Policing Literallys is my Forte

Whilst reading a fun little article about Vice President Joe Biden called Big &#%!ing Joker (here) in National Review by Jonah Goldberg I ran across a couple of passages that seemed apropos for this blog.

I'm not a big "literal/figurative" cop. If someone miss-uses the literal or figurative definitions in a sentence I might point it out if I have nothing better to do but I don't make a big thing. It's generally miss-used in our society I find, but with a bit of prodding one can help others get back on the right track. It's not like the problems going around with Forte. So many people say forte with the "ay" sound on the end when they actually mean, forte no "ay" sound. It's just about been changed in our lexicon in the same way that (much to my grandmother's disappointment) snuck has been accepted. I've not quite given up on "literal/figurative" as I have on "forte." Still this article was fun to read thanks to these two passages:

The word “literally” has taken a beating in the Age of Biden. He’s often proclaimed that Obama had the opportunity “literally to change the direction of the world” (which, if possible, might help fulfill that promise to lower sea levels). Biden announced that “before we arrived in the West Wing, Mr. Boehner and his party ran the economy and the middle class literally into the ground.” His speeches are “literally” festooned with “literally”s, like hundreds of tethers to the hot-air balloon that is his head. 


The standard joke is to quote the scene in The Princess Bride when Inigo Montoya tells Vizzini, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” The problem is that Biden insists that he does know what it means. One of his favorite ways to emphasize his seriousness is to say, “and I mean literally, not figuratively,” as if “literally” meant “I’m really serious” and “figuratively” connoted some effeminate lack of conviction. He says JFK’s “call to service literally, not figuratively, still resounds from generation to generation.” He told students in Africa, “You are the keystone to East Africa — literally, not figuratively, you are the keystone.” “The American people are looking for us as Democrats,” he has said. “They’re looking for someone literally, not figuratively, to restore America’s place in the world.” Speaking at a rally for Senator Patty Murray, he said, “I have now gone into 110 races around the country, and everywhere I go I see ordinary people who play by the rules, get everything right, paid their mortgage, showed up in their school helping their kids, made sure that they did everything they could to save to get their kid to college, took their mom and dad in when they needed help and hoped to save a little bit of money so they wouldn’t have to rely on their own kids when the time came.” Here’s the kicker: “And all of a sudden, all of a sudden — literally, not figuratively — they were decimated.” If they were literally decimated, Biden doesn’t just see ordinary people, he sees dead people. But only one for every nine among the living.

Stunned That Struan Died

I guess other, more purposeful readers wouldn't be surprised by the Tai-Pan's death, but I was. The last lines were not as good as those that prefaced his death. The last lines focus on Culum, the Tai-Pan's son, are:

"And here.” He took out the twenty sovereigns. “Give these to Brock with my compliments. Tell him I said to buy himself a coffin.” 
The three men looked at Culum strangely. Then they said, “Yes, Tai-Pan,” and obeyed.

Clavell, James -Tai-Pan

The lines I liked most were these:

A cannonade of Supreme Winds blew the windows in on the south side and the whole building shifted as though in an earthquake. The nails in the roof screamed against an untoward pull, and then a devil gust peeled off the roof and hurled it into the sea. 
Struan felt Yin-hsi surge away into the maelstrom above. He grabbed for her, but she had vanished. 
Struan and May-may held each other tightly. “Dinna give up, Tai-tai!” 
“Never! I love you, Husband.” 
And the Supreme Winds fell on them.

I think he should have ended with that one.

Not A Team Player

Perhaps I like the idea of self-publishing so much because I am not a team player. I've never been a team player. I liked singles tennis more than doubles. I like running more than lacrosse. I would rather work alone than as a part of a team. I understand the necessity of sometimes having a team, but having read this article (here) Why It Takes So Long by Max Berry I wonder if I would have enjoyed the book publishing process.

My favorite passage, and I like it cause I felt like using the same excuse, artistic license and style, to my cousin who found a plethora of grammatical errors in my most recent work, was this one:

The editor and author begin seeking people to provide a blurb/cover quote. The first edition can’t have actual reviews on the cover, because those will be received too late. But you need someone to say “MAGNIFICENT… STUNNING,” so you have to hit up a fellow author. The copyeditor prints out the new draft and scrawls arcane markings on it by the light of tallow candles using quills. This ensures the book can no longer be shared electronically, and all subsequent changes must be done by hand. This five-hundred-page monstrosity is photocopied and e-mailed to the author. Sorry, that was a typo. I mean mailed. You know. Mailed. When they physically transport something. The author reads this by light of a virgin moon, which is the only time the unicorn ink becomes visible, and accepts some changes while giving others a jolly good stet. This can be a difficult time for the author, who must defend grammatical errors as stylistic choices in order to not look stupid.

