Monday Morning Stepback: Trustworthy authors, asexuality in speculative fiction, and a place to sound off on ebook restrictions

Nov 08 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post

1. Links of Interest

An interesting interview with KATHERINE A. POWERS, literary columnist for The Sunday Boston Globe, at Eric Forbes’ Book Addict Guide to Good Books (via @mathitak):

But, while I’m on the subject, I’ll just say that reading, or rather the idea of reading, has become a fetish or commodity of sorts in the U.S. Reading here carries a baggage of worthiness that is a real turnoff for the hedonist. It seems to be going the way of walking, people do it for a cause, to raise money and/or show solidarity. It demonstrates high civic purpose, responsibility, and deep-down goodness and that’s why you do it, not because you really want to. I think a better approach to encouraging people to read would be to ban more books. Look at the way the Irish used to read when they had to smuggle in the good stuff from England: people getting off the boat hardly able to bend their legs for all the books and contraceptives squirreled away about their persons. I am joking, of course, but only up to a point! …

… I don’t know what the essentials of good fiction are. When I think of the novels I really like, I can think of only one thing that unites them: their authors proved trustworthy, that is, my suspension of disbelief was not betrayed.

The first quote makes me wonder if this view of fiction is why people compare reading genre fiction to eating potato chips, i.e. not really reading. The second I love.

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From Beth Carswell at Abe Books, No Place For a Woman: Women’s Fiction, a kind of time line of the books that nurtured the author over the course of her life.

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Audiobooks are 75 years old (From The Independent):

They started as an aid for battle casualties and elderly people with failing eyesight. Now talking books are a publishing sensation, enjoyed by millions as an alternative to the printed word.

According to the most recent sales figures from the Publishers Association, downloads of audio books grew by 72 per cent between 2008 and 2009. Sales of talking books on CD, cassette and DVD also grew to an annual £22.4m, according to the sales monitoring company Nielsen BookScan.

It all began very differently. Exactly 75 years ago today, audio books were first produced as a public service for soldiers blinded in the First World War. The Talking Books Service, an audio library run by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, was launched in 1935, when Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was recorded on to LPs and distributed to users, along with a large record player. Modern technology – particularly MP3 players – and a growing roster of high-profile narrators, have given the format a dramatic boost.

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Via the F-Word, A post at Shakesville with a long list of reasons a woman might take her husband’s name when she marries. Several apply to me.

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The New Yorker‘s blog has a short discussion of books about Harry Potter and Religion. (This week’s print version also has a full page Nora Roberts ad. I don’t recall ever seeing one in the New Yorker, but I could easily have missed it.)

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A while back, someone started a blog to identify and shame book pirates and author Courtney Milan is having none of it.

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From Inside Higher Ed, a Call to Defend the Humanities.

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A wonderful personal reflection on A Generation of Erotic Romance by author Pam Rosenthal at History Hoydens.

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In case you missed last week’s Cook’s Source scandal — which was truly jawdropping — and only have time to read one report on it, check out this summary at EdRants.

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The results of last week’s elections sucked donkey balls IMO. I am now stuck with a tea bag governor. Here’s a post by Ronald Dworkin on Why American Vote Against Their Own Best Interests at the NYTRB. I deny much of what he asserts but it is still interesting reading.

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A post by author Daniel Abraham, MLN on UF: Why Jayne Heller Won’t Get Raped

Urban fantasy is a genre sitting on top of a great big huge cultural discomfort about women and power. The typical UF heroine (as I’ve come to understand her) is a kick-ass woman with a variety of possible lovers. She’s been forced into power which she often doesn’t understand, and can face down any danger while at the same time captivating the romantic attention of the dangerous, edgy men around her. She’s been forced into power — either through accident of birth or by being transformed without her permission — and is therefore innocent of one of the central feminine cultural sins: ambition. She is in relationships primarily with men rather than in community with women. “Bad boys” want her, and they won’t be bad to her. Etc, etc, etc.

The thing that sets almost (and there are exceptions I’ll talk about in a minute here) all the urban fantasy heroines apart from real women as found in the real world is this: they don’t fear rape.

Huh. I’m not seeing that. What do you think?

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From iO9, Where did Science fiction come From? A Primer on the Pulps (via @thegalaxyexpress):

Pulp historian Jess Nevins, author of Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, takes you deep into the weird history of the scifi pulps, 1900-1950. Get ready for amazing science and astounding adventure! This is the first in a series on the pulps.

