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oh, justine, you have read my mind and articulated my thoughts even better than i had.

why, why, why must they send us junk mail? why, why, why must there be people out there — however small a percentage they may be — who buy from the ads and encourage these advertisers to keep sending the stuff?

i want to opt out! i want a say in how many trees get cut down because of me, and to what purpose! i think we deserve that right.

paper for books = immense goodness

paper for useless ads and mailbox clutter of all types = horrendous badness

and hey–do i have my time zones wrong, or are you really blogging at 2 in the morning?

~Mary

the company that does my water charges a $2.50 fee to pay the bill online but nothing for me to use up an envelope and a stamp and send it in. stupid stupid stupid.

in spite of how cool the kindle looks, i’m still an ebook skeptic. i heart my bookshelf. reading on a glowing screen is not for me. maybe i’ll eat my words someday (ha!) but right now i don’t want to read anything lengthy on a computer. i always print the long stuff.

I love the smell of books! E-mail is a lot easier for cards and I have three paper cuts on one hand. Also, today isn’t a snow day. : (

*sobs and realizes she has to do her english project superduper fast*

“Knee-high to a grasshopper” is one expression I haven’t heard before, I likeys.

Yes yes, trees are nice, but you will never ever convince me not to love mail. (Not junk mail, real mail.) email’s speedy and all, but I miss letters! And if you ask me, a good letter is just as snuggle-worthy as a book.

robin: by all means love snail mail. All I ask is that you not send me any.

Nothing is black and white, using renewable resources like forests which can be replanted endlessly seems a much preferable way then stripmining the earth for coal and powering the electricity for your email with massive polluting factories.

mark - logic is no fair, please stick to purely emotional pleas. I hope to receive holiday cards via owl.

That is completely true. No ebook will have that wonderful book smell. I have to admit, that’s one of the things I love about stepping into a bookstore. The book smell. As weird as that sounds, (or reads, actually) it’s totally true.

Mark: So you’re saying it’s more efficient to cultivate a tree, chop it down, process the paper, print the catalog, then transport the catalog by air and ground to my door, than to email and read the catalog onscreen?

Let’s fact check that, shall we? Computers that display emails have been produced that can be powered by a hand crank. Zero paper mills, printing presses, binding factories, or mail trucks exist that are equipped with a hand crank. That hand crank would be too large.

Some stuff is black and white. That’s why we have the words “black” and “white.”

i too hate junk mail, and have one of those handy stickers on my mail box that stops me getting any. but i curse the fact whenever i have a large group of people wanting to order pizza. is there no sticker that says ‘no junk mail except cheap pizza vouchers’? i think there is actually, but the junk mail person would take it as an open invitation to hide 50,000 catalogues inside. all that said, i do love my books in dead-tree format, but after meeting a woman who loves catalogues but does not read, well, she probably kills less trees than me. although she probably wouldn’t mind reading them electronically and printing out any vouchers. why do they persist with electronic book readers but not electronic catalogue readers?

I gotta say I am very skeptical about this e-book thingy. And I agree junk mail is stoopid and wasteful. And yes, jpgs are better, but postcards are good too when you are getting one of Maureen Johnson’s limited edition Suite Scarlet Holiday Greeting Cards. Only then are post-cards a fun idea.

Hilary!: You know what’s funny? This whole rant started because Maureen asked me for my address so she could send me a Christmas card. After several exchanges she said she would send me a paper-eating zombie instead. I’m still waiting for it to show up.

me likes getting mail as long as it is not junk mail, so pointless!

justine, do you want a e-card christmas greeting?

I love dead-tree books, but junk mail has got to go. Seeing as the future is in computers, why does everyone insist on sending ads? It’s truly a waste of trees and trees are awesome. We can replant the ones we chops down, but there’s some sort of mistique in an old tree. I will never give up paper books though.
Oh, and Patrick is right. Commenting should be restricted to emotions only. No logic! Logic is evil and burns my eyes when I read it.

Trees are not cut down just to make paper. Paper is made out of the stuff left over after they make everything else they want to make out trees. You know: furniture, houses, that kind of thing. Paper is made out of scrap.

And I’m sorry, but junk mail is like cockroaches. Stop them through snail mail and they come in electronically. I’m really sick of spam even more than I am of the credit card offers.

Justine, here is my christmas card to you. check out http://www.catalogchoice.org/#welcome and get your name off of all of those catalogs you don’t want to get.

Hey Justine

Just a little while ago, Julius Lester was talking on his blog about catalogue pollution. And he mentioned a group called catalogchoice.org where you can get yourself taken off catalogue mailing lists. “Once registered you go to their very extensive database of catalogs, find the catalog you no longer wish to receive, click on it, type in the customer number from the catalog, if there is one, and that’s it. The organization takes care of the rest. They say it can take up to ten weeks to be removed from a catalog’s data base, and if you aren’t, you let Catalog Choice know.” Maybe this would work for you.

BTW, I’m not a big fan of Christmas Cards either.

I want a mail truck powered by a hand crank.

I want an internet powered by hand crank. Not just powered by cranks with time on their hands. Oh my. How many fingers do I have pointing back at myself? Hmm.

justine, i got one of those annoying email forwards from my parents recently which was really useful and satisfying–all about what to do about junk mail. it’s kinda long so i’ll just link to where i posted it myself. the upshot is: send them their mail back … at their expense.

I’m writing a paper on health and environment (alot of it dealing with trees, and the timber wars) and i came across the lorax, by dr. seuss. And i just must say, “lorax, please come out of hidding. save the world from useless paper spam. it makes justine sad, which is just no good. but please, please, please, don’t take away my bookies…. i loves them….”

and yes, it’s 1 am.
and yes, i am very very very tired…

does anybody watch the preview while they type instead of the actual typing box, even though it’s way slower? i do….

^-^

*thumps e-table in agreement*

300k? Poverty!!!! Probably eats at Olive Garden…

I’m all for the wga stike. as a fellow union member, solidarity forever.

And i used to scoff at some of the comments you made above, I no longer do. I just hope we can avoid the struggles that preceded the making of the unions.

gah! 300k a year? i want that job….

actually, no. i really don’t. what adds to the infuriating dumbassery of all this is the people who are getting fired to “guilt the writers” into stopping the strike. what kind of fascist strategy is that? ugh.

300k… a year? Oh my… Entertainment and athletes… We really need to see how things have become so diproportionate.
In TV shows or movies, the thing I think most about is: ‘Whoever made up that line was a genius’ or ‘Wow, now I understand! the script writer did such a a great job!’
Sometimes, it’s not just the writers, I pay attention to miniscule detail, like lighting and stuff. This strike affects a lot more people than we can comprehend right now. Maybe the strike will also help with payments for other jobs, raising awareness, for technicians and other people who work on the set and on movies.
Oh, and by the way, the person who did Wilson’s dialogue is episode 1 of the new season- you are my hero.

Justine, you are also my hero. =) Your post made my day.

[…] to Justine Larbalestier, I found this long post from Doris Egan, a writer-producer on the popular show House. Egan is now […]

Yep. I’m totally agreeing with you too, Justine. That is really not fair at all.

Not to mention, what we the writers negotiate with the producers will greatly impact the deal the directors and actors cut next summer. They’re watching us and the producers know that if we cave early, they’ll have greater leverage over the directors and actors. You’ll notice that the producers never come out and try to make their case (an unmakable one) to the public, but rather they keep referring to the writers as “strike happy.” I’m not happy about the strike. I wish it didn’t have to happen. But I also want my residuals checks when my movies make them money.

hmmm… huelga!

ya know, i used to be really down on athletes (maybe just cause i run really slow) but you definitly made a point.

lets just have a revolution, shall we?
hehe

NO SPOILERS!!!! You can’t see the caps, but they’re there. After I got Hp7, I went wireless for the whole weekend. It was scary that a) I could actually do it and b) I had this idea that if I would log on, that I would be attacked by not normal popups…but Harry Potter spoiler popups!! It was horrible! Good thing I got through okay. And…even if people ask me for spoilers, I hate spoiling things for people. I think my own hatred of having things spoiled prevents me from being a spoiler myself. I have a friend who doesn’t mind having things spoiled for him. He’s the kind of person who actually reads last pages/chapters before he reads the rest of the book. It’s weird.

I have a sliding scale of spoiler tolerance. I don’t want spoilers if the book or movie is one I particularly care about — particularly for books. I will usually even avoid reading detailed reviews for books I plan to read, because I want the experience of reading to be mine, not colored by the perceptions of others or by knowing what will happen next.

Movies and television are more fluid for me. One movie I wish I hadn’t been spoiled for was Serenity — one of my friends let a specific fact slip, and the experience of watching would have been much more visceral if I hadn’t known.

On the flip side, I don’t care if I’m spoiled for Doctor Who these days. I watch it, but the recent seasons haven’t done as much for me as that first new season did. So now I want to know before I watch whether it’s going to be worth it!

i hate spoilers. when i was watching farscape, i looked it up on netflix to see if i could order one of the seasons, and the tiny little blurb had a major effing spoiler in it. i almost died.

i only read jacket copy (or whatever it’s called) if i’ve never heard about the book before or i’m just browsing. i sequestered myself while reading harry potter to ensure i didn’t hear anything. i avoid reviews too, not just b/c of spoilers but b/c i too don’t want my own opinion of the book influenced by what the reviewer thought.

it’s part of my enjoyment of the book/movie/show, being surprised by what happens.

I don’t think I have a general attitude to spoilers. I recently read a long review Col Toibin of Ian McEwan’s short book, *On Chesil Beach*. The book may have been as much as a tenth of the book’s length and managed to reveal every plot point and most of the other interesting things. Yet when I read the book a month or so later, mysteriously enough, it hadn’t been spoiled for me in the slightest. It may be, of course, that it’s the kind of books that can be read many times, and I was getting my second-reading pleasures without having had the first-reading ones. I’ll never know, of course.

Do you think (especially in the case of novels) that there’s kind of a ‘lost art’ of reviewing? I seem to remember reviews were supposed to tell you about the work, and either entice you to read it or tell you it wasn’t worth your time - but without revealing the plot. I never read them anymore as they always seem to be ‘then this happens, then this happens…’ - and then (sadly for the writer) I don’t need to buy the book.

I’m like you, too. I can’t stand anything that resembles a spoiler. i’ve mastered the art of skimming reviews without really reading them, so that I can get a hint of an idea if it might be a book that I’ll want to read, without learning too much about it. with Harry Potter, I didn’t tell anyone if I even liked it or not (I mean, you know, until everyone i knew had read it anyway). I want to get lost in the story, and be wowed and surprised and immersed, and spoilers kill that. I also love predicting what I think will happen, and i can’t do that if I’ve had hints.

The less I know about a work, especially a movie, the better. All I really want to know is the general sort of film (drama, comedy, adventure, horror) I’m seeing. This is difficult with today’s trailers, especially with comedies, which tend to give away half the best lines.

With books I’m a little more tolerant, though I certainly don’t want to know whodunit or what the secret of the alien race is.

Spoilers, ugh. And my worst encounter was my own stupid fault — right before I ripped open my season 1 veronica mars dvd, I decided I might as well watch a season 3 episode, just to make sure the show was worth it. ten minutes into the episode, there it was, a single line that revealed the season 1 murderer. And don’t even get me started on how hard it is to hide from Battlestar Galactica spoilers, especially when prominent actresses, ahem, start popping up on sucky new heavily promoted shows. It’s a hard world out there for those of us behind the times…

i was visiting my brother once and one of his housemates asked if she could borrow a certain movie from him. i said, “oh, i’ve been wanting to see that! maybe we (meaning my brother and i) could watch it after you.”

when she brought the movie back (just a few hours later!!) she said, “oh, the end, when he died, i was just so sad.”

i was agog as two gogs. (sorry, georgia nicolson reference.) just a few hours before she heard me say i hadn’t seen the movie!! i sort of did a goldfish face and then sputtered, “why did you tell me that??!”

she couldn’t understand why i was so upset.

to sum it up:

i despise spoilers.

I hate spoilers only when I’ve worked really hard to avoid them. For example, I didn’t know who died in HP6 up until about a week before HP7 came out (which is when I was reading HP6). Because I’d gone so so so long without knowing, I didn’t want it spoiled. But if I’d known before, then I wouldn’t have cared because then the reading would have been more about the journey.

“I want my first experience of any narrative—be it book, manga, graphic novel, TV show, movie, play, whatever, to be untrammelled by knowing stuff about it.”

You hit it spot on. I like that sense of discovery when entering a story. I know not every story is supposed to be full of twists and/or surprises, but when the experience is new and fresh - well, that’s just a whole ‘nother level of enjoyment, for me.

There are some times that I don’t mind spoilers, usually if I don’t care that much about the book/movie, but at the same time I *love* when I get a new book by a trusted author, and can thus just read it without having to know *anything* about it.
Movies, alas, are much harder to do that with, thanks to trailers and teasers all over the place. Bad as it may have been otherwise, the action movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, for example, had a wonderfully set up ‘twist’ to the plot that was completely explained by the trailers, and when I watched it, I kept thinking how cool it would have been to watch that movie with no idea what was going to happen next.

It’s worse when someone gives you ‘fake’ spoilers and I have friends cruel enough to do it. One time I had a friend say, ‘omg, it is all about the pink elephant, it is awesome!’ and there was a pink elephant and I spent the entire movie trying to anticipate how it came into the final resolution - turned out the pink elephant only had a cameo role…

i generally don’t mind spoilers too bad, as long as they’re sort of general. i will read reviews and jacket flaps, but not for sequels like HP7 or ect. i read spoilers on heroeswiki beforehand, but they tend to be more fun hints, such as *this character* meets up with *this character* or *so and so* goes on a quest. that i find more fun food for speculation.

one spoiler that i think was horrible was the Lost season three finale. i didn’t hear about the internet leakage until after i saw it, but i felt horrible for people who did. that was the sort of thing where one tiny line revealed the whole surprise ending and would make watching it no fun at all.

like when i wanted to read city of ember, i looked it up on the internet library catalouge, and the little blurb review completely ruined the mystery premise, which really made reading it no fun at all.

when a sequel i don’t want being spoiled comes out, i avoid the computer and delete all my bookmarks, like i did for extras (which was excellent! and also the sort of confusion-twisting that a small spoiler could have ruined) when i knew i wouldn’t get a copy for a few days.

i went on a media strike the whole time i read hp7. sure it only took me two days to read it but still…
i lothe spoilers. i think its unfair to everyone to spoil something for them. its much better to find out for yourself. although cedar’s points are very good.

I hate spoilers when the book or movie is very plot-driven and dependent on surprises. I would not have wanted to hear spoilers for “the sixth sense” or “the others,” which owed a lot to the surprise twist endings. literary and character-driven fiction doesn’t seem as spoiler-sensitive. i know anna karenina dies, for example, but still plan on reading it someday, for the reasons cedarlibrarian says–it’s the journey, the “how,” not the “what.” either way, if a story is any good, I can become so caught up in it that I forget the spoiler and the events still surprise me.

On the pro-spoiler side, i love talking about books and movies and hate having to censor my conversation indefinitely. i’m nice about it, though, if someone specifically warns me by saying “oh i still plan on reading that,” I won’t say anything. But in general my new rule of thumb is, if it’s been out on DVD or in paperback for at least a year, it’s fair game for discussion.

I find in general spoilers for movies to be far less offensive to me than ones for books — thankfully so, as I know precious few literary people irl. Movies (in general) are effortless, so to have a grandeur moment stolen near the end hardly invalidates the experience since you were merely sitting like a lug ‘being’ entertained the whole time. I had on the radio (of all places) the big twist in the film “what lies beneath” the very afternoon it opened! I don’t think I would’ve walked away with any more of an experience had it been a total shocker to me.

