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Our back door has blown open twice this morning, the second time taking the porch railing along for the ride. I’ll tell you, it scared Rio pretty bad. She’s upstairs huddling in bed with Sailor Boy.
Spent a while this morning sending out cease and desist letter to a couple of pirates who are posting copies of my ebooks online. I got a really snippy email back from one of the sites about how they are performing a valuable service in developing countries where people have neither books nor computers and can download any of 10,000 works in the public domain. Which is all well and good, but a) how do they download these things without computers, and b) then just put up links to Bartleby, Project Gutenberg, or other public domain libraries and do not allow user-generated content, which you know is going to be about 90% piracy (and the rest fanfic).
I honestly don’t know if the posters in question know that what they are doing is illegal. They probably don’t really understand how copyright works. If it’s okay to give a book you’ve read to a friend, they ask themselves, why isn’t it okay to post it on the internet where thousands of “friends” can read it at will?
Here’s the difference: copyright. Copyright literally controls who has the right to make copies of a given text. When you give a book to a friend, there’s still only one copy. If your friend loses it or doesn’t give it back, and you want it, you have to get another copy. (I know this annoyance very well.) But when you send an ebook to a friend (or a thousand friends on the internet) you are making copies. You still have yours, and they have theirs.
I’m the only one who has the right to say who makes copies of my books. I’m the copyright holder.
Copyright is the only thing protecting other people from writing a book about Aimee Hasquale who joins a secret society called Daisy & Mausoleum and printing it as their own (remember Kaava Viswanathan?) Copyright is what is keeping a roof over my head and kibble in Rio’s bowl. Think of Rio! Don’t post my books online.
If money is tight and you want to read my book, please go to the library. If you don’t have a library near you or your library doesn’t have the funds to order my book, then may I suggest some other, fabulous books that are in the public domain and that you can legally get for free online:
You can even listen to audio books in the public domain, as I am with The Call of the Wild right now. I love public domain books. There’s so much good stuff available.
And if you absolutely *must* read something by me, just join my newsletter. I give away free stories every month.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it’s a happy and healthy one!
Given that people have been alerting me to the fact that this baby is up on Amazon for a few days now (where the colors are ALL OFF), I guess I can show it here as well…
Top secret societies…bizarre initiation rites…campus love triangles…political shenanigans…Diana Peterfreund has dazzled readers and critics alike with her Ivy league novels, hailed as “impossible to put down”* and “witty and endearing”** In this final installment, Eli University senior Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel and her fellow Diggers are preparing to face real life in worlds far beyond the hallowed halls of Eli.
For Amy the countdown to graduation has begun, and suddenly the perfect ending to a perfectly iconoclastic Eli career is slipping from her grasp. Her new boyfriend’s been made an offer he just can’t refuse. Her fellowship applications haven’t even been filed. And the student she’s chosen to take her place in Rose & Grave – the country’s more powerful and notorious secret society – seems to come complete with a secret life already intact.
Lunging toward the finish line, Amy finds trouble around every corner, from society intrigues nad unlikely stalkers to former flames and mandatory science credits. Surely it couldn’t get worse…until Initiation Night explodes into a terrifying scene and into a last test of wits for a young woman just trying to make it out of the Ivy League in one piece.
* Publisher’s Weekly
** New York Observer
Things I Love about this Cover:
- The Ampersand. I admit I wasn’t truly sold on the title until I saw the ampersand in the brand new title treatment!
- The pin! It’s back! (I designed these pins myself, so I’m glad they keep incorporating them into the covers.)
- The color scheme. (Someone has been visiting my website!)
- How confident and adult Amy looks in this one.
Secret Trivia About the Cover:
- The model’s hair was originally more blonde, and was darkened in Photoshop.
- The model was originally wearing a huge honking diamond engagement ring, but my editor very wisely realized that might cause some undue speculation (especially given who Amy is dating, their relationship status, and his monetary situation).
- I wrote Amy’s graduation outfit in the book to match the cover.
In related Secret Society Girl news, I caught this guest blog by Angie of Angieville over at the Booksmugglers, in which she presents a Bard Award to Poe in Rites of Spring (Break) for “Best Performance of an Antihero in a Leading Role.” Of said performance, she writes:
“He’s just so snippy and awkward and fun to hate. I love him so very, very much.”
Hee hee.
Angie then put Tap & Gown on her list of “2009 Must Be Mine” books. Woo hoo! (Angie, there shall be much more Poe.)
Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I?