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love the color scheme!

Springing from a long thread at Dear author, a new website, LostEBookSale.com allows you to submit information about digital books you did not buy due to geo-restrictions, price, or format. I recently faced geographical restrictions for the first time, when Amazon would not let me purchase a Kindle edition of The Human Factor by Graham Greene I simply switched my address temporarily to a UK address, and bought it. Obviously, that’s not any kind of solution. Since the restrictions seem to be the result of a complex nonrational Borgesian labyrinth, which benefits no one, and which no one player has the power or motivation to make disappear, I don’t know what will do the trick.

It may just be a matter of an industry catching up to technology. As this post at the Idea Logical Company put it (via @booksquare),

I am one who believes that digital change will lead us to a world where there is one global publisher for most books depending on a network of alliances to execute some aspects of marketing and to maximize distribution everywhere. But I also think our wait for that change to be widespread is going to be a long one; it is many years away. In the meantime, consumers of books will find — as music consumers did in the 60s and sports fans still do today — that what appear to be nonsensical barriers block them from purchasing and consuming content that technology could easily deliver to them and for which they’d be happy to pay a fair price.

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Via @jonathanaallan, What Fictional Asexuals Say About Us from the X Factor, a blog written by a person who identifies as asexual:

The fact that many, many portrayals of asexual characters are found in speculative fiction is not, I feel, a coincidence.

Again, the message: You are, to us, unable to connect with us. You are without emotion, without love. You are, in short, inhuman. This is a stereotype. It reflects mainstream society’s belief that experiencing sexual and romantic attraction is central to emotional connection. More, it claims that because of who we are, we wouldn’t have any interest in connecting with other people anyway–and I think the discussions currently happening in the asexosphere put the lie to that.

Why is this important? After all, they’re only stories, and stories written by people who have almost certainly never heard of the asexual community at that. They’re not written for us, after all. They’re written for sexual people.

2. November is National Hospice Month

November is National Hospice Month. Geri-Pal (a blog devoted to geriatric and palliative care) has a good post. I am a hospice volunteer, and am very committed to the organization and its philosophy of end of life care. I am sorry to get preachy, but this excerpt from President Obama’s proclamation explains both why Hospice is so important, and why we must fight to keep — and expand if at all possible — the Affordable Care Act:

“During National Hospice Month, we recognize the dignity hospice care can provide to patients who need it most, and the professionals, volunteers, and family members who bring peace to individuals in their final days.

Hospice care gives medical services, emotional support, and spiritual resources to people facing life-limiting illnesses. It can also help families and caregivers manage the details and emotional challenges of caring for a dying loved one. The decision to place someone into a hospice program can be difficult, but Americans can have peace of mind knowing the doctors and professionals involved with these services are trained to administer high-quality and comprehensive care for terminally ill individuals. As many of our Nation’s veterans age and cope with illness, hospice and palliative care can also provide tailored support to meet the needs of these heroes.

The Affordable Care Act signed into law this year protects and expands hospice services covered under Federal health care programs. Prior to its enactment, the prohibition on concurrent care for Federal health care programs meant patients could not receive hospice care before first discontinuing treatments to cure their disease. The Affordable Care Act permanently eliminates this prohibition … As a result, fewer children, seniors, and families will have to make the heart-rending choice between coverage that fights an illness and coverage that provides needed comfort.

3. Personal

the father and son in question

Our house was in turmoil last week as my U11 soccer player was asked to “play up” (and if you know instantly what I am talking about, you must read My Kid Plays Up, a dead on satire of overzealous soccer parents, from When Falls the Coliseum). I find it remarkable how non-relationship and non-family centered the organizers of club soccer can be. Nary a thought is given to how playing with older kids will affect established peer relationships. How about the fact that said child’s U11 assistant coach is his father? Letting the child know at the same time as the parents prevents the parents from discussing it first and then presenting the option — if it is one, and this is for parents to decide — to their child. Perhaps this sort of thing is appropriate for older kids, but my son is ten years old, for Pete’s sakes! and a 10 year old cannot be expected to know how to balance the (greater)  importance of peer relationships and friendships and family time against enticements like “We can win the state cup!”. Grrrrrrr.

Otherwise, all is well here. No idea what I will post this week. Stay tuned!

HAPPY WEEK!