Books, conversely, are a labor of love and devotion. Delicately crafted paragraphs are woven in merely to carry you soundly through the plot so that the revelation _is_ the very experience itself, not a fleeting moment of film. At Disneyland three-or-so years ago a look-at-me-im-trying-to-stand-out teen wore the infamous “Dumbledore dies on page xyz” t-shirt in the line for the haunted mansion. wow, the drama that ensued was borderline insanity! You’d think it said something like “kids, your parents will eat you tonight whilst you sleep.”

Spoilers are just plain rude. If you are going to put them in, at least place them behind a cut with a big ole warning. Quite frankly they cost writers money. I have not bought books when they have been spoiled for me and I am sure I am not alone. If I really like a series, would I keep reading it? Yeah, I would be ticked off but I would keep reading. A spoiler wouldn’t have stopped me from finishing Harry Potter; same is true of your Magic series. But if it was a new, or new to me, writer, I wouldn’t be so inclined. Everything has its time and place, and I sure some people want and look for spoilers, just be respectful of those who don’t be giving fair warning.

I don’t like having spoilers around because while it is all about the journey, there is the first journey of discovery, the second journey of re-discovery, the third, fourth, and fifth journeys where you travel along a familiar path, and so on til the path becomes an old friend.

The journey fundamentally alters if I’m given a road map first. anticipation sharpens literary senses and I look for clues I would otherwise never have noticed. I’m not as lulled by the word pictures the author is creating because I know they’re building towards something. I don’t get to experience it all brand new.

Now I can re-read books, and often do, but I really really do love that first journey, when it was brand new and unfolding before me.

I still wonder how my first viewing of Citizen Kane would have differed if I hadn’t learned (from a Peanuts cartoon!) the identity of Rosebud before I had a chance to see the movie.

janet: I never had a chance to have Citizen Kane spoiled. My dad dragged me to see it when I was four. and right now I wish I had capital letters to explain why you don’t take a four year old to see citizen kane. i have a real hate-on for that movie and it’s all because of too early exposure.

really? so, what was the book called? who was it by? are there adult books good? i’ll have to read it to make sure it really does stink. that way i can make sure non of my friends read it. i hate it when an adult athor decides to rite teen or kid books and they are like ten million times as bad as there adult books. *sigh*
it was fawesome seeing you last nite Justine-la! cant wait to read your books. gotta go finish EXTRAS so i can start on yours. bye!
-LIzzy-wa OUT!

I actually think that it’s harder to write YA, mainly because if teens hate a book, they’ll openly say so. I think that they’re much less likely to keep reading something that isn’t interesting, and far more likely to tell other people about how they feel about particular things.

Teenagers definitely aren’t stupid!! In some ways, they’re far more perceptive than adults.

your faithful blog readers are willing to wait for the long, detailed rant. take your time. rants are often best when fully marinated, slow-roasted, and then served cold on a bed of freshly cut righteous indignation.

now i’m just making myself hungry . . .

The other thing i hate is when people come up to me and say, “oh, you’re a young adult author? when are you planning on writing something for grown ups?” like writing for teens is somehow a stepping stone to someday writing for adults.

like being a pediatrician is a stepping stone to treating adults.

I can’t wait to hear which book this was. Can you give us any hints?

I like my rants served hot, but…mmmmmm….righteous indignation. Yum!

maybe people get all wistful about their teen years being a ’simpler time’. they forget all the angst and the heartache and the way as a teen you laugh and love harder than you ever will again in your entire life. when you forget all that, ya books must seem super easy to write.

Ursula Le Guin, circa 1973:

Sure it’s simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up.

All you do is take all the sex out, and use short little words, and dumb little ideas, and don’t be too scary, and make sure there’s a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it….

If you do all that, you might even write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and make 20 billion dollars and have every adult in America reading your book.

But you won’t have every kid in America reading your book….Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them), but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic.

Unfortunately, I think that in the intervening years, some kids have learned to eat plastic under the pressure of relentless marketing, but I think the basic point stands. And “just as simple as bringing them up” is absolutely my favorite statement about the difficulty of writing for kids.

i strongly suspect that some editors are to blame—saying to well-known authors they think might sell big, “Oh you can do it, nothing can be easier! Just channel your inner kid…I’ll hold your hand through the process…’

The other culprit is agents who say, “But YA is so big right now. You can do it—nothing easier, and watch the gigantic advance. Channel your inner kid, and I’ll hold your hand through it…”

I’ve come to this conclusion after seeing several blogs, conversations, interviews and other embarrassed references from authors, “Oh yeah, well, I jumped on the YA bandwagon. I mean if Rowling can do it, how hard can it be?”

Oh dear … perhaps this was a *bad* day to send you that email …

uhh you’ve probally already noticed this, but in magic lessons the editor missed the typing error, “Reason took took.”

I LOVE ALICE HOFFMAN! SHE IS SO FEXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!

I agree with Adrienne Vretos. And I want to know !WHY! we feel things so much more than adults? WHY do emotional things hurt more? WHY?! I don’t understand my feelings anymore!

i read the dreamhunter books by elizabeth knox. they were pretty fawesome.

and that reminds me of a certain book which i will leave unnamed here to prevent this comment getting deleted.but in it, the main character was just a horrible teenager. she made all these quote unquote witty observations about teenagers and cliques and bad fashion in a way that i suppose was meant to be sarcastic and amusing, but to me just seemed cruel. and i am one of those people who spends a lot of time laughing the misery of my enimies—i’m not all over-sensitive about cruel-but-funny. but this book was just sad. she made all these horrible observations about all her brand-new “friends” that she supposedly liked. and they weren’t even genuinely funny. just like a mean girl looking for stuff to mock. wow, long rant. but i also note that same obnoxious heroine was also rather out-of-touch with current culture and mysteriously unaware of her own flaws.
and another thing i’d like to mention is that, as a proud ya and ya reader, most of the people i know don’t read at all. not the ones i hang out with, but the majority of people in my school have forgotten what a book is. and while there are a lot of people chewing on plastic such as a certain name-dropping series whose letters alliterate and a certain other serieses (is that a word?) set in unrealtistic high schools in la, most people i know will put down books they hate. i think it’s such a concious choice for them to be reading, they take a lot less crap. and not to generalize but it seems like adults are far more likely to pick up and stick with a book because it’s a best seller, even if they don’t like it. no offense, quality-first readers.

wow, this comment is far too long. back to westerblog before i come up with another rant topic.

i don’t like those kind of books either. teachers don’t understand why alot of the kids stop reading books so much. it’s only because you can’t get into them!!

I have to agree with Serafina zane on the point that adults seem to read a lot of books just because they are bestsellers. Or picked by oprah or any number of other things which have made the book a little more famous. And even if they don’t like it they read the entire thing anyway. I mean, I understand that to criticize a book and make good points of why it’s bad you might want to read the entire thing — but really, who wants to read a book that isn’t interesting or well-written? I’m more likely to put it down and find a new one if I get bored or if I don’t like it.
It just seems to me that a lot of adults read books by the same author, or only that author, or books that are seen on TV shows or on bestseller lists. Sure, I’ll read books like that, but usually I go and look for books that seem interesting. If a bestseller doesn’t sound the least appealing I’m not going to read it.
And as for writing books like teens are stupid, I just don’t understand it. Just looking, generally, at a good YA section in a library or bookstore supplies anyone attempting to write YA with so many well-written and smart books to look at and see what teens will read and enjoy. We’re not stupid and all too often I find books which make us seem that way. Urgh. It’s just so annoying!
Ooh. That’s a bit long, isn’t it?

Are you being mean to Dan Brown? is that who’s book you have?

I *so* agree with you! What makes me even angrier, though, is the publisher who publishes the book. Surely to god the editor *knows* the book is drek. Why then doesn’t said editor help the author make it better? Or better yet, say *no* to publishing it?

Here’s a good analogy:

an old teacher of mine got moved to the high school to teach. Her mother thought that she had got a promotion. (You know, moving up.)

But, either way, it isn’t a promotion if you stop writing YA or you stop teaching middle-schoolers and you go up a different level- it’s just a different job.

I’ve read too many books where the teenagers act like college students and think like 5-year-olds. It’s really awful. First you get mad at them for doing things way above their age, and then they make horrible, horrible decisions to cope with their overblown lives. It’s as if the author wants to use ‘oh, they’re teenagers’ as an excuse to further plot developement. However, the real thing is that it’s the cheesy, soap-opera plot that’s developing, while throughout the whole book, non of the characters develop at all!!
Personally, I think that every teen in those types of books have major personality flaws. They all know what to do (except for the cheesy ‘which guy should I choose?!’ twist) and just worry, while the whole point of teenagers is that they’re awkward! As a teenager myself, growing up is awkward! Don’t just make things happen! Give us reasons, secrets or magic! ‘Things happen just because’ is reasoning coming from someone who doesn’t know what to do!

Make these authors immerse themselves in teenagers! Do the research before trying to be something you’re not. If you’ve done the research, chances are that most of the readers will enjoy the book.

(on the plus side, I just bought a book by Alice Hoffman yesterday. Freeeaky.)

i agree with capt. cockatiel. most of the adults i know won’t go to a book store the day it comes out for that long awaited book after staying up till midnight to watch the countdown stop. i’ve only done this once people. and im not insane, im an insomniac. they only read one or two authors or only read self-help books or stuff like that whereas yound adults will read anything they find interesting. i think writing ya lets you write a wide variety of stuff and it will still get read because thats what we like, a variety of good books.

I often hear a further extrapolation of this–people find out I like to write YA and middle-grade and say, oh, why don’t you write picture books, too? I’m sorry, I think writing a picture book is even harder. I have read many, many awful picture books and many great ones. I don’t know if I’m a good enough wordsmith to write something brilliant in 32 pages.

ironic, because i recently got a rejection letter — a really lovely one, by the way, which i was happy to get, in one way — from an agent who said s/he thought my ms sounded great but didn’t think the writing would fly in the ya market. i am forced to wonder whether having suited the language to the setting (early-nineteenth-century britain) has made the book unsellable — not to readers, i mean, but to agents and/or publishers.

drecky ya is an enormous pet peeve of mine (as is drecky kid-lit — i have a five-year-old, you see). publishers should not market dreck to readers just because they’re not yet old enough to vote; there’s certainly no shortage of *good* ya and kid-lit out there, so why?

to be fair, however, an awful lot of dreck is published for adults, too…

jaguar?

Some excellent comments here. Love the pediatrician analogy, and that ursula le guin quote is utterly perfect. I read a YA book this year by an extremely successful, internationally renowned adult writer, and I couldn’t quite get over just how dreadful it was - I kept going waiting for it to improve but it didn’t and in the end I stopped reading. the main character was just so blank and boring and tedious, as if being young is simply being an unformed adult, an empty vessel into which a personality is yet to be poured. Someone should have held her hand better that’s for darn sure.

“You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it’s going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children.”
— Madeleine L’Engle

I’ve often felt that adult writers who publish YA are doing it for the market. YA is hot now and teens will spend money to purchase a book. I was worried about Sherman Alexie’s new book - thankfully it’s awesome. But I do have to say as much as I loved Francine Prose’s AFTER, I’m not liking BULLYVILLE.

whoops! I flubbed my url.

See, I was with you up until you dissed Sherlock Holmes. Now I’m going to have to slap you. I was once so engrossed in the Holmes novel I was reading on the way to work that, upon arrival, I snuck into a storage room and hid under a desk for the 20 minutes it took me to finish it! I figured it was worth getting sacked over if I got caught. But I didn’t get caught. And now I have to fly to NYC so I can slap you.

Really!? How sad. I loooovved the Gormenghast books!

moby dick = yawn. dunno about the others, haven’t read ‘em. i did not know your thesis was about bad sci-fi. i figured it would be more about the way women were portrayed in it.

hehehehehe, you should write rejection letters more often.

I guess it just goes to prove that editors are people with their own likes and dislikes. I’ve read very few of the books you mention, but asimov - even today - still works for me. Maybe I’m blinded by nostalgia.

Different strokes and all that.

“this is writ ironical.”

Indeed! Maybe I should change the name of the blog . . .

How can someone who so irresponsibly condones teenage pregnancy get on her high horse about other writers?

Mony: That’s a startling conclusion. How did you come to it?

justine! have you been irresponsibly condoning teenage pregnancy again . . . with your crazy “get knocked up now!” flyers? I have told you about this. to the naughty mat with you!

i hope i don’t get pregnant from reading your blog

I will never understand how writing about something equals condoning it. Like you should edit the world so that nothing but the stuff you’re really into exists.

But yeah, I shudder to think the stuff I would have overlooked if I were an editor. i never got into gormengast either.

Maureen: You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about that!

Simmone: Isn’t it a bit late for you?

Holly: No, I will never understand it either. If we believed what all the characters in our books believed our heads would explode.

I got one of those crazy “get knocked up now!” flyers, too, but I couldn’t read it on account of it was all in Australian. So I’m pretty sure you’re sending coded messages, too, you naughty minx, you. And what do you mean by writing a funny blog entry? the We are Literalists–No, Literally club is coming after you. there is no escape.

Sometime we can have a conversation about a certain victorian detective whose name cannot be typed here. for i love him and actually love a lot of the social commentary within the novels. maybe over pizza while we work on our new book about heroin-addicted necrophiliacs running a sperm bank.

Flowers in the Attic.

What I find terrifying is how many of my otherwise-sane friends will not only admit to having read the book, but will admit to having read the sequels! And tell me (in great detail) what happens in them!

(Actually the terrifying part is realizing that V. C. Andrews died as early in her career as she did; if she’d lived, she might have been a delightful YA writer who only occasionally skeeves the everliving daylights out of me. But because she died so soon, she is permanently to be known, via ghostwriter, as the queen of creepy sibling incest.)

on another note, I would like to point out that rejection letters are usually very polite and seldom suggest any kind of pyschiatric intervention.

Libba: Hush your mouth!

I can’t believe you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan. Not you and Cat! Oh noes!

Veejane: I’ve heard rumours that there never was a V. C. Andrews . . .

What can I say she was a very strong formative influence.

Penni: True. But Henry Miller really deserved it! Plus he’s dead. Surely that lets me off the hook?

oh no! reading your blog and just knowing how much you condone teen pregnancy has gotten me pregnant! oh, and i’m also drunk, because apparently you condone teen drinking too.

I fear I too am a huge Holmes fan. Josh got me the annotated omnibus of the stories for my birthday and I loved them more than jewelry. But I respect your opinions. Except about some stuff. some stuff you’re just totally wrong about.

I saw Disney’s “Great Mouse Detective” as a kid and thought, hey, I might dig SH novels in my older years. To this date, I have, well, still only liked “Great Mouse Detective.” heheh

Wait, they don’t want what? I’m confused. Sorry.

basically SFWA has taken upon itself to remove work from the internet that was written by the people who put it online because they want their work to be readily available. SFWA is acting illegally in the name of protecting copyright. And they’re doing it for people who think their copyright is just fine thank you very much.

[…] *Justine Larbalestier says: SFWA’s attitude to copyright has stepped over the line from luddite into barking mad. As a writer I love my fans. Adore them! I wish I had way more of them. Why on Earth would I join an organisation that is hellbent on prosecuting them? I completely agree with Cory Doctorow. […]

Oh brother. Why can’t Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi just run that place?

Marrije: Frankly I think everyone’s better off joining the authors’ guild. There should be mass resignations from SFWA so it can finally die its long overdue death. Though the emergency fund and writers beware are truly excellent . . .

Why is sfwa doing this? That’s mean and hurtful. Not right at all.

