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 Have you entered the Book Pimp Giveaway this week? If not, here’s another incentive:
Yesterday, in the mail, I received a Venus Envy bookmark and signed bookplate from Shannon McKelden, the author of Venus Envy. So if you win, and choose her book, you get a signed copy.
How cool is that? And of course, if you pick her book, you’re also guaranteed laughs, heartstring-pulling, and a crash course in Greek mythology as told through the filter of high-fashion fairy godmothering. It’s a total bubble bath book and then some, to go back to our earlier discussion. It was the first book I read this year and I enjoyed it immensely.
But again, all the book eligible for the giveaway are like that. This year, I’m only hawking books I recommend.
Speaking of books you recommend, hop on over to Robin’s blog and check out her friend’s book list for her master’s class in children’s literature.
We had a lot of lurkers out there yesterday. That’s okay. Some days I don’t feel like commenting either.
Speaking of comments, there are a whole bunch on Monday’s post that made me think, and they all were some variation on the following:
“When I read a book I read for pure enjoyment. It does not have to mean anything really profound except provide me with entertainment…”
Phrases like “a form of escape,” “pure entertainment,” “not looking for messages” etc. abounded. Which, of course, is awesome! Many books serve the same divine purpose as bubble baths and locks on bathroom doors as far as I’m concerned. And some don’t. Also awesome. Either way is fine by me.
But I don’t think that “meaning” is necessarily synonymous with “profound” or “preachy.” (I don’t think there’s much of a message in Donnie Darko, after all.) Sometimes things just mean something. An in-joke. A shout out. A reference that will further enlighten the audience as to character or plot. An observation the author is making about life. Whatever. You can have your “escape” and your “meaning” in one gorgeous package. Like how bubble baths are both relaxing AND make you clean and moisturized. Mmmm, bubble bath. You know, I did just scrub the tub this weekend.
And I don’t think said “meaning” necessarily equates with subjecting us all to a high school treatise about the symbolism of color in The Red Badge of Courage. (We all had to sit through that lecture once, right?) Sometimes, the author explaining something can be every bit as juicy and entertaining as the story itself. For instance, last night, I was watching the DVD commentary for Stand By Me, and Stephen King was talking about how once, as a child, he and his friends did wind up in a swamp covered with leeches. And let us not even start about the goss to be gleaned from the commentary on Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Whoa, Nelly! And if an author says, “I named a character Valentine Michael Smith for a reason,” I don’t think trying to suss that reason out detracts at all from my enjoyment. It gives me MORE enjoyment. It’s like an extra little game in the text. Part of the fun. Like reading a mystery and trying to figure out whodunnit before the sleuth does.
So I think pure entertainment can also be chock full of meaning. They aren’t mutually exclusive. What do you think?
Yeah, so despite appearances, I’m actually not one of those weird crazy Donnie Darko fans. I do not have a Frank the Bunny outfit in my closet. I do not know the rules of time travel. (I do, perhaps, have a bit of a crush on Jake Gyllenhaal, but then again, I feel responsible for “discovering” him, as I wrote once, in a review that my newspaper forced me to do on Bubble Boy, that the kid was going places.) Honest, it was not my intent to have two successive posts about the film. BUt I found the commentary to be fascinating from a writer’s point of view.
I was so intrigued by the bit where Kelly explained his creative process. He came up with the storyline first, and then reverse engineered the worldbuilding, the rules of time travel, the La-Jetee style (or Twelve Monkeys, depending on your perspective) “technology” (in this case, a series of radio talk and a few grid-like graphics in the director’s version) later on, in order to make this weird story about a disturbed teen and a demonic bunny make sense. I was riveted, listening to this.
That is so not how I write a story.
My storylines spring from my research, my experiences, my world. Sometimes I’m doing research and in the midst of it, I discover some facet of the world I’m studying which seems to fit so perfectly, seems to be part of the story, liked it belonged there even before I knew about it. The more real stuff makes its way into my stories, the happier I am. I’ll change the story if I find something real that I like better.
