The End: National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month. This year, I finally decided I would participate. I signed up on the website, I outlined a little bit, I pondered it over in the week leading up to it... then I started two days late because I found myself with an outline but no real direction.

At the end of the month, I have accumulated just over 25,000 words on a single project. Sort of. Some of the pieces feel like they belong to distinctly different stories though in my mind they are all part of the same world. Some of it was world-building, as opposed to the story arc of my main protagonist(s) (never even met the secondary protagonist).

My NaNoWriMo Graph

Do I think I "failed"? Absolutely not. I may not have churned out the 50,000+ words of other writers, I may not have "WON" the event that NaNoWriMo is celebrated to be... but I wrote 25,000 words related to ONE project. That's a lot, given that I'm much more comfortable in shorter, smaller territories. I did fail though, in one important regard - and it's the one thing I believe kept me from generating the 1,667 words per day.

I failed to KNOW my characters very well. I didn't know my characters, so it was very difficult to invest in their story. Certainly, I find their story interesting, or I'd have thrown it to the wayside immediately.

The pieces that got me to and beyond my daily word goal? Those were about characters I adapted from other half-formed stories in my mind, characters that I've played with and known in some regard or another (some of them for several years). These were easy. I knew their internal landscape. I could put them in situations of varying types and I'd know how they'd react, respond, what they'd get out of those situations, how they might change and develop... I knew them.

Kyern, though? The first of my two main protagonists? I don't know him. What I do know of him, he doesn't know yet. I know he's young, a little confused, and pretty much 'lost' in the world. He lives his day to day life and that's all there is. At the beginning of this story, he doesn't yet know ANY of the things that might make him more interesting. He's pretty much just a regular kid (young adult, but... kid) who has a very irregular destiny ahead of him. I found exploring his life, his daily routine, to be rather boring - but I needed to explore it to get to know THIS much about him. (I did discover an old man who is pretty interesting though). Novel-story progression is slower... maybe not as slow as my mind has painted it, but slower than a short story's nonetheless. I learned a lot from it and about it.

I have to say that I did not get very much use out of the NNWM community. I don't need the pep talks, and I don't like the socialization aspects of it. I also don't like the competitive nature it evokes when it declares those who reached the 50,000 words "winners" - that means that everyone who didn't (even if they didn't give up) are losers... and that's incorrect. (If there are "winners", there are "losers" - that's how the dichotomy works.) Maybe I'm being overly semantic. Maybe I think that the people who really won are the people who will keep writing, who didn't stop writing even when they knew they weren't going to reach 50,000 words...

In any case! I participated, I did not reach 50,000 words in 30 days, and in the future I will not be participating within the "official" capacity again.

I wrote.
I outlined a novel (or series!) length story, which is something I've never done before.
This story is interesting.
I don't need a 30 day "writing competition" to tell me that I'm worthy, that I am a writer.

Maybe what really bugs me is that I don't think the word "won" even has a place in this process. I think there's did and did not.

I did:
A lot of things I'd never done before, including writing (almost) every day on a singular project.

I did not:
Reach the 50,000 word goal within one month.

When compared to one another? One of those things has significantly more weight than the other.

The end result is that NaNoWriMo isn't a fit for me. I'm very, extremely happy for those people who find it to be a useful motivator and tool, but now I know it doesn't serve the same purpose in my personal space.

Thanksgiving Every Day

I know - it's been nearly a month since my last update, and everyone (who cares) is still waiting on my update about MileHi Con, not to mention the Storyboards I haven't kept up with since school started...

But you know what? It's okay. No one is gnashing their teeth or pulling at their hair over it, are they? If so, you have my sincerest apologies.

Ultimately, all of this is relevant to today. I could talk about the hypocrisy that is brought out in my country over this "holiday" wherein everyone is thankful, sharing, and giving... followed immediately (sometimes starting at the stroke of midnight) by rampant, sometimes even violent consumerism... but I think it's been said before.

I'm thankful for a lot of things, even if I don't say it all the time. Like the fact that I can hear a hawk outside my window - that's really an amazing thing. Or the people in my life... But, more relevant to this blog is:

I'm thankful that I have such a fulfilling life that writing in this blog has been a STRUGGLE to find/make time to do. I am so caught up in doing things that I love (sometimes that I just "need" to do, but love when that need isn't so great as to sleep deprive me) that these little things (lots of little things) fall a little to the wayside. I think about it, but I'm just doing things so often... I wouldn't be very thankful for it if I weren't engaged in so many other great facets of life...

