRY ALLIE. I love you. I also put it in the alt text. And there are TWO LINKS. I am crediting you so much. I hope this is acceptable.

Reading Rage Tuesday: If you do stand-up, you should probably keep right on standing.

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Comedian

Hey! Don't you walk away while I'm talking to you, dammit!

Holy balls! A reading rage about books?! BLASPHEMY.Yes, today Reading Rage Tuesday returns to the roots from whence it came: bitching about actual books I’ve read. So, suck it, other reading rages.

(No, I love you, really. Don’t suck it.)

I am a huge fan of comedy, in case that isn’t absolutely apparent. I love stand-up comedy. I will sit down and exhaust all of the comedy specials on Netflix in an evening, even if I’ve seen them two or three times already. I’m not especially picky about comedy, either, as long as it’s funny; I love Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Katt Williams, Demetri Martin, Ron White, Margaret Cho (so much), George Carlin, Louis CK, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks . . . . well, I could go on forever. That’s a small fraction of the comedians I like. I could probably do the whole post just listing my favorite comedians, drink a bottle of wine, and call it a day. (What–you don’t drink a bottle of wine every time you blog? If not, you’re clearly doing it wrong.) Stand-up comedy gives me joy in my life that nothing else can replicate. Well–okay, there are some things that come close. Like chili cheese fries. Not many, though.

Chili cheese fries

I guarantee the person behind the camera was smiling like a lunatic while they took this photo. Also, chili cheese fries may be the least photogenic food ever. I couldn't post a photo of uneaten fries because the photos all look like someone took a dump on top of a pile of fries. Just searching it made me never want to eat chili cheese fries--at least, not until I forget that search I just did.

Do you know what I don’t love, though? I mean, besides poo fries? Comedians writing books. Almost every book I’ve ever read by a comedian has sucked out loud. The only two books that I can think of off the top of my head that were written by comedians that I’ve liked–other than Steve Martin’s novels, which aren’t based on his comedy or his career as a stand-up comic–were Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and Bob Newhart’s book, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This! Newhart’s book was partially memoir, if I recall correctly; plus, he has a dry humor that translates well to the page. Otherwise, whenever I’ve encountered a book by a comedian, I’ve nearly always had this experience:

Me, at the library: “Oh, I love this guy. He’s hilarious. I’m going to read his book.”

Picking up the book at home: “I’m super-excited to read this. This is going to be so funny. I am ready to laugh.”

Reading the book: “Huh. I already saw him do this bit live. I think I’ll skip over this part.”

“Eh? That story was only two pages long and it didn’t even make sense. Where did that monkey come from?”

“Okay, this isn’t even funny.”

“Heh. That one was kind of good. Maybe the book is going to pick up now.”

“Ugh. Nope.”

“Why are all of these stories about monkeys?”

“I’m bored. Fuck this guy. I WILL NEVER LAUGH AGAIN.”

I throw the book down and ragestomp it a few times, then kick a few walls for good measure. If I was dumb enough to buy the book, it ends up under my futon (away from the real books) or becomes a giant coaster.

I know, I know–I’m setting myself up to get a flood of comments (and flood probably means about three) about how this comedian or that comedian (probably George Carlin) writes awesome books. Mind-blowing braingasm books. Books so funny you might need medical attention when you bust a gut laughing. Although I give Carlin a pass for not having read one of his books for 12 years now–therefore not being able to report accurately about the state of his written hilarity–I just don’t see it in most comedians’ books. They don’t make me laugh at all, whereas authors like Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore make me look like an imbecile if I read them in public, cackling and muttering to myself, “Oh, that was GOOD. You, sir, are a genius.” Also, there might be knee-slapping. (This all comes in handy when I want to keep people from sitting next to me on the bus.)

I'm quite certain this is how I look to other people when I read funny books in public. I always have the crazy-eyes, though.

I’ll pick on Bill Cosby for a minute, since I have recently read one of his books. Also, since he’s so successful, it won’t matter if I pick on him; if he had an issue with me, he could crush me like one of those bugs they were using to dye the strawberry Frappuccinos pink and I wouldn’t even care because OMFG BILL COSBY WOULD KNOW I EXIST. I don’t know if Bill Cosby as a comedian is en vogue with my fellow Gen Y’s; I only started watching his stand-up somewhat recently, despite having grown up loving his show on TV. YouTube is my go-to for comedy after I’ve run out of legit specials on the ‘flix; once I hit the poorly-designed “Ultra Mega Comedy Tour 1997 Featuring One Comedian You Might Have Heard of Once and Four People We Pulled Off the Sidewalk” titles, over to YouTube I go. That’s where I saw his specials Himself and 49, the latter of which includes his bit about going to the optometrist to get trifocals. I laughed so hard I almost peed.