I’ve been off my computer and off the internet for the past week. It’s actually been quite a freeing experience. The last month was an incredibly stressful one, professionally, so removing myself from the merry-go-round/echo chamber/take-your-pick was actually quite relaxing and recharging. I’ve been able to think quite a lot about my work, especially the second killer unicorn book, which is shaping up nicely. I don’t really talk about it much on the blog, but that’s primarily because nothing i say will make sense to people who haven’t even read the first one. There are more killer unicorns.
(In passing, the winner of the box o’ books giveaway is LIVIANA.)
I’ve also been able to reflect some on the year that’s passed, which I had not taken stock of in the slightest. This has been a huge year for me,and one in which I’ve always, always been playing catch up. I have never not been behind in some major way. I hope to change that pattern next year.
So, 2008…
 On January 1st, Sailor Boy and I left for a research trip to Europe. It was a miserable trip. SB was sick for the first half of it (like, “perhaps we need to find a hospital here in Naples” sick) and I got an unrelated illness by the end of the trip, resulting in the most uncomfortable plane ride of my life (I begged him to put me out of my misery the entire way back over the Atlantic, during which my ears did not pop in the slightest), and two weeks of “in bed, do not want to get up” abject misery. Scene from my birthday, which occurred a few weeks after:
SB: What do you want to do for your birthday?
Me: (sniffling) Um, get me some nice takeout and a very special movie from Netflix?
It was BAD.
 However, I don’t regret the trip. The research I was able to do for Rampant brought the book alive in a way I hope shows up on the pages. Location scouting, man. It’s a blast. It’s actually quite funny to look at these pictures now, since I spent so many months putting them into a book. On one level, I know this (left) is the cloisters at the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral of Rome, but in my heart it’s the Cloisters of Ctesias, which in Rampant is actually just down the hill. Discovering this cloisters, especially given how many in-cloisters scenes I’d already written, was a truly incredible gift. It was like seeing my book come alive. The second great discovery of the trip was Cerverteri (pictured above). I’d already planned on setting a big scene there, but visiting it gave me the ability to interact with the setting a good deal more and really dig in there
Sadly, a research trip was unnecessary for book 2.
I got better by the end of the month, and flew to Florida for a writing retreat with TARA, whereupon I discovered a bit of a mix-up between when I thought my next book was due and when my editor did. Cue panicked fevered writing and editing for the next three months. (I also managed to squeeze a NINC conference in there somewhere.)
I finished up just in time to attend another writing retreat, this one with my critique partner Carrie Ryan. Lots of drinking with Kresley Cole and Amanda Brice ensued. (No wonder Sailor Boy doesn’t trust that I work at these things!)
On a personal note, SB and I spent a good amount of time that spring looking for houses. No luck.
 And, just like that, it was summer. Summer, the relaunch of my website, and the release of Rites of Spring (Break). I did three signings (one with Nora Roberts!), and had a lot of fun with my promotional Rose & Grave tattoos. Reviews of the book were generally good, and I made a best of summer list with none other than Salman Rushdie. My favorite part, however, was seeing all the comments appearing on the ROSB discussion page. This book was a huge turning point in the series, and I was pleased to see it connect with so many readers. I also got my first fan art.
Also, I got to see my first two foreign editions released, as Secret Society Girl came out in Russia and Brazil.
In July, Sailor Boy and I found a house. More whirlwind, as we barreled toward closing and all that entailed (finding a mortgage, home inspectors, packing, moving, etc.) compounded by the fact that SB was studying for his bar exam.
July 29-30: SB takes exam.
August 1: Close on house.
August 2: Leave for honeymoon.
August 15: Return from honeymoon, move into house.
 During this time, we also managed to get ourselves a puppy, whom we picked up on August 17. Of course, you all know and love Rio, the ersatz star of this blog. I can’t believe how big she’s gotten since this picture was taken. Of all the amazing, extraordinary things that have happened to me this year, I really think the addition of this dog into my life tops the list.
Anyway, back to work. As the whirlwind of house and puppy-acquisition drew to a close, I threw myself into finishing up Tap & Gown, the last SSG book. I felt so nostalgic about the characters, I started the secret story project. I received the cover of my first YA. I received the cover of T&G.
I did a LOT of dog-walking.
With the fall, came the election, and I grew obsessed. I practically lived on fivethirty-eight.com. I settled into our new neighborhood, SB settled into his new job, Rio settled into life as a pampered puppy. I also got sick. Very, very sick. So sick that I tore a muscle in my ribs coughing. Twice in one year. I’m apparently a sickly person. SB and I had our first anniversary around this time, too, and I was well enough to go out for that.
Two couples close to me had babies. I did revisions for Tap & Gown and first pass for Rampant. I received the ARCs of Rampant. December rolled around, and life settled in enough for SB and I to buy some furniture and start really getting the house set up (it’s an ongoing project). We chose a design aesthetic and are slowly incorporating it into all elements of our home.
