The Book Lady's Blog

Movin’ On Down the Road

2013-04-12T14:19:31Z

It’s been a damn good run, readers, and it’s time for the next thing.

After four years of actively blogging here (The Book Lady was born on July 1, 2008), several months of blogging-around-the-edges, and a few months of utterly neglecting this site in favor of other projects, I’ve decided to make it official. The Book Lady isn’t going away–I’ll leave the site up for a while, as it continues to get solid traffic and generate a little extra income with advertising–but I won’t be writing new content here. Let’s be real, I haven’t been doing that for a while.

For the last year and half, I’ve done most of my writing about books, the reading life, and the publishing industry at Book Riot, and now that Riot New Media Group has launched Food Riot, I’m stretching my writerly muscles in a new direction and learning to write about food and the eating life too. I spend my days not just reading and writing, but wrangling an incredible group of contributors and working on the business development side of the company too. My colleagues and our Riot writers are smart, funny, and ridiculously fun, and they teach me something new every day. I am constantly challenged and almost never bored.

These are good things, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, so I’m not sad to be acknowledging that The Book Lady’s days are over. Instead, I’m thrilled beyond thrilled that the work I did here has led to a career and to relationships–both personal and professional–I could never have imagined when I first began. And I am thankful for all of you who have shared your time, your thoughts, and your lives with me here over the years. Many of you have become my friends. A few of you have become my best friends. My life is completely different than it would have been, in more ways than I can count, if I had never started this blog. I have learned and grown so much, and it has been an irreplaceable experience.

And now it’s time for the next thing. So I hope you’ll come find me at Book Riot and Food Riot, and hang around to discover some of the amazing writers I work with. Follow me on Tumblr for quotes from my reading (of the literary and interwebby varieties), bite-sized thoughts on publishing, pop culture, and feminism, and random GIFs. Listen to the Bookrageous Podcast, where I talk books with two of the best friends I’d never have met if not for this blog. Find me on Twitter, and let’s talk.

Change is good. Forward motion is good. Knowing when a chapter is over is good. And you, awesome readers, are the best.

I’ll see you around the interweb.

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The Book Lady’s 10 Best Books of 2012

2012-12-22T18:37:42Z

Y’all, I have written and re-written and re-re-written this list a dozen times, and I only managed to arrive at a Top Ten when my Bookrageous cohosts Josh and Jenn basically forced me to for our 2012 Favorites show. I went in with a list of 17 contenders–this was a damn fine year in reading–and didn’t know exactly which 10 I was going to pick until it was over. Here (in alphabetical order because they’re all too awesome to rank) are my 10 favorite books of 2012.

Arcadia by Lauren Groff: The story of a boy, Bit, who comes of age on a commune during its dying days, this novel could easily have been bitter, or a bummer, or a rant about how fraught the search for utopia can be. But in Groff’s capable hands, it’s a beautifully rendered examination of family, what the heart wants, and where our future could be taking us.

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King: This is the only YA book I read this year, and I’d feel bad about only reading one YA book in a year if it weren’t so freaking awesome. I sort of feel like if I only read one YA book a year for the rest of my life, it’s cool as long as it’s by A.S. King. This, her latest, is about a teenage girl making sense of her family’s dysfunctions and her own sexual identity, and she’s doing it with the help of Socrates as her imaginary friend. King trusts her readers to understand complex issues and pick up erudite references–this novel is packed with philosophy–and her signature use of the surreal is in full effect.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain: It’s no easy feat to be funny about war, or to be critical and satirical and angry without becoming preachy and pedantic. Ben Fountain manages all of that here, delivering the first great novel of the Iraq War and holding up a mirror that forces Americans to examine how we watch, consume, and engage with war. Biting social criticism with a side of Beyonce, Billy Lynn is well-balanced and not to be missed.

Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman: The best short story collection of the year (yes, better than that one by Junot Diaz) comes from a debut writer who nails our relationships with animals and the environment and what those relationships reveal about our humanity. Bergman’s stories are connected by theme, incisive observation, and great sympathy for her characters, flawed though they are. This book is a gem, and a great gift to readers.

Breasts by Florence Williams: You knew everything came down to boobs, didn’t you? Florence Williams presents a heavily researched and immensely fun-to-read look at the social and scientific history of breasts. There’s breast implants and breast cancer, family stories and futuristic technology, humor and heartbreak. And there’s a whole lot of awesome. This is hands down my favorite single-subject narrative nonfiction of the year.