This whole incident just points up the idiocy of the DMCA. It basically allows anyone to merrily mail off a notice of infringement, without having to prove that the item in question actually infringes, and the recipient has to immediately respond and remove said item. The recipient can challenge the notice, but they must wait at least 10 days, and of course they have to consider the potential legal costs of fighting it.

My understanding of this particular notice from the SFWA is that it didn’t even actually qualify as a legal DMCA notice, but just the threat of invoking it was enough to cause the site to remove all the referenced material. As the notice itself was obviously poorly researched in terms of what material actually infringed on copyright, and infringed on the rights of some authors who had specifically requested that the SFWA not represent them in any copyright issues, clearly the SFWA has pulled a major boner here, and is a clear indication that certain parties in that organization don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

I think it’s past time that the DMCA was scrapped and the whole copyright issue looked at again, with a strong eye placed on achieving a proper balance between the needs of the creators and consumers of intellectual property. And the SFWA needs new leadership.

Hopefully Scalzi.

??? WHY ???

DOH! Two lost posts, then that one works??

Were you asking ‘Why Scalzi?’, or ‘WHY?! YOU STUPID COMPUTER!’

why?! you stupid computer!

What had you written that did not make it before your computer ate it?

Just a question about Author’s Guild. Nothing funny. I’m afraid to write it again. it might be a copyright violation and SFWA is eating in.

It’s a generational thing…as we’ve discussed before Justine!…older folk, who may in fact be on fixed incomes by now, are generally less sanguine about giving away the fruits of their life’s labor for free online. as a generational tweener who is not quite a pheezer yet, my view is more complex. the site in question simply failed to put an automated process in place that would distinguish between items volunteered for free by certain authors, and items –with valid, protective copyright marks still on them–that were being uploaded by folks who don’t believe in paying for *anything*, including the books of their “favorite” authors. sfwa’s lamentably clueless mistake was to similarly fail to distinguish between these categories, and as an advocacy organization, forgetting to ask the right questions first before making wholesale “takedown” demands.

Carol: My problem with that argument is that there are young people who are as paranoid as SFWA’s old guard; there are also some oldies who get it. And there are dirt poor writers at all points of the spectrum.

I absolutely agree that the individual writer should have control over their copyright. If they want it freely available online, cool. And if they don’t, also cool. Posting someone’s work without getting permission is very not cool.

I just think SFWA’s clueless mistake comes out of a bizarre institutional mindset. It’s not like this latest bruhaha was a one-off. They’ve been retarded about copyright for years and years.

E-piracy is having a minimal effect on writers’ incomes. Falling out of print and into obscurity, markets shrinking, those are the real dangers. That’s what frightens me.

…The key here again is to make sure that nobody’s work is taken without their express permission. encouraging a cavalier attitude towards *irresponsible* file-sharing doesn’t accomplish that. As an essayist I have already had the unpleasant experience of seeing someone steal my work and put their own byline on it. I’ve also experienced someone stealing my work and putting it into an anthology without my permission. I was able to sue the infringer in the latter case and won damages plus legal fees. But the way copyright protection works, is that if you *don’t* protect your copyright…or if an infringer points to your “precedent setting” habit of dispensing with copyright protection to offer your work for random free downloads on the internet as the reason they thought it was okay to take your work and do what they like with it…you may not be able to rely on statutory copyright protections if you *decide to* take them to court for infringement. Its a slippery slope, and while sfwa is no solution, we who create intellectual property need to come up with new and better ways of being fair to our readers and to ourselves.

I totally agree with you. We should and must be able to protect our work from being used in ways we don’t authorise. No one should be able to get away with claiming that someone else’s work is their own.

I just don’t think the situation is much different than it ever was. Long before the internet there was plagiarism and reproduction of books without authorisation. A famous example: Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was first pub’d in the US of A without the author’s permission.

While the internet has made it easier to pliagarise and steal intellectual property it’s also made it way easier to catch people at it.

My (main) problem with SFWA and the like is their hysteria over what are essentially not new problems. Electronic piracy is no different from the regular kind.

…What’s wrong with the Connecticut sun? Personally, I hate the Utah sun. I love email!!! Except for when it doesn’t work…

Did you change your blog layout again or is my computer being stupid again? I hate this computer. *head desk*

People are reporting that it looks strange but it’s fine on mine and Scott’s computers so I have no idea what to do.

My favorite? Restaurants that won’t seat you if only three of your party of four is there (or five of six). Hello? SAME SIZE TABLE, morons. What restaurant has three-tops and five-tops? VYNL, I’m looking at you.

It looks odd on my computer, too.

Sharing negativity is fun. I probably do it more often than I should…

(Forgot to mention this a moment ago)
Speaking of good bloggers who don’t blog every day, what is Maureen Johnson up to? It’s been a week since her last blog entry.
[cry]

I’m a bad blogger who blogs every day.

Bad bad bad blogger.

what about your husband he is a good blogger that dorent blog every day but he has been lately

do you hate him too

so yea did he read you blog

I have similar anger issues with late people. Especially the chronically late.

I’m kind of in an email/computer hating phase, too.

If anyone bitches at me for watching NFL football this season—Michael Vick or no Michael Vick—I’ma ’splode.

Trains are pretty rad, but sometimes they are very, very, very. Very. Late. Too. But at least there’s room to move around and pretty scenery. I’m actually thinking about getting a rail pass in 08 and visiting my friends around the country at random intervals.

i’m chronically late.

and I think i owe you an email.

Danica: Maureen was who I was thinking of.

Haddy: Scott is a very slack blogger.

Sara Z: Trains a billion times better than planes. No horrible security to go through. They don’t throw your water away. Etc. etc.

I also hate wordpress today.

Diana: You’ve never been late for me.

I thought I owed you an email.

No, you sent me a very nice email telling me not to be afeared of public bookreadings, and I was going to write you back to confirm that I did not, in fact, shrivel up and die at the podium, as I suspected I might.

Also, I got a present. Wait til you see…

I’m sorry! but I happen to love one of those books that you hate! I see that it is crap, but I can’t help myself! I know I shouldn’t read it or be attracted to it, but it calls out my name in that oh so enticing manner that makes me forget about that resolution I made. At least I never buy them though, I only buy good books, really good books, like Girl At Sea. And I hate mocrosoft word too. And yes, trains are much better than planes, better scenery too!

Hey Hilary! I’ll lay you odds that you’re not talking about the book I’m talking about. Though we’ll never know because I will never say in public what books by living people I hate.

I have loved many bad, bad, books in my time. Like Flowers in the Attic not to mention the Flashman books so really I should not be complaining about other people’s bad taste. I am a hypocrite!

Trains are the best. And Maureen’s Girl at Sea is a corker. I can’t wait to read Scarlett Suite!

really i agree with you about the restaurants that won’t seat people, except that i try and look on the bright side & think that this is a policy that saves us from our worse selves, because there are few things more drunkenness-(and subsequently hangover-)inducing than ordering rounds of drinks at a table and drinking them on a very empty stomach while waiting for late friends to arrive!

wha? Phoenix is in the wnba playoffs? Hah, shows how much I pay attention to sports nowadays. Literally my office window looks straight down onto the us airways arena and I had no idea ^^. Likely thats because collegiate football(US) is my sport o’ choice.

Funny caricaturing. (I don’t know how you use that word in English, caricature, which is funny, because it’s actually a French word)
And sadly, those reviews do happen a lot.
I don’t know wether to laugh or cry about the contractions.

I’m actually a reviewer for YA books and have been for 4 years for CanWest. I agree, there are a lot of stupid critics out there who don’t—err, do not—understand pushing the genre further. I try to look at the genre in a new way, which isn’t hard provided some of the reviewers out there with VERY traditional tastes. Teens do NOT have much for traditional anymore, and unhappy endings, or unending endings, are definitely for us.

*insert eyeroll about the contractions* Because, hell, I certainly never speak and use contractions. Or have sex. With my lesbian partner. Wow, I wonder if I’d be banned from a school library for being me.

i do not trust reviews. i always read the book myself and it bugs me when i’m trying to find out what a book’s about on amazon and i get a snarky review instead. *grumble grumble* i really just have to start ignoring stuff like this, b/c otherwise i’d spend every waking minute ranting, bitching, and carrying on about it. and of course, there’s the crowd that’s like, “GASP. Sex in teen books? NO.” Or “GASP. There’s underage drinking in this book? WE MUST BAN IT.” there’s probably plenty of reviews that are more about whether these things should be in the books, rather than whether they’re realistic portrayals of teen life or not. some people are just asses.

When I was a teenager, I was reading adult books because I didn’t like what I’d found in the YA section (too unrealistic, moralistic, I didn’t connect with the characters, etc.). Now that I’m in my 30’s, I’ve discovered some really great YA out there (including yours and Scott’s) that feels more real than any I remember when I was a teen. I buy them as gifts as well.

Teens swear, they develop character through the (sometimes tragic) events in their lives, and they deal with the issue of sex whether or not they decide to have it — and if YA doesn’t include some realism, teens are going to pass on it and just jump into adult books anyway. I certainly did. I wish some of these books had been at the library back when I was the target age for them.

isn’t it funny the way people (particularly reviewers) never talk about books for any other age group?

you never hear them say “books for women who are going through menopause should only have happy endings”

or

“books for people over 75 should contain no sex because old people don’t have sex”

or

“books for mid-life-crisis men should only contain young leggy blonde girls because that’s what all middle-aged men want”

I sometimes wonder whether reviewers even lived their teenage years.

Maybe they were the ones who sat in their bedrooms trying to learn calculus in Year 7. ***

As a teenager/YA, I reckon at this age we are more open to the new concepts being thrown at us like sex, drugs and all the things reviewers say we cannot handle.

Sure, they are huge issues, but then again we can see it from a different angle. Adults have their moral values pretty much straightened out(to a certain degree) compared to teens.

In other words, YA’s are open to new opinions and concepts, and adults can be naive and unforgiving to new opinions expressed by others.

My point is, you can throw some heavy stuff at teenagers, and most of the junk will bounce off, and the things that actually matter to them will stick like glue for the rest of their lives.

*** Amazingly true. I have seen it with my own two eyes. Actually it’s kind of sad really. :S

…have any of these reviewers ever MET a teenager?

Since when do they not use contractions (or, for that matter, swear and/or have sex)?

Wow. What sticks out to me is how the adult reviewers seem to think teens are completely incapable of critical thinking, completely impressionable. The most skeptical readers I know are my high school students. (Who all use contractions and quite a variety of swear words, too.) It’s kind of cute, though, how much faith moralistic reviewers have in the power of fiction to immediately and irrevocably change lives.

*joining the collective eyeroll, esp. re contractions*

This reminds me of my “wtf?” reaction when I first learned that Sendak’s “In the night kitchen” had been banned in some libraries **because it shows Mickey’s weenie**!! out there in public! and we mustn’t acknowledge that boys have penises! oh, the horror!!

which sort of thinking *always* evokes my *most* condescending version of “give me a f******g break”.

Lili: It’s because YA and children’s are the genres defined by the age of the audience, which is so weird when you think about it. Of course, as you know and I know, oodles and schoodles of people read YA who are not teenagers. I’ve had fan letters from ten year olds and from people who are 60+ years old.

Edwina: Yup. I really do think these kinds of reviewers have completely forgotten what they were like twenty years ago or they only remember what they were like and can’t remember that lots of their peers were nothing like them.

Some teenagers I meet are totally into exploring everything and some are totally resistant, some are religious, some are not etc. etc.—what bugs me most is the assumption that they’re all the same. As if five year olds are all the same or sixty year olds. Please!

Matt: It’s kind of cute, though, how much faith moralistic reviewers have in the power of fiction to immediately and irrevocably change lives.

I know you’re being ironic but the cuteness is completely wiped out by the fact that these are the people who are out there banning books that don’t fit their morals. I swear, there seems to be a new book banned every day.

I’m officially 20 years old, but I’m still outraged by the fact that all these reviewers are making comments like this about YA books. In book I’m writing, most of the time the sex doesn’t happen until after marriage, but one of the mains does end up having sex before she gets married. She also ends up getting pregnant, and though the other mains don’t exactly react very happy about it at first, they accept it and love her as they always have. They don’t shun her and treat her horribly because she had sex and got pregnant. People have sex before they get married. Sometimes girls get pregnant. This is real life, and books shouldn’t be doctored to avoid life. That’s just not right.

Teenagers don’t use swear words? What planet are these reviewers from? Maybe they should come out and walk around the halls of the high school I went to. They might learn a whole new list of dirty words.

you’re in good form today, you know that the ranting vein is really one of my favorites!

I boggle!

I just came across a review that dismissed a book because it had a character in it who has sex and doesn’t die or suffer any other dire consequences.

I had to read this about three times to get it; I’ve seen lots of reviews that critique books for depicting sex with dire consequences, but never the opposite!

It’s probably a good thing you’re not linking back, as I value my brain in an unexploded state.

i agree with dawn. the reviewers. they should come to my high school and see the way that kids talk. they must use a bad or a curse word in every sentence.

Great…

Now I want a robot that speaks only in contractions and has sex…

I want to read the sunshine and lollipops version of sex is evil and wrong and you always get punished for it.

David, I imagine it involves uni***ns

oh, god, it would, wouldn’t it.

As one of those who studied calculus very early (not quite 7, but close), I must protest a (little) bit, as I didn’t stay in the bedroom that much. As a parent of a 22 and 17 year old, I also agree that teens who don’t swear, at least think about sex, or don’t use contractions don’t exist, and books that try and portray teens this way are seriously missing the boat. Reviewers who object to portrayals that have some semblance to reality are doing neither the book or themselves any favors.

Still, today’s publishing environment for YA is far different from what it was in the fifties. I note that Heinlein’s Red Planet had to have the statement that Martians reproduce by laying eggs (!) excised on the demand of his editor. He got back at her at little later with his crack in the Star Beast about Lummox raising John Thomases, which apparently flew under his editor’s radar. The current environment and the types of books it has been encouraging has to be better - real life has sex and nasty things happening; teens know this, and the books they read had better reflect this.

sigh. sing it, sister.

and yes, David, it does.

I gotta agree with you, I never, ever use contractions, not even in a hurry, i just can’t stand it, oops. Nor do I read books for their moral lessons, because I am too dense to read a book thats not sci-fi or fantasy says in very delicate undertones ” Hey, you know what, crossing over to the dark side is not a good idea, no matter how cool it seems”, nor do I ever cuss, not even when I am angry, because I have no emotions!

RUBBISH!

I don’t cuss much, but I am not gonna lie and say I never do, but 13 year old brother cusses more than I do and so does my 63 year old Nanna. Just shows how different people are. And I’ve never met a person who doesn’t use contractions, especially not teenagers. And when has a book never had a moral, even if the author didn’t know it, ‘Persevere! stay true to you! your friends! your family! your pets! ambition! hopes and dreams! Don’t be evil! Be happy! “IT’S OK TO BE SAD!” Yeah, some books never have morals!

Hilary!: I loved your comment so much I gave you some of your capital letters back!

I LOVE YOU!

No teenager is the same, I know this because HEY! I am one, but we all think of sex, we talk about it costantly, and we dream alot! And we all cuss to a degree, hasn’t anyone seen saved! though? But I do have to ask “what is the girly fascination with uni***ns, horses, and vampires”? I am a girl, but I have only fallen pray to the vampires (sorry justine!). But still why? I’d like a book that explores and identifies why most girls, or just my friends, have a fascination with these things.

I think a lot of reviewers simply discount all YA for some reason. If you don’t like the genre, don’t read it.

I’m 26 and I prefer YA. I don’t know why, but the stories just seem more real to me. Maybe it’s because I remember being in high school and I remember how hard it was at times.

