Here are a few things I’d like to to tell my own students on the occasion of their graduation. Maybe a little more muted than most administrations would like, but it’s advice I myself would have liked to have heard at 22 (and am trying to remind myself of at 35).

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At this moment, you are more open-minded than you will ever be again. As you get older, your interests might deepen, but the range will almost certainly narrow. Fight this as hard as you can.

Over the next decade, you will probably be able to count on one hand the number of times you will sit in a room with people that are not your friends and talk about ideas. Find ways to have conversations with people who don’t think like you do.

Most of you will try to hold on to your youth for the next 10-20 years. The longer you try, the more painful and hindering it will be. Nothing ages you faster than trying to be something you are not.

You will never feel like you know what you are doing, so don’t wait for it.

Outside of your small circle of family and close friends, no one cares what you wear, what you do, what you read, or what you watch. This can be both liberating and terrifying. Choose liberating.

The more you enjoyed your time here, the more the memory of it will sting.

You were taught principally by people who have no idea how business works, though most of you will spend your professional lives outside of academia.

The difficulties ahead of you will make what you have faced to this point seem trivial.

It is easy to make decisions about your life without even knowing you are making them. You will regret the decisions you did not make a hell of a lot more than the decisions you knew you were making.

You don’t deserve anything. Your passion, effort, and creativity may not pay off. But you still have to try.

The things you care strongly about now might mean nothing to you in five years. And that’s OK. You haven’t failed or given up. You will just care about different things.

The pursuit and maintenance of health insurance will govern far more of your life than art.

Do not think that because you dated a lot in college you have any idea what it means to be in a healthy relationship. Most of this education is still in front of you.

What you will turn out to be will probably not bear much resemblance to what you thought you would be. Try not to mourn this overmuch.

If you pay attention and exert enormous effort, you might be able to mitigate some of your flaws, but this will be an on-going effort.

There are exponentially more possibilities than you can imagine.

Your favorite song right now is likely to be your favorite song for the rest of your life.

Favorite songs will matter to you less and less.

If there is an art to living, it is knowing when to be hard on yourself and when to go easy on yourself. This is more difficult than it seems.

The small patch of understanding and meaning you can create for yourself will be the anchor of your happiness. Grow and guard it.

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Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

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We asked you to share your favorite stories of campus life, and you came up with quite the list.  Take a look, and let us know if we’re missing anything.

Pnin and Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies

Looking for Alaska by John Green

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

All That Sparkles Isn’t Real Sapphire by Daisy Jordan

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Straight Man by Richard Russo

Moo by Jane Smiley

Campus Trilogy by David Lodge

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

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The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (Knopf, on sale date June 11, 2013)

This book is an iteration of the technique where a book follows a number of different stories that turn out to be linked. In this novel, the common thread is a particular antique diamond ring. The stories connected by the ring are interwoven with the snapshots from the life of Frances Gerety, the advertising copywriter responsible for penning marriage’s most famous tagline, “A Diamond is Forever.”

The Engagements sounds potentially saccharine - like a novelized version of several people’s wedding Pinterest boards - but it isn’t. These happily-ever-afters involve a healthy dose of realistic imperfection. The questions raised by the relationship of marriage traditions and advertising are interesting and will prod you gently to think, but don’t overshadow the story. Parts of this novel are better than others, but the good parts range into excellent and the weaker parts are never awful. This book won’t change your life, but it’ll entertain you if you let it.

Verdict: Buy if this subject matter is your jam. Otherwise, borrow.

Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, U.S. sale date June 11, 2013)

The premise: four strangers in a train compartment strike up a conversation and end up trading stories about love. The reader jumps between the characters’ minds, experiencing each of their stories through their own eyes as well as through the minds of their listeners. The love stories are quietly lovely, varied, and vivid, but the book as a whole reads more like several short stories tied together rather than a novel. The characters don’t seem to grow from sharing their experiences with each other, and only one of them gains any new insight from telling is story out loud. It’s still an enjoyable read, but for it to be more than that I would have needed to see the characters disembark the train as subtlety different people than who they were when they boarded.

Verdict: Borrow.

Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann (Touchstone, on sale date June 11, 2013)

Astor Place Vintage tells the stories of Amanda, a vintage clothing store owner who discovers a diary in an antique fur muff, and Olive, the long-ago girl who once hid her diary for safekeeping. According to the book summary, reading Olive’s diary is supposed to teach Amanda valuable lessons about her own life, but that’s not evident from the text. The connection between the stories never really expands beyond a series of forced-feeling coincidences and the characters themselves aren’t dynamic enough to carry the story. The one subplot that really grabbed me was Olive’s quest for accurate information about sex and contraception in the early 1900’s; I found the variation of misinformation she encountered and the depth of the taboos she challenged fascinating. Unfortunately, this was a minor part of the novel.