I posted you this video so I don’t have to make a joke here. TRULY I AM AMAZING.

So how amazeballs-excited was I to run across a copy of one of his books at the thrift store? SO EXCITE. Excited enough that I put aside the ickiness that I feel when I read old books. I hate reading super dusty books. I always feel like a battalion of mites and germs is marching into my body with a singular mission to infect me with musty diseases–a mission from which they will not be dissuaded at any cost. (Yes, I am the one reader on the face of the planet who hates old books. If you ever wondered who that person was, that’s me. I’M A FREAK.)

Still, I bought the book. I started reading the book. I was even in my favorite reading spot: the bathtub.

I realized a few chapters in that all of the material came from the stand-up specials that I’d seen previously. Even worse, it wasn’t funny in written format. The timing that Bill Cosby nails in his stage act had died. It was comedy roadkill. I think that’s what kills a lot of comedians-turned-humorists: lack of pacing in the written medium. It’s one thing to be brilliant at writing jokes, but funny prose requires an altogether different process. Jokes must be finessed onto a page. Written words need to be romanced with a bouquet and a lasagna dinner. The writer has to find the rhythm. The writer must know when to beat the drum a slow staccato or when to roll off a manic solo that doesn’t leave the mind a moment to pause or rest. The writer must know how to heighten anticipation the way a comedian will agitate the audience with a pause: counting one and two and three, waiting for that collective intake of breath . . . right before donkey-punching them in the funny bone. Being merely clever, or translating their stage act to paper, doesn’t make a book funny.

Lack of translation from the stage to the page (ha, I made a rhyme) doesn’t just stop at pacing and timing. Moving from a live format removes a lot of tools in a comedian’s arsenal. Facial expressions. Gestures. Pantomime. Tone of voice, volume of voice. Mimicry. Very few comics can stand on the stage with a flat face without moving and be funny; the ones who can always come off like they had to make the difficult choice between comedy and serial killing. A writer, though, doesn’t have the tools that a comedian has. The story must spin out a different way. Writers can only use words, and fuck me if writing funny material isn’t enormously challenging. I have days where I’d rather gouge out my eye with a pickaxe than to try to write something funny. It’s hard even to do the mediocre job that I do.

Of course, some writers, like David Sedaris, have the gift of both oral and written comedy. He falls under the category of “People who have way too much talent, and why didn’t you leave any for the rest of us? Fuck.”

I can’t blame comedians for wanting to write books. It seems that, across the board, many creative types end up wanting to haul out a ream of paper and cement their legacies with a few well-penned phrases. If you’re a comedian and you’re thinking about writing a book, just remember this: I found Bill Cosby’s book in a thrift store for fifty cents, and I didn’t even finish reading it. I’m pretty sure it’s under my futon right now, because I wouldn’t use an old book for a coaster any more than I would open it up and lick it.

(Excuse me a sec while I go into convulsions after imagining putting a dust-saturated book up to my mouth.)

What are your experiences with books by comedians? Like ‘em, love ‘em, hate ‘em? Don’t read ‘em? Who does make you laugh? Drop it in los commentos (I am so brilliant at Spanish and that was not at all culturally insensitive) below!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Get your fingers off of my words.

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Plagiarism 1 MICHAEL BRUNSDEN

Do you mind if I just . . . ? Yeah, I'm just gonna copy what you wrote.

Yesterday, Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books posted something on Twitter that made a lot of us bloggers sit up and take notice. First, she retweeted:

And then tweeted:

Interest piqued. I followed the tweets to find the source of the story. The trail led me to this post by Beautifully Invisible, and the follow-up post at Grit & Glamour, both from back in January. Apparently, a book blogger (we all took a moment to shake our heads at the irony) had ripped off a number of posts by them, reworded them slightly, and put them on her blog. The posts I linked are definitely worth a read by anybody who blogs, because they detail how they caught the plagiarist in the act; plus, these ladies handled it in a classy way, and I always appreciate class. I don’t always exhibit class, but I always appreciate it.