From looking at the scifi/fantasy section of the bookstore, compared to the YA section, I’ve figured out that my own writing is closer to the YA. I think it’s a great market and I hope it continues to grow.

I gotta agree with matthew, YA is better than it used to be. I want to be a librarian, but I’d rather work in a school than a public library, because then you can specialize, and always have good YA novels at hand. YA has a whole range of sub-genre that’s so fool that most teens, my friends at least, would rather stay a teen than grow up and be expected to hone their reading taste. They don’t understand that even if you’re a grown up you can still read children’s and YA novels, no matter how smart they are. I’m 17 and I jsut finished reading The Princess and The Goblin, which is one of the cutest books ever! Reading has no age limit.

yipes! i’m a reviewer for voya…

*runs and rereads all her reviews*

phew. i think you’re talking about other people. paranoia aside, i have seen reviews like you describe, as well as diatribes against ya in general (why don’t teens read classics? and things of that ilk). what strikes me about reviews and articles like that, is that they are more focused on the reviewer’s opinions than on the book or books in question. which is a cardinal sin of reviewing…

“I swear, there seems to be a new book banned every day.” (justine). But the good news is, hardly anything boosts book sales like being banned. you would think these book-banning types would realize it but then they’re clueless enough to want to ban books in the first place.

Ariel Cooke: See that’s what everyone thinks but many, many books are taken off school shelves because of one person’s protest and no one ever hears about it. The book just disappears from that school or district. No fuss and no increased sales.

Maureen Johnson’s book The Bermudez Triangle was banned in Oklahoma and if the librarian hadn’t let her know she would never have heard. From what I’ve heard the sales of her book have not increased dramatically as a result of the ban.

personally, i find stories that have to have a moral quite annoying. why do people want to diss books when they are being realistic? plenty of teens have sex or drink-and they don’t die. sorry to disappoint, but they don’t die.

i am a teenager. i don’t want to read about rainbows and unicorns and morals and crap like that. i mean, i guess it’s nice to read some “happy-happy-joy-joy” book sometimes, but i’d rather read books that seem more realistic. as for contractions, i use contractions all of the time. it just does not make sense.

plenty of teens care about things like social injustice, poverty, politics, ect. we may not be quite as informed as adults, but we really do care about the world. we care about things other than a sale at amercrombie o getting a date or something.

I agree with Hillary! in one of her first comments. I don’t see how unicorns and horses considered intersting. I do like vampire stories though.

Don’t look at me. I hates the uni***ns and was never obsessed with horses when I was a littlie. Or vampires.

Dunno why so many girls are. Maybe because they’re brainwashed into it? Or maybe they just really like horses.

I did know one boy who was horse mad but he didn’t have lots of horse books he just owned a horse and rode it whenever he could.

I’m so behind reading your blog, and that’s a shame, cause it’s so much fun (and educational!).

But, I’ve been reading Magic or Madness, so that’s good, right? I really enjoyed it, and I’m beating myself up for not having picked up the second title in the trilogy when I had the chance. I posted the review in my LJ, in case you’re interested.

http://calico-reaction.livejournal.com/41294.html

And I’m relatively “new” to reading YA fiction, but I don’t *think* I’m committed any of the grevious sins mentioned above. And I’ll keep them in mind for later YA reviews as well.

Cheers!

are there any people who really think this has anything to do with ability? really?

wow. those people really don’t know what they’re talking about.

Why is there so much bad information out there for would-be writers?

Justine, I’m glad you’ve added this post to your collection. Just the other day I was hunting out your old post on your early punctuation woes; this makes a nice pair with that. Between you and a couple of other writers, there’s a nice collection of articles around covering how writers are very normal people when it comes to the basic mechanics of writing as well (spelling, punctuation, grammar, computer/hand-writing skills, etc).

Thanks muchly.

also, can I add? F. Scott Fitzgerald. FAMOUSLY bad at spelling. That is my favorite spelling example.

I will say, reading fiction prose online, a misspelling or even a homophone problem will not usually bother me enough to stop reading. But you know what can really get in the way of ease of reading? Puncutation. Incredibly weird, inconsistent, or insane punctuation (usually, lack thereof) screws up the reading experience *so much*.

It’s weird that commas and periods should exert so much influence, but when you have to keep pausing and backtracking to find out where one thought ends and the next begins, you really do lose the thread of a story.

(Not that that would necessarily stop an editor, in the end. But I can’t imagine it helps you get out of a slush pile.)

someone said that becuase i can’t spell well, i must not read a lot becuase “people who read a lot are good at spelling.” yeah right. i read A LOT but can’t spell to save my life. just because i can read the word and know what it means doesn’t mean i can spell it! mini-rant over.

I’m actually a pretty proficient speller, (people ask me how to spell words all the time) but it doesn’t really mean that much. I’m famous for comma splices and other horrible grammatical errors, so my spelling skills won’t save me there. I do have to admit to the fact that sometimes I’m quick to judge when someone uses some words improperly. I think all the they’re, there and their’s should be spelled and more importantly USED correctly…as well as other words like to, too and two. I never actually say anything to the person, but secretly, it irks me. Hey, everyone has their pet peeves.

(Is it sad that I just gave my comment a quick scan to make sure I didn’t just make myself look like an idiot? :-P)

I’m also in love with dictionary.com. It is a a lifesaver sometimes.

i’m a bit of a spelling nazi. i can’t help it! although punctuation is much worse, i agree. i just read a (published) book that clearly hadn’t been proofread. there was a mistake on nearly every single page!

my favourite thing though is when people misuse quotation marks.

Like: “sorry!” no eftpos.

we’ll “fix” your telephone!

please make yourself “comfortable”

I’m a good speller (I have to be, since I’m a proofreader), but I always say that the only writing I can’t proofread well is my own. My emails are sometimes full of typos, because I write them on the fly. I do agree with you that spelling ability has nothing to do with being a good, or even great, writer.

However, I do think that if a beginning writer sends out a MS. that’s full of obvious spelling errors, it won’t help matters. If you misspell “bouillabaisse” or something in a MS., nobody’s going to care too much, but if there are frequent misspellings of common words, it’s going to count against you. And it should: spell checkers can handle a lot of this stuff.

I know perfectly well when to use “their,” “they’re,” and “there,” but when I’m writing something quickly, I might make a slip of the pen and misuse one of them. But I would catch it when I read it over later.

The situation changes when you are a published writer. Once you have a contract, you can be confident that even if you turn in a somewhat sloppy MS., people like me will fix it up. We won’t name any names, but many well-known writers turn in final drafts that…need work. I’m fine with that–it’s what I make a living from. And I’ve seen enough to be pretty forgiving. The act of creating text necessitates a certain state of mind that is, I believe, somewhat at odds with the prescriptive part of the brain that tells one whether something is grammatically and orthographically correct.

i spell okay. it’s grammar that messes with me. i know how to use it, but not how to identify it. for example, i have no idea what an adjectival is.

spelling is probably a bigger deal in things like queries. b/c they’re short documents that you’re using to make yourself look good. so if you’ve got any kind of glaring error in one of those, it might count against you. but in the actual manuscript itself, it seems like a few mistakes here and there shouldn’t make a difference. everyone makes those mistakes, like the they’re/their/there thing, even if they know better.
sometimes people’s computers have sticky keys, too. *grumble*

chances are, when you’re writing the story, you’ll be paying more attention to the story, not to the spelling or the grammar.

There are two separate things in play here:

1. Spelling ability. If I’m not mistaken, research has tied this explicitly to visual recall of information rather than general intelligence or even overall verbal ability. I’m an outstanding speller — one of the best I’ve ever known — but it’s because I’m extremely visual, not because I am (or am not) smart. So writers shouldn’t beat themselves up if they’re naturally bad spellers - for many people, it’s like being color-blind. And I myself will often make transcription or typing errors if I’m going quickly (”they’re” for “their” etc.). We’re human.

2. Taking pains. I tell my undergraduates that I won’t ever mark off for spelling on a handwritten exam; usually I also explain what I just said about spelling ability not being related to intelligence or understanding. But I also tell them to spell correctly on anything they’re going to type up and hand in to me. In that case, rife misspellings are simply a sign of carelessness, since anyone can either proofread themselves or, better, get a friend who’s wired like me to proofread for them. (I feel no compunctions about this because even if a student is friendless or surrounded by dyslexics, our university has a writing center where the student can get unlimited free help with things like spelling and grammar.) I try to bring home the point that only a few people are naturally good spellers, but that *anyone* can take pains, and if you show you’ve taken pains, the reader is more likely to take you seriously. Also, if this doesn’t seem to register with them, I usually tell them about my experience reading resumes and employment applications in the business world. Every hiring manager I’ve ever known is happy to throw a run-of-the-mill resume in the Reject pile for even one typo, since there are plenty of good candidates for any job who will take the pains to clean up their resumes beyond reproach.

and that’s probably enough of a rant from *me* . . .

i am a horrid horrid speller. i don’t even know if i spell “misspell” right (don’t think i did, in fact). my new favorite tool is that firefox will spellcheck anything while you type online — even blog posts or emails (of course, i’m not using firefox now…).

i’m also not so good with the punctuation. i love run on sentences and use commas as decoration. it’s my style — i like the flow without the commas. i’m afraid it will come back to bite me when i submit my ms and agents are like “dude, where are your commas!” let’s hope the writing makes them forget about commas…

I’m one of those people that everyone thinks is a good speller, but often breaks out a dictionary of some sort, just to double check. Sometimes words just look funky, you know?

Rebecca, I’m with you. I suffered english grammar classes throughout most of my childhood, but who remembers any of that? Dangling participles? Is that dirty?

I just kind of know when things are used incorrectly. I can point it out, but can’t always say why it’s incorrect. And people constantly brought me their papers to edit while I was in college. scary, isn’t it? fools.

So, when is it acceptable to be a grammar and spelling nazi? That’s the question. I like to be a grammar and spelling nazi when clients (who like to yell at me for no reason, except that it makes them feel special) send poorly written business emails. If you’re going to act all superior in an email, you should at least spell things correctly. Regular emails? Blogs? Blog comments? I figure that most of us are trying to write these sort of things while we’re supposed to be doing other things. like, uh, work. So typing quickly is often necessary. You know, so we don’t get busted.

I think spelling is kind of like juggling. If you’re good at it, that’s great, but it’s not related to your worth as a person, your intelligence, or even to your literary credibility. It’s also very easy to fix through software. Grammar is more important because of its contribution to the rhythm (sp?) of a sentence.

wait, next you’ll be saying we don’t have to outline, create character sheets/histories, travel to Europe to reasearch, and endlessly rewrite our 500 word piece of flash fiction. I mean, without that the ability to apply metrics to creativity, well, that way lays madness. Madness I say.

I’m pretty good at spelling and grammar, so I tend to automatically nitpick on people who don’t write first drafts with perfect technicalities. But thank you for this post, although I don’t entirely agree with you. I still think that a writer should take the time to study grammar and proofread endlessly if they have issues–just as someone who’s weak with characters, setting, plot, or any other aspect of writing would try to strengthen that before submitting. And I have to admit that I avoided your blog for a long time because of the all-lowercase posts–it’s not clear from the front page that you are making a deliberate stylistic choice, to casual browsers it just looks sloppy. On a writer’s blog, too. But that’s your personal choice.

I hope my rant wasn’t the offender! You’re a seasoned pro, so it stands to reason you proofread like a seasoned pro. What bugs me is when folks assume that they “can’t spell” and then give themselves a free pass on even trying - even in contexts where it really matters.

Actually I’m a horrible proofreader. As you tell your students best to always have someone else check stuff for you. And spell checker alone ain’t enough. Specially on the there/their/they’re front.

The person who inspired the update didn’t comment here. They sent me a toxic anonymous email declaiming my laisez faire (sp?) ways.

Brenda Ueland, who wrote “if you want to write,” my all-time favorite book on writing, says “As if Shakespeare could spell!”

[…] Larbalestier is dishing the crazy idea out here: I am not alone. I know lots of writers who are only av. spellers like me. I know a few who are […]

what an asshat.

anyhow, speak for yourself! my thesis: “high wycombe writ large: the incendiary prose of conignsby dawson”

… for some reason the university still hasn’t sent my diploma.

(ps: “warwick deeping” sounds like the lead in a blue movie.)

Well said. I look at writing money as akin to strange weather — double rainbows, hailstorms in July, showers of frogs. I’ve been fortunate — my first novel paid for my wedding and my honeymoon. The next four books are in the process of paying off my credit card debt and buying me a new (well, used, but new to me) car, and paying for the lost income from my wife’s upcoming maternity leave. It’s also buying the occasional sushi dinner. But I have no expectations that I’ll ever make another penny from fiction writing. I *hope* I will, but the world doesn’t certainly owe me a living just because I like to make stuff up and write it down.

Jennifer: Hah! I totally feel like I made Coningsby Dawson and Warwick Deeping up. I am so stealing those names.

Tim: I’m not sure I’d go that far. But then I am foolishly trying to make a living writing fiction. I have backup plans though for when the books stop selling and the advances dwindle to nothing. Wanna buy some lovely knitted booties?

excellent post, Justine. Bravo!

Well, we do have a baby on the way, so booties could be nice…

I’d like to have a sustainable career as a fiction writer, too, of course, and I’m doing my best to make that happen — it’s just my policy to always expect the worst. My wife Heather is the optimist. We balance out!

what a little oik.

Cat: Ta. You are too kind.

Tim: Excellent. Now all I have to do is learn how to knit. Congrats on the littlie youse are awaiting.

The only author that I’ve known about to make bank (my way of saying “a lot of money”…ha) as a first timer is Stephenie Meyer. I’m pretty sure that Little, Brown and Co. gave her a $750,000 three-book deal. Those are some amazing figures, but I know that success is not often measured in dollars, and that’s not how it should be measured. I’ve lived all of my life in a household where money is tighter than tight, but I wouldn’t consider my life a failure because we don’t have money to toss around. I’m thankful for that perspective and I don’t plan on embracing the world as a place to “get rich”. I’m becoming a teacher for crying out loud and I’ve been told by many that I won’t make much. It would be nice to make a good amount of money, but I will never base my view of success on that. To me, success would be being able to get my book(s)? out there for people to read and enjoy. Teaching students and helping them learn more about reading and writing…helping them to enjoy those things…that would be success for me.

I love your books, Justine! And I think that makes you super successful.

people like that guy annoy me. but they seem to be popping up all over the place.

if only all lawyers did make good money.

i’d always wondered what those “nice” and “good” things meant. i was like, “what are they going to do, say that it was a bad deal?” heh.

money money money money. bleh.

The one time I dared to talk about the reality of publishing and money and making a living on my blog, I was called “pretentious” six ways from Sunday and told that they preferred “the more demure Diana.” Now, I ask you, when have I ever been demure?

People prefer the fantasy and if you dare disabuse them of it, you will be punished.

He probably asked the question knowing full well what her answer would be. Maybe he was one of the poser agents with an axe to grind. Maybe he is just a jacka$$. But he either asked the question with a response at hand or is completely deluded and desperately looking for validation. Either way, I hope she didn’t waste too much energy on him. I would seriously wonder about the motivations of anyone who advised a writer with no track record to quit his day job.

That guy is definitely a wanker. In defense of delusion, however, I have to say that I probably never would have abandoned my first career to pursue fiction writing if I’d known just how hard it is to earn a living at it. I consider myself very lucky to be self-supporting rather than a cautionary tale.

