Me, circa 1993, the life of the party

There were two kinds of books initially on my MUST! READ! THEM! ALL! list: anything space related and anything mythology related. Before I could even sound out the word “Universe,” the National Geographic Picture Atlas of our Universe was a frequent flier on my elementary school library account.

Damn, that’s an awesome cover.

And the mythology books — they set the tone for the rest of my life.

No, not this. This came later.

In college, I would dig into the significance of myth and legend, unearth and wrestle with the deep cultural significance of what Joseph Campbell called the “hero’s journey.” But at eight years old, all I really knew was that when Hercules held a creature’s neck in one hand and bashed its head with the other, something stirred in me. When Thor threw his hammer and the speed of its passage rent the air with a crack of thunder, I sensed that I, too, had heroic blood coursing through my veins, and the world held in store great monsters for me to vanquish.

These. Monsters are awesome.

My mom always hoped I’d get into biographies. She’d check out books about Andrew Jackson or Daniel Boone or Marie Curie, and slip them into my library check-out pile. And yeah, I read a few of those. And I pored over The Way Things Work, and I zipped through the Encyclopedia Brown series, and in my third grade classroom, the Boxcar Children was popular. I guess I was an above-average reader before I discovered the fantasy genre of children’s and young adult books. But once I dipped my toe into Lloyd Alexander, Edgar Eager, Roald Dahl — I was hooked. I went from reading just some of the time to reading nearly all of the time. I passed up playdates so I could finish a book; I gave up pool parties and sleep-overs and movie nights. I distinctly recall tears streaming down my face as Taran’s mentor and father-figure Coll dies next to him in battle, near the end of Alexander’s The High King. And then I cried again when I turned the last page of the book, and fully realized that this story was done.

A sampling of the authors I devoured before the start of fifth grade, ’cause the nostalgia is fun: John Christopher (The White Mountains), Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising), Lynn Reid Banks (The Indian in the Cupboard), Jane Yolen (Dragon’s Blood), Madeleine L’Engle (A Swiftly Turning Planet), Brian Jacques (Mossflower), Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) and of course, anything by Bruce Coville (My Teacher is an Alien). I recall a few non-fantasy books that stood out; Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee really impressed me, for instance. But it wasn’t long before I was browsing the adult fantasy section for new material.

Before the end of sixth grade, I’d plowed through everything I could find by Robert Aspirin (Another Fine Myth), Terry Brooks (The Sword of Shannara), David Eddings (Pawn of Prophecy), Richard Adams (Watership Down), J. R. R. Tolkien (what did he write again?), Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game). And I became a bit of a missionary for the sff cause. My sister agreed to read Ender’s Game if I read the ballet-themed Thursday’s Children by Rumer Godden. Bold exploration for both of us, really.

Run away! Run away!

By the time I hit high school, I’d maxed out a lot of the science fiction and fantasy authors whose book covers looked interesting. So, grudgingly, I took a breather  and picked up some of the less awesome books that were always lying about our house. ‘Cause you’ve gotta read something while you eat your cereal in the morning. Only in retrospect do I really recognize how significantly these way-awesome “less awesome” books shaped me. I made my way through Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, and then Cancer Ward; I’d eventually write a term paper on Solzhenitsyn. Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Heller’s Catch-22. Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Lewis’ Arrowsmith.

I wasn’t particularly discerning as a reader up until high school. I gravitated to fantasy and science fiction, but mostly, if it was a book and had words in it, I’d pick it up and give it a shot. Lucky for me my parents had a lot of intelligent stuff around the house. I think I was in tenth grade, reading Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, when I realized for the very first time that what I was reading was really high-quality prose. Like, it wasn’t just entertaining or a good story. I was starting to discern artistry in literature. It was a big moment for me.

Going into eleventh grade, I was asked to be the Editor-in-Chief of our high school literary magazine. I began fancying myself a thinker; it became more likely that I’d have Whitman or Emerson under my arm than Robert Jordan or Mercedes Lackey.

Reading Thoreau while backpacking with high school friends

College was a bit of a jumble for me. I started my freshman year on a full-tuition scholarship for ROTC. I did EMT training at the same time, with the sort of strange thought that participation in one would cancel out the other. While many of my fellow cadets were majoring in computer science or international affairs, I decided on philosophy and studio art. I fell hard for some of the rarified academic stuff that I encountered; stuff like Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and most anything by Roland Barthes. And once again, I ended up the Editor-in-Chief and illustrator of the college literary magazine.

I ended up overwhelmed by my varied responsibilities, and I dropped out of school for a few years. I comforted myself by reading the sff of my youth, watching a lot of movies, and dabbling in video production. When I returned back to school, I decided on a double major in English and media arts studies. Much as I loved studio art, it didn’t seem a viable career choice. My new wife prodded me all the way through to graduation. With a year left to go, my daughter was born. I’d push her in a stroller around the neighborhood reading critical studies of Moby-Dick, or to counter my constant fear of burn-out, novelizations of HALO and Doom. 

I thought I might try to become a professor; I received funding for academic papers and was asked to submit to professional journals. But as much as I loved poring over obscure texts, I could. not. finish. papers. There was always more to read! With every new source I found, the endeavor expanded. I’m glad that I came to terms with my paper-writing anxieties before deciding to go to grad school. In the end, I identify with something Michel de Montaigne said: “If I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention.” It wasn’t worth the pressure of trying to master it all.

Today, I exercise my writing muscles chronicling the ups and downs of being a stay-at-home dad at my blog, Raised by my Daughter. I still make “art,” if by art you mean stick-figure comics made in Microsoft Paint. And I’ve combined my critical English major eye with my love for science fiction and fantasy in my book review blog, English Major versus the World. I dream of writing novels, and in the meantime, during nap-time and at the gym, I read them. One of my primary goals for the future is to have a really, really kick-awesome library in my home, with bookshelves on every wall, and maybe ladders and a special stand for a really gargantuan dictionary. I’m told that children’s educational outcomes are highly correlated with the number of books in a home. Just having tons of them around appears to be enough to make a big difference. So, until we get those fancy full-wall bookshelves, my daughter’s going to spend a lot of time stubbing her toes on books.

GAW RUIN THE ENDING WHYDONTCHA

–SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS–

Don’t read if you don’t wanna get spoiled, y’alls.

With the (soft) ending of the Sookie Stackhouse saga on bookshelves everywhere, sj, Rob and I got together to discuss how we felt about how the series wrapped up. We talked about some other stuff, too.