Loved ones or not, holiday or not (for my international friends) - I'm thankful for you all, all year.

My Books Multiply Like Rabbits

Last weekend (10/19 - 10/21), I attended MileHiCon, in Denver, Colorado. I'd love to sum it up in a single word, but that would require me being some kind of word magician like Lewis Carroll and creating a nonsense word that meant what I wanted it to mean due to other words not quite cutting the mustard. (That's a long sentence!)

There's a lot to tell! I cannot communicate to you how excited I am, or how - a whole week - I am still riding the high of being surrounded by authors of all gradients and immense talent. They are also full of splendiferous ideas and gracious hearts and humility and wonderful things of every sort. I've no doubt they are "just human" as well, which makes all the rest that much more sparkling.

I'm going to take a risk here. Let me explain:

Typically, I like the approach of "if I'm going to list/link some, I should do my best to list/link all" - but let's be honest here. That would be a MAMMOTH undertaking. What I will do, instead, is try to mention all of the authors to whom I listened on panels when I talk about their specific panels. For today, I wanted to talk about the big pile of books I bought.

I had the opportunity to meet and talk with each of the Guests of Honor (I even got to hang out with a couple of them, and engage a couple in earnest, if brief discussions). I'll admit it, even talking about it here, I am squee'ing inside. It's difficult to pick a place to start, so I'll go with... books!

I bought MANY books this weekend. And some of them have stories behind them.

Cherie Priest

I finally got to meet Cherie! A long time ago (about 12 years now), I had a LiveJournal (I still have it, I just don't use it so much), and through that LJ I met many wonderful people. Among them are more than a couple of ladies who have since become published and successful authors. (I feel there IS a difference between published and successful, I can talk more about that later if someone is curious.) Cherie is one of those ladies, and I've been so happy seeing her get her due from the publishing and reading world. As a result of meeting her, of being so excited to realize that she is as much of a genuine person in "real life" as she seems through her site & blogging, I purchased almost all of her books that I could find in print. Yeah. Major hetero-girl-crushing.

Books I bought and why:

Boneshaker
Ganymede
Dreadnought

These are the books that broke Cherie into the limelight. I'm pretty sure it's about time that I gave them a read.

Fathom

Cherie's first Publisher's Weekly starred reviewed book. Seems like it didn't get its due, and I've been excited to read it for many years now.

Bloodshot
Hellbent

Well, what can I say. She calls them her "Trashy Vampire Novels" but that's not what drew my attention. During a panel, she talked about the old vampire folklore that discussed one of the ways to escape the undead abomination was to throw grain or rice or sand or pebbles on the ground in front of the monster. It would then be forced to stop and count the discarded objects. All of this links to the notion of OCD, and Cherie said that her protagonist was "a vampire with OCD" - I was hooked. I've read the first chapter of the first book and am enjoying it.

CJ Henderson

What can I say? I've never been happier to be surprised. I went to the convention MAINLY to get a chance to meet Cherie and to HOPEFULLY sit in on some great panels. I didn't intend to have as great of a time as I did. In the course of things, I went to a panel that consisted of all of the Guests of Honor. At that panel, I had the opportunity to 'meet' CJ Henderson for the first time. His charisma and his no-bullshit attitude won me over in a heartbeat.

I am a living example of his belief that an author earns their fans one at a time. I didn't even really know who he was (I figured out later that I had done a lot of reading about his character Lai Wan), but after that... I had to read something of his. I browsed a local bookstore in the dealer room and found:

What You Pay For

Now, here's where things get even more amazing. Daring to dare, I went to the Autograph Alley and approached Mr. Henderson to get him to sign the book. Meek creature that I can be, I explained (apologetically) that I had not really known who he was, but he made such an impression, I had to pick up something of his from the store. I pulled "What You Pay For" out of my bag. He laughed - a short and surprised and utterly delighted sound. Turns out, the main character in this collection of stories... one of his first, and one of his favorites. Immediately, he flipped into the book and started reading to me, in Jack Hagee's voice. It was amazing; a lil mini reading just for me.

