Orderly

now finished: re-reading Alibi through Evidence of Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries series
now reading: Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary, the Full 3,000-Year Tradition ed. by Tony Barnstone with Chou Ping
now listening: My Story by Elizabeth Smart with some ghostwriter dude, Chris Stewart, I think? 

Yes, a lot going on. It's all different though. These past couple years I've had one audio book going pretty much all the time, which I listen to while on walks, or exercising, or commuting on buses with no working lights (ahem, that happened in Korea sometimes). They take me forever to get through, especially back when I had crappy headphones. Now I have good headphones, or should I say ear buds, that actually stay in my ears while I'm running, but we're training for the 25K River Bank Run (three days from now!) and I listen to music playlists, not books, during my long runs, so I still only listen sometimes, and ... yeah. The poetry is because I dabble, reading a poet or two per day, slowly working my way through the entire history of Chinese poetry. (Just kidding. A sampling.) My actual book-book at the moment is Mutiny on the Bounty, which I did read years ago, but about which I remember next to nothing, so I'm re-reading it and then am going to watch the Oscar-winning movie from the 1930s, and just for kicks I'm probably going to read the next two books in the Bounty trilogy as well.

But let's address my other little ongoing project--Sue Grafton. I have a serious question about that series. No, this isn't about their implausibility or weird characterization or whatever other little flaws impede a reader's enjoyment of them. This isn't about how I'm probably going to blaze through the alphabet as I've set out to do, despite my finding that F Is for Far-Fetched. The question I have is one that came up as I was perusing some Goodreads reviews of E Is for Evidence. Several reviewers mentioned that they were working their way through the series, that they were thinking of giving up, that since Alibi the books have gone downhill, and comments like that. And then...and then... brace yourselves!!...and then, a reviewer of E Is for Evidence named Ed writes: "Every few months, I've been checking out a Sue Grafton alphabet title. 'E' now makes for eleven, according to my Goodreads account, that I've read."

WHAT?! E is for eleven??!

Seriously, E-is-for-Ed, that is basically just like stabbing me in the heart with an icicle. You're reading them out of order?!?!

I don't understand how Ed can do this. How can anyone not read this series in order? I mean ... FIRST of all, I can't just read mystery series out of order, period. This is a big part of my entire problem with reading mysteries in the first place. Every time I browse them, just as with all those times at Borders when I would touch and shelve them, I look at them and get intrigued by them and make mental notes to get around to reading these authors one day but I can't just plunge in anywhere!! I have to start at the beginning, duh, obviously!!!! And if the first one is out of stock, or it takes too much effort to figure out which one in a certain series is even the first one (note to authors and especially publishers: that really sucks, by the way. Just make it obvious on the cover of the book, please, thank you), then forget it, can't try out that author that day. This is why we like Goodreads and authors' web sites that tell us clearly "Ellie Hatcher #1" or "Anna Pigeon #6" or whatever. Waaaaaaaaay back in my early Borders days I accidentally read Nelson DeMille's The Lion's Game, a Detective John Corey book, without having read Plum Island, which is the first John Corey book, and I have been traumatized ever since. I still think about it every single year when I read my annual Nelson DeMille. It's pretty terrible that that happened.

But..but...but, Ed. Ed! With the Sue Grafton alphabet mystery series it's TOTALLYF******OBVIOUS, dude! It's the alphabet!!  It is totally completely thoroughly 100% designed to be achingly obvious what order they go in. Only Janet Evanovich's One for the Money Stephanie Plum series could be possibly more obvious. But I don't think so. Some of Evanovich's titles are cleverly familiar phrases, at least, and you could be forgiven for seeing a random shelf with, say, High Five and To the Nines and not realizing it's even a series and that those are book #5 and book #9. But the Graftons!! Oh my god! A Is for.., B Is for..., C Is for...  It's clear! It's so clear! To anyone! There's no way you didn't know! Alibi, Burglar, Corpse, Deadbeat, Evidence, Fugitive, Gumshoe. You knew! You knew, Ed! And you chose to read them out of order?!?!

I mean, I really couldn't do it. Like, couldn't. I actually could not read those out of order. If someone was all like: Hey, have you read any of the Kinsey Millhone mysteries? and I was all, Nope! and they tossed L is for Lawless my way and said, Here! Try this! I would be like No! No! No! Get it away!

How could you just do that? How?

My god, please tell me that you people out there understand the gravity of this situation.