“Write until your words bleed…” That ‘metaphor’ invokes, to me, images of desperation, not determination. I believe success in writing is binary: If you can go in to any retail bookstore and see your name on a shelf, you’re there; I see many of your guys’ names every such journey! The monetary contributions received is more of a welcome side-effect than a goal to me. I suppose that’s because I approach writing as an idealist and not a profession =) I could crochet some words for Victoria to respond with, but I’m sure she’ll concoct some from a higher path than I!

Corey: Yup. If writing is making him bleed then he’s clearly doing it wrong.

I just signed my first book contract. I met the editor in New York in May right after the offer, and her first piece of advice: Don’t quit your day job. The advance isn’t high, and I wasn’t expecting a lot. I just want to write.

Diana - I’m sure they meant the more ‘lemur Diana’ by which I suspect they meant wide-eyed and nocturnal.

Ms. Larbalestier..I just found your blog and had to share my wry smile…I’m here in my banking office, pretending to be capitalistic, while gazing fondly at the corner of my desk where my copy of “Magic or Madness”, along with various good company (Susan Cooper, Philip Pullman, etc.) stands ready to offer escape from corporate drudgery. Without my surreptious dips into these pages throughout the day, I’d definitely go bonkers (not that a few more bonkers bankers in the world wouldn’t be interesting.) So, the money may be more readily available in finance than in writing, but you’re the much-admired, story-spinning saviour of bored corporate prisoners, as well as fresh-faced youngsters around the world! As long as aspiring writers can afford to eat and sleep in peace, I hope the chance at that admittedly quiet kind of honor and glory, along with the joy of seeing one’s imagination take tangible form, is far more enticing than what I can assure you is the empty allure of material rewards. Thanks for your books! cheers, Ben

But that’s not headhopping! That’s a perfectly consistent omniscient PoV.

Ditto!

Micole and David: Read the earlier post, people! That’s what people keep calling head hopping. They are convinced that all pov shifts are wrong and do not understand that is how omniscient works. Omniscient is what my friend of the earlier post was railing against. The book she claimed was unreadable because of the “head hopping” was in clearly consistent omniscient.

I keep hearing reports of US editors insisting that Australian and UK books they buy be rewritten to reduce the head hopping. The books in question are invariably in omniscient.

Increasingly the invocation against head hopping (i.e. omniscient done badly) has become an invocation against omniscient. And thus the two terms are being used as synonyms. I continue that practice of using the two terms as synonyms but insist that there is nothing in the world wrong with head hopping unless you do it badly. Ditto for any other writing technique.

And frankly, I don’t think separating the two and calling the well-executed shifting of povs “omniscient” and the badly done “head hopping” is at all helpful. All people learn from that is to avoid the technique altogether and not how to do it right.

hahah this one was confusing to me. lol!

I didn’t actually like the book all that much but Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is an excellent example of effective head-hopping. I wouldn’t describe it as omniscient because she goes pretty deeply and exclusively into one character’s head then hops out and goes into another character’s head in quick succession. A good of example of bad head-hopping is Candace Bushnell’s Trading Up (also a bit of a stinker for other reasons) which head-hops in a way that is utterly bewildering. I wish I knew the mechanics of why Patchett’s head-hopping adds to the story while Bushnell’s detracts, but I’m not that smart. It might have to do with clearly establishing whose head you’re actually in so you can deeply experience the action from their POV rather than just being vague. Ennit.

brilliant.

omniscient is good. However, I have seen poor head-hopping done, it hurts, mightly. I tried to explain this to a writer receintly about how if they needed to change POV or give different thoughts, they can’t address those thoughts as “I” unless you have a thought attribution. Once that happens, you need to get locked into a single POV and if you skip around to several characters and have them each use the “I” it has the feeling of being schizoid.

Just what I needed; someone who says that omni is brilliant. And like any other POV it needs to be done well.
I have been stupid enough to follow some of the rules and each time it took away from my story.
Here I am with a my first omni that I converted to first person and now that I am finished; i understand I was right to do it in omni.
But all the friends tell me that New York publishing houses might not like it.
Either way I am re writing my story in omni.
Also read Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. It is in omni and she changes POV in a paragraph. And she did win a Booker.
And Justine I am here for the first time and love this place.

Reality: There are so many things that New York publishing houses might not like that you’re really better off not thinking about it. If your book works best in omni then keep it in omni. If it doesn’t sell write another book.

My first two books (one in omni, the other in third limited) have not sold.

Well, really, if she was anything like Jane Austen, she wouldn’t have to BECOME Jane, would she? The film would be called “Being Jane”. Duh!

Look on the bright side, at least she’s not playing William Shakespeare’s wife… that would just be confusing…

She’s done wonderfully at preserving her looks since she became a widow (I wonder if she’s ever going to write an autobiography, and explain why William left her the second best bed.)

(shudder)

what an awful film.

no story. no historical accuracy. and worst of all - no sexual tension. it was like spitting on jane’s grave and then jumping up and down on it yelling ‘ner ner, we destroyed your legacy! harr’.

I’m a sucker for James MacAvoy. So I don’t care.

And I think the way they did up Anne in this movie she looks like the chick who played Fanny in the MP adaptation. And that was the one (movie) that was supposed to have incorporated all that “autobiographical” stuff.

I like to pretend that the whole thing just never happened.

Hey Justine, i just discovered yor blog, I love your writing, and I read on your bio section that you and your husband like to come to Argentina, I live in Buenos Aires, so next time you´re planning a visit please let me know.

All the best

Agreed. That’s not to say I won’t rent it and watch it while eating a giant bowl of ice cream, cooing over the dresses and complaining about Ms. Hathaway’s utter un-Janeness

reminds me of this post by shannon hale:

http://oinks.squeetus.com/2007/06/our-chum-jane.html

Agustina: I’d love to go back to Buenos Aires—I love it!—but sadly there’s no chance of that for several years. Worse luck.

Hwalk: What a lovely post. Thanks for pointing it out. Quite a co-incidence too. I just started reading Shannon Hale for the first time and have been blown away. Princess Academy wasn’t anything like I was expecting. What a wonderful writer she is!

So Justine, who would you pick to play Jane?
Anon

i love the princess bride! my friends have never heard of it. a mangosteen is a fruit? is that like a mango? is it a mango and we americans just shorten it?

speaking of movies, have you ever seen lilo and stitch? its so cute. lilo loves elvis. lots of elvis stuff in that movie. (okay so its a disney cartoon but who cant love a little elvis loving girl who adopts and alien thinkin its a dog?)

*thinking sorry. can’t spell

Bring It On is SO #1. Anyone who says anything else is BANANAS! XX, LC

i guess i really should watch bring it on someday. see what all the hype’s about.

justine, i think you’d better make “mangosteen” a topic in the sidebar…

I love bring it on. bring it on all or nothing is good too. i like watching people tumbling(flipping) and stunting(holding people up in the air) and basket tosses(throwing people in the air) are awesome!

I

heart

bring it on

I will be buying a copy for my daughters and telling them it’s a movie about feminism.

i LOVE all the movies in the “bring it on” “series.” they are my guilty pleasure. If they are on TV, i must watch. my husband thinks it’s funny. The princess bride is another one. It is one of the best movies ever created, for children and adults.

I LOVE Bring It On!!! I agree with it being one of the best movies of all time. It fascinates me every time I watch it…I wish i could be that…cheerleader-y.

I am all over bring it on.
but I do like unicorns.
your title choice won, by the way

do you want to write next week?

thank you, you gave me my wish!

Hah, finally! Aside from my wife and I, you are the only other person I’ve ever known to say zombies are the best monster… Some people just don’t get it Especially those ‘pire-fiends, they won’t listen to reason! Brains are better than blood; it’s higher in essential vitamins and minerals.

There is so much about this post that is just wrong. Except for the cricket, princess bride and hellsing bits. They sound accurate. Clearly the heat and deadlines are getting to your judgement. I mean, really.. bring it on?! That’s your pick? *sigh*

@dess: Mangosteens are not mangos. They’re both fruits, but the naming is just a coincidence. Mangosteens have a slightly more tart taste, although both are quite sweet. Mangosteens are a bit smaller and much darker (purple, almost) in color when ripe. Mmm… now I want a mangosteen or a mango.

huh. i’ve never heard of/seen a mangosteen before. thank you!

wow was mangosteen hyperlinked before? if so, sorry. do you eat the purple part or the white part, or are both eatable?

Bring it on was a great movie directed by a buffoon. All the pacing was off and the occasionally brilliant one-liners were outlined in bold and delivered with exactly the wrong deliberateness. That said, it must be applauded for doing what so few teen movies based in generic white California do–addressing race and class openly. Also it has finally made the point that cheerleading is NOT regressive and sexist. Cheerleading has nothing to do with girls supporting boys. It’s about gymnastics, dancing, wearing short skirts, screaming, and show biz. Oh, and plot necessities aside, the Toros routine was better than the Clovers.

Cricket?? Too organized and slow. you actually mean aussie rules, don’t you? i’m a flippin’ american and i know that! oh, and love your site!

Please forgive me, blog overlord. I truly did not mean to offend. Please be my friend again?

Blog overlord doesn’t have any friends.

But I’m dead pleased you like my blog!

I’m very sad to say that I’ve not read either of those books. Once I catch up with all the books waiting their turn on my shelf, I’ll get to those.

Oh, the pressure!

Oh! That’s really interesting. I think when I was reading it, I didn’t realize it was 30-yr-old Mia looking back, and so, the book did have an immediacy to it that made me think YA. (The sad thing is, I read this about a week ago and obviously already don’t remember it that well.)

Oyce: I don’t think it explicitly says that it’s Mia looking back, that’s just how it read to me. And it was reinforced by the Afterword which had very much the same tone as the whole novel.

Dawn: They’re both brilliant books. What treats await you!

(Octavian is looking back too though, right?) (Although I agree with your assessment it’s YA.)

Gwenda: You’re right. In a sense all books are looking back right? Esp. if they’re in past tense. There’s always that ghostly “Once upon a time” beginning.

But Octavian felt very immediate. Especially after a certain event and the certain pages that follow.

Maybe the distinction I’m making isn’t what I think it is. It’s clearly too subtle for me.

Justine, I love it when you recommend books as it seems more often than not I haven’t ever heard of them (that “Emma” manga or this latest one, “Cures”), and I end up really enjoying them. “Cures” is being added to my (ever growing) list of books to read!

Well, this is hardly going to explain it to anybody, but here goes…

To me, YA just *feels* young. There’s a certain sense that the characters are very alive and aware, and they balance on the edge between childhood and adulthood, where we understand more than we did as children, and yet still feel things, think things, and believe things that, for many people, are lost when we “grow up”. Everything is very intense.

Which is, you know, why I love YA.

~Mary

When I was graduating Vermont College (MFA, with MT Anderson as one of my advisers, by the way!) I gave my lecture on this very issue. The book that I think is a great example of what you’re talking about is PREP. I think it would’ve actually worked better AS a YA, without the I’m-a-wise-27-year-old-looking-back veil.

I tend to think that the same type of reader might enjoy both books — under a heading like “coming of age” or something like that. But I’m not sure I EVER see the reason to tell a straight coming-of-age story with so much distance. I suppose it would make sense if there were some element of the coming of age that directly affected the adult and continues to affect them. Otherwise, why not just be in the now?

This issue is part of why my forthcoming debut novel’s in the present tense. It’s not intended to be a sweeping story for the ages. It’s just about a few months where a girl grows a bit more into herself.

Put the book you rec’d on hold at the library to add to my artillery of examples of how YA and “adult” books mishmash. Oh, and ’cause it sounded good.

You know, Justine, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this to you…but I love reading your blog more than anyone else’s. That’s saying something, because my whole favorites list is of author’s blogs. It’s just something I live for. I check your blog daily, and I’m so happy to leave comments because I know that you’ll respond. It is so nice to get a response, and seriously it’s like a mini birthday present or something. I mean, you’re a PUBLISHED, AWARD-WINNING author! Yet you still find the time to respond. I just love it. So, thanks.

Agree with the points about the older writer needing to disappear in order for the work to be truly YA (as most writers are older anyway). In the case of this novel, openly assuming an older POV definitely puts it in a different category.
However depending on the writer and their consciousness of what they are doing, this is not always apparent to the young reader. I remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books in total thrall to Laura’s narration as a pre-teen - I was surprised in later life to find that the author’s intentions (writing in her sixties) were mainly to give American children an understanding of what her life had been like on the frontier as a child. I would think she did not necessarily bother herself too much about communicating at the child’s level, though - she just did it! Magic. You only see the didacticism and the older person when rereading, years later, but to the young reader, the story is also working at their level and is everything. Was to me, anyhow.

I strongly agree with your overall point — I do think that immediacy is a major determining factor in whether a book is truly YA. Although there are some exceptions, just like there are to anything.

It’s an interesting hat-trick that MTA pulls off with Octavian, because it does feel so immediate — hell, it even feels immediate when we switch to the letters of a different POV character entirely.

Unfortunately, I have no earthly idea what any of those things are. And I live neither in Australia nor NYC. Can’t help you. Sorry.

Chervil is chervil. I don’t think I’ve ever used it, but I’ve seen the name in recipes.

I don’t know NY, of course, so I can’t help you. I suggest you try these folks:

http://www.chowhound.com/boards/18

padanus leaf? do you mean ‘pandan leaf’?

if all else fails, i suggest signing up and asking the good people at eGullet.

May: Pandanus leaf. The link you supply has it listed correctly first. The Thai name is bai toei horm. You can’t make proper coconut sticky rice and mango without it.

I’m not ready to wade through forums yet. I can’t believe that I don’t have at least one reader who knows the answer to at least one of my quessies!

First place I would try is Kalustyan’s, on Lex between 28th and 29th:

http://www.kalustyans.com/

They are worth a visit, period, but I also think they have a very good chance of having anything you need. Go. Enjoy. It’s really one of the coolest food spots in NYC.

(The second place I’d try is Penzey’s, which has a stand in the Grand Central market, although I believe the original one is in Portland? Seattle? Somewhere out there. They are less with the obscure-to-Americans Asian spices, though, and they are all dried spices/herbs so no lemons.)

Kalyustan’s will definitely have your preserved lemons, and might have chervil. They’re on Lexington and 29th-ish.

I’m not in NY, but I have some general ideas.

For Thai herbs you should try the greenmarket and other farmers markets.

Americans simply don’t cook with chervil, though you can probably find some fresh at a fancy gourmet foods store. Really I’d suggest just planting a pot of it in the kitchen.

And as for preserved lemons, I’ve found cans of them at middle eastern groceries, but they’ve never been very good.

Josh & Misha: Thanks! You (and Maureen who emailed me with the same suggestion) are my heroes! I knew NYCers would not fail me! Kalustyans has proper Moroccan preserved lemons.

Also it is walking distance! Yay!

Do they do fresh herbs as well?

Suzanne: I’ve tried all the local farmers markets. They’ve never heard of any of the herbs I want.

there are a lot of good things that can be made with pandan leaf. don’t get the extract/essence unless you really can’t find it. for coconut sticky rice, i’d skip it rather than use the essence. if you travelled less, i’d suggest growing it–grows like a weed; my aunt complains about it, LOL.

depending on where you are and what season it is, you should be able to find it, at least in the frozen foods section–or so i’ve been told by pals in the USA.

The original Penzey’s is in Milwaukee, btw.

Wikipedia is usually a better source than Google. Try here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chervil and then ask for ‘gourmet’s parsley’. I’m laughing that one of the herbs has ‘farang’ in the title as that’s generally what Thai’s call non-Thais.

Here’s what the westerners call pandanus leaf: Pandanus, Screwpine, Umbrella tree, Screw tree. Screw tree? I’m amused again.

Good luck with your herbs hunting!

