Posts Tagged Books

We have a black president. People like to talk about us living in a post-race society (of course we don’t…but some like to say so).  Generally, being overtly and obviously racist is Not A Done Thing. Not if you, you know, want to stay in business.

Except, apparently, in the publishing industry. Can you tell me why this keeps happening?

I’ve had this book Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon on my to-read list for a while after seeing a lot of good reviews of it and all of the awards it’s won.  It is set in what is a historically accurate pre-China. The main character is Asian.

← This is the original cover.  It’s beautiful and accurate to the book and the character.

But apparently, some book buyers in charge of acquiring books for the major chain stores insist that this cover won’t sell. They insist this often before the book ever makes it to the bookstore. Before anyone who goes into the bookstore to buy books ever has a chance to buy the book with its original multicultural cover.

The bookcover gets redesigned so it will “sell better”. Here’s the new version →

Hmm. This is a book set in historical Asia, pre-China. Why does the character appear to be wearing modern clothes? And is she Asian? You can’t really tell. She rather looks like a modern goth girl ready to go clubbing. Is this Yet Another Vampire Novel? No? Then why?

They wanted to make her look more white. It’s even more obvious on the cover for the sequel to Silver Phoenix. The model is very clearly white. There is nothing to indicate that the story is set in Asia or that the character is Asian.

If there is anything whatsoever to indicate the plot or even the feel of these novels anywhere on these new covers, I can’t find it.

If there is a picture of a character on the front of a book, I want it to reflect the character that I am reading about within the pages of that book. I want it to reflect that character’s ethnicity and beauty, regardless of whether that beauty is white.

If the character is not white, I definitely don’t want to see a white girl on the cover. This has happened again and again, and is specifically rampant in YA novels.

Why does this keep happening? When will the publishers get a fucking clue and realize that people want their literature to be just as multicolored and diverse as the world is around them?

There’s only one way to combat this sort of thing. Let the publishers know that this is absolutely unacceptable.  In this case, the publisher is Harper Collins, but they are hardly the only ones guilty. Bloomsbury has had a particular habit of doing this sort of thing. Contact them and tell them to make their covers reflect the story inside, instead of turning every character everywhere white.

But don’t stop buying the books. To do so only punishes the author and reinforces the idea that diversity in books does not sell. It cheats the author out of the royalties for what may be a very good book, regardless of what the publishers decide to put on the cover.

I got my nook this weekend, from the lovely BF (A Christmas gift that got delayed by lack of availability from B&N) and have been playing about with it here and there.

My initial first impression is good, even once I got over the requisite geek-girl squeeing over a new gadget. The interface is incredibly intuitive and had no learning curve whatsoever.  In fact, while opening the package it came in required instructions (I kid you not. And they were very necessary.), the only instruction manual you get for the actual device is in its own library, and virtually unnecessary.

It came pre-loaded with three classics (Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women) – the inclusion of Pride and Prejudice admittedly won some points with me, as that’s one of my favorite books and likely one I’d have been buying if it hadn’t been there.  Both it and my first purchase via the nook interface, Coraline, look really spiffy rendered in the e-ink screen.

Connecting the nook to my B&N account, purchasing books from the store, etc. was handled admirably fast by the included (and free) AT&T wireless connection, and it seems that the interface lag that I’ve seen folks complain about has been dealt with.  While the AT&T doesn’t pick up at my house (nothing picks up at my house, no matter what service provider. I live in the boonies), it picks up everywhere else I go, and adding WiFi hotspots for my local library and office was simple enough.

My main reason for choosing the nook over the Kindle was because the nook did not use a proprietary e-book format, and allowed side-loading of non-B&N purchased e-books and documents.  Of course, here you have the issue of loading items that have not been specifically formatted for the nook, but the books I’ve loaded onto it in epub format do well. Anything in pdf format, of course, displays as an image and can get cut off. My local library offers e-books in epub format, so I haven’t had any problems with the few I’ve tried out.