My family came for Christmas. Rio turned 6 months old on Christmas Day. I spent an entire week cooking. No, really, the whole week. Now my family is gone (sniff) and I am planning out my next few months of writing, spending quality time with SB, and cuddling Rio.
So that’s my year in review. Personally, it was a huge one: new house, new family members, major lifestyle changes. Professionally, it was more of an even keel. I didn’t sell any new contracts (a few foreign rights sales, though), though I did write two books and see three releases. This is the first year in a while there hasn’t been a major turning point in my career. In 2005, I sold my first book. In 2006, I saw my first release. In 2007, I sold my second and third contracts, one of which was my first YA. 2008, professionally, has been more about transitioning into a mature career – no longer a debut,no longer a sophomore effort — as well as gearing up for 2009: my first YA release, the conclusion of my first series, my first year with two book releases.
In terms of art consumption, I have to admit I’ve been generally more impressed with my television watching experiences than my book reading. The first half of the year was generally disappointing in terms of reading. I read a few historical romance novels I really liked (The new Madeline Hunter, the Sherry Thomas debut), which was great and renewed my interest in them (I’d been growing a little bored with historicals recently that weren’t also paranormal like Colleen Gleason’s series or Libba Bray’s). But I also read a bunch of hugely hyped books that were a let down. This fall, I hit a great streak of fabulous YA novels: Disreputable History, Gamer Girl, the Hunger Games, and Graceling, and 2009 is going to be awesome on that front, I just know it! (Mostly because I’ve read a lot of the books already.) I think in 2009, I’m going to have to go back to keeping a list of books I read, because I honestly can’t remember a lot of what I’ve read this year. Sailor Boy and I bought season tickets to a local theater, though the shows we’ve seen so far have been mostly duds, with the pleasant exception of THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY, a “documentary musical” about the evangelical Christian community in Colorado Springs. But my favorite art this year have been the TV shows: How I Met Your Mother, The Wire, Dexter. Movies? Eh. I’m having a hard time even remembering movies I saw this year. I liked Wall-E well enough, but it was no Incredibles. It’s hard to love a movie where you spend 75% of the time thinking to yourself, “If they kill this little robot, I’m going to march up to Pixar and slap John Lasster right in the kisser.” There’s emotional manipulation (with which I am more than familiar) and then there’s emotional manipulation. To be honest, I think my favorite was the documentary of the making of the Cirque de Soleil/Beatles show, LOVE.
So that’s it. My year in review. It was a very challenging, very busy, very life-changing, very fulfilling year. I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m really looking forward to 2009, in which:
- I turn 30.
- Barack Obama becomes the President of the United States
- I finish my office
- Rampant is released
- Tap & Gown concludes the Secret Society Girl series
- Rio turns one
- I write a book I’ve been excited about for a long time but haven’t had the chance to devote time to yet
As for goals… well, you just saw two of them. There are others, and other tentative plans, but they aren’t blog-ready yet.
The winner of the Alanna Giveaway is: katayoun!
The winner of the Lament Giveaway is: Paradox!
Email me with your addresses to receive your prizes…. (um, after the Xmas rush).
I had a very computer-free weekend. Sailor Boy and I decorated the house for the holidays on Saturday, and then we did a little last-minute Christmas shopping in a mall packed solid with screaming people and attended his office’s holiday party (also loud, but in a much more relaxing way). On Sunday, my best friend and her husband came over and we made Christmas cookies all day long. We made four different types (we were going for five, but one of them was so good we decided to do another batch instead).
What cookies were these? The Pioneer Woman’s Spicy Molasses Cookies. Guys. Yum. You must make these, right now. They take about 3 minutes to mix up. Seriously, it takes longer to heat up the over than it does to make these cookies. It takes longer to go to the store and scour the spice shelves for ground cloves than I does to make these cookies. I made the second batch while my best friend was taking cooled cookies off the rack. it was that simple.
We also did dried cherry shortbread, dark chocolate-ginger crinkles, and traditional painted cookie cut out sugar cookies. All good, but these molasses cookies, warm and soft and right out of the oven? So. Good.
My family is showing up today, so I’m in a flurry of last-minute preparations. Lots of laundry loads, scrub the tub, a bit of shopping, stuff like that. It’s currently 17 degrees outside, so I’m going to wrap up like that little kid from A Christmas Story and take Rio out for a walk.