May & Ava: I know what pandanus leaf is. Back home I cook with it all the time.

I just can’t find it or a whole bunch other Thai herbs here in NYC. Thai basil and Thai mint are about all I can find, which makes for pretty boring salads. I want all the yummy herbs!

I’m starting to understand my Thai food is so awful here—you can’t get any of the necessary fresh ingredients.

Where are you two? Malaysia? Singapore? You’re very lucky!

Ava: screwpine? That’s weird. I’ve never heard any of those names before—only pandanus and bai toei horm.

Yeah. No idea what any of those things are. Plus, I live in Kansas. I feel terribly…ignorant. I’m sorry I am no help whatsoever!

I can understand your reluctance to dive into forums, but the Manhattan chowhound board is bound to be useful, and the chowhound boards are pretty easy to use. You should probably check them out anyway — if they’re anything like the Bay Area chowhounds, they’re extremely useful. Also, a hoot.

In Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison suggests a mixture of parsley and fennel greens as a substitute for chervil. However, she doesn’t seem to think it’s a very good substitute.

Janet: That’s a interesting. I was going to use dill and parsley. Dill not being far off fennel. Great minds think alike, eh?

She’s right though neither substitution is satisfying. Chervil is chervil. It’s such a delicate flavour. No where near as strong as either dill or fennel. Still, I quite like dill in it’s own right and beggars can’t be choosers.

If you do make sticky rice with mango, will you invite your friends?

only if they send justine’s sister more books - I want more - they were excellent!!

…I mean only if you write more books for justine to send to me

Though I’ve not been there, I’ve been told that this place is worth a call, at least.

I live south of Malaysia in Singapore. Leave a comment in this post (I subscribed) if you still can’t find it, and I’ll talk to my Contacts for you.

oh - i know my friend ellen just bought a pot of chervil at the union square green market..

Shana: Alas growing it simply isn’t an option for me. I travel way to much to have plants or pets.

The Union Square farmers market is where I was told at one of the stalls that chervil doesn’t exist and I must be thinking of something else.

Wow. That really was an amazing speech.

My, my…can’t we just leave the vampires ALONE?!

It really was an amazing speech.

Yeah, he’s absolutely right. But don’t feel too bad. He could make that same speech in the UK and be just as right.

I know. I so want him to be wrong. He so isn’t.

foreignor? foreigner? I am all discombobulated.

[…] how people are responding to David Levithan’s provocative podcast, you can try Penni Russon, Justine Larbalestier or Maureen Johnson. (and, in case you want more, here, here, here, here, here and […]

1st 2 times! go me!

wow. becky hammon looks amazing. not that i’m an expert, but i wonder why they traded her. it doesn’t make sense. not that i’m complaining.

I soured on the NYTimes when they ran a front page article about how New York City’s dialect was dying out. Every linguist they quoted said, quite plainly that it was changing; not dying, but changing. I’d noticed other inaccuracies in their news stories, but this one did it.

For national and world news, I now turn to USA Today (when I read printed news). For NYC local news, I’ve found Newsday to be better — even though they haven’t had a NYC edition for a while.

NYT will cover the WNBA about the time they deal with science fiction in a respectful manner in the book review. In other words it’s not happening.

*sigh*

Double grr!!

Speaking as a 4th generation New Yorker (although currently living elsewhere), why are you looking for your sports news in the NYTimes?

My mother used to tell me that PMS was all mental. “When I was young, I just decided,” she told me, “that I wouldn’t have mood swings.” At that time, I could have cheerfully killed her–did she really think I was having fun crying at the drop of a hat?

When she started hitting menopause, it was excellent–the doctor put her on something temporarily–not hormone replacement therapy, just a few months to make sure her system was truly shutting down, and it gave her cramps and mood swings and she stopped telling me it was all in my mind. (Mind you, she still asks me if it’s that time of the month when she thinks I’m overreacting to something, which is going to get her stabbed if she asks it in person. Particularly if it is that time of the month.)

“I didn’t punch her because that would have been wrong.”

good for you. most of us would not have shown such restraint. i’m almost afraid to wonder what else she thinks is all in the mind.

maybe you should eat some hummus. or drink some limeade. it won’t fix the jetlag, but um….it’ll taste good. that’s all i got.

It’s only, “all in their minds” for people who are totally out of touch with their bodies. It’s also the whole “body/mind division” concept, which last time I checked mine they were still attached.

i don’t think i would have been able to stop myself from punching that boss of yours.

M’dear, I just spent merely one week at two hours off my regular schedule, and it’s beating my ass right now. In my mind, in my schmind. I want a nap.

The ability to ignore pain signals while pressing your hand to a hot stove is also in the mind. Generally speaking, when the mind is telling you something, like, “Get your frelling hand off the frelling stove!!” it is wise to listen.

Also, I mean, who doesn’t believe in jetlag? You’ve crossed six timezones in a matter of hours! You’re awake and chipper at 4am, much to the dismay of your hosts/household! What do you think is going on, excess consumption of tiny cups of airline coffee??

hmmm.. I’ve learned to ignore some pain. Like one time I was going tubing and we were going 40 mph and going across the wakes and doing double 8’s and I fell off head first into the water. My neck didn’t start hurting until like 30 minutes after. When I was having fun I didn’t have time to think about the pain but if it was quite then i could think about it and it hurt. Bad. I like to learn about the mind and brain. I want to be a Neurologist. I have this one book called blink and it talks about how we make choices without thinking about them in the blink of an eye. haha i’m 14 and im reading that. most people laugh but its really interesting.
sorry for the long post.

Celia: hah! That is too excellent for words. Have you had an I-told-you-so moment? Or are you enjoying in silence?

Rebecca and May: In my experience punching someone never turns out well. No matter how much they deserve it. I did mock her behind her back and undermine her authority though

Steve Buccheit: It’s also the whole “body/mind division” concept, which last time I checked mine they were still attached.

I am so with you! What do they think the mind is anyways? It’s your brain which is part of your body. It’s why I was never much of a cyberpunk fan—it smacked way too much of the mind/body split. All those boys seemed to want to have their brain in a bucket. No thanks. I like my body, brain and all.

Cherie: Indeed. Now try a fourteen hour difference. Body not happy.

Veejane: Yuppers. Lots and lots of peoples don’t believe in jetlag, judging from the gazillions of times I’ve been informed it doesn’t exist and that I’m just whingeing. Most of them don’t seem to have travelled much. I definitely think it’s getting worse the older I get. Le sigh.

Ally: Ignoring pain is different to saying pain doesn’t exist. Ignoring pain is all you can do sometimes.

You can make your comments as long or short as you like! No need to apologise.

While I was lucky enough to not have cramps or heavy periods in high school, I believed the other girls when they said they did.

And then, I got them too… *sigh*

Having done far too much international travel, I can confirm that jet-lag is definitely real. All those who deny it must be living in fairy-land.

Please! I think there were several I-told-you-so moments. There may have even been an I-told-you-so month.

Yeah, I’m totally with you about this “all in the mind” thing. There are a lot of things that I can’t do, no matter how much I put my heart and soul and MIND into it. I’m not underestimating the strength behind willpower or mindpower, but I do agree that there are obviously limits. To not believe in physical pain does not make it not exist.

Of course it’s all in your head. Because, well, that’s where your brain lives. And that’s what gets final say in what’s real or not.

I once had a very good sailor tell me there was no such thing a sea-sickness. Dunno if he thought differently when I barfed on him, but *I* sure felt better.

jet lag doesn’t exist?!?! who doesn;t believe in jet lag?!?! are you trying to tell me that people think that its normal to suddenly be waking up at 2 in the morning after taking a trip to a different time zone?!?!?! haven’t they ever heard of that whole internal clock thing before?!?! you know, your mind wakes you up at a certain time, gets tired at certain times (*cough*geometry*cough* wait no thats just because i have a boring teacher. nevermind.) sorry rant over

By the way, I finally got magic’s child! I got it yesterday and I’m almost done. It’s so good. if you haven’t read it yet: GO READ IT NOW~ WHY HAVEN’T YOU?!? YOU SHOULD! NOW GO!!!!!!!!!!!! (that’s all in caps which won’t show up, but it is.)

Chris S.: Hah! That’s excellent. Nothing teaches like vomit.

Dess: Why thank you! And, look, I gave you your caps back.

When I went to Australia from Montreal, I was completely exhausted at 5PM, and ended up sound asleep at 7PM. Ha! Dudes, Australia is like thirteen hours later than Eastern time. “Oh sure, jetlag doesn’t exist: look, I just had a two-hour flight and I’m perfectly fine!”

Garbriell: Right now, it’s fourteen hours ahead. They’re already in Thursday while we’re stuck here in smelly Wednesday. I want to go home!

My favorite thing to be told is “mind over matter”. Yes, that’s a good one.

So you say you’ve got terrible balance and you’re scared to climb up on the wobbly, six-foot step ladder? Well, then, just put mind over matter, and do it anyway!! Nothing to be afraid of, you’ll be fine!!

See this plastic leg cast? I wore it for six weeks!!! It itched!! I was not fine!!!!!

Works for all kinds of things, too. Like getting stuck in high places because you put mind over matter to get yourself up there and then matter came back before you could get yourself down again.

*grumbles*

~Mary

mind over matter! i hate that. i was taking a scuba diving course a few years ago and im deathly afraid of getting water in my nose because if i do, i go into coughing fits which would not b good seeing as i was under about 50 FEET OF WATER. they’re like its all in your head honey, mind over matter. its ok you wont get water in your nose. yeah right. and when i did, i was not happy with them at all. serves them right.

*be oops i kinda missed the e there. and thatnk you for my capital letters justine. it seems more threatening/ firmly suggesting that way.

YAY! your home! or according to scott you are. lol the cemetary looked awesome! it would be cooler if there were zombies in it lol

“or to offer me crappy remedies that I’ve already bloody tried and don’t bloody work (and, no, I don’t care whether they work for you or your Great Aunt Tilda)”

Ooh, cranky-pants. They’re just trying to help, justien. Seriously, hope you feel better soon. how can you not? You’re in America! When you could be freezing your arse off in Sydney!

Justine–is it really fourteen hours? Huh. I really thought it was thirteen. Anyway, the point is, it’s a lot!

Mary & Dess: Clearly you both need to work on your zen master arts!

Ally: There were zombies. Just very small very slow moving ones.

Nah, we’re not home. We just left home. We’re in NYC.

Margo: Oh hush. I just checked the temp back home and it’s gorgeous. Wish I was there!

Gabrielle: Right now it’s fourteen. Depends on the time of the year and how the daylight savings line up.

it may be alright in sydney, but it’s 15 degrees and windy and rainy and grey in melbourne today. one of those ‘i want to stay in bed all day’ days.

Jetlag IS all in the mind–at least, deregulation in the signals your brain sends out causes it. Doesn’t mean your mind doesn’t have impacts on the rest of your body, though! People are silly.
Technically, cramps aren’t so much. The hormones aren’t all caused to be released by the brain.
(And I sure wish it really was all in the mind. I literally get partially paralyzed, cannot-move-even-if-I-try, from pain… >=( grr)

i dated a guy in college who told me that i wouldn’t have migraines if i told myself my head didn’t hurt. he also told me i wouldn’t have allergies if i didn’t let the pollen/allergen bother me.

needless to say, i married someone else.

anyway, i’m going to have a baby sometime in the next two weeks. and if someone has the never to tell me it won’t hurt if i don’t believe it hurts, i may end up in prison for murder. (my husband is much too smart to try this, but if any of the nurses/techs/doctors try it…well, a pregnant woman can’t be held responsible, can she? )

orangedragonfly: you’re baby is here almost already? yay! i think german doctors and nurses on the whole aren’t so much of the mind over matter church, you’ll probably be alright in that department. (you are still in germany, no?)

onedragonfly: It hurts like f@#$, but you get this amazing little human being at the end of it.Plus your husband will think you are the most amazing person in the world for, like, years. Much better deal than jetlag.

marrije: yeah, i’m in germany, but i’m seeing american doctors. i go to landstuhl army medical center…you know, the big hospital in germany where all those injured in iraq go? and yeah, my baby’s almost here. i’m due june 12, i can hardly believe it!!

penni: i’m expecting the pain. people keep telling me that it might be easier for me after 12+ weeks of contractions, but i’m not counting on it. anyway, i know it will hurt, but i just keep thinking about holding my little boy. the rest i’ll deal with as it comes…

I wish I could go back and punch the crap out of every doctor who told me my menstrual pain was all in my head. Because after all that, it turned out I had the worst endometriosis imaginable. I had to have a full hysterectomy. No kids, either. The sad thing is if that those doctors who, when I was 18, 20, 22, told me it was all in my head had actually taken the time to find out what was going on, my fertility could have been preserved.

i do need to gain some skills in the zen arts. (or so i’m told. tehehehe) i hope all goes well with your baby orangedragonfly!

Doctors (all male doctors) told me that my terrible pain and suffering was all in my head until I was diagnosed with endometriosis by a lovely, intelligent, kind and in all ways wonderful WOMAN doctor. I laughed at those idiots. HA! HA! It of course was very painful to laugh but I did and I am now on the road to glorious recovery. So get checked ladies, it’s very important and can be very rewarding when experiencing problems that small minded men could never understand. =)

Faith: Evil bastards!

Orangedragonfly: Hope the labour’s quick and not too outrageously painful! Keep us posted!

faith: i completely second justine!!! i had ten or so doctors tell me i didn’t have migraines, that i just had sinus trouble or that i was exaggerating the pain because i was “just a kid”. (they started when i was 10) funny thing….a about two years ago my doctor put me on a preventative migraine medicine and lo and behold my migraines completely stopped. from 3-4 debilitating migraines a week to no pain! only took complaining for 16 years…

anyway, not as drastic as your problems, and without the awful result, but is it any wonder that so many people have negative feeling about doctors??!

(sorry for the ramble…)

hey, new here, but read the comments and wanted to post.

Half of me thinks that the doctors are humans too and thus are responsible for as much human error as the rest of us. While the other half thinks that sometimes they get a little too full of themselves and stop thinking, maybe this person could be that 1%, or whatever and are far too eager to think whatever you have isn’t anything serious.

But you know your body more than anyone else and if you honestly expect it to be something more, persist. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

orangedragonfly, my cousin had a baby a few weeks ago. They gave her a drug through the IV that numbed her waist down. Numbed as in can’t feel anything at all. No side effects to the baby. It’s an epidural without the creepy and painful needle into your spinal cord. Just into your IV. But if you want to go the natural way, I can understand why. By the way, my birthday’s June 11, random, but I thought it was kinda cool.

Very interesting post and I appreciated reading it. I am with ya on that one!

ugh. how. i. hate. that. somebody once told me i wouldn’t have alleig ractions to pollen i i refused too. while it was a interesting idea, i almost puncehed them. coulnd they see dripping, tearing-up, allergic-puffy-eyes me couldn’t have any control? how baka. like i said, hate. that.

I guess when everything’s said like that, it’s true - absolutely everything is in the head. But it’s hard to remember that when you feel like someone is throwing hammers at your abdomen continuously for a week.

oh, funny. y’know, someone once told me that after you travel a lot, you get used to jetlag. i told him he could pay for the trips, and sure, i’d try it out.

@ celia: an older friend said the same thing to me once. i tried not to say anything. mission unsuccessful.

