John Christopher 1922-2012

Posted on 7 Feb 2012 by Philip Weiss

I’ve been on a cross-country road trip for over a month, and traveling even before that. I had planned on remaining silent on this blog until I returned home. I have books to tell you about, but not while I have things to see and places to go.

But I have to take a break from my hiatus to remark on the passing of John Christopher a couple of days ago.

John Christopher was my introduction to science fiction. I read every book of his that the local library would carry. On re-reading the Sword of the Spirits series a couple of years ago, I was amazed by how brutal it was. I didn’t remember that from my youth. If the book banners had ever caught wind of that…

In 7th grade, my English teacher assigned us to write a letter to a favorite author. I wrote something about a trend I thought I saw in his books, though I don’t remember what it was now. Even then I liked pulling stories apart. Of all the people in my class, I was the only person to get a personally written letter back; everyone else got a form letter. He not only wrote the letter, but he actually engaged with my argument, with which he disagreed.

Others came to S.F. through C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. My introduction was the White Mountains. Unlike other books I loved as an adolescent, I loved Mr. Christopher’s books as much later in life as when I read them the first time.

When my nephews get old enough, I will attempt to lead them astray with books by John Christopher.

The world won’t have John Christopher writing for them anymore, and that’s a pity. But I have his books, so I will not grieve.

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Responding to Amazon’s dick move

Posted on 14 Dec 2011 by Philip Weiss

Last week one of the book world’s outrages was Amazon going after independent stores by offering $5 off an order for using their price check app on a mobile phone inside an independent store. No, it’s not a very nice thing. Authors and book bloggers are almost universally pissed. But you know who isn’t pissed? Amazon customers, who are growing in number every day. Amazon offers a lot features, unprecedented selection, and best in business pricing. It’s pretty hard to compete with that.

Most of the responses to this promotion strike me as pretty unproductive. It’s not that they are wrong, it’s that the retorts aren’t going to get people back to shopping at their local brick and mortar independent book store. So, if your response is one of the following, then you ought to be ready for your business to close up shop unless you get to cracking on something better.

Amazon isn’t a good corporate citizen. This response comes courtesy of the American Bookseller’s Association. You know what? I don’t think Amazon cares what their competitors think of them. It’s not going to stop Amazon, and it’s not going to improve your profitability.

People who do this are assholes. This response comes from The Stranger’s Paul Constant. Hmm, calling potential customers assholes is sure going to endear them to you, and get them to shop at your store. People want a good deal, and they aren’t assholes for looking for it. Better answer is to offer a better deal.

Which brings me to my next answer: Local bookstores provide so many benefits! My friend Marie had this quote on Twitter:

Yep. There sure are some things that Amazon can’t, won’t or doesn’t provide that brick and mortar stores could. These benefits aren’t swaying people for whatever reason. Harping on the benefits that have been there for ages isn’t going to change minds. Perhaps it’s that so many stores don’t actually provide these benefits or they don’t do so well with their attempts. Perhaps it’s because the benefits that Amazon offers outweigh the other ones. I don’t know. The numbers don’t lie. If bookstores keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing, they are going to disappear.

Related to that last response, Tom Perrota is quoted by Richard Russo as noting People have to understand that their short-term decision to save a couple bucks undermines their long-term interest in their community and vital, real-life literary culture. That may be very true (I do actually take some exception to it, but that’s another post), but your local bookstores are going to need to do a hella better job at selling that, cause the message ain’t reaching customers. If they are telling this to their existing customers, they are preaching to the rapidly dwindling choir.

The last response I’m going to highlight today also comes from Richard Russo in that article: if the wind shifts, Amazon’s ham-fisted strategy has the potential to morph into a genuine Occupy Amazon movement. In other words, they are just alienating everyone so if we wait them out, things will turn our way. Do I really need to explain the head in the sand approach won’t work?