I loved that the world of collegiate secret societies was so rich that I got to put so many real elements into my novel. (Actually, a couple of people have gotten on my case about it being too real, and I’d tell you about those instances, but then I’d have to kill you.) Especially with the initiation, it seemed as if the real details fit in so perfectly with the theme of the story I was telling. All those amazing tableaux and skits and vows and names with their layers of history and meaning. There wasn’t anything to make up. (I’ve yet to see the fan who, Donnie Darko style, sits down to analyze each of the initiation tableaux for the hidden meanings, but whenever you want; have at it. As I expressed earlier, I’m sure your explanations would be just as cool as the real ones or anything I could make up.)
And it makes sense in the context of societies; after all, they invented the stories, so of course there are strong symbolic elements and themes that run through any of their rituals. Naturally, the course of the initiation fits into a textured, multi-layered whole.
It might be a fun exercise to try to write like Kelly sometime. Come up with a really out of control storyline first, then invent all kinds of crazy rules to make it make sense. But I don’t know if it would work for me. Inventing the reasons after the fact might make the reasons seem as outlandish as the facts themselves. (For instance, now I’m wildly curious why metal and water are so important to time travel.) It feels very odd, but, hey, experimenting is good. It gets you out of your comfort zone and stimulates the brain. However, I do have the memory of my first attempt at a novel, where I made up the most outlandish reasons in the world for getting a chick into a bar, so maybe not.
Of course, all writers are reverse engineering to some degree. Dropping clues, conveniently writing cell phones out of chapters, beefing up a backstory to establish motivation… it’s all the same idea, on a lesser scale. In certain cases, the reasons behind a particular development have to be reverse engineered, and it’s this very process which makes your story unique. Say you are writing about an established myth — say, Vampires — but you want a new reason for your vampires to exhibit a trait we all know vamps have: aversion to crosses. What do you do?
a) Decide that vampires actually have aversions to all symbols of religions, be they pentacles or stars of David or Jain hands or hamsas or itty bitty statues of Shiva.
b) Decide that actually, vampirism causes a side-effect that manifest itself as an aversion to anything previously beloved by the vampire. So if they were very Christian, as many folks in medieval Europe were, they would hate the cross.
c) Decide that vampires have a defect in their eyeballs so that when their visual field comprises right angles, it short circuits their brain.
d) any of the above.
The answer, of course, is D. Each of these have appeared in books as a new take on the old cross-hating vampire myth. And there are some that just forget the cross thing altogether (Anne Rice, for example).
So yeah. A lot of food for thought in that one DVD.
Last weekend Sailor Boy and I watched the “director’s cut” of Donnie Darko. I’ve seen the movie quite a few times while it made the cable TV rounds a few years back, but I’m not one of those huge insane Darko fans. I’ve always enjoyed the film, liked the vibe, liked the performances, liked the plot. Did I understand everything? Hell, no. Does anyone? But it’s like enjoying art without necessarily understanding everything the artist had in mind. Still pretty.
The best part of the director’s cut DVD was not the additional scenes, which generally added little to the story, but the DVD commentary by the director and his buddy, Kevin Smith. Smith is his usual salty, funny, down-to-earth self. The director, Richard Kelly, is trying to explain the film, to us, to Smith, and occasionally, it seems, himself. Smith is occasionally baffled by the explanations Kelly has concocted, as he, like me, and I believe like most of the people who saw the film, tried to create as good as an explanation as they could based on what was there.
Sometimes, Smith added comments to Kelly’s explanations that were pretty much exactly what I was thinking, and all contained a sort of, “WTF?” flavor. Kelly’s busting out all of these very convoluted rules of time travel, like “metal and water are essential to the powers controlling the elements of the manipulated dead” and Smith is all, “you’re operating on this whole different level, man.”
 He was theorizing that everyone in the town was working on some sort of subconscious level to collapse the alternate universe, which is, um, unique, but you know what? I don’t need to know some of that stuff, and I think I’m just going to go on thinking of it as I have before. (Smith goes, “Yeah, I don’t like that explanation. Let’s drop it.”) He also talked as if there was some sort of Great Manipulators from the future who had figured out time travel and messed it all up and, in a sort of La Jetee way, were contacting the people still in the time stream and trying to get them to fix it. Which was interesting but not present on the screen at all. I liked having Smith there. He was the voice of reason, the physical manifestation of the viewer who wasn’t quite buying everything Kelly had to sell.