LET THE DISCUSSION BEGIN!*

*which, of course, it’s already over. WORK WITH ME HERE, people.

sj: Anyway, BRING ON THE SOOKIE BASHING!
Susie: I was actually shocked that it wasn’t AS BAD as I expected.
sj: REALLY?
sj: Ugh, I knew I was in for a frothy rant when she had to tell us how hard it was to get the stupid DiGiorno cardboard into the trash.
Susie: Really. I guess I expected a lot worse somehow. Maybe more trips through the Taco Bell drive-thru.
Rob: lollll…no, it was pretty good; but then, I liked them all. It was all one big book to me.
Susie: The past several were really starting to disappoint me. I felt like she was cramming in a whole bunch of filler.
sj: I stand by what I said in my GR review – that if the last three books had been pared down and combined, it would have been a kickass ending
sj: Except for the faerie stuff in Dead in the Family. I liked that.
Rob: really? I didnt want to see them end, and I read them so fast I don’t see the filler. Mostly I was disappointed that she wound up with Sam; I will always prefer Eric… but then, I pretty much knew she wouldn’t go there, she’d been building up to it starting with the broken bond.
Susie: I was also pretty bummed to see her end up with Sam. Not as bummed as the people THREATENING HER ON FACEBOOK (geez people) but I prefer Eric.

Susie: (Also, I laughed really hard at the Sookie/Sam sex scene… I laughed and laughed.)
sj: I laughed too!
Rob: Most of them make me laugh.
Susie: Sookie and her “good please again dick long hard” internal monologue. >.<
Rob: She tends to keep them short and sweet, but book 4 is still the best when it comes to sex.
Susie: I haven’t re-read any of the books, like ever.. I would say I’m probably due but I’m not sure I will re-read them
Rob: I’ve reread them til they’re now beat to shit.
sj: Yeah, I haven’t ever re-read them either
sj: which might be why I have to read the wiki summary before a new one comes out.
Rob: btw, there is still one more to go… a sort of wrap-up due in October.
sj: like the end of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Susie: She could have done a Rowling and put it in an epilogue.
sj: “Sam sold the bar and ended up back in Texas alone”
Rob: Sookie fans will scramble for the new one, hoping Harris will write “ha, fooled you all, Sookie is now in OK and having Eric’s baby…”
sj: HAHA!
sj: Freida’s dead and Eric is King of ALL THE US!
Rob: and Sookie is now a pregnant vampire and his queen…
Susie: but Sookie is still working at Merlotte’s, even so.
sj: Bill got staked by Sookie when she caught him lurking in her yard!
sj: Lafayette came back from the dead!
Susie: MAN, I was so bummed when Lafayette died.
sj: I know, me too.
sj: back when I was actually invested in them.
sj: I CARED THEN!
sj: Susie, are you watching the show?
Susie: True Blood? Naw. I tried a few episodes but it made me feel stabby since it’s so different from the books.
sj: I thought I would hate it for that reason
sj: cos you know I want all adaptations to die
sj: but then I just said “ahhhh, fuck it” and gave in
sj: and now it’s laughably enjoyable.
Rob: My sister made me watch them for the first two years, which was torture, but not anymore, thank dog…
sj: it’s ridiculous how bad it is
sj: but Alexander Skarsgård makes it worth watching
sj: and I don’t even LIKE blonds.
Susie: Is that Eric?
sj: YES!
Rob: yes, he is cute…
Susie: I also don’t like blonds.. another reason I have no compulsion to watch the show. I don’t want to actually SEE Eric.

Okay, well, I have to admit, he’s looking pretty hunky since he cut his hair.

Ugh. No. Moar Eric, plz.

Rob: I don’t like anyone else though. I especially don’t like the guy who plays Sam, he never washes his hair.
sj: No, Sam is gross.
Susie: the only reason I really thought about going forward with it was Lafayette, but then they had a scene that looked like it was straight out of something like Boyz in the Hood or Menace II Society, and I was like O_O, that is SO NOT BON TEMPS.
Rob: I bet Harris regrets selling them the damn rights. I’d have killed them all by now with a machete.

Susie: I was looking through the book summaries earlier, to refresh my memory.. hee, I really liked the one where Eric lost his memory.
sj: EVERYONE loved that one
Rob: That’s book four… which also has the best sex scenes, too.
sj: Book four was totally hawt.
sj: and Eric was all sensitive
Susie: Yessss.
Susie: I liked Sensitive Eric.
Rob: I liked Eric, period. Sam gets on my nerves, always did.
sj: Oh, I liked the one with the um…the vampire conference
Susie: oh, me too. The one with Sophie-Anne?
Rob: and Andre… the creep.
sj: where Queen Sophie dies
Susie: I liked the series really well right up until about… probably three books ago. I agree with you, sj–if she had condensed the books down a tad, it probably would have been a more lively ending.
Susie: I felt like Sookie was doing a lot of waiting around and mooning over Eric.
sj: YES! I really think the last three felt like novellas that she padded out.
Susie: and eating a lot of quesadillas.
sj: “I KNOW! People want to know what SHE’S EATING!”
sj: What’s southern? Sonic? Yeah, Sonic
sj: Taco Bell? WHY NOT
Rob: I like how we had to know all about what she was wearing, down to the underwear. Do I need to know her panties were steel blue?
sj: Oh, at “and made me a sandwich for a belated lunch. I ate about half of it. I wasn’t that hungry, though it had been a while since I had eaten a real meal” I wrote “NOT HUNGRY?!?!?!”
sj: Because WHEN IS SOOKIE NOT HUNGRY?
sj: And when Quinn offered to make home fries, but on the next page they were eating French fries and I got SO MAD because they are NOT the same thing.
sj: I think most of my notes are food related, actually.
Rob: lollll… Those little details always trip them up.
Susie: I didn’t even catch the home fries/french fries thing. I was starting to glaze over some of the filler scenes.
Susie: “Oh, Sookie’s running errands” zzz. “Sookie’s catching up on what’s new with Tara! (hint: not that much)” zzzzzzz.
sj: I got grossed out when Sookie talked about the “sweat trickling down [her] butt cheeks.”
sj: NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THAT
Susie: Also, let’s be real, if Sookie had a sweaty butt, she’d call it what we call it down in the south: swamp ass.
Rob: Ick. I dont want to hear about it either way.
sj: That’s what I’m saying.
sj: Why was it even necessary to say that?
sj: and why don’t editors catch these things?
Rob: Who knows… maybe so we’d all say ICK?
Susie: I bet Charlaine barely got edited there toward the end
Susie: she probably had Stephen King syndrome
Rob: Unlikely; the more money they make the less they want to tamper, just ask Stephen King–he hasn’t had a book edited since 1978. [jinx, Rob! -- Susie]
Rob: Are either of you surprised Claude turned out to be the creep?
Susie: No, but I’m bummed that Claude turned out to be bad.
sj: Not really
sj: and yes, what Susie said
Susie: I really loved the part where she had the homophobes ready to jump each others’ bones, that tickled me.
sj: I kind of liked that Claude was an asshole, but a FAMILY ORIENTED asshole
Rob: me too…but not surprised. Like Sam, it seemed inevitable.
sj: OH, THAT REMINDS ME
sj: in the show
sj: Steve Newlin is now a vampire AND GAY.
Susie: wat.
Rob: (groans)
Susie: Go home, Alan Ball, you’re drunk.

I.. I just… WHAT

Are there any Sookie fans in the house? How did you feel about Dead Ever After and the end(ish) of the Sookie Stackhouse novels? Are you okay with Sam, or are you Team Eric all the way? Tell us ALL YOUR FEELS about the series below!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Even though that’s pretty much the end of our Sookie discussion, we kept chatting and (as occurs frequently when a whole group of booksluts get together), the topic wound back around to books–this time, Harry Potter and a few other things. So, if you want, you can keep reading our chat, or skip down to the comments to talk about Sookie.