@ faith: i had an aquaintance, not really a friend, didn’t know her too well, who had a partial hysterectomy. she said she slapped the first doctor she saw. don’t know whether to believe her completely, but it seems perfectly justified.

i’d like to say something to all the rest of you (i love your comments.) but i can’t, seeing as that would take up about an hour and a half of my time. loved reading your comments. or did i say that already?

cheers, elli

i love the spelling “gaol”–but what perhaps you might not know is that it is really the same word as “goal” (makes sense, eh? the little cage you pop the ball or whatever into…) and the two spellings are indistinguishable in lots of 18th-century books…

here’s the oed:

[ME. had two types, from Northern or Norman Fr., and Central or Parisian Fr. respectively: 1) ME. gay(h)ole, -ol, gayll(e, gaill(e, gayl(e, gaile, a. ONF. gaiole, gayolle, gaole (mod. Picard gayole, Walloon gaioule); 2) ME. jaiole, jayle, jaile, jayll, a. OF. jaiole, jaole, jeole, geole, cage, prison, F. geôle prison (Besançon javiole cage for fowls) = obs. It. gaiola, Sp. gayola (also, from F., jaula cage, cell), Pg. gaiola cage:Romanic and pop.Lat. *gavila (med.L. gabiola, 1229 in Brachet) for *caveola, dim. of cavea hollow, cavity, den, cage, coop: see CAGE. Of the two types, the Norman Fr. and ME. gaiole, gaole, came down to the 17th c. as gaile, and still remains as a written form in the archaic spelling gaol (chiefly due to statutory and official tradition); but this is obsolete in the spoken language, where the surviving word is jail, repr. Old Parisian Fr. and ME. jaiole, jaile. Hence though both forms gaol, jail, are still written, only the latter is spoken. In U.S. jail is the official spelling. It is difficult to say whether the form goal(e, common, alike in official and general use, from the 16th to the 18th c., was merely an erroneous spelling of gaol, after this had itself become an archaism, or was phonetic: cf. mod.F. geôle (ol).
1668 R. L’ESTRANGE Vis. Quev. (1708) 6 Some again are..boring their very Noses with hot Irons, in rage that they cannot come to a Resolution, whether they shall say Face or Visage; whether they shall say Jayl or Gaol; whether Cony or Cunny.]

1. a. A place or building for the confinement of persons accused or convicted of a crime or offence; a prison. Now, a public building for the detention of persons committed by process of law.

c1275 11 Pains Hell 219 in O.E. Misc. 153 In helle is a deop gayhol. c1290 S. Eng. Leg. I. 187/105 Heo setten him in a swye deork put, at in e gayhole was. c1380 Sir Ferumb. 1970 To my Gayhol go anon & e fyue at bu er Brynge hem out euerechon. 1463 Bury Wills (Camden) 17, I wille the presoneres in the Gayle haue o day brede, mete, and drynkke, and eche persone jd. 1494 FABYAN Chron. VII. 380 The duke of Burgoyne..wt the prouost of Paris, came vnto the Gayole, and there receyued the sayd Peter. a1548 HALL Chron., Hen. VI 170b, He was committed to the gayle of Newgate. 1572 Act 14 Eliz. c. 5 §38 To such sufficient persons dwellinge nighe the said Goales. 1647 CLARENDON Hist. Reb. v. §51 To be committed to the Common Goal of Colchester. 1689 Wonderful Predict. Nostradamus 3, Beer shall fail The Great one Cold, and famish’t in a Gaol. 1779 J. BURGOYNE Let. to Constituents (ed. 3) 15 The goals..were resorted to for other recruits. 1846 MCCULLOCH Acc. Brit. Empire (1854) II. 497 At that period the gaols were..depositories of pestilence. 1848 Act 11 & 12 Vict. c. 42 §21 To remand the party accused..to the common gaol or house of correction, or other prison, lock-up house, or place of security in the county.

depositories of pestilence!

My first born child asked me today, quite seriously and with a curious tone, ‘Can I eat Una’s brains?’ Naturally I thought of you.

And there you are, of course, Adelaide is the city of zombies.

ok, this whole gaol, jail thing? awesome! i knew what a gaol was, from reading zillions of old books, but i (stupid) never connected the two words as far as pronunciation goes. i always said something like “gay-ole” in my head. which is just not right. so, thank you for fixing yet another byproduct of my consumptive reading habits.

i went to borders but i couldn’t find your books. scott’s were there. but not yours. i wanted yours! so, i guess i’m going to have to order them? or are you in some other section, like that i didn’t look in?

as far as firstborn children, mine is a dream, but, he has a tendency to be bossy. kind of like me. those firsts and their bossiness!

also, adelaide? never been there, but love the name. it sounds old fashioned and kinda juicy. with lace.

i read a book a long time called adelaide falling star. i am in love with that name. and i also couldn’t find your books at borders. the people kinda got an earful. (what do you mean you dont have any justine larbalestier books?!?!?! did you EVER have any? NO?!?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! DO YOU REALIZE SHE IS A NORTON WINNING AUTHOR?!?! no i don’t want you to order it for me, thank you. i’ll get it somewhere else. hmph.)

although, they did have so yesterday which i bought but not the day i was there (monday). when i went to the mall yesterday they had it. but still no books by you. i was depressed. barnes and noble has it though. i called them.

awesome! i will check at b&n.

I feel the same way about “grey.” “Grey” sounds so much… grey-er, than “gray.”

i had the exact same borders experience. we had words. i also told them that i didn’t want them to order it for me but to order it for EVERYBODY. like, in bulk. sheesh.

I’m with you on gaol, if for no other reason than The Ballad Of Reading Jail just looks so wrong.

“Jail” is the US spelling; “gaol” is the UK spelling (or used to be; perhaps it’s changing there?)

This wouldn’t be the first time Australia has adopted a US spelling; the Labor Party’s name is a precedent.

The spelling rules for Canadian English are a UK-US mixture.

are you serious about jail and gaol being pronounced the same, people? I feel so foreign again…

They’re pronounced exactly the same.

Dan Goodman: That might have been true forty years ago, but all my life “gaol” has been on its way out.

I can’t speak for the UK. But I’ve seen the “jail” spelling in the Guardian.

Justine, since you are from part of the former British empire, you are perfectly entitled to use British spellings without further explanation.

If we Yanks use them, it would be another story (unless we’re quoting Oscar Wilde or something).

I SHOULD spell ‘jail’ ‘gaol’ but I never do. Call me a rebellious Sydneysider. And I’ve been to Adelaide before. It’s such a beautiful city.

I’ve actually read almost all of Jacqueline Wilson’s books. I probably started when I was 8 and had finished so many of them by the time I was 12 (I didn’t read them end-to-end, obviously). She’s a great author.

I find it amazing that one little word can start so many conversations…
I only use ‘gaol’ because when I was little and writing something (with the word ‘jail’ in it) my mum read it and made me rewrite it with the ‘Australian’ spelling, and gave me a ten minute lecture on spelling things properly because I would get into trouble at scholl if i didn’t. Of course, the fact that my teacher (at the time) was American meant that she re-corrected my work and changed the spelling.
I was peeved.

justine i just love your last name its so pretty

i am most fond of your rants.

though actually diana’s boys aren’t all that little any more. make me feel ancient for having been around (& concious) when they were born…

Marrije: male children are always their “boys” no matter how old they get. Scott’s grandmother refers to her “boys and girls” and they are all considerably older than Diana’s children.

i am most fond of your rants.

You’re always encouraging me to be bad! I am sweetness and light. Sweetness and light, I tell you!

i know! i am knitting you a little pink sweater! with a sweet pink zombie on it! do you like angora?

Pink! Angora! You win! I will rant whenever you want me to rant!

I do think this Paris Hilton thing is stupid. I mean, she completely broke the law, so why should she not go to jail? I even saw that some people sent Arnold Schwarzenegger (okay, don’t laugh, that last name is IMPOSSIBLE to spell) a petition, saying how Paris Hilton “brings excitement to their otherwise rather mundane lives.” Crap, crap, crap.

ahhhh, paris hilton. ahahahahahahahaaaa. i actually don’t pay all that much attention to what celebs are doing, which is why, when people say things to me such as, “OMG REESE AND RYAN BROKE UP,” and I look at them and go, “reese and who did what?” i tend to get looks of incredulity, often accompanied by comments such as “what cave have you been living in for the past twenty years?” *shrugs*

Wow. In my amazingly USian vocabulary (southeast Michigan), I definitely read “Gaol” with a hard “G”, and wondered when they were sending her to another country, instead of jail. Maybe they can send her to a jail in Gaol.

ohh so “gaol” is jail?? i didn’t know that.. i think we should do what hank wants to do to hitler and put here in the evil baby orphanage haha

and paris hilton should have gone to gaol years ago.

evil baby orphanage?
I would rather read about royals who actually have some sort of ‘official’ connection to our country, rather than reading about the “aussie” princess mary…
And at least the royal british family are only in the paper when they break up or if they go dressed as a nazi to a party a week or so before their grandmother is due to visit germany…instead of every. single. week. Even when all they’ve done is change their ’style’ even if they haven’t really.

Yeah, Evil Baby Orphanage is definitely the place for Paris. That would really decrease World Suck. She wouldn’t have become famous and I would have never had to hear that stupid song she released.

The only foreseeable problem would be that she later finds out who her parents are and then the press has a field day with the fact that the Nerdfighters stole her and put her in the Evil Baby Orphanage, thus making her famous anyway. But then everyone would know that she was evil, right?

there was some idiotic protest up in one of the new england states (i think it might have been up near boston, mass.) it was something like “free paris” or something along those lines. the one girl who they intervewed said that people would be out of a job if paris went to jail. (by the way, this girl was a professional paris-impersonator. yes. they do exist. shocking i know.) this is stupid. she broke the law she goes to jail. end of story.

on a lighter note, i just started reading i am the messenger by marcus zusak last night. im on page 169. (my new favorite number. 13×13.) it is sooooooooooo good. wicked book. you people should read it. now. is he Australian? Just wondering because he uses fun Australian words like you have in magic or madness and magic lessons.

i don’t know what she’s done recently to warrant a prison sentence (or is it just a lifetime achievement type thing?) but what if she went to prison and bangkok hilton got a reality show with nicole richie? now that would be worth watching.

good point nichole..OMG i hated her song which it didn’t help that it was highly repeatitive and could get stuck in your heaf very easily. she should have been arrested just for that. We should have snotty rich orphanage for all the people that make americans look like dim-witts cuz shes not really evil just very highly rich and blonde

my comment up there is awaiting moderation? haha

I agree with you 100% about Paris. I hate it when people get famous solely because of their parents…

Hey, um, is “gaol” just an Aussie thing? Or is a good deal of the US saying it too? Because I’ve never heard that before…Mmm maybe I’m sheltered here in NYc and cut off from the states around me…

Ummm… well the whole Paris thing. I could care less but celebrities should be treated like normal people. Marcus Zusak’s book the “the book thief”. it was awesome.

britanne, i’ve never heard gaol before either. (im fron PA) it means jail right?

@Dess-yes, gaol is, I believe, slang for jail.

Paris Hilton. Of course, everyone is talking about her. I couldn’t agree more. Pari Hilton is famous for being famous, rich, pretty, and for drinking and partying. Just because she was born with good genes with a silver spoon in her mouth doesn’t give her the right to do whatever she wants. What have she ever done? She should be forced to go to a rehab center, not sent to jail, though she did do wrong. It might do her some good.

If I was to hear about gossip, I would rather it be about people I knew, people I cared about. Or at least people like Lindsay Lohan or Hilary Duff, who, despite being party girls, actually have a career.

You do rant quite a lot. *laugh* But I enjoy your rants, because you state your true opinion. In this case, I agree 100%.

Notes is a fabby book.

Although I realize that only North Americans incarcerate people in “jail” rather than “gaol,” I’m still partial to our more phonetic rendition of it.

I knew a girl in grad school who seemed to think that Oscar Wilde’s last poem was about his “Reading Goal,” i.e. how many books he hoped to consume.

“1. Book banning clashes with everything in your wardrobe. Every. Single. Thing.”

Unless your wardrobe is completely composed of IGNORANCE!

oh. my. god. yeah, okay, i’ve ranted enough about this. cheers for reason number one. it rocks. so do all the others.

growl. argh. rar. hiss. snarl.

SF Tidbits for 5/11/07…

Mark Chitty has the scoop on Peter F. Hamilton’s upcoming books and stories, including the spiffy new Jim Burns cover of The Dreaming Void. Jonathan Strahan is looking forward to the upcoming anthology Rewired: the Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by …

banned book week! i had no idea that existed. awesome.

I totally agree. Like Maureen said, no one wants to be known as a “book banner”. Jeez, I can’t even imagine being a Book Banner AND a fashion victim!

I totally agree with you, Justine. Seriously, all the kids in that school are gonna want to read the book now. And it’s not like the school is making it disappear from Oklahoma. There are magical places that they call bookshops! The people from the school are getting even more ridiculous as they’re trying to pick up the pieces, now that they see the hordes of angry readers email-attacking them. I strongly recommend reading Maureen Johnson’s blog about this. All the info’s there. Plus she’s funny.

For debate class I wrote about why books shouldn’t be banned. By English teacher loved it. (In one class all the books we read were banned at some point. It was ‘unintentional’ according to our teacher, but he has a tendency to lie. And to sing about Lord of the Flies and 1984, but that’s not the point.)It does indeed have the opposite effect. I had been procrastinating putting a hold on “The Bermudez Triangle” but when I heard it was banned I had to read it. Who could stand not knowing why someone insanely tried to ban a book?

Book-banning is absolutely the dumbest thing you can do if you want to stop people from reading it.

Especially when there are so many more effective techniques, like making a high school English requirement, or making a really bad film version of it.

But if you really want to silence a book, try enthusiastically praising it for saying the opposite of what it really says. Don’t believe me? Try making a Bible-banger hold still while you read ‘em the Sermon on the Mount.

Veeeery long article coming out in the new issue of The Edge of the Forest about how Maureen rocks, TBT rocks, and book banning DOES NOT ROCK EVER.

I don’t think people who make complaints like that actually *READ* the Bible, (or at least the old testament). The same goes for people who say young people are reading trash littered with sex and violence and should turn back to the classics, like Shakespeare…need I say more?

Hey, look at that, I had the first comment…

Oh, well said.

I just ordered my copy.

um…. i could go on and on about this at great length, but i know i’ve done that here before anyway. if i didn’t already have the book, i’d go get it right now.

of course, isn’t it secretly every author’s dream to be banned? think of the publicity! ha.

Elmo: Indeed.

Sherwood: Onya!

it is my goal in life to have a book of mine banned in the us. it will mean i have Arrived.

Rebecca and Lili: You know I used to think that it would be grand to be banned, but having seen one acquaintance have a book banned with accompanying threats and poison letters and “we know where you live” kinds of intimidation, well, I’m less excited by the idea.

And then there’s all the books being quietly removed from shelves all over the US of A. Maureen only knows that her book was banned because the librarian told her. That doesn’t always happen. Mostly there’s no fuss, no publicity, no nothing.

“having seen one acquaintance have a book banned with accompanying threats and poison letters and “we know where you live” kinds of intimidation, well, I’m less excited by the idea.”

wow. really. you know, i’m just kinda furious about all this. i mean, every time it happens, i get mad, but right now it’s the sort of thing that makes me want to fly over to oklahoma and tell the woman exactly what i think of this. however, instead, i’m just going to sit down and read the book. seems to me that’s the best way to protest.

Rebecca: Absolutely. The thing is though I bet she really does think she’s doing a good thing. There are people who genuinely believe that homosexuality is evil and want to protect people from it. They’re wrong and they’re violating students’ first amendment rights in their wrongness, but most of them actually mean well. I think that’s important to remember.

The folks who were harassing the writer I mentioned above did not mean well.