I’m very pleased. This is by no means a substitute for actual physical books, I’m looking at it as more of a supplement to my book addiction  . . . and perhaps a way of ensuring that I don’t end up completely buried in books at some point. (This weekend, I pulled a mountain of books out of my car that, once catalogued and sorted, came out to a total of 197 books . . . BF says I should get better gas mileage.) Very likely, the nook will replace only my paperback purchases – the books that I really care about having for posterity, to read again and again and again, I’ll still be buying in hardcover.

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The newly named Ambassador for Young People’s Literature is none other than Katherine Paterson, one of my favorite writers and a long-time crusader for children’s literacy and encouraging reading.  She wrote two of my favorite and often reread books during my childhood (Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved) and has always been an advocate for children’s lit and libraries.

It’s so important these days to have books out there that kids want to read, rather than having to be forced to read for school assignments. I was never without some book or another as a child (even developing the habit of trailing along behind my mom at the grocery, walking and reading, until I’d bump into her when she stopped).  Being a devoted reader as a child only developed into becoming a rather obsessive bibliophile as an adult.  The best books are those that I can read repeatedly, until the bindings are almost falling apart and the words are so much a part of me that I barely require the book to remember them at all.

People in general are reading less and less. Is it any wonder that children spend too much time in front of various screens rather than reading if their parents do the same?  The best way for any child to learn written language skills is through the application of a great deal of reading – without it, we can’t be surprised if in the future we find an entire generation of children who are convinced that “please” is spelled “plz” and that commas are entirely unnecessary decorations.

I am glad that we have someone named as Ambassador who understands all of this and understands that the only way to get kids to read is to offer books that are just as entertaining, or even more entertaining, than anything they can find anywhere else.

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I read a lot. At any given time, I might be reading several books at once, and I average finishing somewhere around three books a week.  And since it seems to be time for such things, I decided I’d give a little list of the favorite books I read this year.

These books may not have been published this year. They might’ve been republished in a new edition, or won some awards that brought them to my attention, or they might’ve just been sitting on my waiting-to-read stack for a while, but each of these I read for the first time this year, and would recommend to anyone.

1. Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
   Winner of the Newberry and countless other awards and medals this year, and of course written by my favorite contemporary author, this is one of the best examples of what makes Neil Gaiman so great. His books may exist in the realm of the fantastic, but they are a prime example of just how much truth can exist in fiction.
2. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
   This is available on Doctorow’s website as a CC licensed e-book, for those with empty pockets, and it’s definitely worth the read, and the purchase. Cory Doctorow is one of the best emerging authors in the sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction genres. There’s nothing pulp about any of his work, and Little Brother, written for an adolescent audience, is just as pointed in its commentary as any of his others.
3. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
   This is written by the same woman who wrote The Time Traveller’s Wife, which I have not read.  This book is about the “life” of a young woman buried in Highgate Cemetary in London during the Victorian Era. (There did seem to be a lot of good ghost books lately…) Obsession is the major theme of the book, with each character seeming to have his or her own version of it, from obsessive love to obsessive hate and everything in between.
4. Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman, art by Andy Kubert (Pencil), and Scott Williams (Ink)
   As usual, my favorite graphic novel of the year was written by Neil Gaiman,  though this is a departure from my usual Sandman love. I’m usually a Marvel fan, when it comes to comics, but this gorgeous hardcover edition of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? was too beautiful to bypass, and proved to have a wonderful tale within. It answers the question of  what happens to the world, when a bat dies.
5. Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, Art by Will Conrad, Ink by Jo Chen
   It’s unusual for me to have two graphic novels on my list, but these two were awesome enough for it. Of course, I’m a rather fervent Browncoat, but even putting fan-bias aside, this is an excellent comic.  Perhaps, with the television executives unwilling to give Joss Whedon the free reign he needs to produce truly great material, comics will provide a place for us to find the great writing that we all love him for.

Jenny: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

–Giles and Jenny discuss computers and books, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I Robot, You Jane”

I have to admit that the growing market for e-books and e-book readers has me feeling a bit split.  Like Jenny Calendar, I am a dedicated technopagan and geek, and I love new gadgets and embrace technology and innovation with no small amount of excitement.  However, I was a book lover long before I became a citizen of cyberspace, and like Giles, it’s not just the words, but the tangible pleasure of holding a book in my hands that gives me satisfaction in my reading experience.