BONUS MATERIAL:

sj: The drinkalongs are FUN if you like watching movies, drinking, and snarking on things.
sj: which, who doesn’t like those things?
Rob: lolllll
Susie: I only drink about half the time, but the snarking is still fun.
sj: the snarking is the best part.
sj: although that night I broke my bottle of wine was THE WORST cos
sj: ugh, Chamber of Secrets without booze?
Rob: I’d need booze to watch the Harry Potter films again.
Susie: I only did two of the movies I think, because of work and husband. I wish I had watched more, cos now I am in the mood for Harry Potter.
Rob: Ever since Daniel Radcliffe’s legs stopped growing w/ the rest of him I’ve lost interest, it’s too distracting. And ever since book 7, HP just pisses me off. I haven’t forgiven Rowling for it yet.
Susie: Snaaape
Susie: the pre-book-7 Snape Debates were epic
Rob: They were. Then she made snape a “good guy” and ruined it all.
sj: THANK YOU!
sj: I FUCKING HATE SNAPE STILL
Rob: she thought she was being clever with that one, the bitch. She was just being inconsistent.
Rob: YES, always hated his guts. He was a total creep, and I don’t buy the “oh, but he loved Harry’s mom!”
sj: <3
Rob: ‘but he loved Lily, that’s why he treated her son like shit…’
Susie: I wasn’t surprised he turned out to be a double-double agent, but the being in love with Harry’s mom part made me groan.
Rob: Then Harry goes and names his kid after him, please.
Rob: Snape hated Harry for not dying like he was supposed to.
Susie: Have to say though, they did do some damn fine casting for Snape.
Rob: They did…that’s because she had control of that, otherwise they would have fucked it up…
Rob: I really can’t believe people bought it though… the whole ‘he loved Lily’ crap… the only reason why he felt guilty and hated Voldemort is because, as far as Snape was concerned, Voldemort screwed up and killed Lily instead of only Harry and James. If Voldemort had gotten it right, Snape would have still been a death eater.
Susie: Snape was a twisted little shit.
Rob: yes!
Susie: I think there’s an alternative story here somewhere, where Snape takes over and becomes the Dark Lord, heh.
Rob: That’s the only book I haven’t reread in the series.
sj: I used to belong to this HP for grownups board…
sj: where people also posted fanfic and art and stuff
sj: and someone wrote an ADDENDUM to the epilogue
sj: where after Harry put his kids on the train
sj: he saw Dudley walking through the mist with his youngest child on his shoulders
sj: having just put his oldest on the train
sj: and THAT has become my own personal canon
sj: because fuck her for not telling us what happened to the Dursleys after they left.
Susie: Dudley’s kids would totally beat up Harry’s kids
Rob: Yeah, she never did tell us. Oh! and I cant forgive her for killing off Fred and Hedwig either. That was just dumb and unnecessary.
sj: and Remus and Tonks TOGETHER
sj: ughhhhhhh
Susie: I will never forgive her for killing Sirius.
Rob: oh, THAT too… I loved Sirius
Susie: like, great, take away EVERY ADULT HARRY HAS EVER HAD TO CARE FOR HIM
sj: DUDE
sj: when Sirius died, then Dumbles
sj: I HAD THIS WHOLE THEORY
sj: that didn’t pan out
sj: BECAUSE HAGRID WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE
Rob: He should have, instead of Fred, that would make more sense.
Susie: why was Hagrid supposed to die?
sj: okay
sj: long story short
sj: in the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone
sj: there are supposed to be three main stages
sj: and they’re in order of colour:
sj: Black, White, Red.
sj: Black=Sirius
sj: Albus=White
sj: Rubeus=Red
sj: BUT I PUT MORE THOUGHT INTO IT THAN SHE DID
sj: because that’s how I roll.
Rob: I don’t think she put as much thought into any of it other than “I really love Snape, so he’s gonna be a good guy and it’ll fool everyone!”
Susie: I’m just pissed that she separated Fred and George.. they were supposed to grow old at the joke shop together and be selling Harry’s kids some prank items.
sj: damn, I am STILL worked up over this.
Rob: lolllll… me too. I guess because it consumed us for so long at the time.
sj: Right, it was like The Dark Tower all over again
Rob: yeah, Fred dying sucks… and it was pointless–which is, I suppose, her point, that death is random, pointless, blah blah. But fuck that, she killed off enough people.
Susie: come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to think of a recent series that hasn’t totally ended in disappointment for me.
Susie: okay, the Dark Tower series wasn’t TOTALLY disappointing, but there were disappointments.
sj: some, yes
sj: well, some that made me cry
sj: CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL.

And then we started talking about how trashy V.C. Andrews is. We were probably drinking.

Book:

Author: Stephen King

Published: June 2013 by Hard Case Crime, 288 pages

First Lines: ”I had a car, but on most days in that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from Mrs. Shoplaw’s Beachside Accomodations in the town of Heaven’s Bay. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Genre/Rating: Mystery; 4/5 girls with a blue Alice-band holding the hair out of their eyes, watching you from the dark recesses of the Horror House

Review: Oh, Stephen King. I didn’t love The Colorado Kid. When I read he was coming out with another Hard Case Crime book, I was trepidacious. He’s always one of my favorite writers, but he’s at his best when he sticks with what he’s best at – horror or fantasy, with of course his excellent settings and characters to round out his novels.

But I went ahead and bought the book anyway. Of course I did. If he comes out with a new book, it’s in my hands the day it comes out. There’s very seldom a question about this.

(I wanted an e-copy. I’m trying very hard to cut back on physical books since the level of books in my place has hit critical mass and stacks of them come crashing down and scare the cat. However, Hard Case Crime – and I assume King – have decided for us that we need to experience this book the way THEY want us to experience this book, either in paper or audibly. What I think about this decision will be a topic for a rant coming soon to a screen near you, but in the meantime, please read sj or Heather‘s excellent thoughts on the subject.)

Devin Jones is a college student whose long-term girlfriend decides to spend the summer with girlfriends working in Boston rather than working with him at college, like she has in the past. To shake things up, he spur-of-the-moment applies for a job at Joyland, an independently-owned amusement part on the North Carolina coast. Not surprisingly to anyone with eyes (but surprisingly to Devin) his girlfriend almost immediately breaks up with him for someone else, so he spends the summer nursing his first true heartbreak while working at Joyland, meeting the people who work there, making friends, and trying to solve the mystery of the girl who was murdered five years ago in the Horror House by a man who almost immediately disappeared.

