Ah, the "problem parent in young adult lit." Or so says the recent essay in the New York Times, written by Julie Just.
Before I go on, let me just rant -- do we ever see children and teens comment about their representation in adult books? Whether they are absent, or too good, or not available? Please send the links my way if you have. Sure, it is interesting to see how (x) is portrayed in books, with x being just about anything: parents, school, college, siblings, work, economics, etc. What isn't interesting is when the approach is so "me, me, me" by the writer. That is, the adult reader who reads young adult books and cares primarily about how the teens they read about perceive the adults in their life. It's like eavesdropping on kids in a mall, wondering if the teens think your clothes are cool or if your haircut is too "soccer mom." Adults, if your primary interest in books is how adults are portrayed? Read adult books.
I'm not saying Just does this. I'm just saying that's a rant I've been wanting to make for a while.
Topic.
Just looks at what has become a popular topic in the blogosphere: how parents are portrayed in teen books. Just notes that "the bad parent is enjoying something of a heydey."
Having just finished Wait Till Helen Comes, I am quite aware that bad parents have always existed in books for kids and teens.
What is interesting, though, is how we define "bad." What does it mean to have a "bad" parent? Would teens define this differently than an adult, and is that part of the issue of when an adult reads a young adult book and gets insulted? Just uses the example of the father in Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost to illustrate today's "bad" parent: "In a typical scene, from “Once Was Lost,” by Sara Zarr, a dad whose wife is at a “recovery center” after a D.U.I. needs help shopping at a supermarket. He shouldn’t be filling the cart with vegetables, his 15-year-old daughter says. “It’s all . . . ingredients,” she explains patiently. “Who’s going to cook this stuff?” He stands by in confusion as she selects precooked chicken breasts."
Before going further, I greatly appreciate the fact that a father is being taken to task for not knowing how to cook. One of my personal pet peeves is when a parent is judged "bad" based on sexist roles; thus, the mother who does not cook is usually code for "bad." But to step further back -- really? "Bad" is now about not cooking? As you may recall from my reading of Once Was Lost, I have a different definition of "bad": "Just like Sam's mother isn't "teh evil" because she drinks, neither is Sam's father "teh evil." Neither of these parents are portrayed as bad, terrible, no-good people; rather they are real people, not perfect, with flaws, people who try and do the best they can."
Just provides a historical overview of parents in young adult lit. (Agree or disagree with her take on various parents and books. That is part of the fun of commenting on an essay.)
This is where things get interesting. As the reader decides the take away from Just's essay.
Just leaves part of this to the reader -- is the problem not with the "problem parents," or the books, or the depictions, but is the problem the real parents?
Just says, "many contemporary young adult novels seem to reflect genuine confusion over what the job of parent consists of, beyond keeping kids fed and safe. This isn’t surprising, after a decade in which “overparenting” became almost a badge of honor and you could sign a child up for a clay-modeling class only to find that y
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By: Lizzy Burns,
on 4/3/2010
Blog: A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, essays, julie just, Add a tag
By: Rebecca,
on 2/26/2010
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: portmanteaus, Garner's Modern American Usage, On Language, New York Times, Reference, A-Featured, Lexicography, Dictionaries, A-Editor's Picks, Media, bryan garner, Add a tag
Bryan A. Garner is the award-winning author or editor of more than 20 books. Garner’s Modern American Usage has established itself as the
preeminent contemporary guide to the effective use of the English language. The 3rd edition, which was just published, has been thoroughly updated with new material on nearly every page. In the article below, Garner reflects on his column this weekend in the New York Times and asks for our favorite portmanteaus. Mine is chocoholic, what’s yours?
We do love a good portmanteau word, don’t we? A new word blending two old ones.
A friend of mine, a lover of long-distance running and cycling, wrote on his Facebook wall recently complaining about the “drizmal day” he was having. I’d never heard the term, but I didn’t have to think twice about what it meant — and how it felt.