I don’t think I like the explanations. DVD commentaries are sometimes enlightening, but sometimes disappointing. I often find myself listening to the director and thinking, “Eh, I liked the explanation I came up with on my own, better.” There’s really nothing like that for books. We don’t have an established venue in which to say, “well, I have a blue motif in this scene because I wanted to illustrate the character’s despair.” And perhaps that’s a good thing. The book is out of our hands once we let it go into the world, for people to enjoy (or not) understand (or not) and appreciate through the filter of their own experience. I’ve been to book club discussions of my book where they’ve come up with really fascinating insights into characters that I’d never considered.
 And of course, they all come up with different theories: Amy doesn’t deserve Brandon; Brandon isn’t any good for Amy; Amy is too young to know what she wants; Amy should be old enough to have overcome her commitment problems; Amy and Brandon are destined to be together and will work it out. I like hearing all of this. I don’t think there’s a right and wrong here. All of these points of view can be accurate, just like friends being told Amy and Brandon’s story are going to have a different take on it. We know how Lydia feels; I wonder what Clarissa would think? The book club wanted to know the definitive answer — what did I think of Amy’s behavior? But I was hesitant to say, because I didn’t want to invalidate another point of view. (Man, some of the things I heard them say about George!) This situation is pretty much subject to the reader’s filter. In the next book, we’ll see what these characters do with the knowledge the experience has given them, and that, to me, is exciting.
But at the same time, I’m a traditionalist. I like books where the bad people get punished and good people get rewarded. And because that’s what I like, it’s what I write. Still, I don’t ascribe to the “perfect heroine” idea. My heroine fucks up and knows it. I like that. I like her paying for it, and growing as a result.
Maybe this goes back to the question making the blog rounds of “what do authors owe their readers?” I’m not sure we owe them further explanation, or if it’s even a good idea to give it to them if they ask. This will take more thought. What do you guys think? When you’ve gotten the total, complete, explanation from a creator of any kind, has it helped or hindered your experience?
Also, today’s post is Week 2 of the Book Pimp Giveaway. The rules, for anyone who was confused last week: 1) leave a comment in this post to enter, 2) leave a comment from now until Friday, when the drawing will happen, 3) if you win the contest, you may choose ONE of the books pictured on this page as your prize.
There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on in the comments section of a Pub Rants post about Paris’ Hilton’s book, Confessions of a Heiress. Commenters, many of them anonymous (of course), are raving about what right Nelson has to promote a book that is 1) ghost written, 2) “by” such a person as Paris Hilton, 3) trash, and 4) “keeping other more worthy books off the shelves.”
Naturally, they indulge in the usual name-calling and attacks against the blogger. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, if they so disagree with the agent’s taste, business model, business practices, advice, etc. — not that they think they are harmful, just not what they are looking for in an agent — why they just don’t stop reading her blog? Obviously it’s not providing anything to them. But anonymous insults? Not debate, but insults… I really don’t see what the point is. Can it be anything other than a bitter rant?
(Oh, and one commenter totally proved the Harlequin Rule! That rocked.)
Here is my comment:
Book snobbery can work both ways. I’ve seen devotees of genre fiction say they wouldn’t read “pointless, depressing” lit fic. They are just as much book snobs. As KN said, read what you enjoy and be proud of it–whatever it is. You don’t need to justify your choices or put down anyone else’s.
The ghost-written aspect doesn’t have any place in this conversation. No one said, “Wow, that Paris, what a writer she really is.” The book is a product, and an enjoyable one. It’s presumptuous to assume that the ghost writer is offended, or unhappy with their flat fee, or wants to publish his or her own work. Is it what it is. The ghost writers I know enjoy their contracts and the money it makes them.