Potpourri of February/March Reads

Some recent reads, in rough order of worthiness from best to worst:

These were good and/or great
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
Lonely Planet's Phuket Encounter

These were meh/suspect
The Crazed by Ha Jin
Coolidge by Amity Shlaes

This one should be thrown across the room
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Yes, that's correct. Gone Girl is in dead last on the list. I'll get to that in a second. Oh wait, maybe I should say "I'll get to that in literally one second." Which is not true, because it's going to be more than one second, and the expression "I'll get to that in a second" is FIGURATIVE, but apparently the authors and editors in the publishing industry today (see also: The Hunger Games) don't actually have to know what "literally" means but they can use it over and over and over (literally dozens of times!) in these contemporary please-take-me-seriously novels, jarring the reader (but not literally jarring, because how could an author put me in a jar?) and making it so obvious it's the author's voice coming through. Not the literary voice or the writing voice, but the text message voice. That doesn't really work when you tell a story from the points of view of two different characters, but they both just sound like you replying to an email.

Contrast that with The Moonstone, a gem (see what I did there?) from Victorian England, but not your English teacher's Victorian England novel. It has been called "the first detective novel" (would Agatha Christie and the author of The Invention of Murder agree?) but what's so great about it is the narration. There are a few point of view shifts, and each character's distinct attributes are fun, but the snark of the old servant who tells the first half is an unbeatable delight. I love reading classics for numerous reasons, but the fact that they are better edited than most of the crap on front-of-bookstore tables is starting to become a main one. It's bad enough that we live in a memoir- and blog- and print-on-demand-glutted world where everyone who thinks they write can "publish" their words, but when the actual publishers allow sloppy, comma-spliced "voices" to infiltrate the bookstore shelves, it's the beginning of our decline and fall. And that doesn't mean reading can't be fun. I have found most mystery/thriller page turners to be generally well edited over the years, but I guess that is changing. If you want to read a classic that doesn't feel like slogging through a classic, hie thee to The Moonstone.

I read The Moonstone in Phuket, mostly while lazing by the pool and/or by the sea, and while we were there I also read Lonely Planet's Phuket Encounter. Obviously, I had skimmed that before (on our first trip to Phuket) and used it as a reference, but this time I read the whole thing. It just so happens that we also seriously considered moving to Phuket while we were there (I had a job offer, but didn't take it) and I was  enjoying thinking about getting to know the place more deeply as a resident, but still really enjoying it as a traveler, and the Encounter books are good for that: an enriching taste of a place, with where-to-go and what-to-do ideas plus tidbits and a real feel for the spot and its vibes.

I also sat in one of my favorite Phuket coffee shops and finally read Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County. I can't believe I haven't seen a stage production of it (yet) as it has been on my radar since I lived in New York, but it's gloriously funny and dark and I think it's wonderful. I love the wicked dysfunction when it is done so right. Once we returned to Phoenix, we saw the film, and I think Julia Roberts was robbed of a Supporting Actress Oscar.

On to the incredibly average! Our friends whom we met while teaching in Korea and who now live and teach in Shanghai came to Thailand while we were there so we could all hang out in our third country together, and one of them passed along to me Ha Jin's The Crazed, partly because she gave up on it out of boredom. She had heard quite a bit about it, which makes sense since it's about university grad students and professors in the north of China, kind of the exact life my friend is currently living only without the whole lead-up to Tiananmen Square uprising factor. I've still never got around to Waiting despite the many times I touched it at Borders, so this was my first Ha Jin. The story wasn't terrible -- the main character's emotional meandering was a little weird, as was his inability to focus, but it didn't really devolve into unbelievability until the end-- but the writing itself is, for me, filed under "What's all the fuss about?" The main thing about it is that it feels like reading a translation of Chinese language, even though Ha Jin writes in English. This tells you SO MUCH about language, and it is so interesting (for someone like me, who likes words and language) to contemplate the differences between what-we-call-Mandarin and English, and it opens up fascinating questions about translation of literature, our own personal translations of our inner voices, the neuro-linguistic processes of creating art, and so on -- but I really wanted a novel and not a case study. I don't see how people can fawn all over his writing if it all comes across like this, because it doesn't feel natural or like a native speaker at all. Should published writing have to feel like it was written by a native speaker of that language? Which is worse, that Ha Jin sense of prose detachement and not-quite-being-there in the language, or the Gillian Flynn feeling that someone is "literally breathlessly talking to my best friend!!!" as they jabber in a purposely casually unpolished first person?

Coolidge was "meh" for entirely different reasons. Amity Shlaes apparently has writing skills and editors, but her structural and philosophical problems outweigh mere questions of storytelling quality. It's exciting to move into the modern presidents in my Prez Bios project, but I didn't know Shlaes was going to usher us in with this In-Defense-of-Reaganomics screed. She is so eager to prove that if we had listened to Calvin Coolidge's thrifty New England budgeting advice (not that silent Cal was discoursing to many people) we wouldn't have ruined our nation/economy/lives that she makes great leaps in both logic and paragraph construction.