Contents May Have Shifted by Pam Houston: From my rave on Book Riot: I read a lot of great fiction this year, and a lot of whoa-how-did-she-pull-that-off fiction. I read some fiction that held up a mirror to my life and asked me to look at myself in a new way, and some fiction that took my breath away with its heart and emotional nakedness. I even read some really fun fiction. But I only read one work of fiction that was all those things, and it was Pam Houston’s globetrotting novel-slash-memoir-slash-sorta-kinda-connected-short-storiesContents May Have Shifted. It was one of my first reads of 2012, and it’s the only one I’ve gone back to over and over. It’s about love and friendship (Houston nails the magic of friendship between women like no one else) and travel, and how sometimes we leave home looking for things we already have. And it’s the closest thing to perfect I’ve read in a really long time.

Diving Belles by Lucy Wood: Another kick-ass debut collection of short stories, this one’s filled with atmosphere and magic and sorta-creepy-but-in-a-delicious-way unexplained phenomena. Men are kidnapped by mermaids, women turn to stone, houses fill with flora, and Wood never tells us exactly why or how. The dark but playful stories and mind-blowing sentences between these pages beg to be savored

Home by Toni Morrison: Morrison’s tenth novel may not be her best, but it is still incredible. (Anything Morrison is better than almost anything not-Morrison, after all.) A tiny, powerful volume–interesting how her novels have contracted in length after the big stories of Beloved and Paradise–Home gave me impetus to re-read all 9 of ToMo’s previous novels, and so was a defining experience of my reading year. If you’ve never read Morrison, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Quiet by Susan Cain: American culture is obsessed with extroversion, with being outgoing and friendly and using social confidence to imply intelligence and skill. This is never more evident than in our schools and business places, and it is often to the detriment of not only the introverts who make up one-third to one-half of the population, but to us all. Some people need quiet and alone-time to thrive and do their best work, and when we acknowledge this and re-shape our classrooms and offices to reflect it, we all benefit. Susan Cain lays out the science and sociology of introversion and highlights significant contributions introverts have made to society to present the case for understanding introversion and making the places we spend our lives happier and more productive. This book reshaped how I think about my personality and the way I work, and I can’t say enough good things about it.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers: Tight, taught, and profoundly affecting, Powers’ debut novel about the Iraq War is narrated by a young man who watched his best buddy die just eight months into their tour. Private Bartle was somehow involved in his friend Murphy’s death, and he reveals exactly what happened in chapters that shift from his time on the ground to his present-day several years after the war. At 240 pages, this exploration of war–what it does to soldiers, to the families they leave behind, and to humanity–packs a massive punch. Powers doesn’t waste a single word.

With love and shout-outs to Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway and The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka, two of the most fun and unexpected reading experiences of my year–I’d have picked them if Jenn hadn’t gotten to them first!

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Inked!: My Ray Bradbury Tattoo

2012-12-13T22:47:40Z

So, I did this last week:

It’s a selection from Fahrenheit 451, one of my all-time favorites, and the first book that really changed me.

‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.’

So, why this quote, and why now?

Well, I’m about to turn 30, and I’ve doing a lot of reflecting on what it means to be at this stage of life and what I’ve learned. I feel like I’ve figured some things out in the last couple years–the kinds of things that make a person feel like she has a little wisdom (just a little)–and one of those things is that nothing is certain, and that’s okay. In fact, it can be pretty rad.

Often, people who say things like, “there are no guarantees” do it with a hard-won cynicism, and issue it as a warning. It’s a “watch out, kid, it’s ugly out there.” This is not about that. In fact, it’s about the opposite.

This has been was the scariest, risk-taking-est year of my life in ways both personal and professional, but it has also been the most exciting and rewarding. I don’t think it’s an accident or a coincidence that things line up that way. This has been a year of leaping without a net, of consciously choosing endeavors with endpoints unknown. It has been terrifying; it has been exhilarating. And I’ve realized that you can choose to live in the fear and be miserable, or you can let the risk be its own reward. There ARE no guarantees, ever, and when you accept that as a truth of life, the unknown becomes a lot less scary because you know that no matter how much you might like to think you can control things, everything, really, is unknown.