I've read a few pages (this seems to be a trend), and love it. I've always liked detective fiction (not mystery/crime, which I feel are SLIGHTLY different), and I think Jack Hagee and I are going to get along quite well.

Molly Tanzer

A Pretty Mouth

I saw Molly on a panel back at Denver Comic Con and immediately loved her hair. At MileHiCon, I got to meet her and even hang out a little bit (under the influences of some alcoholic beverage(s)). So very glad I did! As a result, I picked up her newly released book as well. I even got her to sign it! ...because why not? I've read a couple pages and am looking forward devouring the rest.

Eventually, my hope is to read and write at least a little review on all of this - as well as delve more into each of these authors' bodies of work. You know, and perhaps one day sit on a panel with them.

Banned Books Week

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." - Oscar Wilde

Banned books. This week has been Banned Books Week. I know. I'm late. But it's never too late to read, and I can't imagine that extending awareness beyond this singular week is a bad thing at all. Brace yourself - there are a lot of links here, and I encourage you to share them, read them, absorb them all.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association and a long list of other rather upstanding groups.

I've been reading a lot about the subject, and it's always been in my periphery. My awareness of "banned books" began in elementary school when I witnessed several books being thrown into the garbage by my public school's librarian. When I asked why they were being discarded I was told that they had been found inappropriate. I asked what that meant. Our librarian explained that either the books had been found inappropriate for elementary school students' age groups or contained content that was inappropriate in general. Amongst these books were several from the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg. A brief description of the series:

Guardians of the Flame is a long-running series by author Joel Rosenberg and is arguably his best-known work. The series is about a group of college students who participate in a fantasy role-playing game, and are magically transported to the world of the game by their gamemaster.

Ever the curious child, and familiar with the game of Dungeons & Dragons (as well as the cartoon series with a similar story), I asked what was wrong with those particular books. "They promote Satanism." I kid you not... Someone decided that Dungeons & Dragons was Satanic (lots of people still seem to hold this belief) and that any book about imagination, about people traveling to another world, overcoming disabilities, being challenged to do the Right Thing... was inappropriate because it would inspire children to Worship The Devil (I really thought these ridiculous theories about fantasy-genre books and games would die by the time I hit my 30's - but they persist).

To this day, there are books that suffer because of this kind of ignorance. Religious groups are not the only offenders. So are too-vocal parents who never bother to read literature and only latch onto one aspect of a book - often misinterpreting it - and then feed a mob mentality into getting a book censored.

In equal turns, I have seen a lot of people saying "These books aren't banned. I can go down to my local bookstore and pick up a copy right now." This is faulty logic, but it is powerful logic, and easily convinces many people that there's no such thing as banned books in the United States. That information flows freely and ideas are not censored. In comparison to other countries? in comparison to previous decades? This is true, but it's not the Truth.

When an institution that has the word "public" in it chooses to remove a book from its shelves or its curriculum because someone finds the use of a word or an idea in it offensive, that is censorship, and that is "banning" a book.

Here's an example:

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. This book has been challenged in locations and removed from some. Why? During a book burning in the story, one of the many tomes incinerated is the Bible. This put people up in arms. "It talks about burning the Bible! How horrible!" ...except the point of the book is that, yes, it IS horrible, but if you continue to ban literature that offends or inspires people, then the Bible is going to end up on that list eventually. What other offenses might Fahrenheit 451 contain? Questioning authority, individual critical thought...? The major themes of Fahrenheit 451 are exactly the themes of arguments made by people wanting to STOP book bannings in public (especially educational) venues. 

By the logic that bans books like Fahrenheit 451, movies like The Matrix and Equilibrium should be banned, too. (Of course, we just take care of the "appropriateness" factor with ratings on films. Equilibrium was rated R for gun-violence, some language, and "drug-use" - despite the fact that the "drug-use" in the film is mandatory according to law.)

If you think it's not a problem, then also consider the Harry Potter series. In the early 2000s, I was stuck in a town I will not name for a short time due to an alternator in the car in which I was traveling having died... There were signs for book burnings, calling for people to destroy any and all Harry Potter books & paraphernalia because it brought children to witchcraft. Yes, this was in the early 2000s A.D. in a town large enough to be called a city.