Her book feels like this: "So, Calvin and Grace, now a settled married couple on the political rise, gazed with wonderment at the Boston politics Calvin was dipping his carefully scrubbed toe into, and they set up their Northampton kitchen and ordered new drapes that Calvin cleverly found in a catalog sent from his Amherst classmate who now runs a railroad car and why can't you people see that Wilson ruined everything by allowing Democrats to hang things in the White House windows!?! Those Democrats were signalling to all the world our fear, hiding from the economic truths of cost-cutting and good, solid American materials.  Also, you should pray at night before bed. Let's skip now to Calvin becoming vice-president. Oh wait, you mean I'm actually supposed to connect his life's timeline together in this biography? I'd rather show how his son dying clearly reflects the impending doom of our nation, with Franklin Roosevelt lurking somewhere on the White House lawn, poisoning the Coolidge boy himself. Or was that just a fever dream I had?"

In other words, I learned a lot, including how to read a biography/political interpretation skeptically, a lesson Shlaes teaches rather well.

Last, and very certainly least, we have Gone Girl, the book that took bestseller lists by storm. As one of my clearly brilliant Goodreads friends put it, "It is a book for non-readers who 'read' and like to recommend the book they are 'reading.'" The first half is engaging, if not engrossing, although it's only eighty or so pages before the intern who was in charge of removing "literally" from every other page apparently had to go back to class or checking Instagram or something. Frankly, I related a ton to "Diary Amy," which as I'm sure your book group pointed out gives us so much to ponder about relationships, psychology, how well we know people, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but then the book starts to veer way off course with its (ideologically) flipped-about second half, and seriously, the less said about the ending, the better. Not because I can't say anything more without majorly spoilering (which is true) but because it's so awful and so doesn't quite work, despite how well Flynn thinks she has stacked the deck against one of her characters (get out! get out! get out! yes, you can get out! and by the way, you suck, too!) .... This book is just a big sigh. Also, a deeply troubling symbol of the state of the U.S. publishing industry: Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me, but don't waste time with silly things like editing, syntax, and vocabulary; what do you think we are, writers or something?

Ugh. I literally wanted to throw the book across the room when I literally  finished reading it, but I was literally reading it on a beach, so I literally had to drop it on the sand instead.

True or false: The word "literally" is used correctly in the previous sentence.

(I wouldn't suggest checking your answer with Gillian Flynn.)

In which I eventually get to the point about Alafair Burke

now finished: Angel's Tip by Alafair Burke
now also reading because Angel's Tip was on my Kindle for PC and I need to have a real book with me: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson

Here's my recommendation for you: Alafair Burke. Now, please recommend a mystery author to me.

While it has been said that I refuse to read genre fiction, that is not actually true. I avoid genre fiction, which is quite different. However, of the genres, mystery is obviously the one that I'm most likely to read and/or enjoy, and I do so from time to time. My favorites, the ones who have inspired me to go out and devour their entire oeuvre, have been Sandra Scoppettone and Nelson DeMille. I have enjoyed mysteries from several other authors, too, but there are two main problems with reading mysteries:

1. Buying them when they are brand new really is cost-prohibitive for the amount you would want to read. What I mean is, they go by a lot faster than some "literary fiction" or non-fiction, so if you're going to go spend 30% off of $24.95 on a hardcover, really, which book is more worth it? The one that you'll still be reading in a few weeks, obviously, not the one you can finish on the bus ride home from the bookstore. This is why a.)libraries are awesome and b.)so are used bookstores and book swaps and c.)the Genres (mystery, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, horror) do so well in mass market - they're cheaper that way! This is also why I immediately bought Alafair Burke's 99-cent downloads for Kindle for PC when her publisher offered the limited-time sales, because that's an awesome way to buy mysteries.More should be done, I think, to make the suck-you-in-stay-up-reading genres cheaper when they are new, and then there would be more new book sales, at least to me.

2. It can be intimidating to choose a new mystery author, because unlike, say, my A-to-Z- Literary Blog Project, in which I chose a book from 26 different authors I had not previously read, one for each letter of the alphabet, and I did not feel particularly compelled to read their other books first or all at once (or, in the case of 'O,' any other books of hers at all, ever ever ever) but with a mystery you might be browsing in the bookstore and come across some mystery that looks quite good and you're about to go ahead and get it when you notice that it is "Sammy Sleuth #3" or whatever, and then you decide to start with #1, but the bookstore has the whole series in stock except the first one, and so you make mental note to look for the Sammy Sleuth series next time you are in a bookstore or library, but then the other 900 books on your to-read list get in the way, and life happens, and then you find yourself a decade after deciding to read Sue Grafton's A to Z Kinsey Millhone series (being clearly fond of A-to-Z things) still stuck on 'E'...or was it 'F'?...and really meaning to catch up but you couldn't just buy them all in one fell swoop. Or is that just me?  (But you still have big plans to catch up by the time Sue Grafton's Y comes out, and then you can anticipate and await and maybe even buy Z all brand new hardcover like. With a coupon.) (Although, recall that I have a major problem with people who make the letter X "stand for" something it doesn't stand for, like in a kids' book that doesn't want to do xylophone or x-ray again so it tries "X is for eX-treme" or whatever. No. Just, no. If Sue does that, I retract everything I've ever said in support of her A-to-Z series and I'll stop at K, or wherever I am when that happens.)