Like a good gadget junkie, I’ve read up and researched the various e-book reading devices on the market today.  I dismissed the Kindle due to the fact that the only materials readable on it are those purchased through Amazon, a limiting factor I didn’t like much, since my local library offers e-book lending, and there are e-books available in so many other formats.  The fact that Amazon has already shown itself willing to reach out and take materials already purchased from the consumer also left more than a slight bitter taste in my mouth.

Of the two newer readers, the Sony Reader and Barnes and Noble’s nook, the nook seems the better option (though the quirky capitalization has my inner grammar-geek shuddering).  The nook allows media to be loaded on it in a variety of formats, including the most common e-book format: epub documents.  You can get e-books from a variety of sources with the nook, and aren’t just limited to Barnes & Noble for your purchases, and you can lend books to other folks with nooks too, though only those materials purchased from B&N will be saved to your B&N account for re-download should they be lost.

I read on the computer just as much as I read physical media. I make my way through somewhere around a novella’s length of blogs on my RSS reader each day, I download e-books to read on both my BlackBerry and my computer, and the majority of “magazines” I read these days are in electronic format.  An e-book reader for me would certainly not go unused.

There’s also the fact that e-books provide a low-cost means for me, as a writer, to gain exposure and readership. I’ve come to refer to this as the “Cory Doctorow” method of publishing, as he is one of the best writers to come out of beginnings in digital media and one of the biggest success stories.  I’m already beginning to release some of my own work as digital media, as I get it formatted and edited.  What better way to convince an agent or publisher that they might want to take you on than to point to a website full of examples of your writing?  The coming of the e-book revolution hasn’t filled me with the same horror as it has other writers and publishers, because I decided early on that something of that sort was inevitable, and it would be better to embrace the format than to fight it.

But, the Bibliophile in me can’t help but speak up.  To even contemplate the purchase of one of these e-book readers seems a betrayal to the shelves upon shelves (and boxes upon boxes) of books scattered about my home, and car, and office, and pretty much anywhere else I spend any significant amount of time.  Nor do I think that an e-book reader will ever be a replacement for those books.  Never will I stop reading or buying traditional books just because it’s more convenient to download them immediately over the ether. An e-book reader wouldn’t go unused by me, not by a long shot, but it will be more of a supplement to my regular book buying practices rather than a replacement.

Because try as they might, innovate all they want, they’ll never be able to make the experiences the same, even if they added some sort of smell-o-vision to make the e-book readers give off a musty-old-paper smell.  There’s nothing out there like the pleasure of holding a well-crafted book in your hand and flipping the pages and, yes, smelling that smell.

Data devices give you data, and that’s all it is, floating out in the ether, moving in bytes over the airwaves or through the landlines, and it can easily be lost or changed or even taken from you like a physical book cannot.  Like China blocking any negative references of Tiananmen from the internet there, data is easy to control and block, but no matter how many books are burned, there’s likely to be another copy of it floating around out there somewhere.

Finally got to see Half-blood Prince this weekend, and it was extremely good.  I’ve said before that HBP is my favorite of the Harry Potter novels, and this movie has a really good chance of being my favorite of the movies.

Like the books, the movies are growing progressively darker and more mature as the characters grow older and the situation more dire. This is not and cannot be an uplifting family film, simply because of its place in the extended storyline.  B made the comment that this is the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter franchise, and I have to agree.  This is also the coming-of-age book and movie of the series, where Harry the child steps up and becomes Harry the man and Harry the soldier.  This is the first time we hear him say “I am the chosen one” with the full knowledge of what that could mean for himself and those he loves.

For those of you who have not read the book or seen the movie yet, I will warn that the following will contain spoilers:

(more…)

The new Harry Potter Movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince promises a lot of Snape being Snape in it.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, but HBP is my favorite of the Harry Potter books, partially because it gave so much insight into one of the most puzzling and interesting characters in the books.

When you first meet Snape in the books, he’s a vindictive, cruel bully of a professor, a terror to students. It’s made pretty clear that there is absolutely nothing to like about him, and yet…I did like him, just as I found myself liking the more difficult professors I had in school.  He was clearly an extraordinarily intelligent character, the best at what he did, and what he did was one of the most difficult and precise things taught in Hogwarts, something that resembled chemistry more than it did magic.