Verdict: Bypass.

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Exterior of the Fairy Castle
Image by Kthypryn

Earlier this month, Derek wrote about The Smallest Book in the World (and Other Really Little Books). Everyone loves the charm of miniature books, but a few collectors have taken this love above and beyond to create some of the most unique and valuable libraries in the world.

That’s right, I’m talking about doll house libraries. In the 1920s, two women created doll houses so fantastic they’ve both been described as invaluable. But among the many tiny treasures in each house, the library collections are the most unique.

Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

A silent film star, Moore started building her fairy castle in the late ’20s with the help of an actual architect and contractor. It has running faucets, electricity, and themed rooms for all of Moore’s favorite fairy tale characters. The star of the Fairy Castle, though—at least as far as we’re concerned—is the library, which contains over 150 miniature books, including original works by writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Edgar Rice Burroughs, written in the authors’ own hand.

The library in Moore’s Fairy Castle.
Image by kthypryn

Originally the library consisted entirely of antique books dating from the 18th- and 19th-centuries, including the world’s smallest printed Bible, a gift from one of Moore’s costars. But Moore sought to expand her collection, and had numerous 1-inch bound books made up, which she then sent to famous writers in the hopes they would contribute some of their own work. The list of writers who accepted Moore’s challenge is a who’s-who of early 20th century literature: Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Daphne du Maurier, Edgar A. Guest, and John Steinbeck, just to name a few. Some, like Fitzgerald, transcribed a few lines from their previously published work; others, like Edna Ferber, wrote a simple thank you along with their signature. But a few authors wrote whole, original stories, like Shaw’s wildly spelled story (he would get a kick out of LOLcats, I’m thinking) about a fairy prince and “prissess,” and her struggle to afford a new lace gown. Pretty heavy stuff for a 1-inch book! Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote “Tarzan, Jr.,” a multi-chapter story illustrated by John Coleman Burroughs about a little Princess who disobeys her mama and goes into the forbidden forest.

These images of “Tarzan, Jr.” are used with permission from ERBzine:

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

©ERB, Inc.
Tarzan is a registered TM of ERB, Inc.

Image by llee_wu.

Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House

Even more impressive is the library in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, which Stephen Gaselee called, “a miniature picture of English literature in the nineteen-twenties.” Unlike Moore’s Fairy Castle, Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was created with a nationalistic sensibility. Started in 1921 and finished in 1924, what originally started as plaything for the Queen to display her collection of miniatures became a symbol of Britain’s recovery from World War I. Over 1500 people were employed in its creation, including 600 writers, from all corners of the British Empire.

The Queen’s Dolls’ House was actually the brainchild of Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, King George V’s cousin and a childhood friend of Queen Mary, and it was she who became the Doll’s House unofficial librarian, sending out hundreds of personal requests to authors to contribute to the project as well as creating the library’s catalog. The list of authors whose work is housed in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House library is truly dizzying. Unlike Moore’s library, the vast majority of books contributed are original works written specifically for the House, including “How Watson Learned the Trick” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Meditations of a Refugee” by Max Beerbohm, “A Tragedy in Outline” by Anthony Hope, and “The Haunted Dolls’ House” by MR James. Two of my favorite olde-timey writers, GK Chesterton and Edith Wharton, both contributed poems; and John Buchan, William J Locke, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, and Sir Philip Gibbs all wrote pieces about WWI.

Image via Pinterest.

It wasn’t just fiction that earned a place in the Dolls’ House: famed surgeon Sir John Bland-Sutton wrote “Principles of Dolls’ Surgery” (rather gruesome); the woman who oversaw the creation of the House’s garden, horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll, wrote “The Book of the Garden,” which is placed in the garden (so meta, you guys); and her sister, Agnes Jekyll, the very first food columnist for The Times, oversaw the stocking of the House’s kitchen and wrote “The Dolls’ House Cookery Book,” which advises brioche with hot chocolate and whipped cream for breakfast, and Chelsea buns with Russian ice made of blackcurrant leaves for tea parties. I don’t what either of those things are, but they sound delicious. And in every book in the House is an itty-bitty bookplate designed by Ernest Shepard and inscribed MR (for Mary Regina) Ex Libris.