Oh yeah, and I also read a few more  mysteries when I worked for Borders and had a.)an employee discount b.)check-out privileges for those new hardcovers c.)advanced reader copies galore. That's when I read one each from Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke, and a few others...but even then I would feel, like, really really compelled to read, say, all of the Dave Robicheaux novels in a row, although of course I didn't, and then I felt guilty about that. Christ. This is the problem mysteries present to a devoted but kind of weird, obsessed-with-planning-things-out reader.

ANYWAY. Alafair Burke. (And why yes, they are related, but their books are totally different, so don't be all stupidly reviewing her on Goodreads by saying, "Two stars -- she is  nothing like her father" because that is just dumb. Drew Barrymore is not like Lionel Barrymore, but they entertain in different ways. What is wrong with people?)

So Angel's Tip is the fourth Alafair Burke book I have read, which is not bad! for me! -- although this is her New York-set Ellie Hatcher series and I did leave Samantha Kincaid hanging, note to self, must get back to those --but, see, I had this extra motivation of sort of knowing the author. Careful readers will recall that I first read Alafair Burke during law school because she was my Criminal Procedure professor and as usual during the law school semester I missed reading my book-books so terribly much and then I hit upon the idea that I could justify reading an Alafair Burke thriller as studying for her exam. This was not as much a stretch as you might imagine, because she does drop some procedure in there, thank you very much. 

I had no idea what an Angel's Tip is before reading this book. Turns out  it's a drink. A little too sweet and chocolate-y for my tastes, I think. Reading this book made me super-duper nostalgic for living in New York, and although normally when I contemplate moving back to the U.S. and "settling" somewhere I usually dismiss New York as too a.)expensive b.)full of New Yorkers (specifically, those who say New York is the greatest place in the world without having lived in the rest of the world), this week I just was all like, "Oh, Manhattan! I sure did like living in Brooklyn and being in the city all the time and riding the subway and seeing historical things and the actual Macy's on 34th Street and McCarren Park and Chelsea Piers and Central Park and Roosevelt Island and lots of food and bars and sports and art and whatnot..."

One of my favorite things about Alafair Burke's books is when her characters say snarky things. Alafair likes the clever, incisive snark (to wit: she recognizes Entertainment Weekly as the genius magazine that it is) and she's rather good at snark herself, and I like it when her characters bust it out. She also weaves pop culture references throughout her novels. I have this vision of some literary archaeologist a hundred years from now reading her books and commenting on how they decidedly capture turn of the (21st) century New York, but who was this Zac Efron fellow?

One of my favorite things about this Alafair Burke book in particular is that it makes a little fun of the whole cluuub scene, particularly in the meatpacking district, where people are paying $400 for a bottle of liquor so they can get bottle service and feel special or rich or something. I do recall my minimal experiences with bottle service at the dance club (clearly, I was hosted by other peeps) and I don't think I will drop that kind of money on alcohol even when I have it one day. I have never been fond of standing in line to get into a club or bar, and I liked that this book revolved around that scene, which is fun to mock a little bit . I was also exceedingly happy to find in this book a petulant law student, a hideously unethical lawyer, and a philosophical conversation about whether one should go to law school.

I'm not going to say much more about the plot. I half believe that mysteries shouldn't even have anything on the back cover besides blurbs and an author bio. I don't want to know anything about a mystery before I start reading it. (This may be another slight problem in my whole finding-mysteries-to-read thing.)  But I will say that I do recommend Angel's Tip and it totally sucked me in. I was reading it on Kindle for PC, having downloaded it all cheaply, but I don't take my laptop everywhere so I had to go away from it a lot and I would be itching to get back to it and find out what happened next. Oh, and also?! I actually had a suspicion of whodunnit, and this absolutely never ever ever happens for me, so that is weird. Finally, I must tell you that I enjoyed Angel's Tip more than the first book in the Ellie Hatcher series (Dead Connection) but of course I can't recommend that you start with Ellie Hatcher #2, so... yeah. You'll just have to read them both. If you are capable of plunging in with #2 in the series, you are a better different reader than I!