So this tattoo, these words from the writer whose work is part of my DNA, is my celebration of lessons learned and wisdom gained, and my reminder to myself that the certainty I might be tempted to reach for sometimes doesn’t exist. It can’t be found. “There never was such an animal.” Why go looking for it when I could stuff my eyes with wonder instead?

What Are Your Favorite Books of 2012?

2012-12-01T20:25:39Z

Over at Book Riot, we’re surveying readers about their favorite books of 2012. There are no genre restrictions, no age or audience restrictions, and no authors or publishers campaigning for your votes. It’s just about YOU, as a reader, and what rang your reading bells this year. We’ll tabulate the results and share them before the holidays, giving you plenty time to scope out what you might have missed and add it to your wishlist.

I’ve been toiling and sweating, by which I mean writing and re-writing, my top picks for the year. My writing this year has focused a lot more on what it is to be a reader than on what I’ve read, so it’s been a long, strange trip coming up with the finalists. I’m not ready to reveal the whole list just yet, but I will tell you that one of the books I shared in the survey was Breasts by Florence Williams.

Dish it, please! I’d love to know about your best reads of the year, and if you’d pop over to Book Riot for the survey, that’d be awesome. Thanks, and happy Sunday!

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10 Bookish Conversations I’m Totally Over

2012-11-09T22:02:19Z

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that drama in the bookish internet is cyclical. Much like those hideous floral-and-lace-inset denim shorts that reappeared this summer (I’m pretty sure I owned a pair in 1988), these conversations are no better the second (or third, or ninth) time around. Many of them could benefit from greater nuance, but given the (incredibly low) likelihood that that’s going to happen–the interweb, you know, is not so great for nuance sometimes–it’s time for them to die. Over at Book Riot, fellow editor Jeff and I pulled on our crankypants and identified the top 10 conversations we never want to have again. Here we go!

#10: SAVE OUR BOOKSTORE

Rebecca Joines Schinsky: I’m just gonna come out with guns blazin’. I never want to hear another variation on, “Save this bookstore! Give them your dollars!” ever again. I love indie bookstores as much as the next girl, and I’m doing my part to keep my local’s doors open. I believe in voting with your wallet to support businesses you want to see stick around. But bookstore owners need to innovate and find new business models and ways to compete, and if they can’t, it shouldn’t fall to their customers to save them.

Jeff O’Neal: I agree—with a small qualifier. If a bookstore is looking for funds that will add or alter how they make money or that will reduce costs, I am more sympathetic. It’s the “give us money so we can keep doing things the same way,” I have a tough time being interested in. This also relates to the zero-sum game of giving: wouldn’t giving that money to beleaguered public libraries be money better spent? In the grand view of keeping books and reading supported? I need the Planet Money guys to do a podcast about this.

RJS: With you on that qualifier. Good point.

#9 CELEBRITY X GOT A BOOK DEAL, PUBLISHING IS DOOOOOOOMED

JSO: I am so tired of this one I can’t even trot out a not-funny joke. For some reason, if a publisher makes a money-grab acquisition, then literature itself is threatened. It may or may not be threatened, but the final hammer-strike will not be Snooki’s book or Meghan Fox’s confessional poetry (which I would read with extreme prejudice by the way).

RJS: Or Kate Upton’s Guide to Doing the Dougie (And Looking Fly)? I’m not even a little bit ashamed to admit I’d read that.

I think this dead horse gets reanimated and beaten up for a couple reasons. It gives writers who have been rejected by publishers a convenient way to explain their failure (and, you know, rejected writers owe their adoring publics an explanation about why they’re not published yet), and it’s an easy repository for all the free-floating anxiety in the publishing industry. Scared about the future of books? Blame a Kardashian!

#8 LITERARY HASHTAG GAMES

RJS: I sorta like the diversion of stuff like #fridayweeds and #badwritingtips, so I don’t know how much grumbling I can muster for this one. It was your pick, Jeff, and I like you, so I’mma let you finish.

JSO: You can only find puns based on Steinbeck titles funny for so long. I liked about the first 987023452 hashtag games, but I think the genre is pretty well strip-mined at this point. If I have to see someone make the “Tequila Mockingbird” joke one more time, I’m going to have to revoke someone’s cool card.

#7 WHY AREN’T THERE MORE WOMEN ON THIS LIST?