I’m not clear on why these posts came up today, but I do know that plagiarism sucks ass. It really does. I have been plagiarized twice of which I am aware. The first incident occurred around, or possibly more than, ten years ago. I had built the best damn Empire Records fansite on the internet. No, really–it was amazing . . . well, compared to the other sites that were out there, which were not amazing. Some chick took copy that I had written myself and used it verbatim on her site. I figured she was probably fifteen or so, and a stern cease-and-desist e-mail took care of the problem. (Did I make her wet herself? Maybe. I was a lot meaner back then.) This incident irritated me enough that I still remember it, but didn’t bother me deeply. The second time I was plagiarized did, though. A friend of mine took copy from my blog, slightly re-worded it, and posted it on their blog. When I went to the blog to read it, being the supportive friend that I try to be, I felt like I’d been sucker-punched when I saw the text. It read so much like mine that they could have been separated at birth.

I never called the friend out because it wasn’t a post, per se–it was some “about me” type text, blog policy text. Still, it hadn’t even been changed enough that my voice had been eradicated; when I originally wrote it, I had tried very hard to make it sound, well, like me. I’d tried my best to inject personality into what would usually be dry and boring. I felt sad and angry that someone had appropriated it without even asking, especially someone that I considered a friend. More, I felt like the friend had taken my voice, as sentimental and hokey as that sounds. I thought, what’s the fucking point of putting anything out there, if someone can just come along and take the things that are special about me for themselves? I calmed down after awhile, though, because I realized this: people can imitate all they want, but they can never replace. Their work is a smudged copy, and there’s a big blank stripe in the middle because the Xerox is on the fritz.

We don’t really talk anymore, this friend and I. I don’t think the friend knows why. (Maybe after this post, no?)

Here’s the deal, for the people who aren’t hip to the fact that it’s not okay to plagiarize: it’s not okay to plagiarize. If you write at all–and if you’re plagiarizing, you must–it’s basically one of the worst things you can do. It’s as bad as Vanilla Ice ripping off Queen. It’s as bad as cheap designer knock-offs. It’s as bad as Urban Outfitters and their apparent desire never to create an original product again. Even if you’re not costing anybody else money with your theft of their material, the principles involved make you just as guilty–writing, after all, is an intellectual pursuit. It means you’re reasonably smart and you can use words properly and you have ideas and so forth. Stealing another person’s words and ideas is like cramming her brain into your head and trying to pass it off as your own. Don’t steal brains. We’ve all learned from films how to deal with people who want to consume our brains, and most of us would be thrilled if we had to use our elite skills to do so.

Don't think for a moment we won't. We might even triple-tap because it feels good.

I do think some plagiarists make honest mistakes. In truth, I think my friend made an honest mistake, even though it still bothers me deeply. Maybe people don’t think that copying blog posts is plagiarism, or copying “about the blog” text is plagiarism. So, I’m here to help. I’m going to write a handy guide to what is and what is not plagiarism. Ready?

If you did not come up with the ideas* and words in your own brain, it is plagiarism. It doesn’t matter if you’re copying out of a book, a blog, or off of a gum wrapper. If someone else wrote it, and you’re copying it, you are a plagiarist. Even if you re-word it a little bit, you are still plagiarizing.

 

*When I say “ideas” in this context, I don’t mean like . . . concepts? I mean fully expressed ideas–as in, if I wrote a post, and someone copied the content point-by-point and then presented it as their own work.

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

“Okay,” you say. “But WHAT IF someone writes a really good blog post, and I really like their ideas, and I write it all in my own words but I still use their ideas?”

NO. Stop doing that. If you’re not using your own ideas, you’re stealing content, which makes you still a dirty content thief. It especially baffles me when people who do write original content steal content, because they, of all people, know what kind of work goes into making the words mean new things. I think people who write content, but also steal content, are double-douches. If someone writes a post that you like, link to it. Say, “Here, I really liked this post and I thought it had a lot of smart ideas. Go read it.” People appreciate being led to good content as well as being presented original content. People do not appreciate you putting your klepto-fingers all over someone else’s content and passing it off as your own.

“Okay. But WHAT IF I am really inspired by something? How do I deal with the inspiration without stealing?”

I’m glad you asked. Let’s take the example of my friend. Clearly, I had hit a number of points that my friend wished also, for practical reasons, to include on their blog. Instead of doing a copy-paste-and-reword job, a better solution would have been to take out the points that the friend wanted to keep (such as, “want to clarify that I might be wrong and ask that people be civil when commenting”) and truly put it in their own words. In that case, it wasn’t an original idea to be stolen any more than ideas in a Terms of Use contract might be original–but my expression of the idea was original, and that should have been left to me alone.