And now that I have recommended Alafair Burke to you, bring it! Who is the mystery/thriller author that I should be reading? Remember, I love Sandra Scoppettone and Nelson DeMille, I enjoyed Tell No One as much as the next bookseller, I really dig the interviews I've read/heard with Sara Paretsky and Karin Slaughter although I've never got around to reading their stuff, and I freakin' hated Men Who Hate Women, or, as you know it, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Final Grade for Angel's Tip: B

It's About Meat War

now finished: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

A decade or so ago in a galaxy not too far away(L.A.), some friends and I had a book group at Borders (R.I.P.) called "The Books We Should Have Read in High School." One of our selections was Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. One member of our book group triumvirate was skeptical about reading this particular work and he would offer up as a reason "It's about meat." It was very funny, the way he said it. Of course it turns out that The Jungle is about far more than meat; in fact, I found that meat played a decidedly small role when compared to the struggles of Polish and other Eastern European immigrants and all the horrible things endured by factory workers and people who weren't rich (you might say the 99%). "It's about meat" became a kind of code-phrase of ours to use for a pre-reading simplification and/or rejection of a book. You know, like, All Quiet on the Western Front: "It's about war."   Or Twilight: "It's about sparkly vampires." If only more people had the good sense to reject that "book," for that or any other reason. You get the idea.

ANYWAY, I don't suppose The Hunger Games could be so simplified, as the title of this blog post would do, but I am here today to tell you that yes, it is about war. The reason I am telling you this is because some friends of mine - who have read it - recently engaged in a discussion about whether The Hunger Games was anti-war. This surprised me because I, who had obtained the vast majority of my Hunger Games knowledge from two years of incessant Entertainment Weekly coverage including an interview with author Suzanne Collins, was decidedly under the impression that it was an anti-war novel. You know, governments plucking teenagers from their homes and families to fight to the death in a breathlessly followed/televised spectacle for no discernible reason, other than to further the power and glory and control of said government? Um, that would be---> war.

Well, I have now read The Hunger Games, and while it is not "amazing" or "soooo totally well written" or even a little bit well-written, it is okay, and it has an interesting premise. Which is about war.

A few quotes from the book:

"What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?" - p.55

"We both know they have to have a victor. Yes, they have to have a victor. Without a victor, the whole thing would blow up in the Gamemakers' faces." - p.344

"It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year. I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job." -p.386

War, war, war.

From the "Nothing Attracts a Crowd Like a Crowd" Files

They tried to make me love the latest hyped bestselling trilogy, and I said no, no, no...

I can hear it now. Now that I have finally read The Hunger Games, I will discuss its flaws and then people will accuse me of disliking it because it's popular. Please let me assure you that popularity is not what I dislike about The Hunger Games.

Oh, wait. Perhaps I should rewrite those sentences so Suzanne Collins and her fans can better understand them. Let's try this:

I can hear it now, that I have finally read The Hunger Games, I will discuss its flaws and then people will accuse me of disliking it -- because it's popular -- please let me assure you that popularity is literally not what I dislike, about The Hunger Games.

Unfortunately, that is how Suzanne Collins writes  in The Hunger Games, way too often for my liking. Yes, my basic idea is still communicated in the above paragraph. Yes, someone might write that way on a daily basis -- someone like a blogger, or perhaps a junior high student writing a note to a friend. You know what should not be written that haphazardly and punctuated that poorly?  Books! The atrocious writing in itself would be bad enough, but then you have to think about the editing. Who are the people at Scholastic Press who let sentences like that go to print?

I do have things to say about The Hunger Games' anti-war allegory (oh yes! there is one!) but first we have got to talk about the punctuation. I was not aware that as the publishing industry crashes and burns their plan was to just release books without bothering to copy edit them, but I really have no other explanation for what happened here. I am not sure when I have ever been so frustrated by run-on sentences, missing commas, extra commas, and missing apostrophes. I thought maybe I was reading my Facebook news feed, but no, it was an actual published book.

You want examples? OK!  Page numbers are from the hardcover edition I borrowed from my local public library.

•  "Electricity in District 12 comes and goes, usually we only have it a few hours a day." -p.80
• "When suddenly I notice Peeta, he's about five tributes to my right, quite a fair distance, still I can tell he's looking at me and I think he might be shaking his head." -p.150
•  "But I don't dare leave the jacket, scorched and smoldering as it is, I take the risk of shoving it in my sleeping bag, hoping the lack of air will quell what I haven't extinguished." -p.173
•  "The girl with the arrows, Glimmer I hear someone call her -- ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous -- anyway Glimmer scales the tree until the branches begin to crack under her feet and then has the good sense to stop." -p.182
•  "They know I have the bow and arrows, of course, Cato saw me take them from Glimmer's body." -p.241
•  "I chew a few mint leaves, my stomach isn't up for much more." - p.282
•  "The strong fatty cheese tastes just like the kind Prim makes, the apples are sweet and crunchy." - p.309
• "Portia and Cinna receive huge cheers, of course, they've been brilliant, had a dazzling debut." - p.360

I'm pretty sure Suzanne Collins' computer might actually be missing its semi-colon key. 