It’s less of a crime novel or a thriller than a period piece. The Devin who’s telling the story is a Devin forty years later, a Devin looking back on it through a lens of nostalgia and pain and loss and memory and knowledge and just a little jaded wistfulness. That’s what works best in this book, honestly. The crime novel aspect was fine; the thriller part, when you get there, seems almost tacked-on. But the storytelling is classic King. Everyone’s fully three-dimensional. Everyone has a life and a story and a heart beating in their chest. No one is there just to prop the story up and send it on its way. You finish the book knowing the characters and loving them a little bit, as well. You finish the book having made friends of them. That’s King’s strength. He takes people made of words and breathes life into them and lets them walk around on the earth among us. I love him for that.

It’s a perfect summer book. It’s a book you can race through while going onto something else; it’s a book you won’t have to think too deeply about. But it’s a book that will stay with you. You’ll smell the cotton candy and the hot dogs and feel the wind on your face as you ride the Carolina Spin all the way to the top and look out over the beauty of Heaven’s Bay. It’ll help you escape from your life for a little while. You’ll feel the loss of your first true love with Devin. You’ll look back on your foolish young adult years with him, too.

Whether or not I agree with the decision to tell me how I had to experience the text (I don’t), it was a damn fine read.

This didn’t work for me at all.

“How long will it take to get there?” I’d ask. He didn’t want to answer, because then we might guess where we were going.

“Dad. I have to know. This is important. HOW MANY BOOKS SHOULD I BRING?”

Odds are very good young-Amy was getting a book here. Also, check out our kicky 70s wallpaper and highchair slipcover. Groovy, man!

My love of books started in my youth. My mother still revels in telling the story of reading me the second book in the Wizard of Oz series; we left off at a cliffhanger, and she promised to finish the book the following day. I was packed off for a nap (so couldn’t have been that old – three? four?) and she got on the phone with someone. I snuck downstairs and read the last few chapters because I just couldn’t wait to find out the secret (which, if I remember correctly, was the identity of Ozma. Who leaves a kid hanging with something like that?) I then proceeded to be wracked with the most TERRIBLE guilt, and the next day, when she gleefully pulled the book out to read me the end, I tearfully confessed that I’d read it already and knew what happened and was SO SORRY but I just couldn’t wait. I waited for my punishment. No punishment came. Mostly she just was in awe that I’d read it by myself, and that I loved books so much that I was willing to be sneaky about them.

A lot of people are willing to blame their mothers for things that happened in their childhoods; it’s an easy out. One thing I know my mother did right was make me a reader. (She’s a reader herself. You never see my mother without a book. She may not read the type of books I do – she’s a romance reader herself, but nothing too naughty! – but she’s always reading.)

I started kindergarten already reading. The teacher had a boyfriend who would visit, and she wanted alone time with him. (Yes, I know. Amy! What kind of school did you go to? The answer is, not a very good one.) So she’d install me in front of the class with a book so I could read to them while she went out in the hall to canoodle with her beau. I thought this was great. The other kids thought I was a weirdo. (Side note: the other kids thought I was a weirdo until the day I graduated, so that didn’t change much.)

Our school libraries were somewhat sad affairs. The selection was dismal and you could only check out a few books at a time. My mother realized immediately that this wasn’t going to work for me, so as a gift, she took me to the local public library when I was in – oh, I want to say third grade? – and got me my own library card. I remember the librarian being a little hesitant at first – I mean, this scrawny kid with crooked braids and glasses with a thumbprint in the middle? With an adult library card? But my mother persevered. At first, the librarian proudly showed me the children’s section, with the picture books and the very basic chapter books. Yes, it was bigger than my school library, but the same sort of thing. I didn’t want to read about Hopping on Pop. I wanted to read about women who changed history. I wanted to read about ghosts and ghouls. I wanted to read about traveling the world. I wanted to read about magical animals. When I sighed sadly at the fifth or sixth book she pulled from the shelf, she just laughed and started getting me REAL books. With many pages. Without a picture on every page. With small type! And I could check out as many books as I wanted. Once, I left with a BOX of books. A whole BOX! I still love that library. It’s a tiny little stone building that smells like books and age and history. Whenever I go home and drive past it I want to honk and wave. It’s like seeing a friend.

This is what library cards from the PAST looked like. Yes, I still have mine. You can’t be surprised by that.

Dad still laughs (somewhat ruefully) at his memories of me at family functions when I was younger. “Where’s Amy? Oh, she’s somewhere. Reading.” I didn’t want to go to family functions – I wasn’t social then, much as I’m not now – but if I went, I’d bring a book. Or multiple books. And I’d find the corner furthest away from everyone and I’d read. And read. And read. And if people attempted to distract me from my reading, I was a total dick about it. I’d close the book with my finger in it, give them a long-suffering look, and nod and smile in a far-away manner until they wandered away and I could get back to reading. Once, he forced me to go to a family reunion, where I knew no one but my family. I hated those things. They were OUTDOORS where grass and bugs and air were, and people always drank too much and were way loud and cheery and shouty. So I got in the backseat of the car with a book and I read. For eight hours. He kept coming over and trying to get me to come out and be social. I refused. He was displeased. I was displeased he kept interrupting my reading. Probably somewhere, there are photos of that day with me missing from them, as if I wasn’t even there. And I wasn’t. I was lost in a book in the backseat of the car where there weren’t a bunch of mosquitos or loud drunk people asking “HOW OLD ARE YOU NOW?” or “GOT A BOYFRIEND YET?”

School was tough. I’ve talked elsewhere, and at length, about my experiences at school. I was terribly bullied. It was a very small school, and if you weren’t one of the popular kids, or at least attempting to be just LIKE one of the popular kids, you were weird, and different, and therefore wrong, so you were ridiculed. And I was. For about eight years of my life. Daily. Books saved me. They were always there for me. The characters promised that there would be life outside of my hometown, life outside of my state, even. That there were people who wouldn’t treat me like I was being treated. That there was the promise of friendship, somewhere, someday. That there were big, huge adventures waiting for me. That there would be love, and magic, and music, and life: I just had to wait it out. So I kept reading, with spitballs in my hair, dodging the kids aiming kicks at me, ignoring the ones shouting “GEEK!” as they passed.

The books were right. It got better. Not only did it get better, I got better. And the books stayed with me. They’re still my friends now, all these years later. They still wait for me. They’re there at my lunch break, after work, when I’m going to bed.

I can’t really tell you what makes a reader, whether it’s a parent who instills a love of words, or something we’re born with, or a little of both – or, even better, just a little of that magic you see every now and then in life, maybe. That this child will be good at sports, and this child will be gifted with music, and this child, this one here, will be able to escape to any world she wants to, just by opening the cover of a book and tumbling in amongst the words.

I’m going to go with the magic. It’s what I opt for, whenever it’s presented to me. There’s just not enough of it available to us, nowadays.

YOU COULD WIN THIS SHIRT

OR THIS MAGNET, ALONG WITH . . . .

THIS UNICORN MEAT FROM THINKGEEK.COM

HOLY BALLS YOU GUYS.

So, Amy and I have actually been thinking about doing a short fiction contest involving UNICORNS for like, um, a year (don’t hate, I got busy). I had purchased the Unicorn Meat specifically for this contest. It got back-burnered, though–and honestly, that was possibly the best thing that could have happened, because the contest just got that much better.