Well worth a glance if you are a writer.

Prolificness

I've read a couple of her books and though I found her " . . . in Death" series a tad prosaic and jejune (see here), there is definitely something to be said for Nora Robert's prolific writing.


This article (here) Keeping the Noraholics Happy by Alexandra Alter that I read and then had forwarded to me by a former employer speaks to that astounding prolificness. The first few paragraphs say it all:


Romance writer Nora Roberts didn't bother to celebrate when she finished her 200th book, "The Witness."

"I don't really count," says Ms. Roberts, a 61-year-old grandmother with red hair and a gravelly smoker's voice.

She took a couple of days off to catch up on chores and gardening. Then she launched into her 201st, "Celebrity in Death," the next installment of a futuristic romantic suspense series that she writes under the pen name J.D. Robb. She's since finished her 202nd, a romance novel set near her home in Maryland, and her 203rd, "Delusion in Death," another J.D. Robb book. She's now writing her 204th, "Whiskey Beach," a romantic suspense novel set in coastal Massachusetts.

The passage that I like, and I've always enjoyed passages like this, speaks to how she got started. Sort of like the J.K. Rowling, sitting at home making up stories for her children story line. 


Ms. Roberts was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Maryland. She began writing one day in 1979 during a blizzard, when she was stuck home with her two young sons. Silhouette, a romance imprint, published her debut novel, "Irish Thoroughbred," in 1981. Over the next three years, she published more than 20 novels. Her books broke traditional romance conventions: They featured non-virginal, flawed heroines, ensemble casts and snappy dialogue tinged with sarcasm, and were occasionally written from the hero's point of view. Her unconventional stories helped transform the genre, which has exploded into a $1.4 billion industry.


Its alot like Janet Evanovich just on an even grander scale. Probably not the best writing, but it appeals to so many you have to be awed by it. 

Can't We All Just Get Along

I don't understand why they can't both exist. What am I talking about? This article in the WSJ Opinion page (here) by L. Gordon Crovitz just about has me regretting my previous blogs on this subject about Apple's agency model. Why should an app and a book be different. Basically, they shouldn't be. It's a good key theme within this article.

Whether it's news, games, apps or books, Apple's position is the same. The market determines the price, and Apple gets 30%. The Justice Department fails to acknowledge anywhere in its 36-page complaint against Apple and book publishers that this is the standard approach. (Indeed, the government complaint inaccurately refers to "30% margins" for Apple. Operating margins are very different from sales commissions.) The government says this "agency model" is inherently wrong ("per se" wrong, in legalese) and "would not have occurred without the conspiracy among the defendants."

I'm not quite all the way there yet, not all the way to completely agreeing with this next statement, but I'm close.

Pricing flexibility for publishers is necessary to allow innovation. Why shouldn't some e-books cost 99 cents and others that come with video and hardcover editions be $49.95? Why not give people the option to pay 10% more to access an e-book on all e-readers? Consumers should decide, not Amazon or the Antitrust Division.

 Perhaps I'm feeling open to the argument because it appeared directly below the article about Argentina coming one step closer to nationalizing Respol for their own means (here). When compared to that the agency model seems like chicken feed.

Book Review of Eye of the Needle

Much better than Hornet Flight and far better than The Man From St. Petersburg, that's the quick summation of Eye of the Needle.



I remember in one of the writing classes I took we discussed what makes a thriller and what makes a mystery. That instructor said that Dick Francis wrote mysteries. I've heard others say that they are thrillers. This one instructor said that Thrillers need to deal with subjects that are grand in scale and possibly Earth-shaking. The Man From St. Petersburg, Hornet Flight and The Pillars of the Earth all lacked this grandiose scale. Eye of the Needle made up for what the others lacked and made the novel better than the others if only for that reason.

Another thing that Ken Follet's books demonstrate is how great novels are based on good characterization not great plots. You can have both, but without great characters you can't have a great book. Eye of the Needle, as so many of Follet's novels, is filled with terrific characters.