Meanwhile, she manages to do something else terrible. In multiple instances, first-person narrator Katniss explains that a character "literally" did something or other. I noticed at least four, such as:

• "To say I make it in the nick of time is an understatement. I have literally just dragged myself into the tangle of bushes at the base of the trees when there's Cato..." -p.223
• "He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean with his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds." -p.312

There is nothing more colloquial, current, and annoying than the use of the word "literally" in all kinds of sentences where it doesn't belong.  Turn on your television or radio and you will hear everyone from sportscasters to politicians adding "literally" into their sentences for emphasis. You will hear them use it in place of "very" or "actually" or even "not literally at all" such as when an ESPN commentator the other night said the NFL draft was "literally consuming New York City." No, it was not literally consuming New York City. That's the whole point of using a metaphor, or speaking in entertaining hyperbole.

It is becoming rarer and rarer to hear or read a use of the word "literally" in which the word means what it means, namely, the opposite of figuratively. Millions of us have been guilty of overuse of "literally" in excited casual speech. That's bad enough, but the misuse is even more annoying than the overuse, in my opinion. I recognize that word saturation happens; sometimes words achieve a weird place in the vernacular. Does this mean published, edited books should succumb? No! That is why it annoyed me in The Hunger Games. It's too easy for Suzanne Collins to write as if she is blogging. It's too easy to fail to be careful and creative with language. It's too easy to require nothing special from our writers and editors, in a world where everyone can self-publish and cheapen the value of the written word.

I'm sure someone will say that Katniss talks that way. Katniss is supposed to be our postmodern heroine, telling her story in a casual, personal, freewheeling tone. Yes, creating a narrative voice -- even a casual one -- is a literary achievement. The writer should create a voice, maybe even a jaded one peppered with slang, like Holden Caulfield.  Consider all the ways J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is nothing at all like The Hunger Games. The author isn't creating a magical Katniss voice if Katniss just sounds like the author herself. That is my objection to "literally." It doesn't sound like a young, fierce hunter from District 12 in the dystopian future. It sounds like Suzanne Collins. Today.

This stuff bugged me to no end as I read The Hunger Games.  The story is all right. In my next post, I will address how very much it is indeed an anti-war novel. But I find myself once again disappointed by the latest hypity-hype-hyped bestseller, and I have no immediate desire to rush out to get my hands on the next installment in the series.The fact that shoddy work can get published and that millions will breathlessly enthuse about it without stopping to notice or care about such basic mistakes offends all of my writerly and readerly sensibilities.

Is The Hunger Games anti-war? (And if not, why not?)

now reading in English: Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom
now reading online in French: Douze ans de sejour dans la haute Ethiopie by Arnauld d'Abbadie

now listening on my MP3 player when I exercise: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis

As much as I don't enjoy reading multiple books at a time, it just works out that way when the medium is unique for each one.  I never used to listen to audio books, and I still can't stand to listen to fiction being read to me AT ALL, but I have discovered that I can listen to non-fiction. It's kind of like listening to intelligent news/public radio. So anyway, I'm making my way through these three works, at different times and in different places.

Anyone notice what I'm currently not reading? That's right, The Hunger Games. But fear not! You will be happy to know, ye of the "ZOMG!-it's-SO-amazing!" persuasion, that I am planning to read it as soon as I get to the top of the holds list at the good ol' Phoenix library. (No, I'm not going to buy it. I prefer to buy books that need my dollars more, and check out from the library something that is already a runaway bestseller and that I am not sure if I'll love.) I think I will actually reach the top of said library holds list fairly soon, as I have gone from position #236 on the holds list to #29 in just a week and a half.

So yes, I am planning to read The Hunger Games, and I will probably see the film, too, and I am not at all concerned about seeing the movie soon, because frankly there is nothing I hate more than being packed into a crowded theater, because I prefer silence with my films. I never ever ever go see movies on the days they come out. Ever. I verrrrrrrrrrry rarely go see films on Friday or Saturday at all. I like having lots of empty seats around me. Anyway, I have actually been vaguely planning to maybe read the novels for a year and a half or so, because the constant EW coverage and some of what I read in the blogosphere started to convince me they were worth a read. Of course, in 2010 when I started to become intrigued by The Hunger Games I also capitulated and read Men Who Hate Women aka in the U.S. as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and it was so overrated that I promptly did not read the next 2 Stieg Larsson books and I went back to ignoring bestselling series for a while, but I've come back around to The Hunger Games because it's so short and YA, so how much of a mental investment can it be, really? And because it's anti-war.

I mean, I thought it was anti-war.

I certainly read about it being anti-war. In the aforementioned EW coverage for starters. I've read a lot about the book in the last two years, much of it straight from Suzanne Collins' mouth, and I have a distinct impression of an anti-war message. But today I've been following the discussion of some friends (who have actually read the books?) as to whether it is in fact anti-war. So I poked into the blogosphere a bit on this specific topic, and I think what I'm discovering is that there might be more disagreement on what it means to be anti-war more than there is  disagreement about The Hunger Games.