These doll house libraries are fascinating not just because of the books they contain, but because of the leap of imagination and curiosity both books and doll houses require. You can’t enter a doll’s house, but you can picture yourself inside, or perhaps envision miniature residents who have stepped out for a few hours and might return any minute. Likewise, books can take you to other places or give you a peek at others’ lives. Unfortunately, that potential is lost on both of these libraries, as the vast majority of their books have never even been opened, let alone read.

There is, however, one book that’s an exception–the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House library’s most famous volume, a book of verses by “Fougasse,” the celebrated cartoonist who was an editor at Punch Magazine. It has been printed in life-size under the title J. Smith and you can not only read it, but own it for your personal library.
Further Reading:

• The Queen’s Dolls’ House by Lucinda Lambton (Royal Collection, 2010)
• Within the Fairy Castle (Museum of Science and Industry, 2010)
• ERBzine: Tarzan, Jr.
• Daily Mail: Tiny Children’s Book Hand Drawn for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House to be Published in Human Size
• The Royal Collection: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House
• Museum of Science and Industry: Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

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Words on the page aren’t the only place this is happening. “Turning the tables,” an exhibition currently on display in Urbana, Illinois, is artist Eszter Sápi’s playful efforts to reclaim and rethink the myths and tales she grew up with. Sápi’s drawings aren’t books, but they do offer us a useful opportunity to think through the tools and methods authors use when they reimagine folk and fairy tales. After seeing Sápi’s show, my way of thinking about what authors like Téa Obreht or Marjane Satrapi are doing has shifted. So I thought I’d share some of her work here, in hopes that it might spark something in you, as well.

Sápi was raised in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, and almost every night, right around bedtime, she sat down in front of the TV to watch the animated versions of traditional Hungarian folk tales that aired on national television. “For the longest time, they tricked me,” she remembers. They taught her that women’s pleasure was frightening, that economic inequality was natural, that violence was a just tool of the powerful.

But now, years later, a lesbian artist living in Illinois, Sápi is revisiting these tales, rereading and reimaging them in peculiar ways. Sápi’s drawings pull characters out of context, taking them out of the stories that made violence and inequality seem inevitable. Rearranging and recontextualizing the characters, she both disrupts and opens up the stories, revealing the strange, queer themes that had been hiding there all along.

For example, a lot of the old folk tales were, as she puts it, “pretty kinky.” Indeed, spanking and whipping appear again and again in the stories she grew up with. But where consensual fun is one thing, coersive violence is another. So, in several of the drawings in her new show, Sápi takes an iconic scene—of castle guards being tricked into taking a whipping

From an animation you can watch here.

—and decontextualizes some elements and repeats others. Here’s a powerful example:

Drawing and photograph by Eszter Sápi

There’s a tension here that’s central to many reimaginings of folk tales and fairy tales, between the momentum of the story and the possibilities of its retelling. In the top three lines, the figure with the switch strikes and strikes but never hits, the repetition emphasizes the violence but at the same time highlights its futility. And below, the traditional object of the whipping lowers his pants, but, at a distance from the switch, he reads less complacent and more, well, cheeky.

This is, I now better understand, what authors do when they take a familiar tale and reinterpret it: they rearrange characters and plots, creating gaps and spaces where there didn’t seem to be any distance, any reprieve, any uncertainty. The princess no longer must marry the prince, the war no longer must produce a hero, the dead no longer keep to their graves—contingency and possibility erupt on the page and something new is built of old bones.

In another drawing, Sápi takes on another common feature of the folk tales: exposed female bodies. In tale after tale, women were tricked into disrobing or were bent over for a spanking or used nudity to convince kings to give them treasures. (As Sápi muttered at one point during the opening of her show, “That’s a lot of nudity to watch with your family when you’re a kid.”) In this piece, Sápi excavates joy—look at that grin!—and power from the tales’ often troubling depictions of women:

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Like Gail Carson Levine or Marion Zimmer Bradley, Sápi confronts head-on the often violent misogyny of older stories and then reworks, rethinks, reimagines them into something glorious and full and powerful.

In another piece, Sápi reworks an original scene where a man forces open a woman’s legs yelling, “Come out, devil, so I can get in!”

Yes, this was a cartoon for children. You can see the animation here.

In her adaptation, the man is gone, and the woman is free to experience pleasure and desire and happiness and independence without the inevitable intercession of men and their demands. “So, the woman with the continuous orgasm can enjoy herself,” Sápi explains, “without shame and without having to worry about some dude who is on an unrequited quest to save her”:

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Speaking of power and joy, I’ll leave you with a piece that plays with the story of a girl who outwits a king, and another where the threat of devil-induced pleasure is redrawn as a cluster of women happily enjoying themselves.