Fast-forward to sj and her mounting frustration that every book she reads that seems to promise zombies and unicorns together does not actually feature both zombies and unicorns. Book called Zombicorns? No unicorns. Book called Zombies vs. Unicorns? NO ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS. Wth?

That’s where y’all are gonna come in.

See, we figured that if we weren’t getting the zombie unicorn fiction we wanted, we would just bribe ask our dear friends to help out. We put together all of our combined resources and came up with–well, not a whole lot, because you don’t make bank when you’re a book blogger. HOWEVER, we think we came up with some pretty cool items. See above.

The contest is for a max 1200 word piece of short fiction that is about unicorn zombies. This could either be a zombie that is a unicorn, or a unicorn that is a zombie. (As sj said, we’re flexible.) Want the details? Want to enter to win these sweet, sweet prizes?

Good luck!

When can I expect that review from you? …. what do you mean, when you learn how to read?

This isn’t the first post I’ve written about how to get people to read your books, and it probably won’t be the last. The incident that inspired this post was an “event” on Goodreads that I was invited to, for someone’s book promotion. If you’re chuckling to yourself because you know that an impersonal Goodreads invite isn’t the way to approach many bloggers, congratulations–you’re already a step ahead.

This event was a blanket invite, not just to bloggers, which made me facepalm even more; what’s the use of sending out marketing invitations to various types of people if you’re not making the minimum effort to separate those people into discrete markets? It’s a lot different approaching a general reader with an offer of a free book than it is to approach a blogger with even a small following; it’s also a lot different approaching blogs that have different size followings. One would probably not approach the popular site Book Riot as casually as they might approach us, for instance. There’s no “one size fits all” approach when you’re trying to get your book into readers’ hands.

This Goodreads event isn’t an isolated incident by any means; I receive so, so many invitations to crap events from people I don’t even know and have never spoken with. I receive a ton of pitches (yes, I still get pitches almost daily even though we no longer accept books to review) that leave me scratching my head. Not because they’re rude or in bad taste, but they do absolutely nothing to make me want to read the book–and half the time, they make me question if the person even knows who they’re approaching to read their book. Then there are, of course, the ones that are rude and in bad taste. The author often thinks he or she is trying to be professional, but end up being extremely off-putting. Off-putting is not the vibe you want when you’re trying to get people to read your book; in fact, it’s kind of the diametric opposite of what you want.

Don’t worry, friends. I’m here to help.

Know who you’re pitching and address them individually.

This probably seems really, really elementary to those of you who are already on the ball, but you’d perhaps be surprised at the number of authors who just send out blanket pitches to any-and-every blog with an audience. You might think that the blanket approach is superior because you hit a large number of blogs who might be interested in your book; as a blogger, I’ll tell you honestly that I can tell who has read my blog and is sending a personal message to me, and who has not. People who have not go in the bin. These e-mails read as barely a step above spam, and I treat them like spam.

A genuinely personalized approach, on the other hand, will often get the blogger’s attention (if for no other reason than people like to be appreciated for their work–bloggers included and perhaps especially). Not only will this stand out in the blogger’s inbox, which generally gets crammed full of variations like “PLZ READ MAH BOOK IT IS GOING TO BE YOUR NEW FAVORITEST BOOK I WRITE GOOD LOOK SOMEONE ELSE EVEN SAID SO”, but it shows that you put as much time and effort into finding out what she’s all about as she will put into reading and reviewing your book if she chooses to accept it. A personalized approach is a gesture of respect and a very high note to start off on with a blogger. While it won’t guarantee a yes, it’ll get your foot further in the door than copypasta.

Plus–don’t you want to know who you’re asking to review your book? This person is going to be recommending your book–or not–to people. If I decided to read and give an honest review to every book that someone tried to get me to review, I would have devastated a lot of authors. (I know this because I did my homework before accepting a book, including reading the sample chapters.) And those reviews would be out there forever, always popping up when the author’s name or the book title was searched. Knowing who you’re pitching is just a good idea all around.

But don’t make it too personal.

If you don’t know this blogger, being cheeky might not go over so well. Any e-mail I get that is addressed “Dear Sluts” goes right into the garbage. (Being “Insatiable Booksluts” has actually turned out to be a wonderful filter for what e-mails I read.) I don’t find it clever and it’s pretty rude to assume that I’d be okay being just called “slut,” which is still a slur and has an entirely different tone when divorced from “book”; a lot of people assume that I’ll find it hilarious, though, because of the somewhat lowbrow humor I occasionally employ here. And those people would be so, so wrong.

So be personal, but also maintain professionalism. This way, you can be fairly sure that you won’t screw your chances by inadvertently offending the blogger.

Make reading your book worth the blogger’s time.

Here’s the deal: when you approach a blogger and ask her to read your book, you’re asking her to commit at least a couple of hours of her life reading the book, then probably another hour or two organizing her thoughts and reviewing it; not to mention, you’re capitalizing on the hours of hard work she’s already done building her brand and her audience and maintaining her website (not to mention the actual cost of maintaining her website, which she’s probably not recouping). If you figure the average trade paperback at $14 or so? or, we’ll generously say that the average self-published or indie-published ebook might be $7 or $8? The “trade” for a book ends up compensating her up to $2.80 per hour (and as little as $0.85 per hour . . or less . . .) before subtracting the costs of overhead. She could probably make more at a Kathy Lee clothing factory.

And if she doesn’t LOVE your book? You’ve wasted time she could have been reading a book that she picked out for herself. Your free book isn’t much of a trade for her at this point. If she DOES love your book? She’s going to tell everyone that it’s ballin’ and you’re going to sell books. Either way, you’re getting the better end of the deal if the book itself is considered your end of the “trade,” which is why you should really consider a review copy a courtesy rather than a perk.

How can you, then, convince a blogger it’s worth her time to read your book? I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED! Here’s the other deal: even though the book isn’t really compensation to a blogger, the potential content that she can put on her blog is. We book bloggers, we blog about . . . books. They’re kind of an essential part of the equation. Don’t think in terms of offering her a freebie (which she’s probably drowning in already); think in terms of offering her content that her followers would want to read. And to do that . . .

Find the people who want to read your book.

I may have ranted once or twice or eighty times on this blog about authors sending me pitches that are not at all appropriate to this blog. This clearly aggravates me to no end, and I happen to know that I’m in no way alone in that. It’s not just that I don’t want to read the books (usually I don’t, but that’s not the point), it’s also that reviewing the books in question would do nothing for this blog. I’m far less likely to read and review a book that doesn’t fit the tone of this blog because I want my regular readers to keep coming back. If I suddenly switched from small press literary fiction to self-published paranormal romance, I would get more than a few WTF reactions.

Think of a blog more like a magazine than a site like Goodreads. What would be appropriate for Rolling Stone might not also be appropriate for Cosmo or Playboy. They cater to specific demographics that may not overlap.