Say you wrote a screenplay, and it was being made into a movie. You have the choice to put it out with obscure actors who no one is interested in seeing, or guaranteed box office draws. People make those choices, and are not burned in effigy for them. But with books it is assumed that there should be a different standard.
I enjoy several series that I know are ghostwritten, either secretly or as an understood business model (such as packaged YA.) They are what they are. How many works of art “by” Raphael do you enjoy, knowing that Raphael himself might have worked very little on it? Does it make the painting any less pretty?
Paris Hilton’s book is not keeping any other off the shelves. There is “space” for celebrity vanity projects on lists that is separate from the space that is held for serious works of literature or romance novels, or what have you. No one says, “well, this guy could be the new Don DeLillo, but hey, how about another book ‘by’ Paris Hilton instead?” and if anything, the cash cow that is a celebrity vanity project provides money to the publisher that they can use to buy and promote their original projects.
The acrimony here is quite misplaced.
The winner of the Book Pimp Giveaway is listed below (#9). Congratulations! Please email your address and which one of the four books (Venus Envy, Surviving Demon Island, The Rest Falls Away, and Magic or Madness) that you would like me to send you.
To the rest, thanks for entering, and we’ll do this again next week!
Things that Make Me Happy:
1. The totally awesome surprise I mailed to Gena Showalter that she may tell you about at her leisure.
2. The kick ass interior design of Under the Rose, and the fact that I’ve seen said kick ass interior design, which means that I saw my book looking like a book, and that’s always happy-making.
3. Speaking of happy-making, I just found out that Scott Westerfeld, New York Times Bestseller List regular, Aurealis nominee, Norton preliminary balloteer, and my long-time professional crush, is writing a follow-up to the Uglies trilogy, called EXTRAS, which will be out in the fall. I get all bubbly just thinking about it.
4. Justine Larbalestier is also on the prelim Norton ballot.
5. Susan Adrian has a new excerpt of her book up. Go read it.
6. Dona Sarkar-Mishra just announced her first book sale for How to Salsa in a Sari. Go congratulate her!
7. Marianne Mancusi just posted the cover and blurb of her new romance/sci-fi/adventure, Moongazer, on her blog.
8. I finished writing a synopsis yesterday and I’m very proud of it.
9. The winner of the Book Pimp Giveaway and his/her choice of the four books pictured on the giveaway post is… SARA (EATRAWFISH)
Things That Make Me Sad:
1. I’m having some sort of tooth pain.
2. Reading up on the type of pain it is on the internet in tandem with my dental history makes me suspect I may need a root canal.
3. Which is not cheap.
4. And I don’t have dental insurance.
5. And it’s so aggravating, because I had great dental insurance at my old job and did not need to go to a dentist, but less than a month after quitting said old job with the great dental insurance, I had a dental incident. (The only thing that even slightly mollifies my frustration of this situation is that even if I had sprung for the unreasonably expensive independent dental insurance, my hypothetical future root canal would not be covered, since there was an 18 month blackout window. Which means if you, like me, chipped a tooth, and then 6 months later you are experiencing a pain that indicates the need for a root canal, then you are up shit creek as far as coverage goes.)
6. Man, I hope this isn’t even worse than I think it is.
7. Did I mention how I don’t actually have a dentist here? Now taking recommendations. Feel free to email.
From the comments section of the last post:
Have any of you come up with traits for your character that changed when you sat down to write? Do you get to know your character before starting, or is it a process as you’re writing?
Oh, definitely! Though I am a big plotter, and always try to write my synopsis first, and have a general idea of who I’m writing about and what their major characteristics will be, I always find I don’t really know my characters until I spend a little while in their heads. So I usually write my synopsis, then write a few chapters to get that character firmly fixed in my mind. The usual in-advance character worksheets and stuff don’t work for me, since I often don’t know what a character’s favorite ice cream flavor is until I need to use it (as the poster said). But, while I’m writing, and sort of “living” in their head, there are certain things that will strike me as being very them, as I spoke about yesterday. And if I run into a problem where they aren’t “coming to life” for me, sometimes shopping or listening to music or trying some other means to get inside them helps a lot.