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Work and photograph by Eszter Sápi

Sápi’s work, as you can see, is gleeful and unsettling in equal measure as only folk and fairy tales can be. So next time you pick up The Tiger’s Wife, or Fable, or The Sigh, I urge you to keep Sápi and her figures in mind. Let them dance, uncontrolled, a bit wild, through your mind. The pages will reward you for it.

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Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, circa ANGELS AND DEMONS.

Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon is at it again! He wakes up with retrograde amnesia in a hospital in Florence, barely escapes an attempt on his life, acquires a plucky female sidekick, and gets down to the important business of being handsome and symbology-solving. And that’s all within, like, the first twenty pages of Dan Brown’s new novel Inferno, a thriller that, predictably/reliably (take your pick) draws on Brown’s/Langdon’s wonkish knowledge of obscure art history and European architecture to save the world from a madman whose clues are drawn from Dante’s work of the same name.

Unpopular though it may be to admit it publicly, I kind of love Dan Brown. The books are ridiculous, sure, but they’re consistently fun to read and perfect for summer weekends when the old brain needs a vacation. It’s nice to be able to unplug and let Robert Langdon do all the worrying for me. If you’ve read Brown, you know there’s a formula to his stories, and you can count on certain items and ideas making repeated appearances. So just for kicks, I kept track of a bunch of Brown’s favorite things during my latest adventure with Robert Langdon.

Fellow Rioter Greg and I will be breaking down our full reactions to the book together in a separate post, so today I give you, simply, Inferno by the numbers. I drank while reading, so, you know, the counts might not be totally accurate.

Bad guys who jump off buildings: 1

Deaths: 4

Reminders that Robert Langdon is a symbologist: 16

Portentous dreams: 1

Dwight Schrute-style declarations of facts: 1

Times Robert Langdon thinks he is going to die: 3

Attempts to kill Robert Langdon: 5

Robert Langdon is caught in a cramped space/afraid he’s about to be caught in a cramped space/reminds someone that he is claustrophobic: 13

Eye-roll worthy self-selected Bad Guy nicknames: 2 (The Shade? I mean, really, D. Brizzle. I expect more.)

Mentions of the Girl Friday’s (her name is Sienna Brooks) ponytail: 13

Symbols actually printed into text of the book: 4

People who are not what they seem: 2

References to Robert Langdon’s beloved collector’s edition Mickey Mouse watch: 6

Hints that Robert Langdon is suave with the ladies: 4

Number of times I wondered if Robert Langdon would be any good in bed: at least a dozen (verdict: probably not, but I’ll bet he has one solid go-to move)

Laps swum by Robert Langdon: 0 (which must be a first for a Robert Langdon book…but he does think about swimming once)

Puzzles solved/devices unlocked/codes cracked: 11

Comments about Robert Langdon’s eidetic memory: 5

Mistakes Robert Langdon recognizes he made just in the knick of time: 1 (he wouldn’t be likable if he were perfect, you know)

Number of times Robert Langdon channels Dante and swoons: 3

Boats with symbolic names: 1 (The Mendacium….come on, you know that’s great)

Lengthy expositions about architecture, art, history, and Robert Langdon’s taste in clothing: you know I wasn’t counting that closely

Do you think Langdon’s preference for Harris Tweed is an autobiographical detail? Hmmmmm.

Publishing jokes: 4 (the best being when Langdon’s editor thinks he would be more deserving of favors if he wrote, say, Fifty Shades of Iconography)

Any recurring tropes I missed? Do you have a favorite Dan Brown detail?

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The black-and-white tells you I’m a serious reader of literature.

Hm. I’m not sure about this new Franzen novel. Seems overdone.

I put on these glasses so people think I’m reading something serious; this is really my fourth time through FIFTY SHADES OF BEIGE.

Is it just me or do Dan Brown novels seem to get longer and longer and longer?

Huh. That guy I dated finally published his chapbook. Utterly juvenile, self-obsessed presentation.

Ok, I’m just going to read enough of GONE GIRL so people stop harassing me about it at parties.

Well this is a monocle-popper of a New York Times review section this week, I tell you.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BOOK

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Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction.

Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chain-smoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

*Not sure what RSS is? Here’s a good primer on a tool that will change the way you read online.

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Here goes:

1. There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.

2. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

3. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly.

4. 124 was spiteful. Full of baby’s venom.

