Hot Off the Grill
February 4, 2010:
Silly Gingers
BBC Complaints about the new Doctor insulting gingers.
In other news, I've decided that I'm going to transfer my blog to wordpress (and probably switch hosts in the process). I'll have to do at least a minor redesign, I may lose some old posts, and I suspect the site will probably go down for a day or two at some point, but you guys will live.
Labels: LOLz, phoebeeating.com, television
Posted at 5:59 PM // 0 comments
February 2, 2010:
Bloggity Blogness
So Blogger announced that they're no longer allowing FTP uploading of their blogs. My blog uses FTP. There are some options, still using blogger, but (from what I can tell--the information they're giving seems overly technical and complicated) I'm not sure I like any of them.
This might be the impetus I need to migrate from phoebeeating.com to a more professional-sounding domain phoebenorth.com. Don't get me wrong; I love phoebeeating--love the joke of it, the layout (though, after two years, I'm getting a bit tired of it; might be time for a change, anyway). But my real name is good, too. And I've been making gradual movements toward greater internet transparency. It seems like a good idea to at least grab the domain and put something there.
(Which I just did right . . . now. Something should be up there soon.)
I'm not sure how realistic it is to maintain two webpages and/or blogs. I'd miss phoebeeating, but knowing me, I probably won't be able to keep both up-to-date. Then again, I don't want to lose any readers. Gentle readers, any thoughts?
Labels: blogging, phoebeeating.com
Posted at 5:28 PM // 1 comments
February 1, 2010:
Goodread Review: The Strange Power
The Strange Power by L.J. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've written before about my adolescent love for L. J. Smith's writing, particularly the Night World series. But, even at thirteen, I was never much for vampires. I was always a more fervent fan of her Dark Visions universe, described in a trilogy of novels about beautiful--and psychic--Kaitlyn Fairchild, who, in her senior year of high school, is shipped off to a mysterious research institute for truly gifted teenagers.
Revisiting The Strange Power as an adult, I can see why these appealed to me more than Smith's more-traditional horror/supernatural fare. As a kid, I devoured non-fiction (and I use that term loosely, of course) about ESP and psychic powers; the Dark Visions trilogy is like a fictional realization of all those volumes I found under Dewey Decimal heading number 130. Smith somehow manages to make things like psychokinesis, precognition, and energy crystals fairly believable, without resorting to the infodumping that she relies on in her horror books. Kaitlyn's universe felt impressively real to me, even as a skeptical adult reader.
This is thanks, in part, to the strong third-person narration here. Smith's Night World books use first-person point of view, which sometimes results in cringe-worthy sentimentality. The prose here, though sometimes slightly edging on purple, is much, much stronger, thanks in part to the distance from the adolescent characters. The writing is clear, functional, but appropriately dark in tone, a nice complement to the quick pace of the plot.
As Kaitlyn settles in to her new life in California, she learns that the institution dedicated to exploring her psychic powers is not all that it seems. She also becomes involved with two of her dreamy adolescent housemates, the golden-boy healer Rob, and Gabriel, a pale-as-Johnny-Depp psychic "vampire" and former criminal. The love triangle here is much stronger, and more interesting, than those we've seen in certain other recent books. Smith doesn't give us an obvious victor here: both Gabriel and Rob are appealing, though in completely different ways, and they're well-developed, too.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Lewis and Anna, the other two psychics at the Zetes Institute. Here, in what is probably the most problematic feature of these books, Smith relies on dated racial stereotyping to create her characters. Lewis Chao, Chinese, controls technology, likes gadgets, and is essentially neuter; while white boys Gabriel and Rob are immediately cast in Kaitlyn's mind as romantic interests, Lewis becomes a sexless younger brother archetype. Anna Whiteraven, meanwhile, is Native American, has a "totem animal" and can communicate with wildlife. She is described as "serene" and "peaceful" and doesn't have much of a personality beyond this--though these are positive stereotypes, they're no less, well, stereotypical. Of course, Smith wrote these books in the early nineties; her gestures towards inclusion of non-white characters may have seemed like a positive effort then, but I do think that it's a shame this book is still a story of a white girl, torn between two white boys, with characters of color as no more than window dressing.
Still, this is a quickly paced and enjoyable read. It's a slender volume, reflecting the YA market of its time, but nevertheless both well-realized and consistently exciting. While much newer YA often suffers from saggy-baggyness, The Strange Power feels tight and tightly edited. I look forward to revisiting the rest of the series.
Labels: fantasy, goodreads, review, romance, scifi, ya
Posted at 12:38 PM // 3 comments
A Time to Plant, A Time to . . . Edit
Editing is rough stuff.
I'm starting to think there may have been a reason that I've been letting my previous manuscripts fester stew. Editing, it seems, is hard work. I began editing what was then known as Convocation the day I finished it--November 30th. Then, it was just over fifty-thousand terse words long, in ten sprawling chapters.
Now--February 1st--it's a different beast. Now, it's The Stone Sorter. Chapters have been reordered, passages added. The beginning was massively rewritten. There's now a new epilogue. It currently weighs in at 62,000 words, in twenty-three chapters plus an epilogue and prologue. Miranda's motivations have been refined, her daily life clarified. I couldn't have gotten this far without my three most-prompt beta readers: Pat, Tarah, and Michele. Their advice was all succinct, clear, and, amazingly, it largely agreed. The book was too short, they said. What didn't work for one didn't work for any of them. These are three very different readers; I wasn't anticipating such a consensus. But I'm glad they agreed. It's sure made my job easier.
Because it's hard enough already. I've moved into line edits now, smoothing my rumpled, messy sentences, fixing typos (my favorite? "He turned crispy" for "He turned crisply."), moving, I hope, from the functional to the artful. It's slow, painful work, but necessary work. I'm not sure that I'll leave any sentence as it was at its inception, untouched and unedited. This is a good thing. But it's a difficult thing. It's so much easier to let words tumble from you, especially once you know your characters. Because they write the book. I close my eyes, ask them what they're up to, and they tell me. My job, I guess, is to make sense of it--to make it good. That's not an easy task.
Since, I've found, setting deadlines here in the blog consistently lets me beat them, I'll say right now: my goal is to start querying by the Ides of March. Any writerly types have any thoughts for agents? I have a couple in mind, a few I'm following on the internet, but I don't want to leave any stone--pun intended, of course--unturned.
Labels: agents, fiction, nanowrimo, querying, stone sorter, writing
Posted at 10:18 AM // 0 comments
January 25, 2010:
Goodread Review: Uglies
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The day I finished reading Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, a coworker picked it up off my desk.
"Uglies?" She asked, with a slight sneer. That sneer only deepened when she read the novel's tagline (in an appropriately arch tone): "In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is Ugly."
I wish I could have responded that the book was a criticism of societies where "extreme beauty" is prized, but after finishing Westerfeld’s novel, I'm not entirely sure that’s the case.
On the surface it certainly seems true. Uglies is the story of Tally Youngblood, who, at nearly sixteen, is about to undergo surgery to make her beautiful. In her world (a post-apocalyptic future, where now-contemporary humans are referred to as "Rusties" and frequently cited for our Rusty and destructive ways), this is what all children do upon coming of age. As in Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," their society rejects physical differences in favor of a flat standard of beauty. Unlike in "Harrsion Bergeron," they achieve this goal by raising the bar across the board, making everyone beautiful rather than average.
And it works. Tally's is a world without war or hunger or disease—particularly self-inflicted diseases like anorexia. As far as post-apocalyptic utopias go, this one is particularly utopic: everything is recycled, no one eats meat, and vehicles are powered by magnets rather than fossil fuels.
This creates a two-fold problem, my biggest issue with the book. First, I never believed for a second that Tally’s world was one that could actually ever come to fruition. This is a cotton-candy utopia, bolstered neither by scene descriptions or by Westerfeld's very weak science-fiction conceits. The "science fiction" here (hoverboards, hovercars) was clichéd well before it was featured in Back to the Future II. These days, it just plain doesn't pass muster. This was made worse, not better, by Westerfeld's use of extremely grating invented slang. I couldn't help but be reminded by this review of Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood. World-building is a delicate process, and if you're going to try to use language to compliment that, it should be done with both restraint and grace (or done wholeheartedly and immersively, as in A Clockwork Orange or Riddley Walker). All this talk of bubbliness and SpagBol and PadThai and Uglies and Littlies felt neither restrained nor graceful, which made the world that much more difficult to believe.
Secondly, I had trouble seeing the dangers supposedly inherent in Tally's world. At the beginning of the novel, Tally meets Shay, another young Ugly, who leads her out of her society and into the world of the Smoke, a group of resistance fighters who have opted-out of the City lifestyle. We learn (through a chapter of awkward info-dumping) that the surgery that makes Uglies into Pretties also makes Pretties stupid and pliant. And yet I couldn't help but wonder if that was a necessary addition to the surgery because Westerfeld hadn’t quite convinced himself (and he definitely hadn't quite convinced this reader) that everyone becoming Pretty and living in utopian cities was really all that terrible of an idea. I also couldn’t help but contrast this with "Harrison Bergeron" again; in Vonnegut's version, over the course of a few short pages, we're utterly convinced of the evils of a uniform society. In Westerfeld's rendering of the same (by now, slightly tired) Aesop, becoming Pretty never really seems that terrible, fundamentally.
Perhaps this is because we see the world through Tally's eyes, and Tally is meant to be a traitor to the Smoke and not a true believer. I think this made her a poor choice of point-of-view narrator, although I found her problematic as a character for other reasons, too. Tally is downright catty toward her friend Shay, despite the fact that their relationship is the most compelling one in the book—certainly more nuanced, believable, and interesting than Tally’s contrived romance with a Smokie named David. There’s a certain ugly (heh) glee in Shay's eventually destruction, not to mention in the way David and Tally both speak and think of her. This made Tally very difficult to empathize with and, more, made her a poor model for adolescent readers. Here, Westerfeld could have given us a still-complex but more functional (and realistic) model of adolescent friendship; instead, he resorts to sexist tropes centered on female competition over men.
Despite these problems, the novel still had its moments, particularly in the first section before Tally leaves for Smoke; in those first hundred pages, the novel seemed full of potential. The pacing does suffer a bit in its saggy, slow midsection, but otherwise Uglies is action-packed and fairly compelling. I just wish it had been more convincing, too.
Labels: goodreads, review, scifi, ya
Posted at 12:35 PM // 2 comments
Synchronicity
Recently read this older story over at Strange Horizons, called "Relentlessly Mundane". I found the subject matter haunting and thoughtful.
Then, today, stumbled across this comic on XKCD. Apparently, I'm not the only one.