He does not suffer fools gladly, our Snape.  I could appreciate that, because neither do I.

As the series progressed, you began to see more and more about Snape to explain his behavior toward students, his favoritism, his bias against houses other than his own.  His status as a double-agent was clear early on in the books and though I always hoped he was in it for the right side, you could never really be sure if he was a villain or a hero, no matter how many times he stepped in and saved Harry.

He kept away from others and did everything he could do to keep them from wanting to get close to him.  Other people could not, or would not, try to understand him or befriend him, and after a lifetime of that he had become adept at keeping them away.  His bristly exterior screamed “I don’t want friends, go away!”

Half-Blood Prince explained why.  He was as much an outcast as an adult as he was as a child, and after a lifetime of everyone else treating him horribly and pushing him away he turned around and started to push back.  The bullied became the bully, but it never got him acceptance.  Even doing what alienated teenagers do and grasping at the first thing that made him feel like he belonged – becoming a death-eater – did not work. He was as much an outcast among that group as he was among everyone else.

Snape is an enigma, a puzzle. He does horrible things, and yet seems to have some innate morality and conviction that though he may have to do horrible things, he is doing them for the right reasons.  He is potentially one of the most complex characters in the series.

I do love puzzles.

But that is why I’ve always felt like, especially after all that we see of Snape in Half-Blood Prince, the treatment of him in the final book of the series was overly simplistic.  It seemed to take an intriguing, complex character and reduce him to the lowest-common-denominator, taking the easy way out.  He died a hero, yes, but a hero reduced to two-dimensions.

But even so, I still consider Snape my favorite character in the series, and I am really looking forward to seeing the new movie.

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As I was saying before I was interrupted by the Firefox 3.5 update.

I haven’t done one of my random all-encompassing update posts in a while, though, and I don’t have any real over-arching theme for today, so here goes some randomness:

• Remember that comic artist friend of mine, Steph Sakurai (aka S. Cherrywell), that I’ve mentioned on and off here? Well, she’s found a publisher for her first print book at Slavelabor Graphics, an indy comic publisher known for dark humor, but also for their contract work on several Disney properties, including Gargoyles. Steph’s book is due out in January, so start looking for it in your comic shops then!  I’ll have more information, and possibly some cover art previews for you closer to the release date. (For Steph’s webcomics, see Intragalactic and Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy)
• I’ve submitted a story to the NPR/New Yorker Three-Minute Fiction contest. If you’re a writer and have something short enough to submit, you should too! It should be any piece of short fiction that can be read in three minutes or less (about 500-600 words), and the winner will be read on national NPR stations.  Once the contest is over, I’ll be putting a copy of the piece up here on my portfolio.
• The hastily declared National GLBT Month of June has passed without comment here, rather as I expected.  Pride parades never seem to make it to small town bible thumping Georgia.  It was a nice gesture on the President’s part, but nothing more than a gesture. I can see both sides of the issue here, the President not wanting to endanger other issues by coming out too heavily on the side of Gay Rights, and the people who complain that what he’s done is no where near enough.
• The costumes still aren’t started, but I have a good picture in my head now of what I want, and fortunately it won’t take nearly as much work or time as The Giant Pink Dress.  Bryant’s costume may still change, however. Looking for some more ideas.
• The cats are being cats. This morning “Brother-Mew” decided he wanted to go to work with me again and went marching out into the garage in front of me and waiting for me at the car.  I  considered asking my boss if we could possibly employ him for part time “work snuggies.”
• Finally, before I bore you all completely to death, a quick congratulations goes out to Kari of Mythbusters on the birth of her baby, Neil Gaiman for winning the Locus award, and my boss for managing to make it through a whole vacation only calling the office once a day.  A fond farewell to Blogatelle, one of the best WoW RP blogs I’ve ever seen. That site, even non-updated, will continue to be a resource that I send new roleplayers to for information for as long as it remains.

And that’s that.  I promise I’ll have, you know, an actual topic when I post again Friday.

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