JSO: This one’s tough because it is a real problem. Women should have a fair piece of the reviewing/being reviewed pie. Duh. But there’s also this way where counting the gender-beans of a publication or an award or a list dominates other kinds of imbalances (like the racial one in the Book Riot Top 50 list we did last week). It’s relatively easy to look at the author names on a list of books and see gender, but it’s considerably more difficult to see class or education or any number of things we all would like to see represented.

The other problem is that the responses of publications that get called out are always so lame. No one is ever like “Oh my god. 92% of the books we reviewed last year were by dudes. We need to fix that like yesterday.”

Does any of that make sense?

RJS: Absolutely. The gender imbalance is a problem, and it’s one we should talk about and respond to, but it’s not the only imbalance, or any more important than the other types of inequity you mention. And really, we shouldn’t want to see lists constructed solely with the goal of achieving gender equality all the time. There are situations in which more books by men will fit, and there are situations in which more books by women will fit, and I’d love to see a list that was so truly and obviously merit-based that no one would want to reach for the gender-beans. Is that so much to ask?

#6 ARE BLOGGERS KILLING LITERARY CRITICISM?

RJS: This argument might have been interesting a decade ago, but I sincerely doubt it. The tension between the old-guard lit critics who are–let’s be honest–afraid of being made irrelevant, and bloggers who have changed the public conversation about literature (and, I would argue, breathed new life into it) is real, sure. But it’s a total snoozefest, and new posts about it are rarely more than pageview whoring. Having a slow week at the Official Website for Dying Print Publication? Make some bloggers mad!

And bloggers’ responses are almost as bad. Nothing smacks of pandering quite like a blogger writing a post about how bloggers will save us all. A little (or a whole hell of a lot) less conversation, and a little more action, please.

JSO: Totally agree. We’re probably a little biased here, but this also feels like a settled question. I think a more interesting question would be something like: has blogging increased the total attention paid to books? It feels true, but again, this is the business I’ve chosen. There’s probably no way to measure this, but I don’t think that discussing books is a zero-sum game, with X number of minutes people will spend reading, and reading about books.

#5: BOOKS EVERY PERSON OF A CERTAIN AGE/RACE/GENDER/NATIONALITY SHOULD READ

JSO: At least two things to hate here. First, the moral “should” that creeps into WAAAAAAY too much book discussion. There is no should, folks. Second, I thought the culture wars cured us of the desire to essentialize identities like this. These lists are more about constructing identities than representing some shared experience. And they are as bogus as a three-dollar bill.

RJS: It gets even worse when the list is books you should read about an identity or experience different from your own. Books Every Woman in Her 20s Should Read is bad enough, but Books Men Should Read To Understand Women in Their 20s is just, I can’t even.

Let’s take “there is no should, folks” and spread it across the bookish internet. Like a literary version of “keep your laws off my body.” I don’t want guilt or moral imperatives anywhere near my reading, thankyouverymuch.

#4 AUTHORS RESPONDING TO BOOK REVIEWS IS A VERY BAD IDEA

RJS: This one comes straight from the Department of Conversations That Need More Nuance But Will Never Get It. I don’t think it’s always bad for authors to address reviews–I like to think it could be done constructively–but we’ve seen enough social media shitstorms to know that it’s rarely a good idea (and to convince me that I never want to be a publicist).

We get it. Some authors can’t handle criticism, and some feel entitled to a positive review just because they sent a reviewer a “free” book, and some are just assholes. Can we stop talking about this already?

JSO: Is there a nastier, meaner corner of the literary internet than this stuff? There are some really unbelievable reviews and some even more unbelievable responses from authors (and/or their entourages). There is definitely a more interesting discussion about the relationship of the author and reader and what we think is fair game for reviews. I guess the thing that seems strange to some people, authors included, is that once a book is out in the world, readers have more control of it than the writers do. The book is what it is at that point, but what is said and thought about it is very much up for grabs, so the stakes feel high (though I don’t think they are in most cases). The risk/reward for responding to a negative/unfair review is usually…..unfavorable.

#3 WHO IS QUALIFIED TO REVIEW BOOKS?

JSO: This leads nicely into a larger, equally tiresome “debate.” Who should be reviewing? Which is really sneaky way of asking “who shouldn’t be reviewing?” Our, now vestigial I think, idea of a review implied authority. “X got a great review in The NY Times” conferred the authority of the publication onto a book, when really it was an individual doing the reviewing. My point is that the whole “credibility” equation was distorted already. Throw in “amateur,” “reader,” “blogger,” and other kinds of reviewing, and you have a confusing morass of cross-purposes. I think authors want an authoritative seal of approval that confers value, where more democratic reviews aren’t in the business of authoritative judgment. They are in the business of giving personal opinion. That we use the same word, “review,” for different ends is frustrating. I bet the Germans have this figured out.