And I certainly don't think it is exclusively anti-war. Of course it is also anti-totalitarian evil f#&*$ in government and anti-infatuation-with-glamorized-entertainment-at-the-expense-of-real-people's-tragedies and so on. Why would those things prevent it from being an anti-war allegory?

But clearly I need to read it, because there is more to this than meets my eye. So, what do you think? WITHOUT SPOILERS, give me your opinion: is The Hunger Games anti-war?

Who Needs the Help?A Bestseller Backlash Case Study

now finished: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

(this blog post backdated to the day I finished the book)

The very concept of bestseller backlash was made for books like The Help. I discovered bestseller backlash in early 2000 when I was at the beginning of my approximately six-year Borders career. People flock to certain books in a very "nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd" way (thanks, Soul Asylum). And those books are rarely worth the hype. To be clear, a book does not fall into the category of bestseller backlash just because it is a bestseller. There's a certain intangible quality to these books, a certain skepticism about their place on the bestseller list, a certain lack of need to read them felt by me and other Readers, as opposed to the breathless "you-have-to-read-this" masses. Sometimes the bestseller backlash is a mistake and the book is good or even great (The Life of Pi, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Dogs of Babel, Freakonomics) and sometimes the book is terrible (The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Who Moved My Cheese?) but most often the book is incredibly average and, much like Top 40 pop music, the throngs of devoted fans are blind to its mediocrity (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Men Who Hate Women, Water for Elephants, etc. etc. etc....and, notably, The Help).

The Help has the added bestseller backlash "advantage" of being not just ridiculously popular but also being thought to be important. Social issues, race, the South, the Civil Rights Era, change we can believe in (oops, wrong decade) you can just feel the self-pronounced importance oozing from the reaction to this book. However, it has actually generated some actual backlash (in the world at large) for telling the African-American stories from a very white, very limited point of view. I myself wrote about feminism in The Help because the feminist issues are there, even when the author seems to be oblivious to them, despite having written this "important" novel. And if there is one thing I hate ("one thing?!" - Clue), it is people/institutions that miss their own point. (See also: most of religion.) I have thoroughly enjoyed this blog, which explains a lot of what is wrong with The Help.

The Help straight up gets some things wrong. For example, when people started becoming long-hair hippies. That was one of the first things to rub me the wrong way, when she had a character in Mississippi in 1963 refer to a long-hair Yankee throwing a peace sign. "No way," I thought. That is way too early! In her afterword, which the abovementioned blog calls her Too Little Too Late section, she casually states, "I took liberty with time, like using Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin' even though it didn't come out until a year or two later." Um - why? You specifically set this novel to swirl around the events of 1962-1963, like Medgar Evers, JFK, MLK, etc. And then you decide to go ahead and switch up history - because - why, again? You're just too good for it? You can't think of a song that was out in 1963? You don't really remember this world you are so haughtily evoking, as you want us all to believe you do?

There were other mistakes/willful errors.  And they weren't the only annoying thing about this book. One annoying thing is the condescension inherent in writing this story the way she chose to do. Another is that no one who lives on the colored side of town seems particularly empowered, ever. They just do good things and get patted on the head by the occasional liberal white person. I think Ms. Stockett was trying to do something awesome here, but it turns out to be another bestseller that ought to be anything but.

As I read, I wanted to know what would happen; I am not going to write a spoiler review because I am more concerned with telling you to PLEASE DON'T BUY this book. Borrow it from a friend or the library or whatever, but please do not throw any more money to this book/author/publisher/entity. 

I want someone to write this novel better. I am fairly certain the author did not at ALL learn the lessons she is apparently trying to teach the rest of us.

Would "Sara Groan" be too mean?

now finished: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I'm in between presidential biographies - after a very satisfying Millard Fillmore experience, awaiting a two-volume stint with Franklin Pierce - and the time came to read some contemporary novels that have been percolating on the to-read list in my head for a while. I plunged right into Water for Elephants, what with the movie coming out soon and all. And....sigh.

It's never a good sign when the only thing you find yourself telling other people about a book is that you'll read it really fast. (Are you listening, Twihards?) Wanting to know what happens does not mean it is a great book. Does wanting to see a photo of a car accident mean it is necessarily great art? No. Two totally different things going on there.

I don't want to chalk Water for Elephants up to being just another nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd bestseller, but it really isn't the Great American Novel. It has some good ideas, some fun scenes, some good writing, some totally out of place dialogue (more like out of time - sounding decidedly un-1930s), some characters that are flat as a pancake and, bringing it all together, an author who I daresay is getting just a bit too much credit for being an animal rights enthusiast when she apparently has no problem with animals being forced to live in cruel captivity and perform in the circus.