In very exciting news, I got my first-ever reader-reaction on Rampant. Everyone else who has read it has been either a) a friend or work colleague, or b) someone who works for my publisher. E. Kristin Anderson is a bookseller at BookPeople in Austin, Tx, and after a valiant quest that included a rather threatening drawing of a killer unicorn, got her hands on an ARC. She writes:
And UNICORNS! The latest book by Diana Peterfreund is the talk of the town. Or at least my part of town, which includes me and everyone I know, which is basically me, my friends, and my cohorts at the bookstore. Seriously, Rampant is THE SHIT. You can’t miss this book – I haven’t read something so awesome in ages. It’s so far my favorite for 2009 (and, yeah, I’ve read a good deal of 2009 stuff already, though, admittedly, very little summer list). My coworkers and I have been salivating over the book since I first heard about it from Miss Justine Larbalestier this fall. Word spread quickly that someone had written a book about man-eating unicorns that could only be killed by virgin descendents of Alexander the Great. With this kind of book, you’re either in or you’re out. And Anyone out is clearly uncool. So I got first dibs on Rampant, devoured it into the wee hours of the night until I was trying to read with one eye open and eventually passed out with the book cracked open over my face.
And it was amazing.
(And then she goes on a huge rant about the cover, which she doesn’t like. At. All.)
Very cool!
Today’s giveaway is another mystery box o’ books! (Probably mostly romance novels…)
Leave a comment here to enter.
I have been reminded that I never picked a winner for the second Suite Scarlett Giveaway from Wednesday. So here goes: Megg, from comment 22 on my website!
(In passing: Giveaways are challenging when every other commenter is like “oh, I’ve read this one” or is me or is commenting on livejournal.)
I am also giving more time to yesterday’s giveaway of Tamora Pierce’s Alanna because I only posted that at 3 p.m. yesterday. So this weekend, you can enter either the Alanna giveaway (the post below this one) or the giveaway from this post. (More to come on that.)
Leah was right in the comments section of yesterday’s post about the reason I’d likely missed out on Tamora Pierce at an actual young adult, as the Alanna quartet was originally published when I was too young to read them, and then the series became super popular while I was in college and too busy reading other stuff for much pleasure reading. (Sadly, I did almost no pleasure reading in college until my senior year, when I not only did more reading for class than I had any other year, but I also rediscovered Harry Potter and popular fiction. God bless J.K. Rowling, y’all. Seriously.)
But also, there are way too many books out there. I try to keep up as much as possible with the popular novels in YA, romance, mainstream fiction, science fiction, and of course the classics, but it’s impossible to read everything. I have dogs to walk and dinners to cook and husbands to spend quality time with and oh, yeah, a job. I haven’t even seen this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother (which is actually the only show I currently watch on television). But I am embarrassed about all the books I haven’t read.
I am not alone in this. When you’re a writer, you have a lot of writer friends. Together, they write a lot of books. When I first joined RWA, I made a concerted effort to buy the books of all of the published writers in my RWA chapter. This didn’t last long, as I was pretty poor and they are very prolific and successful. So time goes on, and I learned that I could be proud and supportive of writers I knew who wrote in genres that weren’t exactly my cup of tea without reading their books.
But then, you get more writer friends, and they write in genres that are your favorite cups of tea, and you still can’t read them all. And then there are other writers, who are maybe not your writer friends, but are big in the genre, and you feel like you really should read them to see what is out there and selling. And people are constantly recommending books to you. And you don’t want to sound like an idiot at a cocktail party when everyone is discussing [insert big book here] and you have no idea what they are talking about.
Like the summer I didn’t read Prep, and then the next year when my book came out, everyone was asking me if it was like Prep, and I was like, um.. (But American Wife is on my TBR pile.)
I have not read anything by: Terry Pratchett, Garth Nix, or Neil Gaiman. And yes, I am a YA fantasy author. Why do you ask? (I’m actually dying to read NATION. Anyone looking for a Xmas gift for me…)
I have not read Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I read my first Nora Roberts novel in 2004, and it was an 80s category romance i picked up at a book exchange in an Australian hostel. I only read Flowers From the Storm this year. I have never read Kathleen Woodiwiss. Or J.R. Ward. Or Laurel K. Hamilton. Or Sandra Brown. I have only read one Danielle Steel.
Stephen King? Only read short stories. Lots of short stories, to be sure, but I have yet to tackle one of his novels. (Sailor Boy keeps trying to get me to read IT, but the first chapter scared me so much I had to put it down. I can apparently only handle King in bite-sized pieces.)
I have not read CATCH-22. If I am ever divorced, this fact may be one of the causes.
If you look at the list of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die (I own a copy of this book, and have posted about it before), I have read precisely none of the books listed in the “21st century” section, though I have, in fact, read over half of the ~50 listed in the 18th century and earlier sections. I’m apparently more of a ancient classics and “rise of the novel” type girl. (Some day, we shall have to discuss how the editors believed there were 70 books one must read before death written in the 5 or 6 years of the 21st c. before this book was published, while they list fewer than 200 written in the entire 19th century.) However, of the books I have not read on that list (lots and lots), I am not embarrassed not to have read quite a few of them.