But, one of the reasons I don’t feel as if plotting means I’ve “already written the story” as some anti-plotters argue, is that I never stop being surprised. Sometimes, characters will completely throw me for a loop. I’m always open to changing stuff if that happens. Two vivid instances of this come to mind:
1) I wrote a book several years ago. Great book, I love it, my CPs love it, certain contest judges adored it and recommended it to their editors… but it was a romance set in the world of kidnapped and exploited children… so, um, a bit of a tough sell. Anyway, when I plotted it out, the hero’s name was going to be Victor. He was Russian, and rugged, and sexy, and a little bit of a thug. So I was writing along, la la la, and the hero appears in his first scene and sparks are firing between him and the heroine. Oh, what a scene. It’s tense and sexy and angry and fabulous… my fingers are flying. Ten pages later, I look up and realize that Victor disappeared about a page and half in and instead, Vincent appeared. It was Vincent that had been pacing circles around my heroine for the last half a chapter. And my goodness, I loved him! I loved him so much more than Victor. As Vincent, he had a little panache to his personality. He was smoother, quieter, more walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick (think Sean Bean), which was perfect for my heroine, because she was a bit on the dramatic side. I got rid of Victor. Mmmm, Vincent. I really loved him.
2) When I was first writing the proposal for Secret Society Girl, I was feeling pretty good about Amy from the start. She had her good points and her bad points, her desires and her concerns, her friends and her history… but I didn’t know her, we hadn’t gone from “acquaintances” to “friends” until (white text for spoilers for those of you — for shame! — who haven’t read SSG yet) she was locked into that coffin in chapter four. I remember writing that scene. The second that water starting coming into the sides of the coffin and she freaked out and told me about her water phobia… whoa, man. Eureka. I remember running into the bedroom and waking Sailor Boy up and telling him all about it. I remember also him telling me I was crazy. But whatever, he didn’t understand the connection I’d just made. After that, Amy and I were friends for life. She’d tell me anything. I went back and rewrote the first few chapters with all of this new information in mind.
It’s fascinating how much one little piece of the puzzle made her character crystallize so completely for me. Even more so because this information really isn’t important to the plot. It doesn’t explain her commitment phobic tendencies, or why she’s such a loudmouth, or what she wants from her life (aside from living inland). But it was a crack I could use to get into her head, and it’s extremely important to her. You’ll see in Under the Rose that this is not an event she’s forgotten (or that she’s ready to forgive).
Have any of the writers who read this blog had similar experiences?
There’s been a lot of talk recently about authors interacting with their characters and about whether or not the authors who do so should be fitted for straitjackets. Points of concern include: 1) shopping for the characters, 2) missing them, 3) speaking about them as if they are real people, and finally, 4) caring about them so much that you won’t let anything bad happen to them.
I’ve done pretty much all of these to one extent or another. In fact, I love to do number one. It’s my favorite way to get a character fixed in my head. I go to stores and try to imagine what my character would buy from the clothes on the racks. What are her favorite colors, why doesn’t she like wrap around skirts, how many black sweaters can one person own?
The nicest thing about shopping for fictional people is that it’s totally free. If I find the perfect outfit for Amy, I don’t need to worry about whether or not it’s on sale. I can give it to her anyway. Fictional clothes don’t cost a dime. Lucky us (especially since Amy is drowning in college loans). It’s no different than cutting pictures out of a magazine of what you think your character looks like.
On occasion, I have actually bought clothes for my character. I wrote a character once who had a very tricky mindset, but a very clear and unique sense of fashion. I bought a t-shirt that was so her, and I wore it every time I was trying to write in her POV. It worked. (Thank goodness her taste leaned more towards t-shirts than fur coats.) A lot of authors find that playing certain music, or indulging in the character’s favorite cocktail can put them in the right mood. Someone on the Smart Bitches blog compared it to method acting. Whatever works, I say (um, except I don’t say it to Thomas Harris). I definitely take on some method habits when I’m writing. I’ve been known to switch up my usual orders at Starbucks, or adopt a character’s favorite phrases, or once, on an occasion I hope never to repeat, to temporarily develop a mild phobia towards a fear that ruled one character’s every thought. I find also, that when I’m writing Amy, my “blog voice” sounds a lot like Amy, and it moves away from that when I’m writing something else.