5. In a hole in the ground there lived a [redacted]. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a [redacted]-hole, and that means comfort.

6. One day when he was out walking, he came to an open place in the middle of the forest, and in the middle of this place was a large oak-tree, and from the top of the tree, there came a loud buzzing-noise.

Time to check your work? Here are the answers.

Blume has “zero -interest” in penning more YA—a genre that didn’t exist when she was writing it. “I don’t consider myself a young-adult writer,” she says firmly.

Is it just me or is that sort of a sick burn by Judy Blume?

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And I have a real problem with this idea that only what is “good” deserves financial success, or that something is off when what is “not good” sells eleventy billion copies.  Because I think there is a judgment implied there that carries over to the reader – like, we can dismiss the thoughts of Twilightfans, because we’ve already decided we can dismiss Twilight.

This, I like.

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But the movie’s excess is okay. Think about how great it would be if there were a major new Walt Disney World ride dedicated to jazz age underground New York City, and then think about the fact that Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby really is a long and excellent Walt Disney World ride through jazz-age underground New York City. What’s not to like about this?

Nothing, that’s what’s not to like about that.

Besides the ridiculousness of this statement (I mean, why would secret material about the Dark Arts even BE on the web?), it makes me legitimately sad to think that a kid wouldn’t understand why a library is a valuable place. Besides, J.K. Rowling loves libraries!

-from A Librarian’s Response to “What’s a LIbrary?” by Rita Meade

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Gone with the Wind was to be called:

Sounds…. 50-Shades naughty.

-from 5 Books with Awful Original Titles by Johann Thorrson

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I read it because I finally talked myself into the idea (maybe call it the “Downtown Abbey Effect”) that I could be interested in this story, as British and soapy as it may be. And I’m here to tell you (even without stupid zombies), if you’re a dude, and you’ve rejected this novel out of hand (despite its canonical status) because it’s “only for women,” you’re wrong. It IS a good story, and despite your own pride and prejudices about this novel (did you see what I did there?), there’s plenty of fun to be had.

-from Five Reasons Dudes Should Read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Greg Zimmerman

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Book staircase by Thatcher Wine. Photo from Juniper Books

It may look like this staircase, in the Juniper Books warehouse, is stacked with books. But those are actually guillotined spines from leftover bestsellers glued to the risers, giving impressions of both depth and bookish abundance.

-from Awesome Bookish Staircases by Derek Attig

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And the most popular post from Food Riot this week was…

I have been told I have the sexiest fridge in the world. I cannot disagree. It’s a three-quarter sized sexy silver beast.

-from What’s In Your Fridge: Bringing Sexy Back by Liberty Hardy

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Well, I was wrong. Or, at least, the high number of incorrect answers on my answer sheet suggested that someone or something was wrong.

Of course she didn’t do well.  She was taught how to think, not how to take a test.

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Qworty has destructively edited the pages of other writers. He has made numerous edits to his own page while obsessively hiding his true identity. And yet there have never been any significant consequences for his actions. For those of us who love Wikipedia, the ramifications of the Qworty saga are not comforting: If Qworty has been allowed to run free for so long — sabotaging the “truth” however he sees fit, writing his own postmodern novel — how many others are also creating spiteful havoc under the hood, where no one is watching? 

And this is why English teachers everywhere tell their students that Wikipedia is not a valid source for their research papers.

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Do women writers get asked this more than male ones? Bet your buttons they do. The snaps and snails and puppy-dog’s tails are great for boys. The sugar and spice is still expected for girls. Up to a point.

No one is better than Atwood at a snappy comeback.

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To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day.

The Book Riot Podcast, Episode #2: Pillow Talk with Robert Langdon

Jeff and Rebecca talk about The Great Gatsby movie reactions and box office, along with discussions on the new Dan Brown novel, ebook market share, a tool to randomly browse the Amazon bookstore, the trailer for James Franco’s As I Lay Dying, and Judy Blume’s disavowal of the label “YA writer.” This week’s episode is sponsored by Nolet’s Silver Dry Gin and Start Here, Volume 2.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (click here) or via RSS (link here).

Links discussed in the show:

The Great Gatsby on Rotten Tomatoes

Dan Brown’s phone sex song

www.bookbookgoose.com

Ebooks made up 20% of US consumer book industry in 2012

As I Lay Dying trailer

Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes film, not thinking she’s a YA writer

Browse previous episodes of The Book Riot Podcast.

