Always Amazed

Whenever I open my email and see the WSJ.com Editors I know that some silly question has been asked of Cynthia Crossen (see here, here and here). Despite my always being disappointed by the question I always read the article and I always come away glad that I did.

This time the question is about what books the writer's daughter should read at camp (here). I've read a few books about the wilderness, but only one of mine made the list. I will say though that my "to be read" list is now much longer thanks to this article. Among the new books on the list:

Another remarkable story of a nervy woman on a long camping trip is Robyn Davidson's "Tracks," a memoir of the author's hike across 1,700 miles of Australian desert with her dog and four camels. 


I also admired and enjoyed Cheryl Strayed's recent backpacking memoir, "Wild," for her hard-earned epiphanies about which sporting goods people actually need to survive a 1,100-mile solo hike. In some ways, "Wild" reminded me of Bill Bryson's very funny "A Walk in the Woods," but Ms. Strayed's account of her journey is rawer and riskier.

And although Deliverance was the only camping/wilderness story that I knew before this article, it only made Crossen's list because of the horror aspect. (BTW, if you haven't read it, do so, it's lyrical).


There's no better setting for ghost stories than camp, and here Dad could throw in a classic: Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw." Edith Wharton has a collection of ghost stories, and Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black" offers a macabre chill. So does James Dickey's 1970 novel "Deliverance," but that's probably going too far on the wilderness-as-setting-for-horror spectrum. The campfire story that scared me sleepless was "The Hookman," which is folklore.


Once again, glad I read it.

Ideas Generator

I marvel at from where ideas spring. Usually some of the most interesting ideas come from my brother (here and here). Some of the even better more fleshed out one come from my own dreams (here). My two novels have just sprung up during writing. This post in the Corner on National Review posted by Jonah Goldberg however (here) brings some very interesting ideas to mind. He quotes his own linked article as saying:

Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.

Imagine a novel about the closing of a huge technology plant and the disenchanted workers using that opportunity to loot the company for his own ends. He hijacks a moving truck which no one really cares too much about cause it's all going to the dump, and unloads it in his garage. Years later his son or grandson is digging through the junk and runs across a nuclear reactor. Sounds like NaNoWriMo 2013 is ready to go. 

Book Review: Tai Pan

I finished Tai-Pan by James Clavell the other day. I loved Shogun and had high hopes for Tai Pan. Then, whilst boarding a flight from St. Louis to Houston the other day a fellow traveler saw the book on my iPad and said "Great Book." All in all it is an apt review.

I already made a comment or two about a couple of passages in the book (here and here) and for the most part there wasn't too much that I stopped to highlight as I plowed through the novel. There were a couple, and I present them here:

I think it's so hard to write "out of body experiences" or showing when a character is confused or dazed. Clavell does a great job of that in this passage.

“I think Father is the Devil.” An involuntary shudder ran through Robb.

“That’s stupid, lad. Stupid. You’re just overwrought. We all are. The bullion and—well, the excitement of the moment. Nothing to worry about. Of course he’ll understand when …” Robb’s words trailed off. Then he hurried after his brother.

Culum was finding it very difficult to focus. Sounds seemed to be stronger than before, but voices more distant, colors and people bizarre. His eyes saw Mary Sinclair and her brother in the distance. Suddenly they were talking to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

One of the characters is found dead and Straun describes the sight and the torture in a grissly way.

Struan went below and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Scragger’s end had sickened him. He knew it was a favorite torture of Wu Fang Choi, Wu Kwok’s father and little Wu Pak’s grandfather. The victim who was to be dismembered was given three days’ time to choose which limb was to come off first. And on the third night a friend of the man would be sent to him secretly to whisper that help was on the way. So the man chose the limb he felt he could most do without until help came. After the tar had healed the stump, the man was forced to choose yet another limb, and again there was the promise of imminent help which would never come. Only the very strong could survive two amputations.

It was fun to read another Clavell novel, but I'm concerned. None of his others might be as good as Shogun. 

Ups and Downs of Reading an Article

I read the question in my email that spurned the article Is the Novel Dead? by Cynthia Crossen in the WSJ yesterday (here). The question was: Occasionally I read about the "death of the novel." It doesn't look like the novel is dead to me. Does it to you?

Ho hum was my immediate reaction. Kind of a silly question don't you think? But then I thought to myself, so many of the questions that are used to generate articles seem silly at first . . . I'll go give it a try. So I did. I saw the graphic that showed a 1950's era poster for an H.G. Well's novel and my heart rate quickened. It slowed the further I read.

The article was about as ho hum as the article generating question, but it did provide fodder for this article. After reading it I thought about a class I had my freshman year of college, The 20th Century Novel. It wasn't a bad class. Not great, but not bad. When the professor asked us what we would do for future classes I thought it would be interesting to breakup the topic into subjects.

Subjects such as: 20th Century Romances, 20th Century Novels on War, Mystery Novels through the 20th Century, Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century, etc. I think any of these would make for a far more interesting class than just 20th Century novels.

By my senior year I found myself in a Charles Dickens class. lt was fun. Bleak House, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and more. Still, I think my idea had legs and wonder if some Aggie (or Maggie) isn't right now sitting in a Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century class and writing about the similarities between Vernor Vinge and Isaac Asimov. What fun!

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.