I am not alone in this. I often have conversations with writer friends where they are like, “oh, yeah, haven’t read that one, either.” And I remember one time in college, when I was discussing with one of my lit professors how the reading of one particular classic was changing my life, he got up, closed the office door, came back, leaned in, and whispered conspiratorially, “I haven’t read it.”
 What books are you embarrassed to have not read?
Today’s giveaway is another book I am embarrassed to have not read: LAMENT: The Faerie Queen’s Deception, by Maggie Stiefvater. I drove three hours down and two hours back to see Maggie sign this book that I’m about to give away, as well as my copy, five hours which must have surely been plenty of time to read said book. But, alas, still on my towering TBR pile. Add it to yours by leaving a comment here.
A busy day here, which is why this blog is so late. Woke up this morning to find out that my adorable, perfect puppy has graduated into the full throes of adolescence. I was out the door at 7 a.m. this morning, by which time, she had already:
- peed on the floor, which she hasn’t done in months! (In point of fact, she peed on my favorite Yale shirt, which, to be fair, I left on the floor, but still!)
- eaten one of Sailor Boy’s socks
- jumped on Sailor Mom’s head
- squeezed herself underneath the fence and run out into the street
And when we told her to “come” she sat there and blinked at us, which I believe is the adolescent puppy equivalent of rolling her eyes. The vet warned us this would happen, but I didn’t believe her. Not my Rio! Not the pride and joy of her puppy school class!
Oh crap, brb. She’s eating my slipper.
What? I’m, like, totally obedient, Mom! Whatever. It’s so unfair!
And this just before my folks come to town, too, toting their perfect one year old sheepdog. I was hoping to impress them with my well-behaved pup. Instead I will try to impress them by restraining myself from throttling her.
Bleh.
So anyway, was up in Annapolis today. I love it there. So pretty! We ate lunch down by the pier. Oysters and crab and flounder and shrimp. Yum! Almost made me forget how mad I am at Rio.
In other news, I saw a fascinating blog post the other day at Curiosity Shop, about the theme of choices/romance/feminism in a lot of YA literature. Martha writes:
“[It] is an underlying theme in a lot of teen books, since it’s a big teen concern–choosing who to be, how to live life, how to be independent. But my fall reading has very much been about characters whose main conflict is the choice between being true to themselves, following their dream or passion or being in love. I’m so glad that there are these books for teen out there. They are important, because they show that it’s not all about the boy (or girl, if the protagonist is a boy).”
This is a theme that very much concerns me, too, and has been a central issue in almost every book I write. It is, in fact, a central issue in most romance novels, especially the ones I really like. The difference is that the genre constrictions of modern (by which I mean “shelved in bookstores as”) romance novels requires what the romance folks call “a happy ending,” by which they mean that the two central characters “end up together.”
Which in turn requires romance novels (well, at leas thet kind I like) being written so that being with the boy is also the way in which the character is most true to herself/ or she can be with boy AND achieve her goal (or same, genders reversed).
The other day, I was watching You’ve Got Mail, and it occurred to me (in a way it did not when I watched the movie as a teenager), that the reason for the long interlude between the closing of Meg Ryan’s store and the happy romantic ending was so that the audience could realize that Meg’s life was not over because she failed in her stated goal of keeping her mother’s store open. That sometimes, your life takes a path different from what you expect, and you are thwarted in one direction, but you grow from that experience and find new happiness. Meg did in fact lose her little store (hope that’s not a spoiler for anyone) but all her former employees became star salesmen at the big box superstore and Meg herself is first offered a job as an editor and decides eventually to write books (and you see that she has a flair for writing from the very start). Also, she gets to keep her stunning apartment that New Yorkers only live in in the movies. Score.
If she lost her store, was crushed by Tom Hanks, and then went off into the sunset with him right away, there would always be this part of you going “What? You can’t be with him! He ruined your life!” For me, the happy ending is not necessarily the romantic one. I like it when the girl (or boy) saves herself (or himself) and then gets the boy (or girl, or boy, or vampire, or etc.) Happy romantic ending without happy “other goal” ending is not satisfying to me, though happy “other goal” ending without happy romantic one works for me just fine. (cf. Casablanca, which a very good, NYT bestselling romance writing friend tells me she will never watch because she heard it “didn’t have a happy ending.”
This is why I don’t write “shelved in bookstores as” romance novels. Because my books don’t necessarily end with the girl getting the guy, though they do end (so far) with the girl getting what it is that she wants. And sometimes, that involves NOT getting the guy (as in Under the Rose).