RJS: That conflation of reviewer with reviewer’s publication is a hairy beast. You’re right that the credibility thing has been distorted from the get-go. That anyone can create and build a platform, and have authority conferred on them by readers in the popular vote of pageviews, just makes it far more apparent. The folks who want things done the way they’ve always been done just because that’s the way they’ve always been done don’t appreciate having this pointed out. It’s like revealing that The Great and Powerful Oz is just a dude pulling levers behind a curtain.

And it makes me wonder: if no one had ever heard of, say, Michiko Kakutani, and she started a blog running the exact same reviews that are now printed in the New York Times, would anyone care? Would she become A Really Big Deal? I have my doubts.

#2 SELF-PUBLISHING IS THE END OF EVERYTHING

RJS: Since we’re on the subject of authority and gatekeepers…God, I don’t know if I even have anything interesting to say about this. I’m so over it. People can publish their own books. Some of them will be successful. Many of them will not. Traditional publishers will continue to offer services and tools (and, ahem, authority) individuals cannot afford on their own, and for that, many writers will resist self-publishing. The end.

JSO: The hand-wringing about self-publishing is so weird because self-publishing actually predated what we call publishing by a couple hundred years. The prohibition on “vanity” publishing is a relatively new idea, and one I’m glad to see go away. Unless self-published works are, in aggregate, so embarrassingly awful that everyone who reads one is so turned off that they never read another book again ever, I think it isn’t a threat to good writing and great stories. It might be a threat to the book publishing industry as we know it, but as I always say, the publishing industry is not the same thing as the “reading” industry.

#1 PRINT IS DEAD/EBOOKS RULE

JSO: Here it is, the most unkillable talking point in today’s book world. As a recent all-digital convert, it is clear to me that the difference between a print book and an ebook is both miniscule and immaterial. As romantic as print is, digital has so many advantages that I have a hard time seeing how it won’t be the dominant form, and soon at that. But print may well remain important. I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. And more importantly, it doesn’t matter.

RJS: With you there. I haven’t made the full conversion to digital reading that you have–I’m at about 50% paper still, mostly because that’s the how galleys show up at my house–but I can see it coming, and I’m fine with it. We’ve talked a lot about the notion of books as containers, and I think that’s right. As I wrote here recently, books are not sacred objects. It’s the stories that we’re really connected to, and as long as we continue to have stories–which we’ve had for a hell of a lot longer than we’ve had printed books–we’re all going to be okay.

Now that we’ve aired our grievances, let’s ask the readers. What bookish conversations and complaints will you be running up the Festivus Pole this year?

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So, I Read CLOUD ATLAS…

2012-10-28T19:39:21Z

Because I cannot resist the opportunity to read an of-the-moment book with a super-hyped film coming out, I dove into CLOUD ATLAS with my Book Riot colleague and writing buddy extraordinaire Greg Zimmerman. (I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s high up on the to-do list. I mean, I NEED to understand why Tom Hanks is wearing that drapey-hoodie thing.)

Some highlights:

>>I’m sure as shit glad that so many people warned me about the slow start, because I’m not sure I’d have stuck with Mitchell if I hadn’t known that. And to think I didn’t really believe them! (“Oh, it’s just that people always think literary fiction is slow,” I told myself.)

>>I adore and appreciate it when authors trust their readers’ intelligence and don’t make it too easy to figure everything out, so I’m thoroughly enjoying the sleuthing parts of this reading experience. The confusing bits are pleasantly head-scrambling, and when stuff makes sense, I feel so smart. But there’s so much to take in! I can get down with dialect, and I can get down with world-building, but I can’t grok both at the same time, and that made one section (“Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After”) quite a slog for me. Worth it, but a slog nonetheless.

Also, the book is chock full of wise observations about life, the universe, and everything? Here are just a few of the many awesome lines I marked: “Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction.” “Humor is the ovum of dissent.” “An impulse can be both vaguely understood and strong.” “The sacred is a fine hiding place for the profane.”