Let’s take the example of the blogger who took content from the two ladies’ sites. Some of the posts were list-type posts, and the poster took both the idea and the individual items from the lists. That’s not “inspiration,” that’s theft. The poster could have taken the original theme–and, I feel, credited the original post where she was inspired to write on the topic–and written a fresh post that was completely full of her original ideas. Blogging about the same topic as someone else is not stealing, but taking their actual points made, yes. That is stealing, and we don’t cotton to idea-theft ’round here.

Even if, on a list-style post, you wanted to use the same point, you need to present it in a different way. Let’s say I had read a top-ten list of, oh, overrated classics. And I decided that was a pretty awesome post and I wanted to make my very own list. I agree with the original poster that a certain book should be on the list. First, I would have immediately credited the post for giving me the idea; then, I would say something like, “I agree with this post about x book” and then given my own, personal, non-stolen reasons that the book should be on the list. That would be an appropriate way to be inspired rather than be shady.

Now, there’s no excuse for accidental plagiarism. We can safely assume that everyone who plagiarizes from now on is doing it because they’re a giant fuckface.

How ’bout you guys? Have you been plagiarized before? Tell us about your stolen content in the comments!

Ebook-troversy part 3: The DOJ files suit, and my head explodes.

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Department of Justice Building: Ars Boni and Ars Aequi Pediments by C. Paul Jennewein (1932-1934) (SOS! Control # IAS 65020097)

So. The DOJ filed suit against Apple and five of the Big Six yesterday, and the bullshit rolled.

Everyone was asking me on Twitter what I thought about it, and I hadn’t caught up yet, so I couldn’t really answer. Someone asked me if the strike was still on, since three of the publishers are reportedly settling. The answer is definitely yes, because the more I’m reading through all of this, the more pissed off I’m getting.

The first article I read about the lawsuit was from the Wall Street Journal. Now, I’ve been following this story, but not like a lunatic or anything; I don’t work in the publishing industry, and I have shit to do. Some of the information I read in the articles surprised me, like the quibbles over the price points. I assumed that the issue with the price point was over Amazon deeply discounting e-books to, I dunno, $0.99, $2.99, things like that, and yeah, that actually does seem a little bit too cheap to me, despite the fact that I would gladly gobble up books at that price. I know a lot of work and time goes into making a great book, and I’d rather pay more for the editing services, et cetera, than get a bunch of shitty, cheap books. So, I was a little shocked when I read this in the WSJ:

The [publishing] executives also called and emailed each other to craft a solution to what one of them called “the wretched $9.99 price point,” the suit said.

Uh. What? They’re mad about the ten dollar price point? For a book that isn’t even a physical book?

The five publishers and Apple hatched an arrangement that lifted the price of many best-selling e-books to $12.99 or $14.99, according to the suit. The publishers then banded together to impose that model on Amazon, the government alleged.

Wow. That? Is pure greed, baby. I’m calling these people out. Selling the right to read digital content for the same price as a trade paperback is absurd. Crying about how much you’re struggling to stay afloat when what you really want is to make more money leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I’m all for publishers making money, but don’t come appealing to me with your “sniff, Amazon’s ‘cheap’ $10.00 ebooks are RUINING PUBLISHING FOREVER” when it’s really about you upping your profit margins, not staying in business. Fuck. You.

The Chief Exec of Macmillan had this to say:

He said a settlement would help Amazon “recover the monopoly position it had been building” and “have a very negative and long-term impact on those who sell books for a living.”

You know why Amazon had a monopoly of ebooks? Because everyone else wanted fuck-all to do with it until they saw how popular it became on Amazon. You would think that publishers would have learned something, anything, about the digital revolution, since they’re basically the last ones on the wagon. NOPE! They fell into the same trap–maybe thinking that books were immune since they were books, I mean, this isn’t sound or video but words, forgetting maybe that most of the internet is made of words and people seem to do just fine with internet content.

It’s funny that they mention the negative impact on booksellers. Bookshops have a very different market. Actually, I was just reading an article from September about an indie bookshop, Farley’s in New Hope, PA, that has found a way to thrive, despite this supposedly dire situation. I think when the publishers and supporters of same say anything about Amazon’s pricing having a negative impact on booksellers, it’s code for “We don’t like what it’s doing to our own profit margins. Even though the whole business world has wholesale contracts and it works out okay for them, we don’t like it because we think we’re special and also the gatekeepers to literary excellence.” Aren’t they just precious little snowflakes?

More gems from the WSJ article:

“[The suit] says the publishing chief executives held quarterly gatherings at such Manhattan restaurants as Alto and the Chef’s Wine Cellar private room in Picholine.”