I’ve been seeing a lot of reactions to Graceling (one of my fave books of the year) that show dissatisfaction with the romantic ending of the book (I’m really not going to spoil it for you). I’m not sure why. Maybe my standard for “happy romantic ending” differs from other people’s, as I know my standard for “happy ending” differs from a lot of romance readers. The romance in that book really worked for me, not least because the dude’s name was Po. But, again, I think that Rick had it right in Casablanca: Sometimes the problems of the world are much bigger than two crazy kids, and sometimes, love doesn’t work out, and sometimes that’s a good thing. It’s not a tragic ending a’la Nicholas Sparks. It’s great.
The most common question I get about the secret society series (after “Were you ever in a secret society?”) is “Who is Amy going to end up with?” My response is “Why do you think she is going to end up with anyone?” Amy is 22 years old at the end of the series. She just graduated from college. I may have been dating my eventual husband at that time, but I sure as heck didn’t think I was, and I bet the vast majority of people in Amy’s situation are not going to marry their college sweethearts.*
Whether or not she “ends up with” someone (in the immediate sense of “is she in a relationship on the last page of the last book”) was not, to own the truth, soemthing I thought about too much as I was planning the series. I was more interested in where Amy “ended up with” regarding herself and the society.
I guess this is rather rambling, My general point is yes, I’ve read all the book that Martha is discussing, and I loved the way the romantic themes were handled in each one, and it’s something I think about a lot in my own work, so great post, Curiosity Shop!
 Oh, and in honor of said post, today’s giveaway is ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, which is the first in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, by Tamora Pierce. I love this series, though I totally read it out of order. After I told someone I was calling the killer unicorn book RAMPANT, they said to me, “Oh, like Tamora Pierce’s book?” So I rushed out to get hers (It’s actually called LIONESS RAMPANT, which was even more terrifying to me, since “lioness” also plays a major part in my book) to make sure that I hadn’t written in ground already covered, and then I was like, “Um, where have these books been all my life, and how come no one, knowing my vast love of Eowyn and Aravis and all things warrior-woman esque, has told me about them before?
So, in case you, too, love strong women and non-traditional romantic stories and have not heard of this series, comment here to enter. You shall thank me later.
________________
* Though now that I’ve said this, I realize that my mother, my brother, my best friend, and two of Sailor Boy’s best friends are married to their college sweethearts.
Great discussion in the comments thread yesterday (that I wasn’t able to participate in because I’ve been running around, trying to get stuff ready for our first ever Christmas Chez Diana). There must have been something in the air, because Jen Hayley was talking about the very same thing on her blog, and then later, I had a conversation with a YA writing friend who admitted that she didn’t want to say the words “young adult” when talking about her book because she was worried it might turn off potential readers. She said that some adults have dismissed her books out of hand when they hear they are “YA.”
I wonder if some of this can be tied to the whole myth of the “reading level.” I am constantly hearing proud parents declaring that their 10 year old reads “at a ninth grade level” and bemoaning the fact that books about 15 year olds are too mature in subject matter to match the “reading level” their children should be engaging in. I’m no educator, but I heard this whole reading level thing is actually describing the ease in which the average ninth grader would read the same material. It’s about phonics, not about books.
These people who are adults now (and dismissive of YA) were told growing up, exactly how old the books they were reading were through the calculation of some voodoo syllable-per-sentence mathematics that really had nothing to do with the book’s actual meat. When I was in middle and high school, we’d brag that we weren’t reading teen books, but adult books. The same group of friends who flocked to see TOY STORY on opening night were shocked that I, the English teacher’s pet, was still re-reading Narnia. They’d go to see SCREAM but would scoff at my Christopher Pike novels (they might, under duress, admit they read Stephen King). Entertainment designed for children or teens was totally appropriate, even cool — unless it was books. Having been trained to look on the back all our lives and press our “reading level” — books couldn’t be for fun. They needed to have bragging rights attached.
I think this attitude has abated somewhat in the face of the worldwide phenomenon that was the Harry Potter novels. I remember seeing fifty-something businessmen with Pentagon employment tags carrying their latest HP around the Metro a few years back. But at the same time time, I lost count of the number of articles saying that reading a chick lit book was rotting your brain. The New York Times was so distressed perplexed by the endless presences of Harry Potter on the bestseller lists that they made a whole new list just for kidlit. The prevailing opinion about books is that they are not supposed ot be fun. They are not supposed to be entertainment. They are supposed to be high art. No one talks down to you if you unwind after a long day by watching Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, or Lost. But if you read a chick lit or a romance or a science fiction novel, you’re clearly low-brow. Stupid. Pathetic.