If independent booksellers want to survive, they need to change how they do business. Local author Nicola Griffith proposed embracing the showroom model of a bookstores. Other answers might be catering to collectors and sticking to a niche market. Or really embracing a performance aspect of literary life. I certainly don’t know. But for sure none of the current mess of responses, which are all talk, and talking to the wind at that, are going to stem the tide. As things currently stand, Amazon is going to win and win big. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’ll be a very different thing.

Love, made from Amazon boxes

What's Love? (Cara Grimshaw - CC By-Nc-Nd)

Posted in Thinking Irresponsibly | 2 Comments

Administrivia: How do I Link Irresponsibly?

Posted on 1 Dec 2011 by Philip Weiss

I’ve periodically posted link round-ups on bookish topics, but I’m finding that format doesn’t really work for me. That’s mostly workflow related, not content related. I like the idea of posting links that I find interesting because I see a lot of content that doesn’t seem to make the rounds.

What I’d like to do is post the links with a bit of commentary as I find them. I’m not quite sure what format and venue would work best. Here’s what I’m considering:

Google+
Read Irresponsibly has a Google+ page, and I’ve been posting some links there. I think the format there works really really well for links. There are two huge drawbacks though. First, using a Google+ page from a mobile device is impossible at the moment. I have to wait until I get back to a real computer to post them. Second, Google+ is a walled garden at the moment. Readers can check the Google+ page without an account, but they have to do so by visiting the page. There’s no feed, so no Google Reader.
Twitter
The pluses are that book bloggers and readers use Twitter behind only to their blogging platforms and Google Reader. I’ve been using Twitter for quite some time, though not exclusively for reading matters. Bad thing is the format. Only 140 characters so I’m limited in description and many Twitter clients don’t have link previews.
Diigo + Read Irresponsibly
Bob Sutor uses this method for his links. Post the links with commentary to Diigo, which automatically creates a link roundup post on a blog. Read Irresponsibly readers don’t have to change a thing about how they read. No link previews, but that’s not a huge drawback.
Read Irresponsibly
Post the links individually to Read Irresponsibly. Each link and it’s commentary gets its own individual post, similar to how Tumblr works. Again, readers don’t have to change a thing, but the number of daily posts will go up a fair amount. I know that I tend to hit Mark All As Read more frequently with blogs that post fairly frequently. One other drawback is that I would need to come up with descriptive titles for each link, or copy the title of the linked article over to Read Irresponsibly in some form. I use titles extensively in Google Reader to decide whether to open and read further. I hate untitled posts and there are very few blogs that go that route that I am willing read consistently.
Facebook
Read Irresponsibly has a Facebook page. Linking there would work similarly to Google+ Pages. I am not a huge fan of Facebook, so this is not an option I am likely to use. It’s even more of a walled garden than Google+. At one point there were RSS feeds for accounts, but I’m not sure if they can still be had, or for pages.

Are there any other methods which I have not listed? What are people’s opinions on how they like to consume socially promoted links?

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Linking Irresponsibly: The Year’s Best Men and Women

Posted on 30 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss

James Nicoll ran some numbers on the numbers of male and female authors in the last five years of each of the major Year’s Best Collections. I am aggregating his numbers here in one place as he spread them across several posts, and I like to have one place to view and compare. He also has a few posts counting comparable numbers for discontinued year’s best series. Following are the tables and links:

Gardner Dozois:

TitleTotalMaleFemale
Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection33249
Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection32257
Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection30228
Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection32248
Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection2821½6½

David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer:

TitleTotalMaleFemale
Year’s Best SF 1621156
Year’s Best SF 1524168
Year’s Best SF 1421138
Year’s Best SF 1325187
Year’s Best SF 1226197

Rich Horton (only 3 years here, as he switched from doing an S.F. best to an S.F. & F. best of in 2009):

TitleTotalMaleFemale
2011 Edition281611
2010 Edition301713
2009 Edition372215

Mr. Nicoll counts one author in the 2011 edition as mu meaning insufficient information to tell whether the author counts themself as male or female. Some people count themselves as neither, some obscure their gender using pseudonyms, etc. I assume that author in this case is K.J. Parker.