15 responses so far

Review: Proof by Seduction, by Courtney Milan

Jan 23 2010 Published by under Reviews

PBS

This is a debut novel from an author who has gotten a lot of buzz, thanks in part to her popular novella in a Christmas anthology. It’s the story of Jenny Keeble, a woman of uncertain and unhappy origins — she doesn’t know who her parents are, but someone sent her to a boarding school where she was treated badly — who has made a career for herself as Madame Esmerelda, a fortune teller, and Gareth Carhart, the humorless Marquess of Blakely. Jenny and Gareth are brought together by his young cousin, Ned, who suffers from what today we would call depression, and who has relied on Jenny’s predictions of his future happiness to get through dark times. Gareth, a man of science, hopes to discredit her. He agrees to allow her to try to prove herself, knowing she’ll fail. At the same time, he finds himself attracted to Jenny almost immediately.

I appreciated the uniqueness of this story, the romance across socio-economic positions, and the sensitive treatment of Ned’s mental illness. There were some very touching and funny scenes, like when Gareth tries to be “just one of the guys” for a moment with his man of business, or when he sings a song of his own creation in public. I also appreciated it very much that the author didn’t resolve the mystery of Jenny’s origins by making her a duchess or something equally convenient.

Overall, though, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I hoped.

I think if I had to put it down to one thing, it would be that the book seems kind of permeated with a very modern psychology. Jenny and Gareth psychoanalyze themselves and each other with 21st century precision, and this had the effect of creating a kind of clinical distance for me as a reader from the characters and the action. In lit review speak, I guess it’s a variety of “telling not showing”.

For example, Jenny doesn’t have to figure out why she went into a life of deception as Madame Esmerelda: she tells the reader point blank that

She’d known since she was a very small child that she stood alone against the world. That had brought her to this career — the sure knowledge that nobody would help her, and everyone would lie to her. Lying to them instead had only seemed fair play.

And Gareth:

He’d left London eleven years ago because polite society nearly suffocated him. It was the rigor of scientific thought, the clarity of observation, the control he gained over the universe as his understanding bloomed, that kept some vital part of himself in motion since his return.

And later,

What had started as awkwardness and isolation had soon become superiority and a fierce reclusiveness.

Jenny says life coach things to Gareth like “You see, there is nothing on this earth so powerful as a lie that can come true.”

And Gareth, this cold scientific man, suddenly starts saying things like, “I need someone who can look at a man and move him to become more. I can’t do it alone.”

I was jarred at several points by specific things that didn’t work for me. For example, Jenny and Gareth butt heads on their first meeting. So why, when he shows up at night at her door, does she open it and allow him to mack on her? We are told that “something vitally feminine deep inside her chest insisted she stay” and then a few paragraphs later, we are reminded that, “everything warm and womanly in Jenny welled up” but it wasn’t enough for me to believe in her reaction, because the reader has been given no indication that Jenny finds Gareth attractive. Would she have responded that way if the local rat catcher or butcher showed up? (Also, as an aside, there is no “seduction” in this book. Gareth and Jenny have sex early and often. but I’ve long since stopped trying to use covers or titles to clue me in to anything.)

To take another example, Ned believes in Madame Esmerelda, a gypsy fortune teller, with the voluminous skirts and and scarves and incense. So why doesn’t he bat an eye when she attends a ball with him and Gareth, and knows exactly how to comport herself?

Gareth complains constantly that “the specter of his title robbed everything good and convivial from his life”. We are told that Gareth feels at odds with English society, but in scenes where he is in it, he seems totally at ease and in command. I guess he just didn’t gel for me as a character, having so many overlapping explanations for why he was the way he was: was it shyness? A hyper-rational mind? Childhood trauma? Rejection of the superficiality of English society? The burdens of wealth and privilege? I had a pretty hard time sympathizing with the last one, although luckily Jenny did too, saying at one point (way too late for my tastes) “Do listen to yourself, Gareth. Poor Gareth — forced to be a marquess.”

The writing wasn’t lovely enough to distract me from the things that didn’t work. For example this is the kind of line I personally felt did not do a service to the story: “Pleasure propagated down his stiff cock and out his groin.”

I will work myself up into something if I keep going, and then this review won’t reflect the fact that I did, overall, enjoy the book, mainly for the uniqueness of the story, so I’ll stop here and suggest you check out the following positive reviews:

All About Romance, B-

Azteclady at Karen Knows Best, 8 out of 10

Babbling About Books, B+

Book Pushers, 5 stars

Dear Author, B+

Mrs. Giggles, 83

Smexy Books, B+

Except for JMC, who had reservations.

21 responses so far