I've kind of started rambling, but I wanted to say this:

Just because a book may no longer be banned on a government level (thus, the best word to use would be "outlawed"), doesn't mean the history of banning is something we should forget. We need to be aware of the types of books that HAVE been banned - not just in the United States, but all over the world - and guard against letting these sorts of things happen in the future.

Do a Google (or search engine of your choice) search and explore the tons of blog and news articles about banned books.

Educate yourself on just what book censorship is, how it happens, why it happens, what is happening with it now and has happened with it in the past. Don't just say "I don't see it, so you must be making it up." And, before you write off Wikipedia links, check out the source references at the bottom of articles - people have done the research, respect that and make educated decisions based on what you find.

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain

"Censorship is the enemy of truth -- even more than a lie. A lie can be exposed; censorship can prevent us knowing the difference."  -- Bill Moyers (transcription, video)

Stephen King's thoughts, from 1992.

Here are some informational links, if you are curious about what books are banned, how and why, and where.

Book Censorship (defined)
Challenging Literature (what it means when literature is challenged)
Book Censorship in the United States
Most Commonly Challenged Books in the United States
Books Banned By Governments

And particularly: About Banned Books (from the ALA, explaining a lot of the details on how and why books are banned)

Depression: Elder Black Pudding

Depression is a monster, and it's not even a very active one. It's more like a slime or a sludge or an ooze or a pudding, once you know what it is. It clings to your legs, slows you down, makes the struggle seem futile, until you want to give up because 'What's the point?'. Then it creeps up and swallows you. ... Elder Black Pudding Depression. (I enjoy the pun that is "inky death" in the descriptor of that link. Which is a good sign.)

It's not rational either. Anxiety & Depression feed one another, and both are extremely irrational. Crazy with a capital K.

I spent the better part of this last week practicing "fake it til you make it", without much success, but just enough to keep moving. That's why there were no blog updates containing any writing; I didn't do any.

Last night I finally pounded out a fresh 750'ish words, and over half of those are going in the can. This is not helping my ascent from the hole where that crazy part of my brain keeps telling me that I have nothing of value to contribute, but... it's still progress.

I am hopeful - and being kicked by my depression for every ounce I muster - that I will have offerings here to the muses, myself, and readers this week.

I also start school tomorrow.

In the meantime,  I wan to share words from other people about this monster (I'm afraid I don't have any witty titles for these):

http://critical-hits.com/2010/12/27/depression-dungeons-dragons/

http://www.elizabethmoon.com/writing-depression.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/14/books/exploring-the-links-between-depression-writers-and-suicide.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2011/05/writers-block-and-depression-why-you.html

http://hollylisle.com/live-to-write-another-day/ -- I really love Holly's stuff. Her voice is so honest.

Memory Eternal: Harry Harrison

It's been a week now, since Harry Harrison's passing and I feel like I've been remiss in not talking about it. While I've never written any real Science Fiction (my Flash-Challenge piece about Icarus is the closest I've gotten and has me learning a lot about Quantum stuff), it's always held a special place in my heart as a reader. I'm afraid I don't have any heavy insights to add to the masses offered all over the internet in the wake of his passing, but...

While catching up on some blog reading, I came across this post by Neil Gaiman where he shared scans of an article he wrote for Knave in 1984 (if you don't know, Knave appears to be the British cousin of Penthouse), where he interviewed Mr. Harrison. The scans are hell on the eyes to read, so I took the time to transcribe the article as I absorbed it. It is certainly worth sharing.

Geek & Sundry: Story Board Episode 1 Recommendations

Nothing original here, just a list of recommendations made during the course of the Geek & Sundry Story Board Episode "Urban Fantasy: Threat or Menace?" and a couple of links that I forgot to put into my last post. (Putting them here as I don't expect folks to go back through a previous post to find two itty bitty links.)

I mentioned two authors that I forgot to link:  David Boop and Delia Sherman. Both were mentioned in the context of Interesting Things that they've said about genre and things revolving around the notion.

On to the recommendations! (This list is from the Info section below the above-linked video.)