First up: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Reagan Arthur, May 21^st). The premise of this book really intrigued me: a young girl, Darling, leaves Zimbabwe in search of a better life in America. Bulawayo uses her own life experiences to flesh out Darling’s character, and in turn the reader is able to get an actual sense of how this must feel. Bulawayo’s main goal is to leave the reader with a feeling that no matter what country Darling is from, “she is from anywhere else where people live and hope and dream and live.” The feelings and emotions in We Need New Names are so raw. After moving to America, Darling has no idea what happened to her friends back in Zimbabwe. Did they get out as well? She is tied to her homeland, but lives an almost parallel universe kind of existence. As she is at the mall with her new friends, her old friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina are sneaking off to Budapest, eating guavas, and carrying on as usual. Or are they? Not knowing is part of what makes the second half of the book so amazing. Bulawayo includes a touching and almost poetic chapter called “How They Lived” that is more of a “this is how immigrants feel in America” and takes Darling totally out of it. It’s a very quick read and easy to follow, which makes it a perfect introduction to African literature if you haven’t introduced yourself already.

And then, there was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf). I already had Half of a Yellow Sun flagged after so many of you guys suggested it, and I was really excited to sneak a peek at her new novel. So… I don’t run out of words much and I’m the girl you roll your eyes at because I start talking to you in the middle of the bagged salad fridge at the grocery store, but… I’m really having a hard time saying what I want to say about Americanah. I can say with every fiber of my being that people NEED to read it. It has the same theme as We Need New Names: Ifemelu comes to America from Nigeria in search of a better life. She leaves her boyfriend Obinze behind, she cuts off contact with him, and he tries to make a life in England. He is deported, moves back to Nigeria, and becomes an extremely successful businessman with a perfect wife and daughter. Ifemelu has no issues remaining in the United States after college and later starts a blog about what race means to her as a non-American black. After she becomes a citizen, she moves back to Nigeria, gets back in touch with Obinze, and BOOM! The great love story is told. It has more than enough plot to keep the narrative going, and covers enough social and political issues to make you think the top of your head off. I rarely mark up books, and my poor little Americanah ARC has more ink than Book Riot contributors. What got me thinking the most? When Ifemelu received her first piece of junk mail with her name on it, she was overcome with emotion. Someone in America knew who she was. She was a person. I don’t even give mail coupons a passing glance.

Americanah is probably more mainstream than We Need New Names, although I know buzz is seriously building for it. So when you finish your new Dan Brown book, consider trying one of these quiet diamonds.

Inbox (Books Acquired)

Inferno by Dan Brown

Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon is back, and he’s being handsomer and more symbology-solving than ever. Or at least as much as you expect him to be. Brown’s latest blockbuster is set in Florence, where Langdon unravels a series of clues related to Dante’s Inferno and a modern-day madman with a bad, bad plan for how to solve overpopulation. There’s obsessively detailed obscure art history. There are capers. There’s awkward flirting (I think it’s flirting?) There’s Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon’s coveted Mickey Mouse watch. And there’s a boat called The Mendacium. (I’ll give you a dollar if you can guess whether the owner is a good guy or a bad guy.) These are all the things I want from a Dan Brown book–it’s a fun, entertaining read, and it’s not pretending to be anything else. Also, it’s not nearly as ridiculous as The Lost Symbol, so if you thought that shiz put you off Brown forever, it might be worth giving him another shot.

Outbox (Books Finished)

She by H. Rider Haggard

Okay, so there’s this woman who lives in a cave in Egypt and has supposedly been alive for thousands of years, and the local tribal people (it’s the mid-1800s, by the way) fear her, and she’s maybe descended from Greek gods (I think? The details get a little fuzzy.) and thinks that one of the human men in this story is the reincarnation of her thousands-of-years-ago lover, and the whole thing is bananas. Oh, and they call her She-who-must-be-obeyed. How’s that for a nickname? Our intrepid narrator journeys to Africa with his adopted son to try to find out if she’s real (spoiler: she is…kind of), and shit gets real. Cannibals and slaves who are mute so they can’t spill secrets and hallucinations and secret messages carved onto clay pots real. I can’t say I loved reading this book, but I have certainly loved talking about it (the whole reason I’m reading it is for the quarterly book club edition of the Bookrageous podcast), and that’s valuable in its own way.

If you dig Victorian fiction and want to have a look at a book that Margaret Atwood says was hugely influential in shaping her as a reader and writer, you might give this one a shot.