Labels: fantasy, fiction, reading, short story
Posted at 9:50 AM // 1 comments
January 23, 2010:
Because I am as mature as a 12-year-old boy, I tried to work the word "wiener" into this post as often as I possibly could
First thing's first: I've done a little bit of webpage house keeping. Apparently, Internet Explorer was rendering my webpage incorrectly again. It seems to do this once a year or so. So I've moved the link to my RSS atom feed to the top of the page. I figure that this might help people notice it, too. Which is to say, in case you've missed it, you can add my feed to your reader via the URL http://www.phoebeeating.com/atom.xml.
Now, on to more important stuff! Wieners!
This New Years the Etzel clan and I instituted a new tradition, one I'd like to call the Annual Jersey Cuisine New Years Etzelstravaganza, which is to say, we ate wieners. Lots of wieners. Three kinds, in fact!
It might seem strange that we're so into cheap wieners, especially me. People are always mistaking me for a vegetarian. I'm not sure why, particularly as there's a huge wiener at the top of my webpage.
I grew up down the road from a traditional Jersey wiener joint, the Red Tower II, which (I've learned via the appropriately named dad-in-law Frank) serves Plainfield style dogs, with a meat-based chili, onions, and yellow mustard. Some of my earliest, and best, memories take place there. I knew it was love with the hubby when he was excited about taking walks there with me to eat wieners early in our relationship. We also took road trips to places like White Manna. How could I not love him for that?
The union of two wiener-loving Jersey families is a fortuitous thing, a reason to celebrate. So this New Years, we celebrated, indeed!
Frank arrived on New Years Day we three types of dogs: Plainfield-style, from Manny's Texas Wiener Weiner in Springfield; Paterson-style, from Teddy's in . . . Paterson; and a wild-card wiener ripper from Rutt's Hut in Clifton. And we washed it all down with icey cream from Guernsey Crest.
The difference between a Plainfield and a Paterson wiener lies in the chili. Paterson-style has a goopy, thin, sauce; Plainfield-style a drier, thicker, and spicier chili. Rutt's Hut serves something different entirely, a veggie-based topping slop. Different, but nonetheless delicious.
The Etzel brothers, as native North Jerseyans, preferred either the Rutt's ripper or the Paterson-style dog. (The Etzel brothers, having celiac disease also, sadly, had to forgo the buns).
Alas, I am my father's daughter, and will always be a Plainfieldian at heart. I preferred Manny's wieners. Crispy dog; dry, spicy chili. Perfection. On a bun.
Dessert wasn't so bad, either. We had two flavors to choose from: mint chocolate chip, and the most amazing black raspberry ice cream that's ever passed between my lips.
Now, let's see if you've been listening. Can you name the wieners below?
Heh. Wieners.
Labels: family, food, food memories, husband, phoebe eating, photos, social eating, traditions, weiners
Posted at 9:26 PM // 4 comments
January 21, 2010:
More Missing Digit LOLz
Yahoo! Answers, should I date a girl with a missing finger?
Labels: editing, LOLz, research, stone sorter, thank god for ask.metafilter, writing
Posted at 4:18 PM // 2 comments
January 20, 2010:
Goodread Review: Riddley Walker (read in December of 2006)
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I discovered Riddley Walker by attempting, and totally failing, to finish a book that I'd heard rip-roaringly good things about, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.
To be fair, I was only attracted to Cloud Atlas because I'd heard it featured a dystopia. I was fresh out of college, working in a library, and all I'd been interested in reading about was the end of the world. I happily picked my way through wikipedia's lists of dystopic works,until I got to Cloud Atlas. It became a slog: I only reached the end of the first half-story, then, lip curled, turned again to the internet to find out what happened in the rest.
It turns out that Mitchell, in his novel's post-apocalyptic center, was inspired by Russell Hoban, whose name I recognized from the Frances picture books from my childhood. I found a copy on the shelves of our library, and dove in.
And it was a dive: Riddley Walker was one of those most immersive reading experiences of my life. Hoban's invented language--as complex as Burgess' in A Clockwork Orange, but, perhaps, more poetic--seemed to change the book from a fairly simple story about a boy coming of age in a Bronze-Era-like society after the fall of man to some sort of integral, sacred text. I usually read quickly: Riddley Walker forced me to slow down, and in doing so the landscape around me seemed to transform. I remember standing on the brick track behind the library where I worked as the sun went down and feeling the soggy natural potential in the world around me.
It's difficult for me to talk about this book and not sound either sentimental or trite; it's difficult for me to talk about it in terms of plot, or character. Riddley Walker to me seems to be more of a history, or a mythology. It has the same slippery quality that Homeric works have, the same intangible magic as the Tao Te Ching or the Bible.
And no one's heard of it.
Oh, that's not entirely true, I suppose. People have. There are annotated webpages, goodreads reviews. But I've never met anyone familiar with the book. Because the experience of reading it was so strange and so affecting, I talk about it whenever I can. I have had more than one person tell me that it sounds like Cloud Atlas; have I read Cloud Atlas? At that, I can't help but wistfully shake my head. This isn't a post-modernist nesting doll gimmick of a book. This is something else entirely.
Riddley Walker should be seen as required reading for anyone who is interested in doing something beyond telling a story when they write a book. This is the story of a boy, and a death, and Punch and Judy, and the government, and what happens following the fall of our world. But it's so much more than that, too--it's the story of the world, and it's a world in itself, too.
This review is part of Road Trip Wednesday, YA Highway's "Blog Carnival," of weekly writing- and reading- related questions. This week's question was "what's an unheard-of book you love?"
Labels: genre, goodreads, postapoc, review, scifi, ya
Posted at 2:16 PM // 5 comments
Research
Research for editing my novel lead me to this page, which contains the following helpful tip: "When checking for a misdiagnosis of Amputated finger or confirming a diagnosis of Amputated finger, it is useful to consider what other medical conditions might be possible misdiagnoses or other alternative conditions relevant to diagnosis. These alternate diagnoses of Amputated finger may already have been considered by your doctor or may need to be considered as possible alternative diagnoses or candidates for misdiagnosis of Amputated finger."
Labels: LOLz, research, writing
Posted at 1:12 PM // 4 comments
January 18, 2010:
My Mother the Ghost
Yet another beautiful story up at Fantasy, this one by Willow Fagan, called My Mother the Ghost. How can you not love a story that starts like this?
I was eleven years old when I realized that my mother was a ghost. I can remember the exact moment of this realization, but I wish I could better explain how it came about. It was like I had all these broken pieces of the truth, like shards of a white bowl, and in one moment, the pieces flew together, reforming the bowl, like the instant of its shattering running in reverse.
Labels: fantasy, fiction, short story
Posted at 2:44 PM // 1 comments
January 16, 2010:
On Honest Reviewing
I've been spending a lot of time on Goodreads lately, more time than I spend on any other social network. I've been reading and writing reviews, making surprisingly connections. Though I've been on there for quite awhile now (two years? Yes, two years in March), finding community there seemed to start with my review of Wings, which wasn't very positive, and ran counter to many of the other reviews on there. I've gotten a surprising number of messages in my GoodReads inbox, saying things like "Thank you for the review! I thought it was just me!" or "I rely on people like you to tell the truth!"
I also got into an argument in the comments of my review, which has since been deleted by the other participant (making me look a bit like a crazy person, talking to myself), about what I admitted was a bias against the author, jealousy over her success. About how that invalidated my opinion. This makes me sad, because I spent a lot of time thinking about what I did, and did not like about the novel. I've been spending a lot of time on all of my reviews lately--because, in part, I'm aware that people read them, and because I want to honestly share my opinion, but also because I've found lately that writing a review is a good way to see, holistically, my feelings about books: what works for me, what doesn't, what my own tastes are, how I think writing should be. And that's become instrumental in my own writing. When I saw the said bookisms in Pike's book, it also brought to my attention the said bookisms in my own draft; when I saw the needless descriptors in hers, I was better able to see them in mine ("You should call it," Pat said, "The grinning grinners grinned with a grin. Grinningly.")
There's a good post up right now on YA Highway on Thinking Before Posting, as well as some excellent follow-ups and links there, which gave me pause. Am I possibly eviscerating my own writing career by posting reviews? Am I being needlessly cruel, catty? The truth is, I don't know the easy answers to this: I believe that reviews need to illuminate the flaws in books, and they need to be both honest and passionate, or else they're not useful. I also believe that they're not a reflection of authors even if it can be difficult for authors to see that. Something I learned in the MFA program was the utter subjectiveness of opinion, and a good review will be thorough enough that you should be able to get an inkling of where the reviewer's tastes lie in relation to your own. I believe that, if I'm ever lucky enough to get published, I'm in for some harsh reviews myself. After all, that's what happens when you share your art with others. I'm sure I'll be hurt by some of the reviews (that's what happens, too!), but I hope that I'll be able to comport myself well, and with grace, and refrain from commenting--the best course of action for any artist, and the best defense of one's work. I also hope that I'll be able to learn something from negative reviews, to make my writing better, to always strive toward writerly nirvana, perhaps never reaching it, but also never giving up the quest. Onward! Upward! And so on.
I feel like I learned a lot of this from William Logan. William, the most hated man in American poetry, about whom an undergraduate professor commented, upon learning that I was applying to UF: "William Logan? He's mean. Are you sure you want to go there?" I've written about this before, but on arrival here I quickly learned that William wasn't mean: as a teacher, he was incredibly generous. As a critic, he was always honest--about his own opinions, of course, which are, of course, subjective. I quickly learned that William and I have very, very different tastes. What he finds sentimental I find uncanny. What he finds "a bit typographical," I find refreshing, and so on. This was why I didn't work with him on my thesis--he wants different things out of his poetry than I do. But his reviews, though they garner him death threats and hatred, are still useful, even if I don't agree with them. They're well-developed and explained. And they're always, always honest.
I try to keep all this in mind when I'm reviewing. Perhaps people reading my reviews should also keep this in mind: on GoodReads, I gave Ulysses three stars. I thought Joyce could have used a better editor. Ulysses! One of the greatest books in the English language! Lauded--but also sometimes loathed. Tastes are subjective; they're not absolutes. Everything I say is said with the caveat that you might find my opinions to be very, very wrong. But I'll always try my best to explain my biases as well as my opinions. I'll be thorough. But more importantly, I'll always be honest: you can be sure I'll always mean what I say, even if you utterly and completely disagree with me. And that's fine, too. Onward! And upward!
Labels: goodreads, MFA, publishing, review
Posted at 1:34 PM // 0 comments
January 13, 2010:
Jordan says, "I don't think I remember the last time you laughed that hard at something on the internet!"