I think the inclination for a writer’s brain to file characters away in the same manner as it files real people is natural. The mind is programmed to remember friends — face, name, likes, dislikes, quirks, things they’ve done, etc. When I dream, and my mind sifts through its roster of people with which to populate my dreams, it doesn’t differentiate between fictional and non-fictional, alive or dead, place or time, or whether you really know them at all. How many dreams have you had where you are palling around with Brad Pitt, your best friend from second grade, and Batman?
So because I think the brain is programmed to remember fictional people on the same system by which it remembers real people, you get a little bleed. If I’ve been working really hard on my book, and Sailor Boy says something charming to me, it may remind me of George Harrison Prescott. I may hear a reference to the Lady of Shallot and all of a sudden miss Anne Shirley, whose world I haven’t visited for a while. (One of the nicest things about fictional friends is that they are only a bookshelf away, whereas real friends may be in another hemisphere.)
Of course fictional characters have to be as real as real people! We need to cry for them, root for them, laugh with them. Otherwise, what’s the point? We’re not crazy for talking about them as if they are real, or knowing what they want for their birthdays, or missing them if we haven’t written about them in a while, or occasionally ordering our hamburgers with their favorite toppings instead of our own, just so we can better describe what their food tastes like.
It’s not the behavior; it’s how it’s handled. It’s a hoary old thriller plot, the FBI profiler who gets too deep into the mind of the criminals, and can’t tell the difference anymore. Yes, that would be bad. We’re all agreed here. But I don’t think that makes the act of channeling characters a bad thing for a writer, actor, anyone to do. We’re trying to create verisimilitude. SB thinks I’m crazy when I announce that a character “told” me to take the plot in any given direction. But it’s just writerly shorthand for knowing a character so well that it is obvious what they will and will not do in a given situation. Are there people who indulge themselves into believing that the people they’ve created are real? Of course. There are also actors who check into rehab after playing drug addicts on TV. Most of us are just doing our jobs.
Which brings me to my last point (4). Most writers I know love their characters. They have to, to be willing to spend so much time inside the person’s head. We feel protective of them, and as a result of these emotions, may feel tempted to make it easy on them. This is a very common mistake, especially for beginning writers. They don’t let anything bad happen to the main characters. But we have to get over that. We have to be willing to “chase them up a tree and throw rocks at them.” Even if it makes us sad. I know that I cried through the worst things I did to Amy, and now, as I’m preparing to put her through her most difficult trials yet, I have to steel myself from trying to be lenient. This isn’t a question of mental health, but of professional grit.
(The Book Pimp post is still collecting entries below. To clarify: The winner will receive his or her choice of the four books pictured in the post. That way, you can enter even if you already have one or more of the books, or are the author of one, or whatever.)
As I said yesterday, we stopped off at the bookstore near my house, where I was pleased to see they still had two copies of Secret Society Girl on the shelves.
(We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement: Go buy Secret Society Girl  before the hardcovers go ‘back in the vault.’)
I was looking for the new releases by a few of my friends, and actually found some. However, we didn’t find others, which was a drag. I figured it would be on the new paperback table, but when I didn’t find it there (though I did find the mass market Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, which I have been recommending to Sailor Boy), we looked in the romance section. No dice. Then I looked it up on the bookstore customer service computer. “In store.” Um, no.
Then we asked a bookseller. I told her the author and the title, and while she was looking on the shelves where it wasn’t, I said, “it has a black and red cover, with a girl with a stake and a  corset on it.”
“Honey,” she said. “They all do these days.”
She looked it up on her special computer, and confirmed that they had two copies, and were getting four more, and they could order it for me. I always feel bad at this point, because my response is, “No, don’t bother ordering it; I already have a copy” at which point they give me the “then why are you bugging me about looking for it” look. Though when I told her that I knew the author, she got all wide eyed. Which was nice. So, Colleen, if you want to come to town and sign here, I say go for it.