>> It was a valuable reading experience, but not a life-changer. If fiction has to have a message, I want it served up this elegantly. But here’s the rub — while I’m blown away by the organizational feat Mitchell pulled off (and I can’t stop thinking about what his work space must have looked like while he wrote this), I’m missing the human connection. This is a great book in the “Whoa, look what he did!” sense, but I just don’t feel a beating heart behind it. A friend I was discussing this with used the word “reptilian” to describe Mitchell’s work, and I think that’s right.

Have you read CLOUD ATLAS? What do you think?

Pop over to Book Riot for the full collaborative review.

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Books Are Not Sacred Objects

2012-10-28T19:31:01Z

I wrote this for Book Riot a while ago and thought I’d share it here because I continue to be super-annoyed by people who see gorgeous crafts made from books and resort to the, “NOOOO, I could never hurt a book” response. Here we go!

_________________________

The bookish internet exploded recently when, in what one report called “the worst craft idea ever,” Lauren Conrad (star of MTV reality shows and author of teen novels) cut apart a set of Lemony Snicket books and used the spines to decorate an otherwise plain box. The outcries were variations on the theme of, Nooooo, not books! That bitch!

During the brief but passionate storming of Conrad’s castle, I couldn’t help but think, “Really? THIS is what book people have become?” I had just watched the same tempest hit a smaller teapot one day earlier when a photo posted on the Book Riot Facebook page of a ring box carved out of a book resulted in an unexpected and heated battle between Team That’s So Romantic and Team OH NO NOT BOOKS. The protests in both cases came across as absurd and overblown (when it seems they were intended to come across as evidence of what good bibliophiles the protesters were for decrying the destruction of books). And one has to wonder if the torch-bearing villagers were actually upset with Conrad, or if she was just the latest convenient scapegoat for the pervasive and unnecessary fear that the transition from print books to digital will spell the end of literature as we know it.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick of this conversation. And it’s not because I don’t love books. I do. I love paper books; I love ebooks; and I love the wreath made of book pages that hangs on my living room wall. They are not mutually exclusive.

So come on. We’re better than this. When you eat a popsicle, you don’t care what happens to the stick afterward. You might even pat yourself on the back for your eco-minded creativity when you recycle it into a craft, or hand it off to your kids to do the same. It’s not about the popsicle stick, and you know it. The popsicle is the thing you want; the stick is just the delivery device. Stop me if you know where I’m going here.

It’s the same with books. We love books for what they carry within them, not for what they’re made of. The story is the thing; the physical book or ereader or tablet or phone is merely the delivery device. When you fetishize the physical properties of an object, you devalue its contents. When you freak out over the ‘destruction’ of books, you are not elevating books. You are reducing the intangible magic of stories to the ink, pulp, and glue that deliver them to you.

Rachel Fershleiser, who has seen this issue from many sides–as an author, a bookseller who sorted donations at a used bookstore for six years, and a former publicist for Big Six publishers–expressed strong feelings about it on Twitter. Here’s what she said when I asked her to expand on them.

I am continually mystified by people who worship the physical object. They used words like “sacred” and “deface” and “murder.” My best guess is that these people have little experience working in a bookstore, library, or publishing house. Books are made from wood pulp. If they don’t sell, to wood pulp they return.

That’s right. Books that do not sell are often destroyed or recycled. Now how do you feel about bookish crafts as an alternative? Sure, I realize that a book that has been recycled into another object can no longer be read, but not every book needs to be saved and re-read. Not every book CAN be saved. (Hell, I’m sure we’d all agree that there are plenty books that shouldn’t have been published in the first place. Who’s to say they aren’t better off as craft supplies?) Fershleiser again:

If books find a place as art or craft or marriage proposal, I feel comfortable saying it is better than many deserve. If you think your local library or school or used bookshop will be overjoyed by your donation of World Book 1992 (for any purpose other than arts and crafts time, that is) I can assure you, you are sorely mistaken. Some books are worthless. It’s just a fact.

Fershleiser knows from book-crafting experience, so cover your ears, oh defenders of ‘the preciousssss.’

Many years ago I found a free book on a giveaway shelf with a nice red cover. With exacto knife and Aleene’s craft glue, I created a treasure box I use daily. The book is called Send A Fax To The Kasbah. Should anyone be eager to read it, there are currently 77 copies available on Amazon beginning at a price of $0.01. Knock yourselves out….Should we hold onto the ideas for posterity? Absolutely. Should we allow creative people to use stacks of paper for anything they damn well please? I am certain of it.