Jonathan Strahan

TitleTotalMaleFemale
Volume Five291414
Volume Four2912½16½
Volume Three281711
Volume Two24168
Volume One24177

Again, Mr. Nicoll counts one author in the most recent anthology as mu. Again, I assume that author is the pseudonymous K.J. Parker.

I’ve been collecting Mr. Dozois’ editions for a few years (only missing years one and two). I need to think about whether I will continue to do so. The fact that his collections are pretty consistently 75% male tells me his idea of what is the year’s best story doesn’t fit my idea. I would expect the numbers to cluster around 60% male (sometimes more, sometimes less), which I believe is approximately the ratio of men to women in S.F.W.A. I don’t believe men are writing consistently better stories than women.

I have one of Mr. Strahan’s collections that I picked up this spring when I visited Night Shade’s booth at FOGCon. The booth guy threw in the collection for buying a bunch of books. Historically, I’ve found reading through the Dozois collections to be somewhat slow and I’ve attributed that to having to context switch between stories. But perhaps I’ll find the Strahan collection to be easier on the ears, so to speak. Anyway, time to at least try something different.

Posted in Linking Irresponsibly | 3 Comments

Death Of The Mantis / Michael Stanley

Posted on 26 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss

Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip form the writing team of Michael Stanley. They are native South Africans and are writing crime fiction series set in Botswana. Unlike the more famous one set in Botswana, the Detective Kubu series are police procedurals rather than cozies. LibraryThing’s EarlyReviewers had copies, so I grabbed one.

Cover of Death Of The Mantis

Detective Kubu’s real name is David Bengu, but due to his size has received the Kubu nickname. That’s a Botswanan word for hippopotamus, though I don’t recall if the authors ever said which language the word comes from. This is the third book in the series, though he doesn’t make an immediate appearance. The murder happens at the edge of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, when a disliked park ranger disappears and is found by a co-worker with his skull bashed in.

The local detective Lerako seems determined to pin the murder on a trio of local bushmen who were found with the body. The director of Botswana’s investigative division sends Kubu in to make sure Lerako conducts the probe properly. He doesn’t want the police to receive criticism over shoddy work after a previous botched investigation involving bushmen. There’s little in the way of evidence against the bushmen found with the body, so Kubu secures their release but Lerako continues to favor them as the murderers.

Other related crimes and deaths follow, with Lerako continuing to push explanations that involve bushmen as culprits. But the evidence continues to be mixed. One of the victims resides in neighboring Namibia. He comes across a body in the desert after which he’s shot at but escapes unharmed. He exhibits suspicious behavior that Lerako ignores. Kubu must work overtime (literally, his wife gets quite upset with his extended hours) to corral Larako and as the book goes on assumes more and more of the investigative duties.

I did not enjoy this book for three basic reasons. First, I don’t know a whole lot about the Botswana Police Service, but I can’t buy into a police department as unprofessional as the one portrayed here. I get that they may not have the skills, procedure and technology of a first world police. But a professionalism fitted to the Botswana culture has to be there. Lerako pretty much refuses to do any investigation whatsoever except toward convicting his preferred suspects. It feels like this is done to create conflict that isn’t natural. The authors manage to make the national park ranger staff a professional outfit that doesn’t happen with the police.

The second reason is the bad guy. He’s a cliché without subtlety. When the reader find him out, he’s pure B-movie material.

And lastly, there’s no emotional depth to any of the characters, despite a valiant effort by the authors. A significant portion of the ink expounds on the personal relationship between Kubu, his wife, her sister, and his parents. And yet, and yet, again I felt like I was watching people read their lines flatly and go through the motions as if acting like a real family. The words are on the page but the authors are obviously far more at home when writing about the desert, murder weapons, or the actions of men with something to hide.