Then I wended my way back to the YA section of the bookstore, where I got into a browsing match with a woman who turned out to be a librarian at a grade 7-12 school. We started talking books. What we liked, what we loved, what we worshipped, what we insisted the other had to read right right now (Her: The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray; Me: Magic or Madness) and pretty soon, another woman overheard us and got in on the conversation (I think I sold her on either Enchanted, Inc. or Secret Society Girl or possibly both) and we walked away with a nice, healthy stack of books.
(And I found SB flipping through The Android’s Dream on the front table and getting after me about why I’d suggested OMW to him rather than TAD, and I’m all, dude, the last time I suggested a book to you (last January, and it was The Golden Compass) you didn’t read it for 12 months (and then begged for Amber Spyglass for Xmas). He still hasn’t read Scott Westerfeld, and I’ve been hawking that for, like, a year and a half. I know, I know. I’m not sure why I’m marrying him, either. Um, SB, not Scott.)
I walked home on air. Here’s the thing: I looooooove books. I love reading books, I love recommending books I’ve read, I love talking about books with other book readers, I love talking about books with people who hardly read at all in the hope, perhaps, that they will come around. Books books books. Yummy! And I have so much fun striking up conversations with people in the bookstore and convincing them to buy books that I love. I even joined a book club. (Which reminds me. I have to get that book and read it.)
So I’m going to start doing more book pimping here. I’m starting this week, giving away a copy of one of the books pictured in this post. (We’ll be doing the others a little bit later.) Leave a comment below if you’d like to be entered. We’ll do the drawing at the end of the week.
Diana channels Kristin Nelson:
What’s playing on the iPod? The Bitch is Back, by Elton John.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 
So just when I think I should get rid of that Google Alerts thing, I get a glimmer of gold in my panning sieve — this one in the form of a review from the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose:
This is the book for you if you believe in conspiracy theories. Eli University’s secret Rose and Grave Society has unexpectedly tapped girls for the first time in its 150-year history. Amy Haskel, editor of the campus literary magazine, fully expects to be tapped into Quill and Ink, the literary society. So she’s shocked and amazed when she realizes that the most powerful, notorious and ultra-exclusive Rose and Grave Society has tapped her! Vivid cloak and dagger initiations, quirky characters and situations, and college-life romance provide a provocative look into the heart of the Ivy League. Fast-paced and funny, Secret Society Girl is an entertaining quick read for teens and adults. The second book in the series — Under the Rose: An Ivy League Novel — is to be published in June 2007. — Cheryl Woods.
Isn’t that nice? Thanks! And SJL.org has a handy dandy feature, for anyone who needs something new to obsess over, that shows you how many copies are in the library system, checked out, on hold, or  missing. I’ve only been to San Jose once, and my main memory of the trip was the rocking children’s museum, but when I return, I shall have to check out their libraries.
Went to a movie tonight with Sailor Boy and Sailor Parents. We saw Children of Men, which is very very violent, and which Sailor Boy and I disagreed mightily over. He says that the idea of global infertility is a MacGuffin, and the plot is the same as Willow. I say decidedly not, as the plot of Willow made no sense, even to the ten year old I was when I saw it, and the identity of a MacGuffin qua MacGuffin is extraneous to any storyline, whereas global infertility is intrinsic to the storyline of Children of Men (a premise), and the miraculous pregnancy (which is not a spoiler because it’s in all the ads) that forms the driving force of the plot is the natural story question that arises from this premise.
We did this over beers.
Then we went to a bookstore. Some authors tell me they get depressed when they go into bookstores because there are so gosh darn many books and they begin to think that there’s no way they can compete with that many books. I also get depressed going into bookstores, but it’s the same depression I feel when I go into pet stores. I want to take them all home and provide loving homes in which they will all be petted and nurtured and read and loved and have their covers tended and cherished, rather than stripped.
Seriously, though, I had the best time in the bookstore tonight. I’ll tell you all about it on Monday, when I reveal the cool idea it gave me.
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