The Great Pizza Orientation Test
Labels: links
Posted at 11:55 PM // 4 comments
Goodreads Review: Catching Fire
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins' much-anticipated sequel to The Hunger Games, starts, much like the first one, in District 12. However, now that Katniss Everdeen has triumphed over the Hunger Games, a televised fight-to-the-death, she's lifted her family out of poverty and become not just a celebrity but also a figurehead for a growing rebellion. That doesn't mean her life is easy; she's still not sure what to do with Peeta, her fellow victor and sort-of fiance, not to mention with Gale, her childhood hunting buddy who has recently decided to kiss her. But as President Snow, the leader of Panam, appears and threatens the lives of Gale and her family if she doesn't obey, her life gets even more complicated.
If that sounds a bit convoluted, that's because it is--and that's not the half of it. Catching Fire has a sprawling, complex, and often messy plot; first we spend the beginning of the novel in District 12, then we tour the country, then back to District 12, then, abruptly, there's a turn and we spend the second half of the book again plunged back into the Hunger Games themselves. With such a meandering story, it's no wonder that our narrator seems capricious, inconsistent, and unsteady--but this is an unfortunate and stark contrast to the driven and even-keeled Katniss of the first novel.
This is particularly true in regards to her romantic entanglements. While I enjoyed the romantic triangle of the first book, by the second it's clear that Gale is so poorly developed in comparison with Peeta that there's no way he could win Katniss' heart without the writer resorting to extreme contrivance. Gale hasn't yet, of course, but already the scenes where Katniss is starting to lean that way feel eye roll worthy. After two novels, I still feel like I didn't know Gale at all, and mostly felt frustrated at him for standing in Peeta's way--and frustrated at Katniss for caring about such a bland young man.
The ultimate return to the Games was likewise contrived, and a less interesting choice conceptually than remaining in the districts and with the growing rebellion. It almost felt like Collins wasn't sure what to do with her book without the structure of the Games to bolster it. That's a shame, because Catching Fire deals with some compelling issues: the growing rebellion, Katniss' place in it, and how such a young woman could possibly balance her role as figurehead with her own life and needs.
That being said, Catching Fire does have the same strong, driving voice as the first novel, and the characters here are even better developed than in the first, with the exception of Gale. Even minor players in the Seventy Fifth Hunger Games are vividly crafted and eminently believable. Though I suspect that Catching Fire was neither as carefully planned nor well-edited as the first book of the series, it was just as readable and enveloping. I hope that Collins returns to form in the third, and that she's willing to try to talk about Panem's bigger issues by keeping us out of the Games.
Labels: goodreads, review, scifi, ya
Posted at 10:47 PM // 0 comments
January 11, 2010:
My Thick Skin is Starting to Feel Thin
Nice, but apparently form, rejection from Abyss & Apex:
Thank you for submitting "Elsie And The Wild Boys" to ABYSS & APEX. It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication.
I hope you'll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in placing this story elsewhere.
Onward.
In other publishing news, a magazine that had about a dozen of my poems for over six months just folded. Another never responded for over a year, including to a direct query on the status of my poems. Aside from speculative journals, I've received nothing but form rejections for my poetry for about two years now, if anything. A few theses on that:
- This is because I made the choice to submit to more challenging markets, and my work just isn't up to snuff.
- My work from the MFA program is overedited, soulless, or just plain sucks. Having read slush, I know it's not exactly the dregs of the slush pile. But maybe it is, and I just don't see it.
- I don't network enough.
- People google me and think my blog is too snarky/ridiculous/whatever.
- I'm just a terrible poet.
- Who knows?
Whatever the reason, I'm feeling increasingly reluctant about my realist poetry, and the literary world generally. Even the form rejections from the speculative fiction/poetry side of things are nicer. Does nice matter? Maybe it shouldn't. But it sure as heck makes me feel more motivated about submitting.
Labels: literary world, poetry. fiction, publishing, rejection
Posted at 11:14 AM // 6 comments
January 9, 2010:
Goodreads Review: The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'll get this out of the way, first: conceptually, I found Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games to be derivative. My first thought as I began reading this story about teenagers in a dystopian world pulled into a televised fight-to-the-death was Stephen King's (or, you might say, Richard Bachman's) The Long Walk, though upon reflection it had even more in common with Battle Royale in the specifics, from the isolated setting to the armed battles to the alliances and romances between contestants. Collins seems not to have read these books, or if she has, she's kept mum about it. Instead, she claims that her inspiration was the myth of Theseus. Maybe that's true--it's not unheard of for different authors to stumble upon similar concepts. Convergent evolution, as it may be. It would be nice if Collins acknowledged these similarities, though. I can't help but think that it's an author's duty to read conceptually similar works before they embark on writing their own, particularly in an era when google and amazon makes them so easy to find. Perhaps King's review of The Hunger Games for the New York Times is a silent acknowledgement of their books' similarities, in which case, I guess I'm wringing my hands about nothing.
That being said, The Hunger Games is a gripping read, with one of the strongest YA protagonists and narrators I've seen in years. Katniss Everdeen, resident of District 12, dutifully cares for her grief-stricken widow mother and helpless little sister, not through traditional female tasks such as cooking or cleaning but by striking out to the woods of her mining community and illegally poaching wild game. Katniss is a no-nonsense young woman; her protectiveness and loyalty recalls Gregor, Collins' hero of her middle grade series that began with Gregor the Overlander. When her sister is selected in a lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death in their nation's capitol, Katniss takes her normal protectiveness a step further, taking her place in the game.
Katniss' voice is superbly designed. Collins adopts a sparse, strong, and utterly appropriate tone. As a heroine, Katniss is never sentimental--this causes her problems later in the book, when one of her fellow contestants develops feelings for her--and so the book rarely is, either. Having just finished the first two novels of the Twilight Saga, I can only call the difference refreshing. Collins proves that we can have a believable teenaged girl narrator who doesn't resort to purple prose every time boys come up.
That's not to say that she's an automaton. In fact, it's in her observations about the other characters that the novel is sharpest and most interesting. Though she sometimes (understandably) resorts to stereotyping her fellow contestants, Katniss--or Collins--has a fine eye for human interactions. This leads to excellent and gripping tensions when when the book's romantic triangle, between Katniss, fellow tribute Peeta, and Gale, her former hunting companion, develops. This isn't an easily resolved situation--there is no "right" or simple choice for Katniss--and it propels the reader quickly through the novel.
Descriptions of battle and Katniss' survival techniques are unfortunately less engaging. The Hunger Games comes very close to stream-of-consciousness at times, describing, in excruciating detail, every moment of the games. I found this unnecessary and more, just not that interesting. I'm not sure if this was because I'm generally less interested in these topics, or if Collins' just doesn't know how to make these passages as juicy as she does her character interactions. Of course, we're also never really left to wonder whether Katniss survives--she's narrating, after all--so it could just be that these passages lack the urgency of those regarding which boy she'll eventually choose.
Still, this was an excellent read, the kind where you keep telling yourself you'll just read "one more chapter" and soon find yourself another hundred pages in. I'd say that I couldn't wait for the next one, but that's not entirely true--in fact, I started it this morning, and am, already, a third of the way through. I'm sure already that the third volume in this trilogy will be eagerly anticipated.
Labels: goodreads, review, scifi, ya
Posted at 6:09 PM // 0 comments
January 8, 2010:
A Solstice-stravaganza
This is the first of likely many (or, at least, a handful) of picture posts, because, with the holidays just passing, and my mother's gift to me of a more convenient point-and-shoot, and what with me finally getting around to upload about two months worth of photos, I have loads of them.
I want to talk, first, about Christmas, which I'm sure everyone is sick of. Frankly, everyone always seems sick of Christmas, or of holiday cheer, or the non-denominational-but-admittedly-commercial holiday season.
But I pretty much never am.
When I was a kid, Christmas was the most magical thing, ever. I believed in Santa Claus until I was almost ten. Granted, this has an awful lot to do with the Dudley Moore flick, Santa Claus: The Movie, which was billed as the "real" story of Santa, and I can see why. The first half, which is all about this weird Santa resurrection and magical elves called the vendicum and why Santa wears red and how reindeer eat glitter-filled oatmeal, is amazing.
(The second half, which is about product placements and Dudley Moore, is less-so.)
Anyway, so Christmas meant a lot to me as a child, despite my agnosti-half-Jew upbringing. This had nothing to do with Jesus and surprisingly little to do with presents but much more to do with:
- Sparkling lights.
- Magic.
- The fact that my family always seemed to get along pretty well on Christmas, the ceremony of our traditions, the general warmth of our household on Christmas eve.
- And, okay, the presents, too.
As I got older, after my dad died, our Christmas traditions slowly changed. I don't want to say they dissolved, but (maybe understandably), my Jewish mother was pretty eager to stop doing the garish, artificial tree thing. We spent a few holidays in New York City, at my sister's place, and three years in a row watching Lord of the Rings movies (which, since Christmas is a time for fantasy and magic for me, I loved, but I think Emily, who doesn't like fantasy movies generally, liked less), but lately, other than the fact that we'd be together on Christmas Eve and probably watch a movie on Christmas Day, we pretty much didn't have any traditions. This made me sad.
One of the (many) things I like about Jordan is that he gets my Christmas boner, even though he's an agnosti-half-Jew himself. Christmasses with his family were a really special time for him, too, as a kid. Like me, he doesn't dread "Christmas creep" but enjoys it. The lights. The music. The Christian people trying to be nice to one another because it's the one time of year you're supposed to.
So this year, our first living together, I wanted to do something special for the two of us to honor our seasonal love. We were planning on driving to New Jersey for the holiday itself, but, I figured, there was no reason that we were obligated to celebrate on Christmas itself; it's not like we believe in the religious aspects (and even if we did, not like Jesus was born on the 25th, for real, anyway). And despite our utter agnostitude, we're only human--we like traditions, including some of the ones we were raised with, and it makes sense to affix them to a date with some sort of meaning.
So we decided to have a small, seasonal celebration on the Winter Solstice. Why the solstice? Well, it's the Pagan holiday that the Christians took many of their traditions from, of course, so there's precedence. It's also firmly rooted in actual, scientific things that go on in the world: the longest night in the year, the shifting of seasons. After the solstice, the days start to get longer again. Since I'd been walking home in the dark for weeks, it was easy for me to see why that was worth celebrating.
So I got a bunch of Christmas movies--the Santa Claus one, but also The Christmas Toy and some claymation ones--decorated a cheap, fiberoptic tree, strung up some lights, and invited people over for a feast.
The menu consisted of:
- An ethically-raised ham shipped to us by Niman Ranch. I used this Yule ham recipe, which was seasonally appropriate and, uh, pretty much amazing.