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Buy Irresponsibly – My Best Reads of 2011

Posted on 25 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss
Photo of stack of books

Top That! (Michael Summer CC By-Nc-Nd)

Welcome to my buying guide for 2011, also known as my annual best read of 2011 list. I like calling these buying guides because that’s what most of the Best Books of 2011 lists really are. They come out now so that a business (Amazon, B&N, etc.) can talk customers into buying stuff for Christmas. This is one of the few times of the year where I’m going to get specifically promotional about books. I think you should read these books.

These are not books published in 2011. They are books I read since Thanksgiving last year. In fact, one of them won’t be out until January. In no particular order…

Fiction

Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Immensely readable science fiction starring a woman kidnapped from her ultra-rich family. She escapes but chooses not to return to them and instead lives outside the law herself, though she eventually tries to go straight. She works in a water treatment plant supplied by the corporation owned by her family, and her superior education and knowledge of the company’s products combined with her arrogance make it hard for her to pass. Class differences are the most prominent part of the book, but Ms. Griffith doesn’t shy away from commentary on gender or sexuality either. (Amazon , review)
The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark
This isn’t what I thought a Western would be. Sure there’s a posse and riding horseback across a dry western landscape. But the meat of this book is a morality tale and a psychological drama that plays out in the head of the narrator who at first appears to be merely an observer. (Amazon, review)
The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction
Gods meddle in the affairs of men. Women and men fall in love. Several murders. These are the kinds of stories told in lurid prose that the folks at Blaft have put together. (Amazon, review)
Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge
In the future, governments and companies try to use virtual reality to imprison criminals. Why pay to lock someone up when you can plug them in and they are locked inside their head for all they know. And what are the consequences of that? The protagonist goes from running the project to do this to convicted terrorist and crash test dummy for the technology. (Small Beer Press, review)
Defending Jacob by William Landay
I haven’t even published my review and the book won’t be out until January, but there’s no way I can leave this book off the list. It will inevitably be compared with Presumed Innocent partially because some of the elements of the book resemble it, but also because the publicity material sent out by the publisher makes the comparison. Mr. Landay mixes up the staid gentility of a courtroom drama with a bit of Boston’s rough and tumble crime scene. A father must come to terms with the legacy of his murderous father when he defends his son against charges of killing a classmate. It’s rare that I read an ending done so well. Pre-order this book. (Amazon )

Non-Fiction

Devices & Desires by Andrea Tone
Did you know that for years Lysol was the best selling contraceptive in the United States? (Actually, I did because I have lots of friends who tell me that sort of thing.) You’ll find out about the sordid history of Lysol in Devices & Desires as well as how condoms came to acceptable use during World War I, the medicalization of contraception and how it was a good thing at first, and much much more. (Amazon , review)
A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A classic of feminism argued that the quality of women’s writing would be improved by women being financially independent of men. (Amazon, review)

Normally I include a bonus worst book of the year for those of you who want to inflict pain on your extended family. Fortunately, I haven’t read anything really that bad this year, so I cannot make any recommendations in this regard. Huzzah for me!

Now, go forth and buy readable things. Or check them out of the library. Or take a book away from your little brother and ignore his crying because dammit, reading is fun!

Posted in Thinking Irresponsibly | 1 Comment

No Hero / Jonathan Wood

Posted on 18 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss

Jonathan Wood wrote Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle (link is non-working; hopefully E.V. will get migrated over soon) which appeared in in Electric Velocipede’s Winter 2008 issue. I thought the story deserved to be in a Year’s Best anthology of some sort.

Used to be when a reader found something good they would search for books that author had written. That happens still, but these days I more often find their blog or Twitter account and follow them. When they talk up their next project, if it sounds like something I would enjoy I will then pick it up. Mr. Wood’s book No Hero was on sale late this summer when he promoted it on Twitter and jokingly said if it worked he would set himself up as a social media guru. Being the smart-ass I am, I replied that I couldn’t in good conscience help anyone else become a social media guru. I did buy a copy, however. Authors, please don’t make me choose between your book and making you into another Sanford Smith.