This obsession with protecting the book as a sacred object is misguided and counterproductive. It’s a distraction from the mission of keeping people interested in reading when a whole host of alternatives are constantly vying for their time and attention. So how about this, fellow People of the Tome: Let’s stop wasting our time on self-congratulatory defenses of objects and redirect that energy to something that matters, like reminding the world of the value of literature and nurturing new readers. Let’s get our priorities back in line. To paraphrase my friend Bradley Robb, let’s not have container fetishes, let’s have story fetishes. The container is just a container, perhaps a reminder to us of what it holds. It’s the story that entertains us. It’s the story that changes us. It’s the story that is sacred. And no crafting project or technological advancement can change that.

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A Short Course in Getting It On: A Reading List to Spice Up Your Love Life

2012-09-13T01:54:50Z

Every now and then, the perfect writing assignment comes along, the one that really couldn’t be more in your wheelhouse. That assignment came my way last week, and I spent the weekend having way more fun than should be allowed for work. The full post, recommending a couple dozen books, is up at Book Riot. Here’s a peek.

Behold: The Book Lady’s Short Course in Getting It On.

I don’t remember where I first heard the word “orgasm,” but I do remember that 1) I didn’t know what it meant, and 2) I went straight to the dictionary to try to figure it out. (Ah, the good old pre-internet days when you actually had to do some work to learn about sex stuff you probably shouldn’t know yet!) As a reader, I’ve always used books to help me make sense of the world, and sex is no exception.

There’s a wealth of good reading to be done about between-the-sheets techniques, and heaven forbid you should try to find it by googling “sex guide.” (File that under: it ain’t pretty.) Here’s an annotated round-up of some of the best–informed by my own reading, two years of graduate study in clinical psychology focused on sex research and therapy, and recommendations from friends and sex shop-owning experts. Cue up the Marvin Gaye, baby. It’s time to get our groove on.

Part I: Get It On

From Boinking for Beginners to Advanced Action, these books cover it all.

The Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides–If you buy and read and mark up one sex book in your entire life, it should be this one. (My first copy still has post-its with notes like, “Sounds fun!” attached.) Super inclusive, with tips that work no matter what your sexual orientation or whom you like to get jiggy with, The Guide is now in its seventh edition. There’s a chapter for just about everything: romance to reproductive systems, kissing to kink, going down to getting pregnant. This is a book about learning to talk about, think about, and have the sex that will make you happy.

The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans–It’s a tall order to live up to the subtitle, “The Most Complete Sex Manual Ever Written,” but the folks from Good Vibes(one of the best and most comprehensive sex shops online) do it. And they do it well. Similar to The Guide to Getting It On, this one covers communicating with your partner, having safer sex, and experimenting in the sack, and it approaches sexuality across the lifetime.

Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex by Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning–Babeland does IRL what Good Vibes does online–they remove the seediness from adult toy stores to create places designed to make people feel comfortable asking intimate questions and exploring sexuality. (If you get a chance to shop in one of their stores, you’ll find that you really can ask about any product, and they’ll answer–often based on personal experience.) Moregasm is very inclusive and covers a lot of ground, so while it won’t all be relevant to your interests and experience, you’ll learn a whole lot.

Sex: How to Do Everything by Em and Lo: A collaborative effort from Nerve.com writers Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey, this enthusiastic “romp” is less about solving problems and more about going from good to great. It also includes 300 live-shot photos to provide you with visual inspiration.

Pop over to Book Riot for reading recs on getting off, getting frisky and getting DIY.

Read It Now: WHY HAVE KIDS? by Jessica Valenti

2012-09-05T01:17:57Z

Whether you have kids, are thinking about having kids, or have determined that you don’t want to have kids, you need to read Why Have Kids? Noted feminist writer Jessica Valenti (longtime readers will recall that I loved her 2009 book, The Purity Myth) chronicles her experiences as a first-time mom, explores cultural myths and misconceptions about parenting, and speaks truth to the unequal and unfair treatment of women who choose to mother (which, you know, is *most* women).

Valenti begins with the myths, devoting the first half of the book–called “Lies”–to dismantling widely-held but wrongheaded notions, including the ideas that having children will make you happy and that women are naturally better at parenting than men are. She supports her claims with evidence from major research investigations, and let me tell you, some of it is jaw-dropping. For instance: were you aware that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies time women spend with their children as “parenting,” but considers time men spend with their kids to be”child care” (the same classification given to babysitters)? A full-time stay-at-home mother is a parent, but a man who does the same work is a babysitter. Let that sink in.