“The government said publishing executives knew what they were doing was wrong and took “steps to conceal their communications with one another, including instructions to ‘double delete’ email.”

After Amazon started reaching out directly to authors, one publishing executive said he was angry at the potential competition and expressed his desire “to screw Amazon,” the suit said.”

This makes me angry. The ends don’t justify the means, and you don’t meet in secret and “double delete” e-mails if you’re not doing anything shady. Even if the ends did justify the means, the publishers and Apple weren’t exactly doing something heroic. They weren’t preserving literary culture. They were just trying to make a little more scratch.

Speaking of gross charades, if one more pro-publishing person remarks that they were just trying to “restore competition” to the marketplace, I’m going to barf. The irony here is that antitrust laws are in place to protect a competitive marketplace, and Amazon isn’t the company being raked over the coals for violating them. What they really mean by “restore competition” is “get more money for ebooks.” Their actions prevented competition because they prevented sellers from competing on their price points. I’m not saying that Amazon was necessarily right to sell ebooks at a loss to their own company. The world of online retail is new and under-regulated, and I think a hard look should be taken at retailers such as Amazon who have the power to destroy their competition and still remain profitable by selling other kinds of goods to make up the difference. It is not, however, in any way okay to take illegal measures to try to force Amazon into a corner. It’s kind of like that old saying, “fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.” Violating antitrust laws to preserve a “free” marketplace doesn’t fly.

An article from PCMag discussed a statement from Hachette:

Hachette said it “reluctantly” agreed to join the settlement, and denied that it was involved in a conspiracy. It’s e-book decision regarding Apple’s iBooks “was designed to facilitate entry by a new retail competitor and to increase the diversity and health of retail booksellers, and we took these actions knowing that Hachette itself would make less money than before the adoption of agency.”

Bull. Shit. Do they really, I mean really expect me to believe that they did this “knowing” that they would make less money? Especially after Jobs commented, ”The customer pays a little more, but that’s what [publishers] want anyway.” Do they really expect me to believe for one second that the publishers jumped on this because of some grand literary altruism? If they do, they’re more clueless than I ever expected.

Here’s what I hate. I hate being lied to. I also hate being treated like I’m some sort of faceless cash dispenser. I’m a customer. I buy books. If the big publishers have any money at all–and they do–it’s down to people like you and me, buying books because we like to read. Not to preserve our grand literary culture, or whatever, but for our own pleasure. And I’m not at all pleased with being treated the way that we’ve been treated. I’m not pleased by repeated attempts to make me believe that they give a fuck about my local bookshop, or about literature in general–aren’t they, the big publishers, trending more and more into the realm of books that sell well rather than books that are masterpieces? That indicates to me that they don’t give two shits about books beyond the fact that we will pay for them, and they want to print more of what we will pay for.

I’m also not pleased that they’re basically ignoring what we want because they think they have a monopoly themselves. Well, guess what, behemoth book-makers? You don’t. There are tons–TONS–of independent presses popping up all over the country, and they’re bringing their A-game. All of these huge publishers could close their doors tomorrow and we would still have plenty of books to read. I’m even more than happy to pay more for small press books–even ebooks, although not an absurd amount–because I know that they have slimmer profit margins due to lower volume. I know where my money is going, and they don’t lie to me about it. What’s more, they appreciate every sale. They thank me for buying their books. They read my blog. They interact with fans. Their authors interact with fans. They treat us like customers, not cattle.  It’s an overall better experience and I still get to read great books because their goal is still making great books. The big publishers? Well, we’re seeing for ourselves what they’re all about–charging us more money, and making sure they crush Amazon so that they can get more of our cash.

It’s pitiful.

So, I’m still on strike. You can join me on this strike, if you want. I’ll continue not to purchase and not to review* books from the big six** until they start treating us with a little more dignity and respect. They wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for the readers, so they should start thinking about keeping us happy. And I’m happy when people don’t break the laws, and even more happy when their lawbreaking doesn’t cost us upwards of $100 million. (No, really–that’s the estimated amount that we collectively overpaid for ebooks due to the alleged collusion. See the PCMag article.) I’m ready to make peace anytime, though; it’s up to them, now, to make the changes that they need to make to survive in the digital marketplace.

*Unless the book is a classic from quite awhile ago. I’ll still try to get it from the library, but I won’t punish authors and executives who are probably long dead for their successors’ fuck-ups.

**Random House, as I said before, is included for other bullshittery that they’ve perpetrated. I recognize that they were not included in this lawsuit.