I just bought 13 little blue envelopes yesterday and i can’t put it down..its awesome and there is nothing bad in it..(even though we arn’t talking about it)

if homosexuality is allowed in public and people are aloud to state their opinion in the U.s. then why was it banned. they have a choice to read it or not, they are not made to. It would be different if it was like maybe a private school but dang

“most of them actually mean well.”

yes. you’re right. but i have a very hard time remembering that. so many of my friends are fighting people like this, so i guess, to me, it’s almost personal.

Shouldn’t people just be glad kids are reading rather than spending time unnecessarily banning books? I remember reading ‘A Clockwork Orange’ at 12 and having got it from my high school’s library. I turned out perfectly fine, actually.

I hadn’t heard of the book, but I’ve just ordered it from Amazon because of this post. I love the smell of banned books in the, erm, evening.

If there is one thing that I’m absolutely adamant about…its being against censorship! Sure, stories that include homosexuals bother people. Stories that include sex bother people. Stories that curse. AND A MILLION OTHER REASONS!!! So what? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Don’t be ignorant and prevent other people from reading it just because you don’t like it. GRRR. It really ticks me off. Plus, don’t parents know what this does? Um, kids like to rebel. Tell them they can’t do something and its a pretty surefire way they’re going to die of curiosity if they don’t find out why.

yeah the whole rebelling thing is true..im a kid i should know and heres proof:

okay at my school we have a center hallway we call “the hub” which is in the shape of a circle..we have three hallways going off of it so it looks like a round-about..well one day our principal decides that it would make more since to make it go one way “only to your right when entering the hub” which was really stupid because if you were entering the hub and your locker was right to your left you had to walk all the way around!KIDS WENT INSANE!! everybody was walking the wrong way and making protest and the only reason we did it was because he told us not to

I go to a private school and I don’t think that any books have ever been banned..(That might also be an australian thing) but we do have a senior reading section that that students 14 and under aren’t *supposed* to borrow…but they do anyway.
ally, donna, dawn: You’re all so eloquent! Well said!

haha why thank you

I think Scott should put Bartlesville in the next Midnighters book, and not in a flattering way.

she really does think she’s doing a good thing. There are people who genuinely believe that homosexuality is evil and want to protect people from it. They’re wrong and they’re violating students’ first amendment rights in their wrongness, but most of them actually mean well.

Yeah, but so what? Everyone thinks that they’re the good guys. Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks “Heh. Another beautiful day to sully by committing highly immoral acts and promoting the dark side of the force” (well, sometimes I do, but you take my point). The people who write death threats think that they’re the good guys too. All the bigots, including the ones who kill people, genuinely believe that whatever their personal hobbyhorse is–homosexuality, interracial couples, uppity black people, uppity women–is evil and that they’re protecting the world, or the part of it they care about.

I just don’t care about people’s good intentions any more. When they do something bigoted and foul, they’re foul, and to hell with them.

Hi Justine:

I’m the Assistant Director at the Bartlesville Public Library and a big Maureen Johnson fan. We’re all pretty sick about the decision here. Here’s what I just sent to the paper.

Dear Editor:

It has come to my attention that the book THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE by Maureen Johnson has been removed from the library at the Bartlesville Mid-High. The book is the story of three girls who have been best friends since childhood. The summer before their senior year, Nina goes away to an academic camp while Avery and Mel work as waitresses in a restaurant. Nina falls in love with a boy at camp, and Avery and Mel fall in love with each other. While Mel believes she is a lesbian, Avery seems to be experimenting. The heart of the story is how their friendship changes when Nina comes home to find her two best friends are a couple, and how the friendship changes again when Avery dumps Mel. The book doesn’t advocate for anything other than forgiveness and friendship.

The book is a fine example of a young adult problem novel, the characters are interesting, and the situations are realistic. It contains no sex scenes, just kissing.

The book was removed from the Mid-High because of the homosexual content.

Students at the mid-high are freshmen and sophmores in high school. I am quite certain there are students at the mid-high who are in same-sex romatic relationships–statistics show that 2 teenagers in 20 identify themselves as gay. Popular culture has many examples of gay couples. It ludicrous to think that any mid-high student is sheltered from and ignorant of the existance of homosexuality.

THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE is not on any required reading list. It was one of many books made available in the mid-high library for recreational reading–a very important component of anyone’s education. Nobody HAS to read the book. Removing it doesn’t protect or shelter anybody, it simply denies a good book to students who want to read it.

I find it fascinating that the mother whose complaint got the book removed from the library suggested it be replaced with the Bible. Aside from the fact that I’m sure the mid-high library has plenty of Bibles, I wonder whether the complainant has ever read the Bible. While it is one of the great books or our civilization and a guiding light for millions of Christians, it contains plenty of homosexuality, rape, murder, drinking, and incest. I don’t think anyone would suggest that the Bible be removed from libraries due to this content–that’s not what the story is about. By the same token, while THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE features homosexual characters, it is a story about friendship.

I would wonder why a student whose mother is so homophobic would check out a book obviously about gay characters to begin with. Anyone reading the back of the book, or the flyleaf, can clearly see that the book features two female characters who fall in love with each other.

I have gay friends, and they are just like anybody else. I can verify that homosexuality is not catching–I’ve been hanging out with some of my gay friends for years, and so far I’m still heterosexual. I’ve also read books about gay characters, and I have not been converted. In fact, I read books about gay characters when I was in high school–still straight. Reading a book about gay characters won’t turn you gay.

The real issue here may be this: reading is the ultimate virtual reality game. When you’re reading, to a certain extent you are living inside the world of the book, and inside the minds of the characters in the book. Reading breeds compassion, tolerance, and understanding. Reading teaches you to think for yourself. Ultimately, that may be what book banners are so scared of.

Beth DeGeer

Awesome letter, Beth.

wow, beth is a ninja librarian superhero!

I’m overwhelmed by how many great letters people have written. Beth IS a ninja librarian superhero.

hear, hear.

hello justine! off topic but i just got through reading the glossary and there are some really weird words haha like a sloppy joe being a sweater and i’ve heard of Spagbol form uglies but i didnt know what the “bol” part was..is bolognese bologna? and pop rocks arn’t strange..i like them, i remeber getting them when i was little

well i hope ur trip is going good

[…] Let’s start with Justine Larbalestier’s justified outrage about another recent YA book-banning. This kind of shit really pisses me off–thinking about it probably won’t help me get out of my pissy mood, actually. If I didn’t already have a copy of The Bermudez Triangle (yes, I read some “girl books”–want to make something out of it?) it’d be enough to get me to go buy one. Since I do have a copy I’ll have to go buy the rest of Maureen’s back catalogue. (I was kind of planning to do that anyway based on how much I enjoyed Devilish. And I’m not the only one–it made the NYPL set of recommended teen books.) […]

ranty goodness, that is. and as basketball is one of a few sports i actually know something about (and sometimes enjoy watching), i second your rantiness.

and speaking of which…. PLAYOFFS!!!!

Heh. I tend to go with “pituitary cases” instead of genetic freaks. Because indeed, all pro athletes are genetic freaks.

Accountants have to have talent to;). Case in point: Enron.

It’s interesting that people refer to people who are different as “genetic freaks.” The way natural selection works is that we all come out a little different and the ones that are more suited to the environment thrive. We should be celebrating these differences rather than condemning them.

But don’t take my word for it. Ask Charles Darwin.

Oh, I think that the genetic freaks who end up playing pro ball are pretty well celebrated, don’t you? They often get gobs and gobs of money, and fame, and hero worship. The fact that cranky geeks like myself call them nasty names is a reaction to the general veneration of athletes.

Natural selection isn’t moralistic. A person who’s a ‘genetic freak’ shouldn’t be celebrated for being ‘more evolved’ or anything.

To me, the answer is that I find something beautiful about watching Amare Stoudemire move with his absurd combination of grace and power. (I don’t watch the WNBA, but I love watching Essence Carson, too, if it makes you feel better) Those genetic freaks are freakish in a specific way which I find aesthetically pleasing. But I don’t expect everyone to see it that way. Not everyone has the same aesthetic sense that I do, and they may not find beauty in a 7 foot tall man with superhuman agility showing off his abilities in a competitive setting.

Eric: Exactly!

Aaron: What you said, too. I do watch NBA games—especially during playoff season—even though they ain’t quite as pleasing to me as the WNBA. But I second your Stoudemire admiration. Ben Wallace too. Incredible!

i think they should make a sport for short people who have no coordination and a very (emphasis on very. cant do caps.) short attention span. i need a sport designed for people like that.(me)

dess, i’m pretty sure you’ve just described the marketing campaign for “lawn darts.”

hey justine, its a ittle off topic but I was wondering if you were considered an american citizen since you live here half of the year..or just a “visitor”..probably an aussie all the way

Sounds interesting.well Gourmet Chocolate at www.gourmet-chocolates.org

lawn darts? never heard of it. hmmm… there may be hope for me after all! *goes to google to find out what lawn darts is*

aw this bites! lawn darts is banned in the us because it can cause skull damage if not done correctly. it looks like something along the lines of horseshoes. only with darts. too bad it’s banned. there goes my chances at a sport i can play.

yeah me! i havnt read the post yet but i wanted to be first haha
okay i read it

first off i have no idea what manga is
senond i hate preppy girl books. they are everywhere and stuff like that doesnt happen. all my friends are preppy and they are nice people and the “leader” of the “group” absolutly hates sterotype people. People don’t go in the halls pushing books out of peoples hands and the preppy people don’t go around “ruling the school” i hate it!

hehe i feel better

okay i was bored so i looked up manga. So, is it those japanese comic things? or some other manga..because i know what those comic things are but i didnt know the name..they look confusing don’t you like read them backwards and right to left?

A world without reality TV, manga**, Micheal Hussey, Antony & the Johnsons, Beyonce, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter or Meg Cabot.

Wow…you’ve just made the 1980s sound like…heaven. Actually, you had me at “a world without reality TV.”

oh, I hate writers that do that. that is a definite pet peeve. Also, it’s lazy!

“People don’t go in the halls pushing books out of peoples hands and the preppy people don’t go around “ruling the school””

funny, but every so often, i find myself thinking about that. my high school was definitely not your run of the mill adolescent prison, but i still don’t see how it’s normal in any school for people to act the way they do in movies, or in books sometimes. like everyone in a college class laughing at a kid and calling him names, for example. right there in the class in front of other people or professors. it would be an understatement to describe my current school as prep city (or fake tan/popped collar city or rich white brat city, etc.), but still, even here, no one is like that. maybe it’s ’cause the actual city i’m in is pretty easygoing overall and things would be different if i were in a more conservative town. but i can’t see people acting that way. and it really annoys me when they do in books, ’cause i just don’t buy it. maybe at the middle school level i would. but even middle school wasn’t so much about the out-in-the-open in-your-face type of meanness. it was mostly the behind-your-back or the subtle-put-downs or the not-quite-accidents. when things heated up, sure stuff was said out loud and plainly for all to hear, but it just wasn’t as blatant as a lot of books (and even more movies) make it seem.

and also, i may have mentioned this before, but monster vampires annoy the crap out of me. and sometimes vengeful angry ghosts too, usually if they don’t have a good explanation for why they are vengeful or angry and the only reason they are is because they are ghosts. if people are morons, they need to have a reason to be morons. and they can be all moron all the time. everyone has good and bad. the whole evil ghost/evil vampire/evil dictator/evil take-your-pick just really irritates me.

i am with veronica on the reality tv. *shudder* however, on the whole, i don’t much like 80’s pop stuff either. especially some of the popular clothing and hair styles. *double shudder* although if i’d been a teenager in the 80’s, it would have been a hell of a lot easier for me to do my hair. all i’d have to do is let it run wild and free, and all the girls using thirteen cans of hairspray and teasing in the bathroom between classes would have been sooooo jealous.

“and they can be all moron all the time.”

i meant that they can’t be all moron all the time. *sigh*

Well, you know, if your target market isn’t real teenagers but rather 30something YA readers…

if i read one more fecking manuscript where the protag has some embarrassing incident in the cafeteria in the first chapter, i will commit seppuku.

Just out of interest, what is seppuku?

My pet peeve is books that ask you to accept something really weird, with no stup to it:
eg. Vampire book, set in 2005-8 (or whatever)with no mention of magic whatsoever (and no other explanation), and say: well, all their bodily functions have stopped (digestion, nervous system, respiratory system, etc.), but they can still breathe and move and they have to drink blood…doesn’t. work.
However, I’m perfectly happy to believe in vampires (whose bodily functions have stopped) and anything else the author throws at me if they tell me why and how this is possible, whether this is caused by magic or a freak nuclear explosion..whatever.
My friend says I shouldn’t ask those questions. I blame my parents…A chemist and a biologist…

David: Well, you know, if your target market isn’t real teenagers but rather 30something YA readers . . .

Then they’re really barking up the wrong tree. Cecil and me are their target audience and we both hates it.

Oh, hush, my sample size is plenty big enough.

I roll my eyes when I read a book that has a protagonist who is passionate about reading and/or writing. I mean, they tell authors to write what they know, but this one is plain old played out.

There’s a big wide world out there. Pick a hobby that supports your character’s personality and learn about it.

Eric

I am told preppy is coming back. Pink izod and everything. So these YA novels you decry are actually canaries warning, “Flee! Flee for your life!!”

ritual disembowelment, elmo.

not a pretty picture.

Rape scenes. I am completely sick of them. I find it a rare thing to be able to read a fantasy novel that has no rape in it. It’s almost like rape has become the default setting, like car chases in the movies. Historical mysteries seem to be getting rape heavy now too.

When I get to the rape scene I’m done with the book nine times out of ten.

Pleads: Can’t writers come up with something other than rape? Abandon the default.

i am now picturing the ultimate bad novel, an urban fantasy set now but where all the references are from the 80s. In the first chapter, the heroine is raped in the cafeteria.

…by an unexplained vampire?

When I hear things like this, the wicked creature sitting on my shoulder starts goading me to try to write it and write it well.

Usually I manage to resist.

I don’t really have anything to rant about authors I read nor the eighties. The good thing about the eighties was that I was born. Yay? The authors that I read, I like. I don’t venture too far out unless I’ve gotten good reviews…I’m just that picky.

I used to see this all the time in bad romance novels. Heroines who were supposed to be my age wearing leggings and oversized sweaters.

But everything old is new again, and now all the starlets are wearing leggings and oversized shirts.

What bugs me most is authors taking polls on their writing loops about whether such and such reference will be understood by the teenage audience or does “no one say that anymore.” Slang is regional, what is “in” or how cliquey a particular faction is or what faction of the school is the most “popular” or the meanest differs from school to school.

There’s nothing I’m “sick” of like that because any element you can name is going to be one person’s pet peeve and another person’s favorite element. And even if it is your pet peeve, you’re going to come across an exception that blows your mind.

Deep. All opinions for one and and opinion for all…
or something to that effect, anyway.
jennifer, aka literaticat: commit it to whom?

okay, something that really bothers me is when people don’t end their books right. when they try to be all original with the ending and then it doesn’t end how i want it to. the publisher may have liked the creativity, but i wanted it to end how it was supposed to. either happy ending or a tragedy, but a lot of times people skirt in between the lines and get nowhere.

i also don’t like happy endings..there has to be something that went wrong

self, elmo.

i probably won’t REALLY though - as i haven’t got a sword by my desk.

yet.

One of my friends in high school was obsessed with the 80s. Our school had an 80s club and we used to listen to an 80s radio show during art class (this in the late 90s)
And yet we mostly talked about Friends and Eminem and no one wore neon leggings.

You are a riot! Me hates those books too. Me hates them forever!

I hear you, sister. But don’t you sometimes wonder why the editors let them get away with that crap?

Meeks: Some of the editors are children of the eighties and all. Maybe they’re just blind to it?