And you wonder why adult publishing is in grave peril.
Children’s publishing is doing better, perhaps, because kids have not yet been trained to think of reading as something they only do under duress so they can sound erudite at cocktail parties. “Oh, of course I read Proust!” (I don’t know why I’m picking on poor Proust. I’ve never read him. For all I know, I may find his books to be fascinating page-turners.) Kids meet in school yards and talk about how much they love Dumbledore. In kids publishing, it’s okay to be both highbrow and still tell a good yarn. Look at the Prinz winners and the National Book Award Children’s recipients.
 One more note: in the comment thread yesterday, katayoun asked why books need to be split into all these different genres. It’s really a marketing concern. If you walked into a bookstore and you saw a huge wall marked “fiction” it might overwhelm you. But you read one book, and you like it. Say it’s a romance. You go to the romance section, where you figure there may be other books like that book, and you’ll like those. Ditto for fantasy. Or books for teens. Or mysteries. or so on and so forth.
And now, the winner of THE HUNGER GAMES is: Tez Miller. (Tez, hon, you are so getting this slow-boat-to-Australia method. I am researching my Amazon options as we speak. Serves me right for including the overseas folk).
Today’s giveaway is Maureen Johnson’s SUITE SCARLETT. Leave a comment here to enter.
I found it interesting yesterday that the comments about Wonka seemed to be evenly divided between “I didn’t like the Wilder version because he scared the crap out of me” and “I liked the Burton/Depp version better because the Wilder version was too saccharine and Burton/Depp brought the weird.”
So some folks thought Wilder’s version was terrifying (raises hand, also points to Marilyn Manson, who also clearly found it terrifying, as he co-opted the “rowing song” which may actually be some sort of other literary allusion, but Google’s not helping me out much), and some found it “too sweet.” Maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to Burton’s brand of weird. It’s like, oh look, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, and Deep Roy. Must be a Tim Burton film. Or maybe I just had to sit in that boat with Gene Wilder too many times as a young, impressionable film.
I also remember an interview Jack Black did when School of Rock came out where he talks about how folks think that acting in children’s movies is such a step down or whatever, but then cites Wilder’s Wonka as something that may be a tad too intense for the kiddies.
All of this, by the way, segues neatly into my rant for the day, which is about the trend I’m seeing in a certain family of YA reviews that’s making me very hot under the collar. Hey, it’s great that folks are reading YA. But they have done it with a certain level of condescension which is amazing to me.
“XYZ is unique in children’s books, because you don’t often see this level of intensity/horror/consequences/violence.” (False. I’ve seen some pretty horrific stuff go down in YA novels. Read How I Live Now, or Life as We Knew It or Living Dead Girl — or a book without any form of “life” in the title: The Forests of Hands and Teeth – to see some more pretty horrific stuff happening to the characters.)
“XYZ is pretty good, for a book for children, but I doubt the author will be allowed to take it to the next level, because children’s books rarely do that.” (The “that” in question, by the way, is a rebellion against the powers-that-be by the teen main characters, which is so common in YA fantasy and SF books that it’s practically a cliche.)
“It was so obvious to me in XYZ who she was going to end up with.” (This from a romance blogger –the mind boggles, really? You knew who the hero of a romance was? — about a teen romance based on a retelling of a classic romantic plot)
“I read XYZ’s author’s adult work, but the YA is probably too simplistic/uninteresting to hold my attention.” (Insert any of the following authors into that statement: Allegra Goodman, Neil Gaiman, Sherman Alexei, Mark Twain, Robert Heinlein, Cory Doctorow, Scott Westerfeld, John Scalzi, Kelly Link, Richelle Mead, PC Cast, me…)
And then I look at someone like Roald Dahl, who pulled no punches when it came to writing for children, even cutesy, fantasy, genre books. His stuff was dark. It was intense. It was often scarring. Witches scares me to this day. And that’s not even YA. that’s for children children.
Also, have all these folks forgotten what these teens are reading in school? Hamlet. Macbeth. The Iliad. The Sun Also Rises, Farenheit 451. As I Lay Dying. The Jungle. Lord of the Flies. The Crucible. Where are they getting the idea that kids read simplistic/happy-go-lucky/non world-shaking stuff?
What’s so cool about today’s YA is that it’s a response to the fact that, in the past, teens were jumping straight to adult books because so many of the teen books weren’t intense/complex/world-shaking enough to hold their interest. YA imprints get this. There are all kinds of books published in YA now that I know whould have been adult a few years ago (Madapple comes to mind) and all kinds of books that were published adult that would have been (and perhaps are now) being repackaged as YA (Prep and The Lovely Bones, for example and Life of Pi already is).