In the Queue

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

As I, along with most of the reading world, devoured Gone Girl and then Gillian Flynn’s backlist last summer, I fell wicked hard for her mix of thriller and feminist/social commentary. A smart friend recommended that I go back to one of the originators of that trend, so then I fell even harder for Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place. It is so, so good, and I’m looking forward to getting to know more of Hughes’ work. Shake up your summer with some way-back backlist goodness and join me, why don’t ya?

That’s my reading week. How was yours?

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Image source: Kate Gabrielle of Flapper Doodle

People think I’m ridiculous when I tell them I have certain relationships with books, and that those relationships dictate how I read those books.

Why don’t you just finish one book before you pick up another?

That book was terrible, how could you finish that one and not this one? And how could you LIKE it?

And so on. I can’t finish a book until I’m in a relationship with it. If I’m not feeling a connection to the book, one of the characters/the setting/something about the plot, I’m going to put it into rotation (and eventually back on the shelf if it doesn’t step up). However, if I find one thing, one thing, about a book that bonds me to it – I won’t let it go. But this happens so rarely that it seems to those around me that I am constantly not committing to one book… and this would be the truth.

So, I’m left to wonder. Are our relationships with books similar to relationships with people? I look around and can’t help but think there might be something to this…

Surfacey Relationship People

These are the people who know a LOT of other people and are “great” friends with them all. Ask them something deep or quite personal about one of those dear friends and they will often not have the answer. These people don’t tend to have a lot of time for reading, they are too busy socializing (and by socializing I mean hanging out with Honey Boo Boo and Kim Kardashian too). Ask them who David Foster Wallace is and they probably won’t have the answer either… Sophie Kinsella and Dan Brown? Probably…. they’re reading one of their books over the summer. The entire summer.

Serial Monogamists

These are the people who jump from long-term romantic relationship to long-term romantic relationship. They also jump from one long book to the next. The book they are reading is usually a project, usually on their nightstands for some time, and usually something “important.” They don’t give up (they wouldn’t dream of it), and when they know it’s coming close to the ending, they’ve already researched and planned which book will be next on the nightstand. No empty nightstands (or beds) for these people.

Committed People

These are the people who are in committed long-term relationships and probably have a few kids. They’ve settled down, they’ve got their groove. They know which books they like and they stick with them, why change? And if something new is introduced to their palate, they’ll eventually (when they have time) try to juggle it in and then feel ecstatic that they have something new and fresh in their lives. Did you know about this?! They’ll exclaim to their friends who have more time on their hands than they do. Yes, those friends will answer, it came out eight months ago and the entire Internet/Night Show Circuit/Bestseller Lists was blowing up about it. (Rinse and repeat eight months later.)

Commitment Phobic People

These are the people who don’t tend to like everyone they meet. They date sporadically because most people don’t entice them, but they have a series of crushes to get them through day-to-day life. Then, randomly they’ll meet someone and be hooked. Same goes for books, these are the people who start books and stop them like other people use chewing gum. Sometimes they come back to try them again – see if they’re a better fit, and then move on again. Then one day they find something that hooks them and doesn’t let them go and they can’t-stop-reading. Once that book is done they look wildly around for another to make them feel as wonderful as the last, but we all know they’ll get back into the cycle of reading a few pages of one, then a few pages of another…

Because these statements are statistically tested, there is no reason to argue with them. They are black and white and as solid of assessments as can be in the book reading world. Of course, there are no other types of readers (or relationships) and every single person fits precisely into one of the above categories. However, if we were to imagine that these previous statements weren’t true, and/or that this piece is entirely sarcastic, what types of readers and relationships have I missed exploring? Write your own Type of Relationship and synopsis below…

Literary fiction is my wheelhouse, and my adventures in sci-fi/fantasy and speculative fiction have been mostly successful thanks to the recent trend of literary writers playing with genre. Authors like Colson Whitehead, Justin Cronin, Margaret Atwood, Karen Russell, and Nick Harkaway made it easy for me–they write beautifully and build worlds that are similar enough to ours that I can see them as I read (which doesn’t always happen for this language-driven reader). Ditto for thrillers, thanks to Gillian Flynn, Natsuo Kirino, and Sarah Waters, among others. Pageturner stories AND skillful writing? What’s not to love about that?!

(Yes, it was something of a revelation to me when I began this project that genre fiction wasn’t *just* about the plot.)