Cover of No Hero

Detective Arthur Wallace and his partner Allison Swann of the Oxford Police Department investigate a series of murders where each victim has his head sliced open. Through smart thinking, they determine the pattern and arrive at a building just as victim number seven is getting his head sliced off by a woman wielding a sword with superhuman speed. And she notices them, quickly advances and slides her her sword through Wallace’s chest.

When he awakes in the hospital, Wallace has a mysterious visitor. Felicity Shaw is the director of MI37 and she wants Wallace to join her agency. MI37 isn’t your regular military intelligence agency. When extra-dimensional aliens attack, MI37 steps in. Wallace doesn’t think of himself as a hero, but he joins anyway. MI37 doesn’t have many resources due to budget cuts, so Shaw names Wallace a team leader on his first day. Not knowing how to act, Wallace often takes his inspiration from Kurt Russell.

No Hero is a fun book. Think of The Laundry series with less snark about the office and more … well, Kurt Russell. I loved Arthur Wallace. I loved Allison Swann even more. It’s too bad she wasn’t picked to join MI37, because she doesn’t have Wallace’s occasional bouts of I don’t know what I’m doing pathos. The best scenes are when Wallace doesn’t know what to do, but he does something anyway. In one early scene Wallace attempts to fight a demonic enemy with a rubber handled crowbar. If Wallace can separate the fellow from the car battery that powers his spells, the good guys win. Things do not go well for Wallace in this case. But the key is he is interesting when he powers through his cluelessness.

Three secondary characters provide a lot of color. Cranky Tabitha researches everything for the team, and is their primary radio backup. Clyde appears at first to be another desk-bound type, but he’s embedded electric wires under his skin to transmit magical power. His bouts of indecision fit his character much better than the similar ones that plague Wallace. Kayla is the superstar of the group. She has superhuman speed, strength and is pretty impervious to injury. But she also freezes up in a fight. All of them do this. Men In Black they ain’t, which is why they need Wallace.

Also, since this is urban fantasy, there’s even a love interest. Yup.

From his Twitter I see that Mr. Wood has at least one more book planned in the series.

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Scandalous Women / Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Posted on 16 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss

Scandalous Women might be the first non-fiction blog-to-book project I’ve read. I grabbed this at a fundraising table at WisCon in May. It’s a series of short biographies of scandalous women throughout history. Elizabeth Kerri Mahon notes in her introduction that most This Day In History bits cover men predominantly. Her stated goal with the blog and book is to reclaim history, one woman at a time. All the included women caused a scandal, a commotion, they bumped up against the status quo.

Cover of Scandalous Women

The obvious thing about a patriarchal society is that pretty much any woman who did anything before recent times was bound to piss people off and cause a commotion. There are a lot of women who could be included. Scandalous Women has seven sections, each with five biographies: Warrior Queens, Wayward Wives, Scintillating Seductresses, Crusading Ladies, Wild Women of the West, Amorous Artists, and Amazing Adventuresses. Some of the women highlighted are Joan of Arc, Mary Wollstonecraft, Carry Nation, Josephine Baker, and Amelia Earhart.

What struck me most was how many women were scandalous primarily because of who they slept with. For a long time there weren’t a lot of ways for a woman to become well known enough to be recorded in history at all except by who she slept with. Thankfully, most of Ms. Moon’s examples that fall into this category weren’t scandalous just because of who they boinked. Barbara Palmer, for instance, wielded her status to become very influential. Story-wise the sleep your way to the top focus was repetitive.

That’s not to say all or even most of the biographies classify that way. My favorites were Joan of Arc and Amelia Earhart. Joan of Arc for her drive and the complete lack of sex in her story as well as for her meteoric rise from nothing and fall. Amelia Earhart because of her boldness. According to the author, she wasn’t a great pilot. She pushed herself in spite of her lack of virtuosity. That story celebrates what she did, not that she disappeared.