- Roasted winter veggies - Acorn squashes and potatoes and garlic and parsnips nom nom nom.
- Mulled mead, for revelry.
- Homemade peppermint ice cream, which, sadly, we forgot to eat on the holiday, but have been enjoying in the New Year.
We invited a few friends--Gainesville around Christmas isn't the most populated time of year--to share in the celebration with us. The plan was to stay up until dawn, to celebrate the passing of the longest day. The mulled mead put a kink in that plan, and we ended up passing out around two.
However it was still a pretty magical--a step in the right direction towards honoring the season, and celebrating it. In the morning, Jordan, Sammy Katz, and I opened stockings--small, thoughtful, funny gifts. It was low-key, happy, nice. And it did bring the change of the season to the forefront of my attention, which I think is a good reason to celebrate the solstice. Sure enough, since I've been back to work, my long walks home have been getting progressively brighter. Time marches on; if winter's here, can spring be far behind? In any event, it might sound cheesy, but I hope we'll be repeating this tradition for years to come.
Labels: christmas, eating in, fast food, holiday, magic, photos, social eating, traditions
Posted at 10:46 AM // 5 comments
January 4, 2010:
Goodread Review: New Moon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Yet another treatise on teenage depression: whereas in Twilight, Stephenie Meyer explored the depression of solitude and fitting in, in New Moon she recounts, with vivid and accurate sharpness, the depression of being dumped. Bella Swan, having been drawn out of her shell by uberboyfriend Edward, is then unceremoniously left by him. The details don’t really matter, and really aren’t that interesting. What’s important is that Edward tells Bella that he’s so much like Romeo that he’d commit suicide if anything ever happened to her, and then ditches her, leaving her an empty shell for a good three-hundred pages.
As an adult reader, this made for pitiable and perfectly boring reading. Bella misses Edward so much that she first goes completely blank, then talks ad naseum about the burning, itching sensation he’s left her with (don’t worry—it’s in her chest, not her panties). This was monotonous for me, but I remember crying over boys at seventeen and have to say that it’s pretty accurately rendered. Bella begins seeking thrills in Edward’s absence—an interesting idea, although her resulting hallucinations of Edward nagging her were a bit silly—and ends up becoming reacquainted with Jacob Black, a childhood friend, in the process.
Bella’s reawakening into the land of the living was charming, as was her relationship with Jacob. They share activities together (schoolwork, motorcycle repair) and discuss their fears and dreams. Bella initially worries that she’s leading Jacob on, but she begins to realize that her relationship with him makes her happy, and brings her joy. Though she avoids giving in to his advances initially (because she wuvs Edward), she begins to wonder what would have happened to Juliet had she lived and Romeo died: would she have come to love Paris? Might Bella’s affection for Jacob grow to a healthy romantic love, too?
Unfortunately, it’s around this time that Meyer remembers that she’s writing a fantasy novel and that we’re supposed to be cheering for Edward and not Jacob and so throws her main character off a cliff. Literally. We get an awkward, contrived, and rushed plotline about Edward’s attempted suicide and an awkward, contrived, and boring reunion. The novel ends with Bella contemplating a marriage proposal and Edward contemplating turning Bella into a vampire and by then I just really, really didn’t care.
This goes deeper than thinking that Jacob makes a better romantic lead than Edward, though I suppose that this book convinced me that, were I to really care what happened to Bella, I’d be TOTALLYTEAMJACOBOMG. By the end of the book, I became convinced that, not only did Meyer not understand some fundamental things about Romeo and Juliet but also not understand some fundamental things about teenagers—things that Shakespeare understood all too well.
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet wasn’t just in their death, but that their love was so fundamentally immature and sexual that they hardly knew one another. Romeo, like most sixteen-year-old boys, was capricious and shallow; Juliet, at fourteen, passionate and naïve. They marry one another, and do it, within a day of their meeting. In contrast, Bella and Edward’s six-month love affair is chaste and completely bland—apparently, they watch movies and listen to CDs together. How . . . star-crossed. How riveting.
Meyer refuses to explore either of the rational conclusions that would arise out of the parallels she wants to draw between her work and Shakespeare’s. Either, like Romeo and Juliet, Bella and Edward’s relationship should be so tumultuous and rash that it destroys both (creating a sad, but believable and beautiful tragedy) or, like most teenagers, Bella actually grows beyond a purely physical, reckless, and unhealthy relationship with a cipher like Edward and instead discovers a more mature and healthy love with someone else. Someone who makes her happy; someone she enjoys sharing conversations, interests, and activities with. Hmm.
But Meyer refuses to let Edward destroy Bella (and frankly, her vampires are so happy and functional that all of his hand-wringing about her losing her soul seems flatly ridiculous), and she refuses to let Bella grow up, either. This makes for a tiresome story—one which teaches us very little about passion, pain, or loss. That’s a shame, too; Meyer seems to have her pulse on the sadness of adolescence, but she seems incapable of seeing the potential lessons that can be learned through the pain of being a teenager.
Labels: cheesy, goodreads, horror, review, romance, ya
Posted at 5:22 PM // 0 comments
December 29, 2009:
Goodreads Review: Twilight
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well, I finally read Twilight.
How can one go into such a book without preconceived notions? I had those in spades before reading Stephenie Meyer's infamous, and infamously selling, teen romance novel. I'd heard it was Mormon. I'd heard it was poorly written, with little plot or action until the novel's rushed-feeling final third. I'd heard it was anti-feminist. I'd heard that Bella Swan, the main character, was vapid and irritating.
All that proved to be more-or-less true. But I was surprised to find that there were some things that I hadn't heard about Twilight, features that proved to be largely positive.
Namely, Meyer does setting, and setting description, exquisitely well. I read on her website that the novel was initially titled Forks; I can see why: the fictionalized-but-existant town makes for a lush and immerssive setting. Gray and green and very, very wet, Forks is a vivid backdrop to our narrator Bella's depression, which lasts through the bulk of the novel. Meyer's greatest strengths lie here, as well as in the parallel descriptions of Bella's drab home and school life. It was in the early pages of Twilight--in their utter sadness and the stark truths they revealed about the lonely lives of many high school girls--that I found myself the most engaged. Though even in these early pages, vampire Edward was often unlikeable (he is, variously, sneering, patronizing, haughty, and a little smarmy), one could almost understand how Bella, a very sad girl leading a very lonely life, would turn to a dangerous-seeming, but still pretty, boy, rather than her more welcoming peers, for affection.
Unfortunately, for all the dark promise of both the setting and the male romantic lead, the novel falls flat when Bella and Edward begin their relationship in earnest. Edward's danger proves impotent; we know (and not just thanks to spoilers) that he's never going to pose a real risk to Bella, and the chapters about his sparkling were even sillier than I'd imagined. Bella and Meyer wax some of the most purple prose I've ever read, and much of the subtle strengths evident earlier in the novel vanish completely.
And then the vampires play baseball, and the novel takes an excruciatingly cheesy turn. Beginning with the America's-pastime passage, and proceeding through the novel's, yes, rushed final arc and goofy conclusion (the prom? really?) I couldn't help but wonder, several times, why I was reading this. There's a very uncomfortable juxtaposition here between Meyer's hope for a wholesome relationship between Bella and Edward and everything we'd learned about their characters up until then. Perhaps this is true to the desires of her young readers: rarely do even the saddest teenagers want their mates to be truly dangerous. But these toothless and bland vampires make for some toothless and bland reading, much less romance. Meyer would have done better if she'd kept Twilight dark--and kept the Cullens out of the outfield.
Labels: fantasy, goodreads, review, romance, ya
Posted at 12:17 AM //
December 18, 2009:
More Stuff Phoebe Likes
Reminder: I am not a Buddhist. I like stuff. These are some things I've been enjoying lately:
- CB I Hate Perfume - I don't hate perfume. Actually, I love perfume. But I bought a bevy of sample sizes of CB I Hate Perfume's scents about a month ago, and they're amazing, more experiental and delicate than most scents. I have In the Library (musty, reminds me of a cabin in the woods), Wild Hunt (which smells like a forest), Winter 1972 (pretty, faint, wintery in an intangible sort of way), and M#3 November (like Winter 1972 but sweeter, with an underscoring of brown sugar), as well as single note accords in Old Leather (amazing, masculine, sexy) and Soaked Earth (exactly what it sounds like--there was a smudge of some on my scarf and I wondered why it smelled dirty). I'd love to try more of these--maybe gingerbread? Or musk? The only problem with them is that they're faint and fade quickly. But they smell so rich--I bought them while I was working on NaNoWriMo, and I can tell you that the library of my fictional school, Sacred Grove, smells just like In the Library. Just like it! Love it.
- Scribblenauts - I'm fairly unabashed about the fact that I'm a casual gamer. The last time-sink game I played was Shenmue back in 2000. I get frustrated when games demand my time--which is why I gave up on Animal Crossing and Nintendogs. I want games to be engrossing on their own terms, but not demanding; I also like them to be creative. Scribblenauts is great--a treat to play, though the controls can be a bit fiddly. There's nothing better than conjuring up God and Satan and letting them duel it out. Except maybe conjuring up Cthulhu.
- PlayOn Digital Media Server - We don't pay for cable. But I love TV, and we do have a NetFlix subscription and a Wii. I spent $20 to get the beta version of PlayOn for Wii and now can stream NetFlix and Hulu and even YouTube to my television. When I was sick last week, I spent all day watching Family Ties reruns. Awesome!
Posted at 2:48 PM // 0 comments
December 16, 2009:
Goodreads Review: The Magicians
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the first chapter of The Magicians, our hero Quentin Coldwater, a charming, intelligent, rich, but perpetually unhappy young man, muses about the nature of Fillory, a fictional world and book series which form the backbone of Lev Grossman's novel:
It was almost like the Fillory books--especially the first one, The World in the Walls--were about reading itself. When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt's house and slips through into Fillory [. . .], it's like he's opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better. [. . .] In Fillory things mattered in a way they didn't in this world. In Fillory you felt the appropriate emotions when things happened. Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility. It came when you called. Or no, it never left you in the first place.
The Magicians is, then, the story of a quest for happiness, like much of the escapist fantasy literature it recalls--but if the tone of this quote suggests, for you, that this is an impossible quest, then you're right.
Quentin, the only American-sounding character in a book full of people who seem to speak with strange British lilts, is eighteen-years-old and bound for the Ivy Leagues. A strange encounter with a dead body changes his plans, however, and he ends up at Brakebills, a magical school nested in a pocket universe (where time runs two months behind the rest of the world) on Long Island. Though he's cast in a Harry Potter role, as our star student and hero, he's written much closer to a Donna Tartt character than he is one of J. K. Rowling's. Blessed and brilliant, but also moody and insatiable, Quentin is often an unlikeable character. His behavior is at times off-putting; his reactions to others sour and unkind. But Grossman is wise enough not to ask us to cheer for him even when we are meant to empathize with him. This is, after all, a novel about misery and the search for unobtainable happiness--how strange it would be if our characters were happy!