The second half of the book presents “Truth” and includes chapters on the death of the nuclear family (the changing shape of families away from the ‘traditional’ model), why mothers should work, how “smart women don’t have kids,” and what happens when parents want to give up on parenting. This is stuff we need to know–and more important, stuff we need to talk about–if we want to demand not just equitable treatment of men and women but equitable treatment of parents and non-parents, women who mother and women who don’t. (Another fact: women who don’t have children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar; women with children only make 73 cents to that dollar.)

Some of Valenti’s statements are controversial, and they are intended to be. Valenti’s purpose here is to push a dialogue forward, and you can’t do that without ruffling some feathers. To wit, American culture likes to talk about how parenting is “the hardest job in the world,” but Valenti (who, remember, is a mother) disagrees.

If women continue to believe that the most important thing they can do is raise children–and that their children need to be the center of their universe–then the longer that American women will go unrecognized and undermined in public life, and the more frantic and perfectionist we’ll become in our private and parental lives.

Furthermore, she wonders, “if parenting is so rewarding and so important, why aren’t more men staying home to do it?”

You won’t agree with everything in Why Have Kids?, and a lot of it will probably make you angry, and that’s the point. The way American society–our families, our workplaces, and our government–conceptualizes parenthood and treats parents, especially mothers, is broken. We should be angry. At its core, Why Have Kids? is “about how the American ideal of parenting doesn’t match the reality of [parents'] lives.” Valenti offers up not just criticism of existing ideas and practices but a call for change and potential next steps.

If you believe that all women should be treated equally regardless of their reproductive status, that the parenting work men and women do is equally valuable and important, and that the pressures and expectations on parents in contemporary society need to shift before they cause further damage, Why Have Kids? is a book for you. If you’re not sure about some of these issues, or you’re open to having your ways of thinking about motherhood challenged, it’s even more a book for you. Lucky for all of us, it’s out today. Go read it now!

Check out an excerpt from the book at Salon, and if you popped over hoping to find a book about why NOT to have kids, check out Laura Scott’s terrific book Two Is Enough.

If 90s Pop/Rock Lyrics Were Book Blurbs

2012-08-26T03:59:18Z

My recent exercise in repurposing hip-hop lyrics into book blurbs over at Book Riot was so much fun, I had to have more of the music-literature crossover shenanigans. So I hopped into the Wayback Machine, tapped into my deep stores of 90s nostalgia, thought wistful thoughts about my Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper, and came up with these. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

(songs are linked to Spotify for your listening pleasure)

The Catcher in the Rye

Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once? I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it.

(Green Day, “Basket Case”)

Trainspotting

So I wake in the morning and I step outside and I take a deep breath and I get real high, and I scream from the top of my lungs what’s going on?

(4 Non Blondes, “What’s Up?”)

A Reliable Wife

She lies and says she’s in love with him. Can’t find a better man.

(Pearl Jam, “Better Man”)

Sharp Objects

Scar tissue that I wish you saw. Sarcastic Mr. Know It All. Close your eyes, and I’ll kiss you.

(Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Scar Tissue“)

The Handmaid’s Tale

I’m just a girl, living in captivity. Your rule of thumb makes me worry some. I’m just a girl, what’s my destiny? What I’ve succumbed to is making me numb.

(No Doubt, “Just a Girl”)

The Complete Memoirs of Casanova

A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side. A little bit of Rita is all I need, a little bit of Tina is what I see. A little bit of Sandra in the sun, a little bit of Mary all night long. A little bit of Jessica, here I am. A little bit of you makes me your man.

(Lou Bega, “Mambo No. 5”)

Anna Karenina

The ties that bind are tearing me apart.

(Cowboy Mouth “Jenny Says”)

Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me by Pattie Boyd

They all said she’s just another groupie slut. I said I thought you were anything but (think again). Sometimes reputations outlive their applications…

(Coyote Shivers, “Sugarhigh”)

Anything on the ‘Books About Books’ Shelf

And all I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape.

(Blind Melon, “No Rain”)

Oliver Twist

Don’t try to feed me, ‘cause I’ve been here before, and I deserve a little more.

(Counting Crows, “Rain King”)

This is just half the list. Pop over to Book Riot to read ‘em all.

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