 In honor of that, today’s giveaway is THE HUNGER GAMES, which has already achieved massive crossover appeal from the kids market to the adult market, and was one of my favorite books of the year. It was pretty close to a perfect book; I had a few quibbles with the inclusion of a aliens-land-in-chapter-14 scene near the end (those of you who have read it probably know which scene I’m talking about). But an astounding read. I so can’t wait for the next one! I’m currently making my way through Suzanne Collins entire backlist (Before this, her YA debut, she wrote MGs.)
Leave a comment here to enter.
P.S. Those of you signing up for my newsletter today can check the archives on Yahoo to get the message I sent out yesterday with the prize. There will be another next month.
Well, the competition was stiff. Between the blogs, we had nearly a hundred entries in the Great Rampant ARC giveaway these past few days. Thank you guys so much for entering, and I hope that we can do another one in the future. Perhaps with the hardcover.
And for those of you who didn’t win, never fear! Everyone signed up for my newsletter gets a prize today, one that I shall be sending out forthwith. (What a lovely word, forthwith. It should be utilized more often.)
So this weekend I indulged in a lot of R&R (and a little Rx) with Sailor Boy and Rio. (Everyone in my family has a water-themed name but me. ::Pout::) I feel much better. Thank you so much for all the well wishes!
[[Wait, says the savvy reader. She hasn't posted the winner yet!]]
I watched the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which had the unintended effect of putting all the songs from the far-superior Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in my head all weekend. (“I want a party with rooms full of lawf-ter! Ten thousand tonnes of ice crrrream! And if I don’t get the things I am awf-ter, I’m… going…to…scream!”)
Things I liked about the new version:
- The fact that the Oompa-Loompa songs were based on the actual songs Roald Dahl wrote in the book, which I now unfortunately realize I have memorized (this is why I have no room in my brain to remember to, say, take the trash out on Thursdays).
- The scene where Wonka finds the Oompa Loompas
- The casting of the children and their parents
- The more faithful rendition of the great glass elevator and the great glass elevator sequence
What I Didn’t Like: (hint: pretty much everything else)
- The pacing was way off — slow in places it should be quick and vice versa, there was much less time/indulgence for “magic” and mystery/horror
- Johnny Depp’s Michael Jackson act got so tiring after five minutes –I’ll watch him in anything, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
- None of the parents seemed overly concerned with the fate of their children. It was all so staid.
- Helena “Bellatrix Lestrange” Bonham-Carter should never be cast in a role without edge
- What the hell was up with that whole bizarre dentistry subplot? I mean, three cheers for Christopher Lee and all that, but Whaaaa? (Disclaimer: I only read The Great Glass Elevator once, and disliked intensely the character assassinations of the other Bucket grandparents, so this plot may exist in that book and I just don’t remember it.)
I wonder if I would have liked the movie more if I didn’t grow up with the wonderful (if less faithful) Gene Wilder version. Interesting. I guess that goes to show you that “faithful” in movies-from-books does not always equal “good.” I far prefer the less “faithful” latter-day Harry Potter films to the slavishly faithful Chris Columbus ones. I prefer the Lord of the Rings movies to the books, because I think they did a great job of cutting out all the crap (and turned Arwen into a character I could actually imagine Aragorn picking over the kickass Eowyn). Then again, though I would have no idea how they could possibly have filmed Prince Caspian the way it was written (which is almost entirely in flashback, as Trumpkin explains the situation to the Pevensies), I was not as big a fan of that adaptation, mostly because the idea of a romance (however chaste) between Susan and Prince Caspian is just gross.
Edmund kicked ass, though. Ah, Edmund, how do I love thee? You are in my triumvirate of adoration for characters whose names start with E: Edmund Pevensie, Elizabeth Bennet, and Eowyn of Rohan. Love love love…
And let us not even get started on the changed ending of The Golden Compass. There’s really only two reasons to watch that movie: Nicole Kidman’s letter-perfect rendition of Mrs. Coulter, and armored polar bears fighting in the tundra.
[[Wait! cries the savvy reader. She still hasn't picked a winner!]]
Also, back to Wonka: the book and the old movie always made me crave candy. This one did not. That’s a point against it, as far as I’m concerned (actually, since the old movie was in part sponsored by a candy company, it makes sense that they would design the movie to make you hungry).
[[And still no winner!]]
Well, I’m off to run errands.
[[Hey!]]
Be back later!
[[Come on!]]
Okay, fine. the winner of the RAMPANT ARC GIVEAWAY is: Jocelyn!
(Jocelyn, please email me to discuss details.)
…is at 70 Days of Sweat.
Please note: Comment on the “Big Friday Giveaway” post in order to be eligible for the ARC of Rampant.
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