Many reviews of The Magicians have centered on the novel's first book; it's often described wholesale as "Harry Potter with sex and booze", but I found that viewing this section of the novel in only this light was limiting. Brakebills is an incredibly rich setting, and the most stunning examples of scene building and magic happen here. There is an absolutely stunning scene near the novel's beginning featuring a magical feat that seems to owe quite a bit to the magic of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell--in fact, even the magic at the novel's climax doesn't quite live up to this display. There's also one scene of true, and shudder-inducing terror. These sections were deliciously written, and much, much better than those about Grossman's half-hearted Quidditch-rip-off (sorry, "welters"), for all their tongue-in-cheek similarities to Rowling.
Almost two hundred pages remain after Quentin leaves Brakebills. He departs for strange lands--Brooklyn, then Fillory itself. The narrative here takes on a tone that's really crushing, appropriate for the empty and desperate lives that Quentin and his friends lead. I was surprised that the one bright spot I found in the story was Penny, a character who had previously been introduced as a foil and rival to Quentin. Even through to the novel's climax, Quentin seems to view him this way, but I was never really sure if Grossman intended the readers to see him as such. Despite unfortunate fashion choices, he's clearly the most dedicated magician of the bunch, and possesses an enthusiasm and naivety which is frankly refreshing after spending so much time with Quentin and his dry, dour, and amoral friends. And it is Penny, in the end, not Quentin, who makes the greater sacrifice. Perhaps Grossman was trying to tell us something about hope, and about potential: the most brilliant among us are often those who are, in the end, the most truly lost.
These are the questions that I found engaging in The Magicians--how can we still be hopeful, despite what we know of the world? Is there room for the magic of our childhood? Though it's easy to focus on the intentional similarities between this and other works--and there's plenty to focus on, if you want, with references that go far beyond the Pevensies and the Potters--it's simply not as interesting as taking a close look at what this literature stands for here, and in the lives of young readers like our hero once was: hope and happiness, the kind that's not always easy to find in grown-up books or in a grown-up world.
Labels: depressing, fantasy, goodreads, review
Posted at 12:19 AM // 3 comments
December 13, 2009:
I Swear I Didn't Rip Off Lev Grossman
I'm reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians right now and finding it mostly enjoyable, but, thanks to it, I now have a dilemma.
My just-finished manuscript is set at a magic school, as this one is, for the the first half. I picked it up because it sounded somewhat similar in concept, and I thought it was worth taking a look. So far, overall, other than the setting the books' styles and intents and themes are very, very different. The Magicians is more genuinely an updated Harry Potter in many ways, mostly tonally. It's firmly cheeky realist fantasy, while mine is just fantasy--my school, Sacred Grove, exists in a world of fairies, and has a hidden and sinister back story hinted at from the beginning.
But I still worry that people will think I ripped Lev Grossman off, not only because of the general premises, but because, as I read, I noticed a small handful of descriptive and name similarities:
- The descriptions of two settings in Grossman's book--the hero's room, and a First Year lounge, both of which are tangential to the plot, sound a heck of a lot like my students' rooms and my students' canteen, both of which are pretty important settings in my book.
- The dean at his magical school, Brakebills, is named Dean Fogg. My head magister (teacher) had the last name of Ladd--also four letters, also with a double-consonant ending.
- There's a minor character in his book with a mohawk, and his hero is named Quentin Coldwater. There's a minor character in mine with a mohawk named Bram Broadwater.
I don't know if I can--or should--do anything about the setting issue. We're clearly both playing off certain fantasy/school story tropes there, though I definitely cringed when he explained, at length, the torn-up couches and chairs in his students' lounge. The name issues are more pressing, but even more frustrating: my characters all have Meaningful Names. Magus Caulden Ladd is named for the Cauld Lad of Hylton; Bram Broadwater's name is referential to his powers, which aren't discussed at length in this book, but I was hoping to explore eventually. Both can be changed with the meaning intact, I hope, though, dammit, I've grown attached to both. But I know it's wise: I don't want anyone to think I've ripped off a recent, fairly popular book.
Labels: books, plagiarism, similarities, writing
Posted at 9:59 AM // 5 comments
December 9, 2009:
Goodread Review: Rampant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Friend, has this ever happened to you?
You pick up book after book after book, hoping to get pulled into something. Friends lend you volumes. You seek out recommendations online. Yet your interest wanes thirty pages in again, and again, and again?
Maybe you finally slog through something only to find that it's a mostly terrible experience. Though you have previously believed yourself to love books more than life itself, you begin to doubt yourself and your tastes.
This happened to me recently, and, boy, was it painful. After finishing my MFA, producing two manuscripts and a thesis in a matter of months, and reading more mediocre books than I care to recall, I was starting to feel utterly burnt out on words.
Then I picked up Rampant by Diana Peterfreund.
It was the premise (in four words: "girls hunt killer unicorns") that initially drew me in, but the fantastic, battle-strewn plotting and frantic pace that kept me there. For the first time in ages, I stayed up late--too late!--to read, consuming the entire book in two big night-time chunks. Though the first two chapters began a bit slow, as Peterfreund introduced us to Astrid, a virgin who is attacked in the woods one night while necking with her boyfriend, it picks up as soon as she ships Astrid off to Rome, to a cloister full of girls with a genetic predisposition for unicorn-killing.
This probably sounds a bit silly--it did to me, too, at first, too. But Peterfreund puts a remarkable deal of care into crafting her urban-fantasy world, particularly the mythology behind the unicorns. We're given a small handful of bloodthirsty species, and she even manages to make two unicorns into believable characters. Though one unicorn, Bonegrinder, is tame, she certainly isn't a saccharine-Lisa-Frank-kind-of unicorn, but instead a gritty, feisty, and fiercely loyal killer.
(I must admit, however, to being a little hazy on the specifics of certain aspects of unicorn mythology by the end of the book, though. This is mostly because it's explained by a non-verbal unicorn character, but I had hoped for things to fall into place a little more neatly than they did.)
Peterfreund's character development, generally, is nuanced and complex. All of the teenage girls manage to be as thorny and complicated as real girls, and though Astrid, as narrator, has a clear favorite among them in her cousin, Phil, even she behaves in a realistically annoying, short-sighted, and sometimes even selfish manner.
The major exception to this was Astrid's mother Lilith, whose behavior I found over-the-top. Sure, she's meant to represent overly militaristic ideals, but her hysterical and frankly creepy behavior at the end of the novel made it difficult to understand Astrid's affection for her.
But Peterfruend generally manages character creation well, and she matches her complex characters with a voice that's wholly unique for urban fantasy, and one that, for the first few chapters, I admittedly found a bit off-putting. Astrid's voice sounds much more like the narrator of a typical chick-lit novel, tinged with sarcasm and a little old for her age. Though I initially hoped for something a bit more fitting with the fantasy premise--something a bit more musical, perhaps--by the novel's climax, I realized that this was one of Rampant's unique strengths: as a hunter, and a warrior, we're really able to trace Astrid's growth through the development of her voice. By the novel's conclusion, she no longer sounds strange and instead sounds truly strong.
Finally, there's some interesting discussion of sexual politics in Rampant's pages. Some reviewers seem to view this as a preoccupation with the characters' sex lives, but I found that I could draw some pretty fascinating parallels between current cultural stances on virginity--in a culture where girls are simultaneously sexualized and urged to remain pure--and the fictional situation that Peterfreund explored, where only virgins are able to become unicorn hunters. This became especially interesting when one character is date-raped; the sometimes horrifying reactions of those around her are an interesting analog to the real attitudes girls face when they discuss their sexual histories.
By the novel's conclusion, Peterfreund leaves a few threads hanging, clearly setting us up for a sequel. Though I was frustrated by this in an immediate sense--I wanted to know what happened!--I'm happy that I'll eventually have another killer unicorn novel to devour.
Labels: fantasy, goodreads, review, ya
Posted at 5:40 PM // 1 comments
A Retrospective of Self
For some reason, I started looking back through one of my older online journals--which was, in many ways, embarrassing, and which I won't be linking here for numerous reasons--and I was struck by a few things. How mean some of Jordan's friends were to me (Saying that people were "sucking my cock" every time they left a nice comment! Telling me that I should shut up every time I discussed my feelings toward him!) and how I put up with it. How raw I was--about myself, sex, friendship, family, feelings, love--how very, very raw. And how my poetry was, I think, better than it is now. Rough nineteen year old stuff, sure, but good--alive, glittering in a way it doesn't now (especially now--these days, it all dies after a few lines). Now, with distance, I read it as if someone else wrote it, and I catch my breath for a moment. Who is this poet? What happened to her when she went to poetry school?
The Lives of Insects
sometimes when walking down the stairs
in the dark at night you're mistaken in
believing you've mis-stepped, the sensation
of falling without going anywhere like
toeing the edge of a light house, a steep
stair case, the viewing deck of one of the
world trade centers, a cliffside at night
with your boyfriend and you're stoned you
have sex believing you'll fall into the
lights of suburban families sitting down to
vegan dinners or beating their children or
going to separate beds--lights which are really
stars. belief begets sensation but you
don't tumble or tuck your body into yourself
which you learned in a book will save your
your face and your ribcage but maybe not your
spinal cord but who doesn't love a para
palegic you just watch as his shoulders move
up and down and up and feel the blood drain from
your fingers.
i've built a wall for myself out of intelligent
fiction, books about primate biology, existential
ism, little girls discovering what those-folds-are-
for in chicago apartment complexes, pottery, poetry,
and the real meaning of those flowers in through
the looking glass. my wall is strong. it's guarded
by insects: mosquitoes smoking exotic cigarettes outside
of concerts without paying the cover charge, fire
flies in coffee shops, dull and dim and drowning on
espresso, and you, a green fly, and me, a mantis, and
i don't know who we really are any more, apart from
justification for my theories. i think in stanzas,
relate in five paragraph form, a strong thesis and three
supporting arguments and a conclusion but i always lose
myself around the conclusion
and you, you're still standing on those stairs at night
barefoot and breathless and believing that if you open
your eyes you'll be bloody on the carpet, banister
buried inside your ribcage. i'm still waiting for you
to take that first step, and hear the old boards shift
beneath your toes. walk past those walls and stop
talking in your journal about it.
there is really only one insect in this story.