The only criticism I have is how Western focused the book is. There’s a little that’s covered that happened outside the sphere of the West. Cleopatra was based in Africa. Anna Leonowens achieved fame for her time in Thailand. Josephine Baker was of African descent. A few other bits and pieces as well. That doesn’t make this a bad book, but it is a large group that simply isn’t covered at all.

A quick glance at the Scandalous Women blog shows it’s still active.

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Revenge Of The Spellmans / Lisa Lutz

Posted on 14 Nov 2011 by Philip Weiss

If you remember my review of Curse Of The Spellmans the previous book in this series, you’ll remember I had a eureka moment that ruined the book for me. I didn’t identify that as what was bothering me until after I’d read Revenge Of The Spellmans. I held off on reviewing this to let the sentiment pass, but I still wasn’t particularly thrilled with the book.

For those who haven’t read any of the series, the Spellmans are a family of private investigators. The schtick is that they have shenanigans mostly involving loving antagonism and mutual investigations of each other. Izzy Spellman is the main character. Her parents run the business, her sister Rae is just reaching adolescence. Brother David tries to maintain his distance.

Cover of Revenge Of The Spellmans

Revenge of the Spellmans picks up where Curse Of The Spellmans left off. Izzy has left the Spellman firm and is working as a bartender. She’s not sure she wants to keep being a P.I. and really not sure she wants to work with her family. Her boss thinks she should go back to being a P.I., and forces her to take on a client on the side. Ernie, the client, thinks his wife is cheating on him. Izzy quickly figures out that’s not the case, but something is up with the woman’s behavior. For instance, she made sure the marriage was never recorded.

The problem with the book for me is that the mystery that Izzy investigates is insubstantial and not very interesting. That leaves only the family interactions to hold my attention. So there’s just the schtick. It’s old now. It was great the first time around, just like the first time your uncle tells you to pull his finger. The 3rd or 4th time it just stinks. Though I’m sure it’s still funny to your uncle.

I similarly tired of the Stephanie Plum schtick in Janet Evanovich’s novels. Stephanie Plum looks to have reached eighteen books now, and the Spellmans will have a fifth book early next year. A lot of people ain’t tired of it. But I am.

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Semi-Social Reading

Posted on 27 Oct 2011 by Philip Weiss

Reading, unlike sports, is not an inherently social activity. The words exist in the book. The brain consumes them. Much of the social activity surrounding reading happens before and after the fact: discussions about reading among people who read. Author readings are somewhat social but are usually just a different mode of delivering the words.

Reading Corner: Reading in a group is always more fun than reading alone. (Greg Williams - CC By-Nc)

A few days ago I copied an idea I’ve seen promoted in The Stranger. I invited my Facebook friends (all people I know in real life, it’s just that some of my actual friends don’t use Facebook) to join me for an evening of reading together. We take over a coffee shop and read and chat. Last night four friends joined me at Roy Street Coffee and Tea, the fake Starbucks on Capitol Hill. I’m no fan of corporate coffee, but they do have a lot of comfortable seating. We brought books, drank a little bit of coffee, read, and occasionally chatted.

Despite a setback, I pronounce the evening a success. During one of the chatting breaks, I nearly died from lack of oxygen due to cracking jokes about cat ass. (Don’t ask, cause I can’t remember now.) I got 80 pages out of Salvage the Bones read. Setback was that Roy Street Coffee and Tea had a jazz band come in and play, and the seats we’d chosen were about 10 feet from the band. When they started setting up, we decamped to Espresso Vivace a couple blocks away, which had better coffee but less comfortable seats.

I will do another one in a couple of weeks.

For the record, the participants last night were reading the following books:

  • MicroTrends by Mark Penn (Heather)
  • Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (Kim)
  • Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (Phil)
  • Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (Lori)
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (Deirdre)

Writing about this has got me thinking about social reading. There will be a post.

Posted in Literary Life | 3 Comments