Unsurprisingly, a blog’s tone and demographic also tends to match the blogger’s tastes (who knew?). Amy, Rob, and I don’t necessarily read the exact type of books, but we have tastes that match in enough places to have created a general vibe here. People who like our vibe respond to it by checking in to see what we’re reading. If you look for bloggers that you think would genuinely like your book, you’re also going to reach readers who would genuinely like your book; if a blogger has a hot tip on a book that her readers would like, damn skippy she’s going to pass that along. We didn’t get into the book recommending game to sit on our hands when a book we really enjoy comes our way.

But how do I find these blogs that would like my book?

There’s the rub, right? There are about a zillion book blogs out there, a lot of them have a “No self-pubs need apply” sign hanging in the window, and you’re competing against literally a million books a year for review space. It’s the fourth quarter and you need to hustle your ass into the end zone before ZOMG SPORTS METAPHOR SOMEONE STOP ME.

Whew.

Okay, first things first. You need to find books that are similar to your book–both mainstream books and other self-published books. Now, here’s a huge caveat coming up. Are you ready for this? This is something you absolutely, positively cannot ignore. Ready?

(clears throat)

You need to be super-honest with yourself about your book before you can find books that are similar, and this is really, really hard.

I once had someone brow-beat me into reading his book, comparing it to the work of Neil Gaiman. That is a lofty comparison, and it was not at all true. I’m sure he was very inspired by Gaiman, but he definitely did not write like Neil Gaiman. He either wasn’t being honest with me or being honest with himself–and I suspect that he really did think his book was like the writing of Neil Gaiman.

Sigh.

When comparing your book to other books, don’t shoot for the moon; it sets up unrealistic expectations for the blogger, who either flat-out won’t believe you or will be very disappointed when you’re not as good as some of the greatest writers of all time as you claim (whaaat, you mean you’re not actually another F. Scott Fitzgerald??). To help sort this all out, take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the top of one side, write “Authors who have inspired me” and down the other, write “Authors and books most similar to mine”. If you’re a newer author who hasn’t gotten a lot of publicity, you’re probably shooting for self-published books or midlist traditionally-published books for column B; you can put your shoot-the-moon heavy hitters in column A.

Once you have your lists, search for reviews of books in column B. Find people who liked those books and wrote about them on their blogs. Congratulations, you have the beginnings of a list of bloggers who might like your book. Once you have the list going, you can cross-reference their Goodreads profiles or past reviews to see if their tastes mesh with yours (if one of your big influences is Hemingway and the blogger hates Hemingway with the fury of a thousand suns, that might not be a great fit).

And the beauty part? You’re also starting your blogger research for personalized pitches. Instead of sending the canned marketing copy that you worked up about how awesome your book is, you can now say, “Hey! I saw that you reviewed Book Y and said that you really liked x about it. That’s why I am approaching you today about my book; I thought that if you enjoyed x, you might enjoy this similar thing about my book. Also, I noticed we both really like Neil Gaiman–rock on!” (Er, well, you might want to flesh that out a tad. This is for DEMONSTRATION ONLY, people!) If you have a book that the blogger previously liked to point to, it’s much more likely to catch her attention–sort of like recommending books by other authors to people, yes? There’s some common ground there where you can find footing.

What if the blogger said no self-published books and I am self-published?

This is a conundrum. If this is the case, you definitely do not want to cold-pitch this blogger under any circumstances. You’re going to look like a schmuck who can’t follow directions and your pitch will go in the garbage.

This blogger needs to be courted. Not in a smarmy way. In a “I think you’re a badass and I love what you do” kind of way. Do not–let me repeat, DO NOT go about trying to friend a blogger just so you can get them to read your book. Be professional and be honest. You can introduce yourself in an e-mail and say something like, “Hello! I have read and I do understand your policy about self-published authors. I am writing to you today because I am wondering if I can convince you to make an exception for my book because I love your blog and I think that my book may be a good fit for your content. I completely understand the misgivings that many bloggers have about self-published books, and also that they get a lot of e-mails from authors who are convinced that their book is different than other books; this is what I have done to make my book a better reading experience: x, y, z. I thought you might like my book because it is similar to Other Book, which you reviewed and said that you enjoyed. Thank you for your time today.” Do not go ahead and attach your book, or publicity flier, or anything else “just in case.” You’re merely asking them if they would consider reviewing your book.

The polite, respectful approach is going to unlock more doors than trying to be sneaky or salesman-y. It also makes you sound like a real person who really does empathize with other people, and perhaps would be less likely to foist a rough draft on someone for review.

You can also try being a genuinely active participant in the person’s community–something that is easy if you connect with the blogger. Don’t see it as trying to butter them up, though; if you drop them like they’re hot after they accept or decline your book for review, they’re probably going to tell people (ie, other book bloggers that you’ll want to review your book) how you cozied up to them just to get a review. This will not bode well for you.

(By the way? If you don’t have things to fill in for x, y, and z to tell a blogger what you have personally done to make sure that your book is up to par–and that should include professional editing and proofreading, which are not the same thing–don’t bother. Your book shouldn’t even be on the market yet.)

If you wrote a good book, you can get reviews, but it’s not going to be an easy road. Persevere.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any shortcuts to this part of the book publishing process. To build an audience takes a long time. (As a blogger, I know this all too well–and frankly, that IB got the readers it did as quickly as it did was a confluence of very lucky events.) You might have to get “known” around our corner of the internet before bloggers will take your work on; don’t panic. Participate, talk to people, be real. If you have a good product, you’ll get there.

What say you, fellow book bloggers? What tips and tricks do you have for authors trying to get reviewed? What would work when approaching your blog for a review, if anything? Post your comments (or horror stories–we all love a good horror story!) below!

I know, this is not a food blog, I know. But I learned something really, really distressing today:

WHAT.

Now, I DO NOT in any way blame Pam for never having had tacos. She doesn’t live anywhere near Mexico or the United States. So I don’t want anybody being all, “ZOMG HOW HAVE YOU NEVER HAD A TACO.” We’re gonna be like little Fonzies about this.

Still.

Everyone should have tacos. Tacos are great.

So, this post about tacos is dedicated to our friend Pam. I am hoping that, with our help, she can get in the kitchen and make some tacos for herself–or at least, if she manages to find somewhere that sells tacos, she can know if she’s getting the real deal or not.

What is a taco?

If you’ve never had a taco before (weeps for you), this is probably a good place to start. Traditionally, in Mexico, a taco consists of corn tortillas, meat of some sort (more on this later), raw diced onion, cilantro, chopped green cabbage, and whatever kind of salsa they have or you like. Salsa in America tends to be tomato sludge from a can, but salsa just means “sauce” in Mexico and can come in many guises, from chunky pico de gallo to super spicy chilies blended with lime juice.

Americans tend to junk up their tacos with a bunch of other shit, like shredded cheese, ground beef, and lettuce, and use stale tortillas that come out of a box. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s completely wrong.

WRONG

NO.

WTF TACO BELL

Sigh.

This is what tacos should really look like:

Come to mama.