Love and War
He wastes time with whiskey on the ancient couch
swallowed in a throw she had composed for him out
of blue and yellow yarn a little jewish ingenuity
the smell of her sex; once they built shelter from
pillows and blankets, lamplight fireworks filtered
through pale threads. She fought her wars with her
fingernails, left rivers of blood along the geography
of his ribcage and he retaliated, bruising her throat,
her pulse scored with napalm burns; they took off a layer
of skin and they starved, the radiation fallout poisoning
of love--
love was a treaty of bodily borderlines, the taut skin she
never let him taste, the tributaries that rushed out from
his navel at night while he waited for something better to come
along well of course he loved those grey grenades she called
eyes, her aK-47 cup. He was a veteran envisioning god
in limbs that were only phantoms, flash backs of bullets
raining like first-kiss passions, wrestling, groping gunless,
streaked with her lipstick and her orgasms, her orgasms,
her orgasms were silent as a solitary shot
glass on a Saturday night.
Something happened after I graduated from college. Part of it was growing up. Part of it was going on birth control that made me less crazy, but muted my emotions, over all. Part of it was loss and fear and fear of my own mortality: my mom got sick, my grandfather and my cat died, I became terrified of the idea of my own death. My journaling, and writing, changed--it was something panicked, preoccupied. Before going into the MFA program, I tried writing fiction which, I recognize now, was just a mass of sad wish-fulfillment. My second livejournal, which I also won't be linking here, became a record of unhappiness and stress.
I'm happy with my writing these days; the fiction I write feels good, productive. But I miss that nineteen-year-old poet girl. There are days when I'd like to call her back to me, to coax her from the guarded walls of myself. To be brave and bald like she was. But I don't know if I have it in me to be her, anymore. To put it all out there. To risk pain and censure.
I'd sure love, at least, like to write poems like she did, though. Because she really was a lovely little prophet-girl:
ideally, yes, i'd watch the sunlight spill over his pale back every morning; the green sheets would come to memorize our indentations. we would sweat together in august with no air conditioning and take showers just to cool off and sit on the fire escape with hard cider and popsicles and sing into the sunset.
ideally, yes, in winter my nose would turn blue when i'd dig my car out of the banks in February; at night after long dark hours deprived of vitamin e under fluorescent light we'd leave our boots trailing mud across the foyer and our socks over the radiator and our fingerprints on each other's flesh as we rediscovered fire and the meaning of the words "body heat."
ideally, yes, the cat's name would be shroedinger and would curl in siamese curves against his belly as he read, one finger to his lips, the other poised between the creature's ears; i would play music and dance by myself and take photos of my feet standing in the bathtub and draw pictures of him in green marker on the backs of napkins when he wasn't looking.
ideally, yes, we would be true to one another, pen dry erase poetry on the refrigerator door, make love and only sleep on the couch because of insomnia; naively, yes, ideally, yes.
and i don't care about the spaces in between but I want you to be the last thing I see when I sleep and the first thing I'm sure of when I rise. i want i want i want
to belong
to you.
Labels: memories, phoebe, poetry, prose poetry, writing
Posted at 2:07 PM // 0 comments
December 8, 2009:
It's that time again . . .
title time!
If you know me, you know how much trouble I have titling bigger works. Poems and stories I'm fine with. Novels and theses break my brain--in fact, I had my only grad school melt-down while trying to title my thesis.
Editing on my NaNoWriMo is going surprisingly well: I'm plowing forward, whittling, rearranging, refining. But I'm not happy with the working title--Convocation. I want something jazzier. Something right.
So far, I have tried:
- A wordle cloud, which shows me, once again, that I over-rely on visual cues, but little else.
- Word 2007's auto-summarize tool, which gave me this:
If ever. Molls narrowed her eyes. Molls grinned. Close your eyes.” Mikhail and Annie both laughed. Mikhail flushed. Mikhail didn’t answer. “Yeah Molls?” Annie still sat besides Mikhail. Mikhail and Annie seemed different. Love Mikhail and Annie.” Mikhail looked at Annie, narrowing his eyes. Mikhail glanced up. Mikhail nodded. Annie cast black eyes to Mikhail, who shook his head. “Chuck!” Mikhail nodded. Mikhail asked. “Mikhail?” Annie rolled her eyes. “Annie!” Annie?” Hair. Mikhail's pupils had flooded his eyes. Mikhail! “Mikhail . . .” It was Annie. “Chuck?” My eyes widened. Annie exclaimed. Mikhail didn't answer. Mikhail watched her. Annie. “No, Mikhail.”
Thanks a lot, Bill Gates. - Combing wikipedia for anything that's possibly relevant.
I've come up with a few options that are okay, but I'm not entirely convinced by any of them. The Stone Sorter. Under Foreign Stars. Meh.
So I turn to you, Gentle Readers, for advice.
Here's a brief summary of the story, which I've copied and pasted from my NaNoWriMo profile, and which is more-or-less accurate:
At first glance, fifteen-year-old Miranda Cohen seems to lead a golden life: she has wealthy parents, a beautiful home, and a boyfriend who adores her. But she's not happy. In truth, her successful parents rarely have time for her, her house is well-fashioned, but cold, and her boyfriend Tim, though sweet, doesn't challenge her. One night, while up late surfing the internet, she impulsively applies to the Sacred Grove Academy, a residential free school for gifted students. However, it's not until she arrives at Sacred Grove that she realizes exactly how gifted she is.
Miranda is the long-lost descendant of a changeling, or fairy child, and mysterious powers course through her. She and her classmates have been selected to attend Sacred Grove in the hope that they will learn to tame these powers. Miranda discovers that she is a diviner, whose abilities seem to draw on the ordered life her parents have built for her. But by coming to Sacred Grove, Miranda has sought to escape the asceticism of her parents. Rather than honing her skills, she becomes involved with an older student, Mikhail, whose own powers and passions threaten to tear her to pieces. When he pressures her to take part in a strange and unsavory ceremony, Miranda must learn to embrace her powers, and her real inner strength, before it's too late.
Other (possibly) relevant details: Miranda goes by the name "Randy" for most of the book. Things at the school creep her out. She has to sort stones at one point, hence The Stone Sorter as a title. It's the first of a possible series, but at this point I need it to be able to stand alone, too.
Ideas? Suggestions? Help me, Internet Masses, you're my only hope!
Posted at 2:36 PM // 6 comments
The Beatles' music will live forever in the hearts of those who had their hearts frozen while the Beatles were still alive
Labels: beatles, video, youtube
Posted at 12:31 PM // 0 comments
December 5, 2009:
Goodreads Review: Wings
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I went into the novel Wings by Aprilynne Pike expecting to unilaterally hate it.
I was only mildly disappointed.
I'll admit: my low expectations were, in part, a reflection of sour grapes. I first heard of Wings on one publishing blog or another, where Pike bragged in comments that she didn't have to query agents to get her manuscript read, but that it was passed on, instead, by a well-connected friend (the Internet suggests that this was Stephenie Meyer, who also blurbs Wings, laughably, as “a remarkable debut” on the novel's front cover). Pike then immediately received a four book deal and had Disney option the film rights. As a struggling beginning novelist writing in the same genre, who knows other writers in a similar position, I recognize this sort of success as the kind that often only happens to either the wildly talented or the terrifically well-connected. My cynicism told me the latter was more likely true, though I hoped to be disappointed.
After all, Pike's premise is, at least, creative, if not also weird and a little silly. Laurel is a blond, tall, beautiful home schooled girl attending public school for the first time. Her flirtations with a surprisingly popular and studly science nerd are suddenly curtailed when she discovers what seems to be her very first pimple. Over the course of a few days, this zit grows to epic proportions, swelling first to the size of a softball, then exploding overnight to reveal a wing-like flower on the center of her back. It turns out that Laurel's a faerie (Pike's spelling, not mine), and that faeries are plants, not animals. And that the thing on her back isn't a pimple, and isn't wings (don't ask me about the title, then), but is, instead, a reproductive organ meant for manual diddling by sexy faerie men.
Unfortunately, the actual plot doesn't develop far beyond this basic premise, and Pike's writing fails to save the story from its inherent silliness.
In fact, I'd blame Pike's writing for the book's failure overall. The first two hundred-or-so pages of Wings read like a very clunky, very poorly executed draft. Pike's prose is adverb heavy and relies too much on staging when dialog alone would suffice. Here's one of my favorite passages, from the novel's first chapter: “He stood and offered her his hand. He pulled her to her feet and grinned lopsidedly for a minute” (6).
Lopsidedly? That's an awkward mouthful.
This sort of clunky phrasing would be more forgivable if it were more rare, but the novel is chock full of it. Here's another winner, from page 60: “David stared with his mouth slightly open. He stood, hands at his waist, lips pressed together. He turned and walked to his bed and sat down with his elbows on his knees.”
Honestly, the repetitive sentence structure, the contradictory descriptors (is his mouth opened or closed?), and the draft-like quality of these passages drove me batty. I did something I've never before done on a published book: I grabbed a pen and started line editing. This helped me see some of Pike's persistent prose problems: reducing the number of adverbs by half, alone, would have resulted in cleaner, more readable writing. Unfortunately, my own “editing” soon degraded to crass commentary on the characters in the novel, particularly Laurel.
Because Laurel is, unfortunately, a total bitch.
I'm all for realistic and complex characters in YA lit. Characters should breathe—they should be human, with flaws and foibles. But Laurel is neither complex nor realistic. She's written as a petty, shallow, whining girl, but treated as a kind-hearted and flawless princess by both the narrator and the other characters in the book. On more than one occasion she complains about the fashion choices of those around her or the ugliness of those around her (the evil of ugliness and “asymmetry” being one of the novel's overarching themes); she clearly plays the two male characters, Tamani and David, off one another and yet is treated like she's all goodness and light. We're supposed to believe, somehow, despite the inherent ugliness of her personality that, as David tells her, she's both “awesome” and “impossible to stay mad at.”
David isn't the novel's only bumbling idiot. Laurel's parents, particularly, act as no responsible parents would; their contrived blindness to Laurel's myriad flaws (especially her eating habits—more on that in a minute) are later hand-waved away as being due to faerie magic that makes them forget all the weird things about their adopted daughter. However, that didn't make the first two hundred and sixty pages, where we're told repeatedly they're such hippies that they don't believe in doctors, how they've never taken Laurel to a doctor and even got her exempted from a school physical, any more bearable.