Diana Recommends:

Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne
Jane True series by Nicole Peeler
The Black Sun's Daughter series by M.L.N. Hanover

Emma Recommends:

Topper; Rain in the Doorway by Thorne Smith

Jim Recommends:
The Twenty Palaces series by Harry Connolly
Alex Verus novels by Benedict Jacka

Patrick Recommends:
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Christopher Moore
The Odyssey by Homer
A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare

In addition to these listed recommendations made toward the end of the panel, I made note of a few other books mentioned in the course of the panel conversation. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list (it's not very long either).

Last Call by Tim Powers
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (I'm not 100% sure this was mentioned - it could be I was just thinking so hard about it when they were talking about Urban Fantasy & its cousins filling the need for fairy-tales/myths/folklore that I think it was mentioned)
The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams (will be released Sept 4, 2012)

Geek & Sundry's Story Board: Urban Fantasy

I've learned that I love panels. They are akin to miniature lectures and there's always more to learn if you pay attention. So, this week, Geek & Sundry launched the first episode of their show Story Board, titled "Urban Fantasy: Threat or Menace?" It's not a traditional panel, but a "hangout" - I'm going to call it a panel.

Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicle) hosted with Jim Butcher (Dresden Files), Emma Bull (War of the Oaks), and Diana Rowland (White Trash Zombies) as guests. The whole thing was just over an hour long and well worth the time. It was obvious that they had a lot more to talk about, and it's a shame that it had to end at the hour mark. 

During the course of this panel they discussed several questions and I had several thoughts of my own that I wanted to put out there. Anyone is welcome to chime in with their own thoughts, here. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother sharing!

What Qualifies A Story As Urban Fantasy

Emma Bull opened the discussion saying she felt that to be an urban fantasy a story needed to be set in a city. Diana Rowland disagreed, saying that it only required the story to be set in the real world. Jim Butcher kind of wrapped up the discussion saying that the whole thing was really about bringing magic and monsters and other scary things to modern audiences.

For myself: If a story is not set in an Urban Environment, I don't feel like it should be called Urban Fantasy. This harkens back to my post about covers - like the cover, a book's shelving (what genre labels are REALLY for) promises something. Urban Fantasy promises two very specific things - not one or the other. It might be meeting the qualifications of Fantasy, but if there's no urban setting there should be no Urban label. Even the requirement of the Real World is a little shaky. Emma mentions Fritz Leiber's city of Lankhmar as a good example of a setting for what she'd consider non-Real-World Urban Fantasy.

This is also a good and solid example of how broken the idea of genre can be when you start talking about specific novels. The Wikipedia link there for Lankhmar lists the genre as Sword & Sorcery and Fantasy. (David Boop said, at Denver Comic Con, that genre is  dead and tags are the way to go. I tend to agree for pretty much these sorts of reasons.)

The City Is The New Forest (attributed to Delia Sherman)

There was talk about the Forest, and the City of modern days being the Forest of older stories.

I don't feel very strongly about trying to identify stories by genre, when I don't feel that genre is the right way to organize things, but there are certain aspects in Urban Fantasy (and within several other, related genres) that I find deeply interesting. Late in the panel, these authors discussed the gap that genres like Urban Fantasy are filling in the human psyche, in our need for stories. It is suggested that these stories fill our need for the Fairy-tale - which Rothfuss defined as "set in the Real World where something Other intrudes on that Real world" - and Emma Bull suggested that, instead of Fairy-tale, these stories fulfilled a need for Myth, becoming Contemporary Myth.

I don't disagree, but I think at this point, the topic started splitting hairs. Fairy-tales, Mythology, and Folklore share a very strong and central spirit. We've come to treat Mythology as "a way of explaining phenomenon in the world in the absence of science" - but what about the Minotaur? What about Io? What about a dozen other myths that don't serve to explain anything? And Fairy-tales have been relegated to the role of Moral Tale, when that's not at all what they were. Folklore may be a better compromise...

I don't think any of these things are necessarily accurate, either. People are disenfranchised with their regular lives, they need escapism. Urban Fantasy, just like Epic Fantasy, just like Science Fiction, and all the labels in between, serve as a source of that. Urban Fantasy is just much more easily digestible, which leads us into the next part...