Once I’d tested the waters of sci-fi and thrillers and found that (gasp!) I enjoyed them and knew how to talk about them (good writing is good writing), I decided to approach my final frontier: romance. I had all kinds of stereotypes about romance novels (heaving bosoms and throbbing members and damsels in distress) and less than zero actual knowledge of the genre, so I asked a friend (Sarah Wendell of the uber-awesome Smart Bitches, Trashy Books) to recommend a good starting point. And then I spent a weekend with Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. It was fun and non-threatening, and the female lead wasn’t a virgin who magically had seven orgasms the first time she had sex (that’s a trope I can’t abide), so I chalked it up as a win. But it took THREE HUNDRED WHOLE PAGES to even get to the sex, and I am not that patient. So then Sarah recommended that I try some erotica. Mission accomplished.

Ever since that experiment, I’ve been dipping into romance and erotica (and erotic romance, which is also a thing–I’m pretty sure no genre has more subgenres than romance does), and it’s been fun. It’s been exactly what I want reading dirty books to be. Thanks to a suggestion from fellow Rioter Jenn, I fell ass over teakettle in love with Sarah MacLean’s Rules of Scoundrels series (you guys, there’s a sex scene in One Good Earl Deserves a Lover that doesn’t even have any touching, and it’s so hot the pages sizzle). On a whim, I picked up The Siren by Tiffany Reisz and found myself devouring her stories about a dominatrix-turned-erotica-writer who still visits the dungeon. I’m getting pretty good at knowing what I like and don’t like in romance books, and that makes me happy.

But here’s where I get stuck: I’m still a total noob with the genre, and I’m not nearly familiar enough with it to recognize all the conventions and tropes (and there are A LOT of conventions and tropes), much less evaluate how well a book fits them. I can say, “I liked this, and here’s why,” but I can’t really tell if a romance book is GOOD or not. Readerly enjoyment and literary quality are separate dimensions of judgment, and right now I can only use one of them (unless the book is very obviously baaaaaaad). So I’m stressed!

What if it turns out that the romance books I’ve been enjoying are considered not-so-great by romance readers who, like, actually know things? Why do I even care what other readers think about a book, as long as I’m enjoying it? (Answer: because I am, for better or worse, somewhat invested in my identity as a Discerning Reader.) It seems to me that readerly enjoyment is a primary goal of romance writing anyway….so maybe I don’t need to think about the “is this a quote-unquote good book” issue at all and just go with what I enjoy? Is this an “If you build it, they will come” (hah! come!) kind of thing, and I just have to read more dirty books before I can answer these questions for myself? And if that’s the case, how will I learn how to make good romance recommendations for other readers? Sex and sexytimes writing preferences are so personal! Perhaps this is why community has become so important for romance readers, particularly online–you’ve gotta get to know other readers and their preferences well before you can successfully recommend the right romance books for them? I have SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Help me, readers. How do you select romance and erotica? How do you evaluate it? Should I loosen up, let my mind wander, and stop worrying about what’s good versus not good?

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To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day.

Like the first book in our START HERE series, START HERE, Vol. 2 will have 25 chapters, and each will provide a 3- or 4-book sequence for discovering a different author’s work. It’s important to us to cover a wide range of authors and meet as many readers’ requests as we can. Authors we know will be covered include: Jennifer Egan, William Faulkner, Anne Carson, Ursula K. LeGuin, David Mitchell, Toni Morrison, Alan Moore, John Green, and Philip Roth.

START HERE, Vol. 2 backers and Book Riot editors will determine how to fill most of the remaining spots, but you readers have total control over one. Vote in the poll below for the one author you most want to see covered in START HERE. The poll is open through 11:59 pm Eastern next Friday, May 24, 2013.

And remember–START HERE, Vol. 2 won’t happen unless we hit our $2oK funding goal on Kickstarter. So back it, share it, and shout it out. We can’t do it without you!

Love true stories about fascinating people? So do the folks at Biographile, a website dedicated to helping readers discover a rich mix of real lives through author interviews, news updates, reviews, essays, contests, and more. One of their latest Q&As is an exclusive interview with the hilarious comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan, whose explosively funny memoir recounting the joys and horrors of raising five kids (in a two-bedroom apartment) is just out from Crown.

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at The Hairpin, 10 Things That Happened While Reading THE WOMAN IN WHITE

at Terrible Minds, 25 Things You Should Know About Outlining

at Flavorwire, 10 Disappointing Film Adaptations of Classic American Novels

at The Guardian, Top 10 Books About Burma

at USA Today’s Pop Candy, 25 Favorite Books from the Last 25 Years

at PWxyz, 10 Biggest Book Adaptation Flops

at Flavorwire, 15 Books You Should Definitely Not Read in Your 20s

at The AV Club, 13 Surprising Celebrity Novels