Foto de http://tacotruckscolumbus.com/

The Anatomy of an Amazing Taco

MEAT

If you’re a meat-eater, the base of a taco is all about the meat, yo. Delicious, tender, flavorful meat. Mexican tacos are served with a variety of meat choices–some popular ones are al pastor (spiced pork), carnitas (slow-cooked pork), chorizo (spicy fresh sausage), carne asada (steak), tongue (yeah, I have not had tongue and don’t plan on getting it–I don’t do offal), barbacoa (spicy slow-cooked beef, possibly the cheek depending on where you are–friggin delicious). You can usually get chicken, although chicken as the base of a taco is pretty bland unless it’s SERIOUSLY good chicken.

If, like Pam, you can’t get legit tacos where you live and you want to recreate tacos at home, the meat part isn’t hard at all. HOWEVER. You will want to allot time to prepare it properly. Some meats may need to cook for several hours, some may need to marinate before cooking. My personal favorite taco meat is carnitas, which is slow-cooked pork shoulder–think barbecue, but not smoked. I have been making carnitas at home using a very, very simple method described here on Serious Eats, and it’s a really great taco base. (I know that sj also has a really awesome carnitas method that she might comment about if you’re lucky.) Serious Eats also has recipes for barbacoa if you wanna get fancy and complicated, and a spicy marinated pork shoulder taco if you want pork, but more kicked up. (Feel free to sub in your favorite local meat preparations, too. Especially if they’re spicy. Adobo chicken, for example, would be awesome.)

(I post a lot of links in this article to Serious Eats. That’s because I have actually found them to be a very trustworthy source of food information, especially if J. Kenji López-Alt is the post author.)

BREAD

That base has to have something to go on, and that is a tortilla. Store-bought tortillas basically suck, but they’re better than no tortillas at all. If you’ve never had tortillas, they’re a very thin, flexible flatbread that doesn’t usually have any leavening at all (unless you’re from Texas, where they puff up their flour tortillas with baking powder). To have tacos, you’re going to have to make or acquire some tortillas. If you want to go really hardcore, there’s a tutorial here about how to make your own corn tortillas; it’s a multi-day process so, uh, be prepared for that. If you can get a flour called masa harina at your local grocery and roll your own corn tortillas, that’s the next best thing; if nothing else, you can get the store-bought kind and griddle them for a few seconds to warm them. (Corn tortillas are generally served in a double-stack–two tortillas stacked atop each other, then topped with taco filling.)

Flour tortillas are tasty but not generally used for most tacos. Still, better than no tacos. I wrote a post awhile back about making my own flour tortillas, a process that is much quicker than the corn tortillas. If you can get NO OTHER TORTILLAS, store-bought flour tortillas will not kill you.

TOPPINGS

I really prefer the basic toppings you get at most taco stands in Mexico: chopped cilantro, diced onions, chopped green cabbage. I like the cabbage best when it’s chopped up pretty small, although I’ve gotten it in strips, as well. I guess you COULD use lettuce. If you had to. And I’ve seen people use avocado.

Lime wedges are also amazing. You squirt them over your taco and it gives the whole affair a nice pop of brightness.

SALSAS

Pico de gallo is a must for me when I’m doing taco night. Pico de gallo is basically diced tomatoes, diced raw onions, chopped cilantro, lime juice and salt. You can add diced jalapeños or chilies if you want more heat. I love the freshness of pico de gallo.

You can also make salsas with combinations of roasted chilies, tomatoes or tomatillos, garlic, a dash of oil and/or vinegar. Puree them in the blender or leave them a little chunky, up to you. Here’s a recipe for salsa amarilla, here’s one for roasted tomato salsa, here’s one for salsa verde. Go wild.

ACCOUTREMENTS

I mentioned lime wedges above, those are a must. You can also serve tacos with chopped raw radishes (very traditional), sliced cucumbers (great for cooling down), roasted or pickled jalapeños (if you like the spice), pickled carrots and onions (if you don’t). Or you can just shove them into your facehole with a beer. Whatever works.

Get yo’self a taco.

Despite being Mexican in origin, the ingredients for tacos seem pretty universal; substitutions might need to be made here and there, but overall, it’s a simple, hand-held flatbread sandwich with bangin’ ingredients that is both inexpensive to make (usually) and so full of flavor that you may never want to eat anything else. I could personally live on tacos forever.

FOREVER.

If you love tacos, or if you decide to make tacos at home, please post about it in the comments. Tell us what you love to eat on your tacos!

P.S. This conversation between me, sj, and a couple of other rad people on Twitter may be relevant to your interests.

Book:

Author: Benjamin Constable

Published: June 2013 by Gallery Books, 352 pages

First Line: ”‘I’d like to write a book where the two main characters are me and you,’ I said to Tomomi Ishikawa, and absentmindedly organised the objects on the table.”

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 4/5 notebooks ducttaped to the underside of statues in gardens behind the New York Public Library

This book was received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: This is my first NetGalley book. I’ve been a member for a while, but not a very GOOD member. The first book I was accepted for had technical problems and by the time they were sorted out, the release date had come and gone so it was too late to review it. I’m cursed, apparently.

This one went a lot more smoothly, luckily. Whew.

Benjamin Constable is a Brit living in Paris. He and his American expatriate friend Tomomi Ishikawa meet up frequently for drinks and long walks where they smoke and talk about all manner of things. She’s very likely his closest friend in Paris; they can be honest with each other, real, even when the reality isn’t pretty.

One day, Ben comes home to find a letter from Tomomi. She states that she’s killed herself, and that she’s hidden clues for him to find around their city. These clues send Ben to parts of Paris he’s heard of but never seen – statues made of stopped clocks, the catacombs, tunnels leading from one street to another. Eventually the clues lead him to Tomomi’s hometown, New York City, where he is sent on another set of adventures to discover the city that she loved so much. Each clue gives him more information about his friend – and the information isn’t easy to stomach. The Tomomi Ishikawa he knew was hiding a very dark, very shadowed past. Or was she? Was all the writing she was leaving for Ben true, or part of a story she was telling him? And why did she want Ben to be the one to find these stories?

I was somewhat torn by this book. Overall, it was very good, and I did decide to give it a high rating – but it had some missteps.

The prose was beautiful. Constable’s description of the hidden beauty of both Paris and New York City was so evocative it made you feel like you were there. New York is my favorite city of all time, and reading about it described in this way made me so, so happy. The story was rich and pulled you in; you wanted to keep reading because you wanted to know why this was happening to Ben, what the next clue would be, what else he would find out about his friend. Also, I loved the overarching theme of how well, exactly, do we know our friends? Even our closest friends? How much have they told us, and how much have they held back, either in a sense of self-preservation or perhaps even in an effort to save us from their demons?

However, I didn’t love the somewhat juvenile construction of naming the main character after the author himself; it seemed a very high-school thing to do. “I’ll write a BOOK! I’ll be the main CHARACTER! It’ll be AWESOME!” I also was not overly keen on the ending. It got kind of…strange? I don’t know how to say much more without spoiling it. It ended up alright, but then there was a little coda tacked on that seemed needless. It just seemed like, perhaps, he didn’t know quite how to end it. Also, and this is, I suppose, somewhat nitpicky? I don’t know that Tomomi had three lives. There might have been three; there could have been four. It’s not the strongest title. He could have done better with that.