World Building in Epic Fantasy vs Urban Fantasy

Rothfuss suggested that one of the major draws of Urban Fantasy was the lower amount of world-building required (this results in less effort for the audience to immerse in the story - they know the setting). Of course, Urban Fantasists disagree, but I find the arguments on their side of the fence to be fairly weak. Yes, the Urban Fantasist is still required to provide description - as Emma Bull said, "Not everyone has been to New Orleans." - but they are not obligated to create an entire world. We've been living one and building one for tens of thousands of years that they get to use.

By no means am I saying that Urban Fantasists have to do less work. No, not even a little bit. There's a lot of research required when you are working in the real world, but this fact remains -

Urban Fantasists do not have to build the world from the foundation up in the same way as Epic Fantasists. There is world development and a required good use of setting, but the Real World provides a vast body of foundational material that the Urban Fantasist doesn't have to create or explain.

Consider, for a moment, the things an Epic Fantasist must think about and create that an Urban Fantasist may take for granted:

• Geography
• Ecology
• Cosmology
• Physics
• Geology
• Biology
• Cultures (and all that entails)
• Meteorology
• Population (Flow, Growth, Expansion)
• Societal Structures
• Technology
• ...conventions of time-frames: paved roads, wheeled transport, electricity, water services, etc...

Needless to say, the list could go on. I might've spared you some -ologies if I'd thought about it...

Sex - Where's the Hot?

The panel also discussed sex in Urban Fantasy vs Epic Fantasy. I don't have much to say about this topic, I'm afraid. Rothfuss said it best, "Sex is important to the characters, but it is rarely important to the plot." There's a balance that a lot of authors don't know how to keep.

Of interest: Rowland said she was yelled at for not having sex in one of her novels, whereas Rothfuss was yelled at for having it in one of his.

Sex seems to be expected in the Urban Fantasy genre, and they attribute this to its close relation to Paranormal Romance. I admit to having a reluctance to go too far into these related genres specifically because of this relationship. For example, I have read 16 of the Anita Blake novels. In the beginning of the series, there was a very good ratio of story to sex. When the sex started to actually get in the way of a story, I stopped reading entirely. I hope Urban Fantasy doesn't fall into that trap.

If you want erotica, go to the erotica section.

Zombies

No literary discussion involving monsters, magic, or other such things would be complete without mentioning zombies. To wrap things up, I bring you this quote from Jim Butcher, with which I heartily agree:

"In the zombie apocalypse, it's not the zombies I'm worried about. It's the other survivors. Those are the guys who are gonna getcha."

Coursera - Fantasy & Science Fiction

I recently signed up for a free course over at Coursera - Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. For anyone curious about how this course works, I thought I would do a little description of my experience so far, with my understanding of what will happen in the upcoming days.

The first session started last Tuesday and our first homework (a short analytical essay about Grimm's Fairytales) is due this Tuesday. Afterward, peers will grade the essays and the professor (Eric Rabkin from the University of Michigan) will post a lecture about the week's unit. Peer feedback is due by Thursday, at which point the submissions for the next assignment will open.

The lecture happening after the writing assignment is a mixed blessing. This keeps the students' work from being influenced by the professor's views on the piece(s). Whereas I typically have a better time generating essay topics via interactive discussion, the online course doesn't offer quite the same kind of environment. There are, however, forums set up and a lot of active discussions on them. I have posted to a couple of threads, but not entered into any conversations yet.

Next week's unit is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. (It just so happens that I picked up this book as part of my summer reading and started reading it a couple of weeks ago.)

The course will continue unfolding with the same structure, moving through the different texts in the syllabus: Dracula (Stoker), Frankenstein (Shelley), Stores & Poems of Hawthorne & Poe, The Island of Dr. Moreau/The Invisible Man/"The Country of the Blind"/"The Star" (Wells), A Princess of Mars & Herland (Burroughs & Gilman), The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury), The Left Hand of Darkness (LeGuin), Little Brother (Doctorow). It's a pretty hefty reading list, but I'm going to do my best to keep up with it, in addition to starting the Fall semester. (Of course, I'm taking a literature course there, too.)

And in September? I'm looking at also taking Modern & Contemporary American Poetry taught by Al Filreis from the University of Pennsylvania (still on Coursera). It is another 10-week course.