This is particularly true with regard to Laurel's completely disordered eating habits. I know, I know—Laurel is a vegan because she's a plant, but prior to the novel's inception, and throughout most of it, her parents don't know this, and somehow, still, they never bat an eye. We're treated to passage upon passage of vividly disordered eating. Laurel's diet consists of salads, strawberries, canned fruit, and soda. Her mother, a health nut, allows Laurel to guzzle Sprite because “she couldn't argue with the 140 calories per can. That was 140 more than water. At least this way she knew Laurel was getting more calories in her system, even if they were 'empty.'” (11). Later, in the same passage, her mother turns her back while Laurel eats “one peach half and about half a cup of juice” to give Laurel “a modicum of privacy.” But we're told that, despite this, “Laurel felt like she'd lost some imaginary battle.” Heck, if eating a can of peaches is so fraught, how could Laurel's mother, as a supposedly good and responsible parent, not drag her kid to a doctor, no matter how crunchy she is?
These passages, and later ones, where David snaps at a friend who inquires if Laurel's ever sought treatment for her apparent inability to digest “fats” (milk products and meat—Laurel at one point becomes nauseated at the smell of leftovers) read like a classic description of anorexia. While I have faith in Pike's young readership to tell fantasy from reality generally, I don't doubt that these descriptions could also be triggering for those who have experienced eating disorders. What makes them disturbing isn't only their vividness, or their specificity (though those don't help), but the way that Laurel's parents embrace these habits. Laurel hasn't started her period, another classic symptom of anorexia, but we're told that her mother “always shrugged it off.” Later, Laurel has a very disturbing conversation with her father where she points out that the kids at school think her eating habits are weird. He responds: “I don't know anyone who eats more fruits and vegetables than you do. I think that's healthy. And you haven't had any problems, have you?”
Laurel, in a rare moment of astuteness, replies: “Have I ever been to a doctor?”
Good question, Laurel. If I were you, I'd want some answers, too.
I said at the beginning of the review that I didn't unilaterally hate Wings, and that's true. Once the plot finally kicks into gear—a silly story about some ugly trolls trying to steal her parents' property—it becomes a much more readable novel. I'm not sure if the prose actually improved, or if I didn't notice it once there was something happening beyond Laurel's protracted journey of magical self-discovery. Unfortunately, this plot only starts in the last hundred pages of a nearly three hundred page book. Had Pike had an editor who pushed her a little more towards conciseness—shearing a hundred or so pages from the novel's first two-thirds, reducing wordiness, tightening up the plot generally—Wings might not have been such an excruciating experience. As it stands, though, I'm looking forward to not reading the next three sequels.
Labels: fantasy, goodreads, review, sucked, ya
Posted at 6:07 PM // 1 comments
November 29, 2009:
Goodreads Review: Soulmate
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Soulmate is the sixth entry in LJ Smith's ambitious Night World series, which consists of nine books with an overarching story. Only at the end of this volume do the major themes of the series really begin to get underway. Unfortunately, the necessary development of these detracts from what, already, is only a mildly successful paranormal romance.
Sixteen-year-old Hannah Snow has been missing time. After these gaps in her memory, she finds notes--from herself, to herself--warning her that she's destined to be dead by seventeen. She visits a psychologist to explore these events further; when he puts her under hypnosis, she flashes back to an earlier, pre-historic life. Meanwhile, a coterie of vampires she's met before seem to be chasing her--including Thierry, Lord of the Night World, who claims to be her soulmate.
All of this, particularly the flashbacks, are mildly entertaining; unfortunately, the character development in Soulmate is terrifically lacking. Hannah's counselor Paul stands out as being completely unconvincing as a character and a mental health professional, but even Hannah and Thierry themselves aren't major improvements. Both are flat characters, completely bland were it not for their situation. Villain Maya fares a little better than the rest, as her sinister intentions mean that she actually seems to have both motivations and desires, something lacking in the rest of the cast.
What's more, the novel's climax and denouement is muddled as Smith tries to explain Circle Daybreak, the coming apocalypse, and "the soulmate principle." Throughout the series, I've found the requisite discussions of this principle to be didactic--they almost always are composed of stiff, affectless dialogue that feels oddly juxtaposed to the supposedly passionate subject matter. It's too bad that Smith chose to sink a good handful of chapters in this volume into exploring this further. Hopefully, in the next three volumes, there will be a little less (dry, stiff, and humorless) talk, and a little more action.
Labels: goodreads, horror, review, ya
Posted at 7:24 PM // 2 comments
I did it!
Posted at 2:25 PM // 9 comments
November 26, 2009:
Goodreads Review: A Night Without Stars
A Night without Stars by James Howe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I was a kid, I absolutely loved James Howe's Bunnicula series. So when I found A Night Without Stars, a 1983 children's hospital story, by the same author, I was naturally pretty curious.
It's clear from the cover that this is meant to be a Serious Book, in the manner of all those After School Specials and Degrassi episodes from the 80s. Maria has a hole in her heart and has to go to the hospital for surgery. There's she meets a young boy, Donald, who suffers from terrible burns. Because he is an experienced patient, Donald is able to help her through her fears--once she overcomes her prejudices against him.
Though this is a fairly well-realized book, it's also almost completely joyless and didactic. The adults here are both useless and clueless; Donald (sensitive, gifted, and pretty much perfect despite his burns) is the only one able to treat Maria's concerns with empathy and respect. The message is simple: don't judge people; be honest with children. I guess that's okay.
Unfortunately, the characterization of the young patients is a bit flat and overly simplistic. The only characters who really breathe, who really seem to have any complexity, are Maria's family, whom we hardly see. This was an okay book, one that I could see giving to a child before a hospital visit for a "teaching moment", but not one that I'd recommend for recreation.
Labels: goodreads, kiddie lit, review
Posted at 12:11 AM // 0 comments
November 24, 2009:
OH HELLS YEAH
Posted at 1:30 PM // 0 comments
November 16, 2009:
On Writing Race
A few weeks ago, my friend Michele had this to say about race in this blog post:
It sounds odd, but I always have a hard time constructing (and by constructing, I mean imagining or tentatively writing a bad first page of a pretend novel that I then abandon) a protagonist who is, like me, half white. The dilemma is that if I don’t mention race, the reader will automatically assume she or he is white by default (which is inherently problematic), and if I mention race, then the novel suddenly becomes a commentary on race or racial identity politics or transparently autobiographical/memoir-ish. It’s really frustrating. I’ve tried just mentioning it in passing, but it just doesn’t work. And then there is a larger question of ethics–should it be the responsibility of the minority author to deal with or at least acknowledge racial issues because that is the world or experience we (minorities) live in/with? I can see why Sci-Fi or fantasy genres might be more liberating in some respects, though I imagine the compulsion to read things allegorically is much too strong.
I never thought about the implications of writing race in fiction, honestly, until I got into an online argument about the new Star Trek movie just after its release. I was objecting to the pairing of Uhura and Spock on the grounds of the established canon (I always liked her chemistry with Scotty); several black female fans responded pretty (justifiably) passionately about how thrilled they were to see a black character paired with a primary (white) character in a functioning and happy relationship. I'd thought about the importance of Uhura in the lives of young black women before, mostly thanks to interviews with Whoopi Goldberg about her childhood reaction to the character. What I hadn't realized, in my white, privileged state, was that the same need for fans of color to see diverse and realistic characters of color is still going, by and large, unfulfilled. Writers of color are doing what they can, but I think it's important for writers of all races to be aware of constructions of race in their novels, particularly when writing for young and impressionable readers, many of whom haven't had the privilege of libraries full of heroes who look just like them.
(And I'll say that I feel pretty much the same way about character sexuality. Sorry, JK Rowling, but mentioning that Dumbledore is gay as if it's an afterthought just isn't enough. It's not a reflection of the world that anybody I know lives in, and it's not fair to your young readers, or your characters.)
The heroine in Encounter at Rhea's Point, Dee, is half-black and half-Polish. Rhea's Point is in first person; she describes herself freely, and, though the focus of the novel isn't a particularly racial one, I think her identity is important to her and therefore, in some ways, to the narrative. She doesn't "just happen" to be half-black and half-Polish; even growing up away from Earth, she is defined, in part, by the differences between her and her blond, white, blue-eyed, and thin mother. That's not to say that it hasn't been a challenge. I don't want to pretend like I can speak for those who have gone through life, in our society, particularly, having had the experience of actually growing up of mixed ancestry; I realize that my experiences are very fundamentally different from that. But I do the best I can, with Dee and with all of my characters: I try to make them breathe, try to make them have genuine, non-stereotypical* experiences, try to make them people and not archetypes. I don't do it because I think it's noble. I do it because I think it's correct, or rather, incorrect to do otherwise.
That's not to say that I don't understand Michele's apprehension. Race is such a loaded thing, and, honestly, I can't help but feeling a little self-conscious about talking about it, even now; will my attempts to discuss my motivations seem paternalistic or condescending? Can a white writer even approach a character like Dee fairly and respectfully? All I can say is, I sure hope so. I did my best with her.
And I continue to try to do my best. Convocation, my manuscript for NaNoWriMo features an interracial group of students. Though the narrator in this case is white and Jewish (and wealthy--that's been a real stretch for me, as I grew up pretty poor), I've been mindful to populate her world with important people of varied races and sexualities. With every character of a race other than mine, I try hard to make sure their race is an important part of them, not a trifling matter, because it isn't when it comes to real life, but I try to be sensitive enough not to make race the only part of the character. In all cases, and in all respects, I want my characters to be people, and not stereotypes.
*Speaking of stereotyped characters, I recently starting watching True Blood and at first I loved Tara; she seemed like a subversion of a stereotype of an angry black woman and seemed to have such potential for depth. The further I've gotten into the show, though, the less I'm sure. The black characters there are a flamboyant gay drug dealer, a perpetually angry woman unable to forge healthy romantic relationships, an alcoholic who thought she was inhabited by a demon, and a practitioner of voodoo. At the very least, the characters aren't as nuanced or well realized as the other (white) characters, which is more than disappointing.
Labels: nanowrimo, novel, race, rhea's point, scifi, ya
Posted at 9:28 PM // 7 comments
November, I love your red lips and your leather jackets.
November's busyness has only been accentuated by NaNoWriMo; I look up and the month is halfway gone and the word count is halfway there and the MFA@FLA Writer's Festival (which kicked my ass with its awesomeness--Chris Bachelder was stunning, and I can't wait to buy the work-in-progress that he read from) is over and the lovely Claire Barwise's visit is over and everything is hazy. And crazy.
I fully intend to write something intelligent soon, namely about writing race. There are blog posts I intend to respond to by doing so--of course, those are two weeks old already, and in blogland that's a lifetime, but I keep telling myself: the writing comes first, the writing comes first.
Labels: busy, nanowrimo, novel, writing
Posted at 12:00 AM // 0 comments
November 9, 2009:
Goodreads Review: Silver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Norma Fox Mazer's Silver is an interesting testament to a different era of young adult literature. This slim volume, and the voice of the main character, might seem very young when compared to the YA literature of today. However, this would be deceptive: Silver deals with some challenging subject matter (sexual abuse) as well as class issues with surprising maturity.