(Also, and this is totally a galley problem and not an author problem? The formatting on this galley was terrible. Sentences stopped, then started again mid-next-page. Sometimes the print was red for no reason. The sentences were choppy and sometimes broken up all over the page. It was VERY hard to read. Other NetGalley readers – are all the galleys like this? Or did I just happen to get a bad one?)

Overall, though, for the language alone, for the love letter to two beautiful cities full of hidden mystery and a thoughtful piece on what it means to be a friend, I’ll give it fairly high marks. It’s the author’s first book, and I’ll be curious to see what else he comes up with. He shows a lot of promise.

Book:

Author: David Sedaris

Published: April 2013 by Little, Brown and Company, 288 pages

First Lines: ”One thing that puzzled me during the American healthcare debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented.”

Genre/Rating: Humor; 4.5/5 skeletons of dead pygmies (we have no way of knowing if they were murdered or not) (side note: they were)

Review: I somehow totally forgot a new David Sedaris book was coming out.

I KNOW! What does this say about me? I am a terrible human being. I should be drawn and quartered. Barring that, I should at minimum be flogged, or something. Not the happy fun-time flogging, either. The bad kind where someone ends up crying.

Over the last few days, I’ve been sneaking in these essays and inappropriately giggle-snorting in various places. The lobby of the theater, where I was supposed to be very quietly sitting and waiting to see if anyone needed my assistance finding the bathroom or locating a glass of water. My bed, where I was SUPPOSED to be sleeping. The breakroom at work, where I only had twenty minutes but I was totally late clocking back in.

Is the book as funny as his earlier work? Well, in places, yes. But overall, no. Here’s the thing. I think humor writers run out of things to write about. They start strong, with a huge well of material. That well is usually their childhood, and things that have happened to them leading up to the decision to start writing. But if they’re prolific, they eventually come to the end of that material, and then they have to vamp, or use things that are currently happening.

Sedaris does both here. He writes about things that are happening in his life now (and he does it well – I mean, you guys, it’s David Sedaris, he could – and does, here – make a visit to get a colonoscopy funny) and then, in this book, writes some monologues that he says are modeled after forensic speeches that students would use in speech and debate competitions. They’re fiction – he’s an upright Christian mother, a murderous homophobe, etc. They’re funny, but they’re jarringly different from the tone of the rest of the book. (Luckily they’re brief, and there are only six of them.)

The essays themselves, though, are typical, and wonderful, Sedaris. What worked best for me? “Attaboy” and “Standing Still,” about his father’s sense of vengeance (and tendency to wear a dress shirt and underpants around the house); “Easy, Tiger,” about learning the language of the countries he visits (his take on German had me in tears); “Understanding Understanding Owls,” about a deeply weird trip to a taxidermy shop; and “Laugh, Kookaburra,” about his trip to the Australian bush and the things he saw at a restaurant while he was there. (He fed a kookaburra, you guys. You KNOW that’s my favorite bird in all the land. I was so excited I bopped all around in my chair.)

I was also struck by two things in reading this book:

• Sedaris’ travel stories work so well because he has a constant childlike wonder at what he encounters and a very skewed way of seeing things. Anyone else who travels as much as he does would get inured to the little differences in food, customs, behaviors; Sedaris is always not only amazed by them, he shares that amazement with us, in a way that is both detached and ironic as well as geekily adorable, that makes him very relatable. (I personally relate to this because I feel the same way; no matter where I travel, be it somewhere new in my own town, or somewhere continents away, I’m the one with huge eyes and my mouth hanging open about EVERYTHING. My wonder makes other people grin. I’m a kid in a candy store about new places.)
• As he ages, Sedaris’ work is getting a little more reminiscient, a little more introspective – and it’s not a bad thing. It’s not maudlin or sappy. It’s still through that slightly sarcastic, ironic lens, still using his voice. But in “Loggerheads,” for example, we look back on his memories of a childhood friend, and it’s not as much funny as it is bittersweet. In “A Friend in the Ghetto,” we laugh, but we also cringe at the unintentional racism of childhood. It’s a maturity of his writing, and it’s interesting to watch that happening. It’s refreshing. I like it.

Close to five stars, but not quite, only because I’m comparing it to some of his earlier books and it’s not quite as funny. But it’s still Sedaris, and if you love him like I do, you’re going to want to read this and snort-laugh inappropriately for a few days. Who doesn’t like a good snort-laugh, I ask you?

It probably looked exactly like this.

Throughout my childhood my mother fed me books.  As a working mom with a difficult marriage, my mama didn’t have tons of extra time to read books to us; I’m sure she did read to us, but the strongest memories I have are of her providing access to books.  That meant regular library trips in addition to the weekly ones my class took to our elementary school library.  I very vividly remember the first real chapter book I read because I had to get special permission to check it out; Jeanette Oakes’s A Woman Named Damaris is classified as Christian fiction, but it alludes to rape near the beginning. The librarian felt that I, as an eight-year-old, was probably getting in over my head.  I felt like A Total Grown-Up carting that book around school.

When I was a teenager, my mom would pass on all the grocery store fiction she read, books about medical examiners and serial killers, and I ate that shit UP!

Reading has just always been a part of what interests me and how I define myself; books are so intertwined with my life story that they can’t be separated.  When I think back on my school years, my mind is cluttered with so many memories that are tied to literature.  I was an Accelerated Reader badass with a million Pizza Hut coupons.  Teachers asked me to read aloud to the class.   After winning a contest by designing a book cover for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, I got to take a picture with Barbara Robinson.  My high school English teacher let me read real books like They Cage the Animals at Night while my class was still thumbing through Flour Babies.  I was SO that student, the one that just annoys the shit out of everyone except teachers and other people’s parents.  I know.  I’m sorry.

Oh god I know. I KNOW.

I flitted around college majors before settling on English, though, weirdly enough.

By the time I started college I had decided to be a forensic or school psychologist.  Three classes in and I knew that wasn’t going to fly, so I fell to secondary education in English.  After my first middle school class visit, during which I said “fuck” to a student, I felt pretty sure being a high school teacher wasn’t going to be for me either, so I pared it down to English.  Things like salary concerns and job security had led me all over the place, but finally I was happy.  I would be lying to myself if I let this crap economy, the abysmal salary, and the sucky chances of landing a solid academic job get in the way of doing what I love.  (Current professors, please do not smash my graduate school idealistic imaginings, ok?)

Being a reader and a writer are part of my natural fabric, so it makes sense to make that as big a part of my life as I can.  Even though this comes with the pseudo-downside of having someone else choose what I read for the majority of the time, I’ll get to do that for my students one day, which is awesome (and possibly a forum for some nonsensical retribution).

Librarian Hanna is my spirit animal.

And when you get down to it, I feel lucky. You’ll have to excuse my nerdy enthusiasm, but can you think of a better job than slaving away, writing short stories in some coffee shop, reading articles and books all night, every night, and teaching students who are math majors and will NEVER NEED TO WRITE DAMMIT? Because I sure can’t.