Judging A Book By Its Cover

"Never judge a book by its cover" - this advice is meant to apply to more than just books and I've had success using it in my daily life. When it comes to books, I stand with it in spirit. In truth, however, I'm completely guilty of looking at a book's cover and moving on without giving its content the time of day. This case of hypocrisy is one I revisit now and then, and try to examine to see why I would proliferate this advice when I'm not entirely willing to follow it for myself. (I guess it's not unlike MOST advice in which we all traffic.)

Window Shopping

I'm no expert on the concept of cover design, or what makes things "pretty" - I only know what catches my eye, and what doesn't hurt it. Even when I'm not shopping for anything in particular, some aesthetics demand to be seen. For books, this means their spines need to be legible and attractive. Believe it or not - those plain black spines with plain white san serif fonts have a better chance of getting me to pay attention than the busy ones with script fonts. (A good title doesn't hurt here, either.)

When confronted with the facing cover, I have a soft spot for fantasy inspired art. At the same time, I like a simplistic framing device more often than a full-cover style.

The old Dragonlance novels, for example, had great cover art by Larry Elmore, but also a solid cover framing that allowed the title and the Dragonlance branding to present themselves without interfering with the art or looking too busy. When the publishers wanted to update the look of the books, they went to full cover art. I like those copies distinctively less and will go out of my way to find second-hand Dragonlance novels just for the older covers. Since that time, they did go with a compromise on the two styles, leaving a solid bar across the top and on the bottom, but switching artists (to Matt Stawicki).

Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series also had a plethora of different cover styles. You can see them: Here. My favorite is the Gould series from 1983, followed closely by Yoshitaka Amano's Japanese covers the following year.

It may sound like I don't enjoy full-art covers, but I do! It's just a little harder to catch my eye with them. Especially in fantasy & science fiction - they all start to look the same after a while.

From My Shelves

First, the plain cover. This book had a dust jacket at some point, but I picked it up in a secondhand shop completely naked. This is Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural,  part of The Modern Library published by Random House, Inc. in 1972 (renewing the 1944 copyright, it says). Aside from the content (which is my true love, here), I love a plain cover. Gold lettering? Even better! Wide enough to display the title so I don't have to tip my head to read? We have a winner.

Next, the simplistic cover. Never mind that this is Stephen King (one of my favorite storytellers). I am in love with this cover aesthetic. This reprint of The Eyes of the Dragon was done by Signet Fiction (a part of the Penguin Group (US) Inc.) as part of a massive reprint of King's works, in the early 2000's (there's no reprint date on the copyright page, and different pages provide different reprint dates but most range from 2001-2004). In fact, my first large purchase of King's books came with this reprint line because I loved the covers that much. They are easy to read, they give a kind of coherence to the shelf, and they aren't very distracting - while still being pleasant to the eye.

Finally, the full cover art. I spotted this book in a bargain bin (more like a shelf, and on the bottom no less) in a K-Mart sometime around my 15th birthday. I hadn't read the first books in the series (it would take a few years more for me to have funds of my own with which to hunt them down), but this cover said I had to take it home, and made promises to me. It promised I would love the book, it promised me a struggling protagonist, or a sympathetic antagonist (I got both), and a different world. It delivered.

Promises Made, Promises Broken

Speaking of promises - a cover, to me, is a window into the kind of dedication and care that has been put into the creation of a book. I understand that, by and large, the author doesn't necessarily have any sort of say over their covers (and some shouldn't - writers are writers, not necessarily very good at presenting or designing a visual aesthetic). This decision lies with a publishing company's arts department. In the case of self-publishers and small press, however, the situation rests more with the author than not.

That being said - my criticism rests on both sets of shoulders equally. I've seen big publishing houses put terrible covers on books and I've seen self publishing authors go with amazing covers.

Whatever impression a cover gives, there is a promise that the inside of the book is going to deliver on it. Bad covers promise sloppy stories, pasted together from disjointed ideas, and bound inside a cover that serves as a train-wreck of a metaphor. Good covers promise carefully drawn characters, stories that follow some sort of logic (fiction need only follow its own rules of logic, not the real world's), and care given to - if not every word - the story overall.

While these promises don't always prove true, they are still the messages being sent by the covers.