I marked one passage:

"It is for places like this that the word "bleak" has been invented. The island is a J-shaped lump of rock rising sullenly out of the North Sea. It lies on the map like the top half of a broken cane, parallel with the Equator but a long, long way north; its curved handle toward Aberdeen, its broken, jagged stump pointing threateningly at distant Denmark. It is ten miles long. Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage; a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity."

I loved the book and can't wait to read another from Follet.

Back to Writing and Reading

Enough with chickens in sweaters, onto Oliver Twist. I just finished reading Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist for the second (maybe third) time. It must not resonate with me till the end of the book because I only remember that I've read it before when I get to the very end. This time I read it, and just as Sikes is trying to get away, I remembered having remembered reading it before. This makes me think it is my third read through.




That being said, I still liked it. Sure it's a tad slow in the middle, par for the course for Dickens I say, but it has a far more climactic ending than many other of his novels. You can find my list of interesting vocabulary (here) and passages (here and here as well as here) in my past posts but what I think what I find funny is the importance so many readers, reviewers et al put on a moment in the book that has such throw-away level significance. The moment when Oliver, an inmate of the workhouse as a child, asks for more food (see the above cover art) is almost the one facet of the book so many folks latch onto, but in the book is little more than a one passage instance. Does it play into who Oliver becomes? Somewhat, sure but no more than some other moments. I think the hike he takes toward London is more profound, his fight with Noah are just as prescient and revealing. Funny.

Nevertheless, glad I read it again. I'll go another year I suppose before my next Dickens classic, and at that time, as this time, I'll wonder why I didn't read more sooner.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

My wife never ceases to amaze me. She read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in under 48 hours. Well, that could be incorrect, if you include the time she slept as non-reading time, she really finished it in under 24 hours. Why do I mention this? It should prove to any reader what a compelling novel it is.




I remember when I first read Jurassic Park I was so drawn in that I finished it at 2AM in my bed cause I couldn't put it down. Despite my wifey's intensity, it took me longer to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but I still liked it quite a bit.

I think it was a bit slow in starting. If I hadn't heard so many great reviews I might even have given up a quarter of the way through. During much of the first half of the book one thing that is a bit off-putting and also intriguing is trying to figure out how Stieg Larsson is going to get the two main characters together. Eventually they do come together and completing the book is worthwhile overall.

What I liked about having my wife read it, things that took a long while to complete for me took only moments for her. Where the time it took me to get from point A to point B might be three or four days, my wife will ask me about point A and then thirty minutes later will talk about B. If I had to do it over, I'd have done it her way and knocked it out all at once.

Book Review – Way Behind here

I think I’ve read two or three books since I finished The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson. This book was recommended to me by a fellow National Noveler and I’m glad she did so. It is a thriller in every since of the word. Sadly, like my own first novel, this thriller screams, “This is my first novel!”



I don’t think there was a single vocabulary word underlined throughout the course of the novel, but I did like a few passages, again, not enough to underline them.
The plot was riveting. Who wouldn’t want to read about CIA agent thrown into Al Queda before September 11th, trying to make amends to his handlers and his family for having missed the clues that would have helped him alert the US about the attack. Secondly, having planned a couple of terrorist attacks of my own for thriller writing purposes, Berenson’s idea is really quite interesting and keeps the reader on edge.

I look forward to reading his second effort and I hope it does scream, “I’m better, I’m a second novel.”

Book Review - Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (here) was not bad at all. The characters were fun to read about, the situation, although not terribly original (see here), was as fresh as a stale idea can be. My one concern is that how good can the writing be if I didn't highlight a single word or sentence?




Word? I can see that. This is a Young Adult book and although I don't have the most high brow vocab, I throw out the nickel words every now and then. So, I can't ding Collins for her limiting the four syllable words. But not a sentence? That doesn't say much. Usually I identify an amazing analogy, a moving metaphor, or a stupendous simile in everything I read. Here? Not.

That being said, I read it, and like the first time I read the DaVinci Code or Jurrasic Park it drew me in so much that I didn't want to put it down. I stayed up late nights to read it. That alone says alot about the authors ability to reel in the reader. Not only that, but I'm looking forward to the follow-on novels, particularly because the ending is so aburpt and non-redeeming. But, as much as I liked it, I wish I had liked it even more.