Part of me thinks I shouldn't judge Water for Elephants based on the Sara Gruen interviews I've read, in which she says that extreme animal rights activists are as bad as those abusing animals. The rest of me is puzzled that this woman who is so enamored of the circus and zoos is getting credit for writing an animal rights-themed book.

The main problem with the book has nothing to do with any of this. The main problem is that the two main characters, Jacob and Marlena, who fall in love, are flat flat flat flat flat. In the midst of a circus - a CIRCUS! - a place with the most interesting, crazy, robust, raunchy, drifter, mean, talented, bizarre, drunk, quirky group of characters you've ever seen, this author manages to make the object of our hero's affection have absolutely nothing interesting whatsoever about her. Quite a feat, that. There's also the slight problem that most of these interesting kooky circus freaks and whatnot are men, while the three women characters are the beautiful love interest, the nurse, and the sex worker. Wow, Sara Gruen. Just wow.

I ended up gladly giving it away at our inaugural Andong English teachers book swap and am just a little sad that I spent the money to buy it (and gave Ms Gruen another number to pad her bestseller statistics), and yet I'm not really sorry I read it. This is what makes me miss having ready access to an English library.

The Girl Who Doesn't Care About Stieg Larsson's Trilogy

now finished: Men Who Hate Women by Stieg Larsson

Oh, you thought it was called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, did you? That's because we are victims of jackass corporate publishers who listen to their jackass marketing departments, who, unfortunately, are well aware of just how dumb jackass Americans are. The title in Swedish is .. um...something I can't remember or spell very well, but it MEANS "men who hate women." And that's what the book should be called in English. Instead, we have this "The Girl With..." nonsense. Apparently The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second book in the series, is an accurate translation of the Swedish title, and as this wise blogger points out, the first and third were willfully changed to distort not only the focus of those two titles but the second title as well, making it all about The Girl instead of the fact that she is taking on something more dangerous than she may have thought.

And now we have a jackass "English-language remake" of the Swedish film in the works and EW keeps jabbering about which actress will play Lisbeth Salander and quite frankly, she's totally not even the main character of The Girl With the Dragon TattooMen Who Hate Women, which I, unfortunately, have now read.

Usually I maintain my bestseller backlash for a bit longer than this - I first touched Men Who Hate Women With Dragon Tattoos, what - two years ago? Two and a half? In Borders Atlas Park. But there was this vast right-wing conspiracy to get me to read it, and then we went to the cottage and Brian's mom had it and blew through it and the second onto the third, and everyone but everyone like Jill! and Amy! and Stacey! and Chris and everyone on Facebook! and the Swedish movie was across the street forever! and the violence wasn't gratuitous, and wasn't misogynistic, or was it? and fine! fine! fine! I read the damn thing on the beach in two days. And my grade? W. For "whatever!"

It's like The Incredibles all over again. People got so uproariously mad when I didn't like that movie, because, they all said, "It's unique! It has this totally inventive, original story line about these superheroes who are, like shunned by society but really are smart and have these incredible talents!" To which I responded, how is that not the plot of every single superhero movie? And of every single Brady Bunch episode? My friends, we have a repeat. All the Män som hatar kvinnor (I looked up the spelling) devotees go on and on about the unique literary brilliance of this book. No. It's a mystery. It's written much like any mystery. Especially maybe The Da Vinci Code. It has its interesting points, but around page 280-something it goes seriously downhill for a while. And, as many people have pointed out SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! NOT TO DO WITH THE 'WHO DONE IT' BUT A PLOT POINT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS' RELATIONSHIP 300 PAGES IN SPOILER ALERT! SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT THE SPOILER! ALERT! ALERT! I'M GOING TO SPOIL NOW! there is no freakin' reason for Lisbeth to sleep with Mikael Blomkvist. Seriously. None. It is so stupid. Even if Stieg *had* to establish the nice-guy-can-be-promiscuous-without-hating-women-so-not-all-men-are-bad aspect of Blomkvist, he could have done so by him sleeping with his best friend co-worker (which he does) and one of the members of the Vangar family (which he does) or even the red herring of what's-her-guts in the cafe. UGH. Also I really really hate that Stieg took the David Foster Wallace/Emile Zola route with regard to the cat. The cat was, quite frankly, my favorite character, but he sacrificed it and, worse, made it the subject of monstrous brutality. That's when I wanted to throw the book across the room. OK THAT IS THE END OF THE SPOILER. ONTO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. NO MORE SPOILERS.

So I'm annoyed with Stieg, I'm annoyed with the publishers/marketers, I'm annoyed with the fans, and I'm totally not impressed by the story or the writing. Whatever, trilogy that you all can't put down. I can so easily put it down. Noooooo problem.