Sarabeth Silver is the teenage daughter of a working class woman. Her home life--the trailer she lives in, the way her mother scrimps and saves, her mother's friends and boyfriend--are very realistically described. After a move across her trailer park, Silver is enrolled in a new, wealthier high school. There, she makes friends with a group of sometimes-interchangeable girls who are richer, yet more troubled than she is. It is in the scenes with her new friends that Silver's voice, silly and sensitive, really shines through. Though she seems a bit younger in tone than many YA protagonists in books with more serious subject matter, it also felt more true to life.
Silver's discovery that one of her friends is being molested by a relative, and her romance with a boy from another school, feel a bit tacked-on, unfortunately, and the novel concludes without any real satisfaction or feeling of resolution. This isn't exactly gripping reading in terms of plot, but it's a strong character piece nevertheless.
Posted at 8:08 PM // 0 comments
October 29, 2009:
Rankings that matter. To me.
Gentle reader, I present to you last month's phoebeeating.com top 41 search results!
- phoebe eating
- phoebeeating
- phoebeeating.com
- phoebe eats
- phoebe and jordan's wedding
- "but we've decided not to accept it for publication"
- "fully funded" mfa studio art
- "justin evans" "franz wright"
- "phoebe north" etsy
- "phoebe north" nj
- "phoebe token"
- "steve fellner"
- abramson mfa rankings poets and writers
- advice about writing samples for the mfa in poetry
- alien nation dark horizon stupid
- boys forced to pose naked
- comments dunham mfg
- dunham manufacturing class rings
- essay hortlak
- friends phoebe loves the hummus
- fully funded mfa creative writing programs
- gerald's game deformed man space cowboy
- love of eating wax
- pheobe eating
- phoebe fibing love...
- pictures of people eating sandwiches
- poems about sandwiches
- poetry portfolio editor mfa
- seth abramson consulting
- seth abramson funded
- seth abramson jerk
- seth abramson talks too much
- tin house august 16th
- what do phoebe eat
- what do phoebe's eat?
- what is a siladium ring worth
- which episode of friends does phoebe eat
- white mountains by john christopher projects map
- www.phoebeating.com
- www.phoebeeating
- www.phoebeeating.com lori
And now, for your informational ease and pleasure, let's address some of these pressing issues, shall we?
5. phoebe and jordan's wedding
Our original wedding website, which I had not previously linked to the public, was phoebeeating.com/phoebeweddingjordan. If you're searching for pictures, try the pro photo set or facebook photo set from flickr.
6. "but we've decided not to accept it for publication"
Sucks when that happens, doesn't it? If someone just turned down your writing, which I'm sure was brilliant, I'd suggest the blog Literary Rejections on Display. Always makes me feel better.
13. abramson mfa rankings poets and writers
Frankly, I prefer these rankings.
14. advice about writing samples for the mfa in poetry and 28. poetry portfolio editor mfa
As always, I'm happy to talk to prospective MFA applicants about my experiences in my MFA program. If I have time (unlikely, in November, thanks to nanowrimo, but you can try), I might be even willing to talk writing samples. Shoot me an email!
15. alien nation dark horizon stupid
Well, I don't know. I thought the movie was aight. My review on the book is here at goodreads.
17. comments dunham mfg and 18. dunham manufacturing class rings
I was exceedingly happy with my class ring from Dunham MFG and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anybody interested in buying a magical trinket. Pictures of my ring, and my review, are here.
25. phoebe fibing love...
My love is never a fib. My love is always true.
35. what do phoebe's eat?
You probably mean the bird and it looks like they eat insects. But in case you mean human Phoebes, this one eats lots of stuff. For food-related blog entries, try the following tags: food, eating in, eating out.
Labels: phoebeeating.com, search terms
Posted at 10:08 AM // 2 comments
October 28, 2009:
Manuscript Update re: ENCOUNTER AT RHEA'S POINT
I've been quiet lately, I know--not even updating Motes, for shame. It's all because I've upped my daily word count goal on my current manuscript as a warm-up for nanowrimo.org (and frankly, in part because Claire finished hers, and I was jealous--jealousy can be a great motivator!). It's had a terrific effect on the urgency and flow of the novel. Forget my goal to finish it by my 26th birthday: I should be done with it before the end of this week. It looks like it will clock in at just over 70,000 words.
Through the increased production, the characters started to run away with the plot a bit: my protagonist got all nervous about her first kiss, and somehow managed to drag out the action leading up to it; I realized that it wasn't time for one character to die, despite the fact that I'd planned her death from the beginning. I don't want to say something like, "It's their novel at this point; I'm just telling the story," because it sounds crazy. But that's how it feels. I'm not entirely sure if this is a good or a bad thing: the writing is supposed to have control, of course, but I also want my characters to feel like fully realized people, which, I suspect, they are.
It is, of course, very rough. But, damn, I feel engaged. I'm looking forward to this feeling continuing through next month. Here's to hoping that I'll have three novel drafts finished before December. If 2009 was a year of writing, why can't 2010 be a year of editing?
Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in reading either a first or second draft (depending on how unabashed I'm feeling) of this MS, at least, in exchange for offering copious editing remarks, I'd welcome that, bearing in mind that this is young adult sci-fi and probably not for everyone. Email me!
Labels: goals, motes, nanowrimo, novel, writing
Posted at 5:06 PM // 0 comments
October 27, 2009:
Final Wedding Post: Nom Nom Nom
Since this is phoebeeating.com, I feel it's important to mention that we had our food catered by Bosphorus in Denville, NJ, an awesome Turkish restaurant. It was sticks-to-your-stomach good, a necessity, I think, when one is drinking lots of mead!
And here's me, the bride, chowing down (picture courtesy the Dad-in-Law). I don't think I got to eat much more than this on the Big Day!
Labels: eating out, food, photos, wedding, wedding porn
Posted at 9:24 AM // 3 comments
October 22, 2009:
The One You May or May Not Have Been Waiting For
A day or two after I got hitched, Ms. M.B. Ferda emailed me and urged me to update. She said: "Phoebe you know that nothing is sacred and that you have to pause your wedding and post-wedding festivities to update your blog. everyone you've known since 5th grade is waiting."
That's probably true, and only a little scary. Connectivity is weird. Thanks to facebook, who knows who might be looking at this? I feel like I should send shout-outs to Inha Son, and the mothers of my elementary school friends (hi, Ellen!), and that's not even counting all the relatives and new relatives-in-law who read this thing!
In any event, I'm not sure how we did it, but Jordan and I got married. Despite planning the whole thing in four months, and despite the fact that we were still putting up the tent about fifteen minutes before the guests arrived, it all worked, and it all worked beautifully. The day was really, terribly magical. Guests hula hooped. Much mead was consumed. People laughed and cried during our ceremony. There were impromptu high fives. I went for a (drunk) stunningly gorgeous walk with two of my stunningly gorgeous friends. Writing center people and MFA people played kings together and there were battleship battles and surprising hook-ups and it was sunny and orange and fun and just about as awesome as I could possibly imagine.
But what you guys really care about most is pictures, right? Of course. Our pictures were taken by our dear friend D'Arcey; like everyone else who contributed to our wedding (and it really did take a village), we couldn't have done it without him. And he did an awesome job, didn't he?
(Don't worry, facebook folks, I'll post these there soon, to your tagging delight, I'm sure.)
This shot typifies our general disposition during the whole thing. Giggly.
Our friends and family get off their butts and declare their support. Thanks, guys!
Our dear friend Jeff gave an amazing speech--more on this at the end of the entry.
Jordan's comically large vows.
Our amazing shoes.
Ceremonious high-fives!
We hadn't planned on doing the Jewish glass stomping thing, but my cousin Lisa ran up with a cup and we thought, hey, why not?
Hugs!
Me and my beautiful Mommy, who let us use her yard for the day.
Me and my beautiful Emmy, who was keeper of the tequila.
There's some serious mead drinking going on here!
And some serious hula hooping!
John Randall was the keeper of the fire.
There was Apples to Apples.
And kings.
But most of all, there was us--the two of us, and all of us, people who love one another.
Somehow, strangely, I think it's easy to forget that weddings are about love, about celebration. There's so much buying, and planning, even in an offbeat wedding, so much anxiety built into the process. But I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I got to celebrate with the people who love us. It made it that much more special.
Jeff wrote a speech for the wedding. I think he wanted to keep the text secret, as if it would somehow be better captured only in memory. But I keep rereading it. It's probably the nicest thing that's ever been written about us. It's magical. It sparkles. And I'm incredibly vain. So I want to share just a bit of it with you, gentle readers.
These two have created something together that could not have come from either alone--something beautiful and cosmically right (and I don't even believe in cosmic plans). They have built something so profound that it has nearly taken on substance, and to be with them--in the presence of their love--is to sense something almost tangible.
[. . .]
Part of loving another person is the element of time--of change--and our ability to love constantly, even increasingly, as the object of our love grows and changes and surprises us, or even confounds us.
The truth is that I wish I had met Phoebe and Jordan before they'd met one another. I wish I had seen them when their dreams for one another were new. I think that watching their love take root and bloom must have been like watching the sun rise to illuminate a landscape--making its beauty more apparent, more defined, and more real with subtle, gradual, light.
Later, Phoebe wrote to me to warn me about love. She wrote: "Part of loving is dependence, which is a weakness, and relinquishing control, which is scary, too. You cannot be a rock. And rocks are cool. And you cannot be an island." But Phoebe isn't a rock. Jordan is not an island. Phoebe and Jordan are independent, self-sufficient, and brilliant people who are set aglow in the light of an unfathomable--and I will admit undefinable--love. They have been lucky enough to find one another and patient enough to fall in love--to let that first limerence evolve into the enduring romance we're to celebrate today. They appreciate one another, and everything they've experienced together, in a transcendentally beautiful way and it is obvious that no two people are as capable of making one another happy--of finding what they are looking for in one another--as these two.
Thank you, Jeff, and everyone else, for all you did for us. Really. Can't thank you enough.
Labels: friends, love, photos, speech, wedding, wedding porn
Posted at 10:26 AM // 0 comments
About Phoebe, Eating.
Phoebe is an omnivore. Her favorite foods include chili dogs all-the-way, dark chocolate, savory soups, swiss cheese, raspberry sorbet, Fuji apples, tangellos, soft pretzels, onion rings, dragon rolls, tuna sandwiches, steamed broccoli, her mother's matzah ball soup, and kettle corn.
See Phoebe eat!
Refresh for another picture of Phoebe eating!
Leftovers
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