It's hard NOT to judge a book by its cover, and I think that perhaps we shouldn't always be cover-blind. Despite that, I still try - now and then - to pick up a book with a cover that I don't like, but a title that I do, and give the interior a try. I also appreciate new & different covers that move away from the traditional forms. (Silhouette and semi-abstract styles, for example.)

Do you have book cover pet peeves, preferences, ponderings?

Reviewish: The Amazing Spider-Man

This isn't where I was thinking I would start my blog, but it seems as good of a place as any.

I realize that I may be a terrible "film critic" - a title I've never claimed for myself. Although Roger Ebert's review reflects my feelings about the new Spider-Man reboot, I keep seeing largely negative reviews from people who have issues with the soundtrack, or the deviations from the comic books, or just because "didn't they do this 10 years ago?"

I went into The Amazing Spider-Man with no expectations, except that it should be somehow "better" than the first. Let me rephrase that; I did not have an expectation that the movie should repeat, re-represent, or retell any particular aspects of the comics (keeping in mind that Marvel has had several different iterations of reality/multiverses and multiple retellings of Spider-Man's origin story) or the Raimi films.

What did I expect?

I expected a good Story; a story that showed me the development of a teenage boy who gains superpowers from a spider bite, on top of dealing with all the regular problems that come with being a teenager. Not only a teenager, Peter Parker is also a kid whose parents have left him (abandoned, even) with relatives, is a bit nerdy and awkward, and has to process very important ethical and moral questions above and beyond what at typical person must face. I expected the story to progress logically, to keep me engaged, and to resolve in a way that made sense without a feeling of deus ex machina (in a world with superheroes & supervillains, there's a lot more leeway on what acts as deus ex machina, but you can still sense a cheapness when it happens, and it usually requires an even BIGGER power to pull supers out of the fire).

The Amazing Spider-Man met and exceeded all of these expectations. Andrew Garfield was extremely comfortable in the skin of Peter Parker; his love of the character showed in his excellent portrayl of it. Peter's reactions to events in his life were believable and realistic. There were no forced-angsty moments, and when the right amount of teenage emotional conflict reared its head, the character was not forced to stay in a scene or on camera for longer than any teenager would remain in that particular situation. The movie, overall, was extremely satisfying for me, given my expectations.

Some of the nitpicks I've encountered:

Soundtrack - from my single viewing, I remember seeing 3 or 4 songs listed in the credits. Songs, not score. Of these songs, I remember ONE during the course of the movie, after an adorable but awkward encounter between Peter and Gwen. The score, however, was wonderful in the theater. It wasn't distracting, and in the quiet scenes where it became noticable, it was as fitting as the scenery.

The Suit - The suit doesn't get a lot of time in the story. There is the way in which Peter learns he should probably cover up his face if he's going to go around looking for the guy that killed Uncle Ben (spoiler alert?), there is a little research, and a very short construction scene. Some people pick at how suddenly Peter becomes an excellent sewer due to his powers. Sewing, by hand, is NOT a difficult skill to pick up.  In any case, the suit is not a focal point of the story and I had no problem with it being glossed over. It didn't NEED super detail. There was no time for it.

Gwen Didn't Know - For those unfamiliar with the comics, the general canon for Gwen is that she had no idea that Peter was Spider-Man. This has been altered in the film, as have some of the events that happened in relation to Gwen, her father, and Spider-Man - and their interesting interpersonal relationships. These changes did not bother me because they made sense in the context of the film. Given the number of reboots/retellings/alternate universes that have happened in the Marvel universe, I'm surprised at how much criticism this gets. In at least one iteration, I felt the comic dragged the reveal out too long - but that is also the nature of the medium, which brings me to my next point of minor contention.

Film is a completely different medium through which to tell a story. A comic, done weekly or monthly, is set up to build up tension that will carry over to the next week, the next installment. You receive a rather small snippet of story with a lot of repetition or filler, with a major arc lasting months or even years. A movie has roughly 2 hours to give you a complete and satisfying arc. While this film could've given more time to a few moments (I personally would have liked to see more development between Peter & Dr. Connors, as well as a little more between Peter & Gwen after the climax), I didn't feel cheated.

All in all, everyone MUST make their own decision as to what they like and what they don't; my criteria makes it a lot easier for me to enjoy a good story, regardless of any source material.