Writing about portmanteaus (/port-MAN-tohz) in this week’s New York Times “On Language” column, I considered what makes or breaks a new coinage. We can certainly do without a strained one, for example, or an indecipherable one, or an unpronounceable one.
Many of the latest portmanteau words are less than charming. I suppose Brangelina might be meaningful to celebraddicts, but I’m not a fan. And some other people seem to agree: bromance, chillaxin’, and sexting have all made the annual wish list of banished words from Lake Superior State University.
No, I don’t really like celebraddicts, either.
But other portmanteau words are clever and incontrovertible evidence that our language continues to evolve in creative ways. Here are some that have survived and even thrived:
- agitprop (agitation + propaganda)
- Amerasian (American + Asian)
- brunch (breakfast + lunch)
- fanzine (fan + magazine)
- mockumentary (mock + documentary)
- rockumentary (rock + documentary)
- stagflation (stagnation + inflation)
What are your favorite portmanteaus? Add them in the comments.
By: Kristin Nelson,
on 2/17/2010
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: news, New York Times, client books, general rants, bestseller lists, Add a tag
What’s playing on the iPod right now? GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN by Cyndi Lauper
One of my agent friends is constantly chastising me for not taking a moment to celebrate when really big things happen at my agency.
For example, last week, we did a huge film deal and I barely broke stride. I have to admit, I didn’t even go out to a celebratory dinner or anything. I just kept my nose to the grindstone (in my defense, Bologna Book Fair is rapidly approaching—I have to be ready!)
But today, I really can’t just do that. Besides, I don’t want her to berate me again (and I know she’s reading this and will call me up).
Last week was big—no doubt. This week is a huge milestone for an agent and in truth, it doesn’t happen often so I really need to take a moment and acknowledge it so that’s what I’m going to do.
Today, I have two authors sitting on the New York Times Bestseller list at the same time.
Now, I’ve had one author with two books sitting on the NYT list at the same time but never two authors on at the same time.
Wow.
Great. Now I’ve just raised the bar and I’ll have to do 3 authors on the list at the same time or 2 authors with 2 different books on the list at the same time…. Naw. I’m just going to enjoy this moment.
By: DGLM,
on 1/11/2010
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Lauren, Ben Yagoda, Bapsi Sidwha, reading, New York Times, fun, Add a tag
Aspiring authors, published authors, and non-authors alike, do yourselves a favor and take a moment to check out Ben Yagoda's essay in the New York Times on readers' access to writers in our technological age.
I can only think of one occasion that I've done it on a purely personal level: I was trying to recall the title of a beautiful novel I'd read in college (Bapsi Sidwha's Cracking India) that had been titled one thing when originally published, another in the US, and a third when made into a film. Upon googling, I stumbled across the author's website. Uncharacteristically, I took a moment to reach out to her and say how fantastic her book was and how much it had stuck with me. And I was delighted when, over a year later, she came across my email and realizing she had not thanked me, wrote back.
Since I haven't done it again, apparently the reward of hearing back wasn't enough to encourage me (though by that point I was an agent, and ethically it had become more complicated) to continue reaching out. Obviously the examples in the essay are the odd, amusing, or frustrating ones, but do any of you routinely contact authors of books you've read? And published authors, what emails do you get to rival Mary Karr's love letters from the incarcerated?
By: DGLM,
on 1/11/2010
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: opinion, New York Times, e-books, Wall Street Journal, Jane, future of publishing, Add a tag
The news coming out of last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is very exciting for our business. An article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal and another in Saturday’s New York Times announced that in the next several months over half a dozen new readers will be introduced into the market.
I say the more the better. This is definitely going to mean more readers and higher sales of books in all formats. I am delighted.
By: DGLM,
on 1/7/2010
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Jessica, CS Lewis, Laura Miller, reading, New York Times, fun, lists, favorites, Add a tag
Over the holidays, I gave myself the gift of a bit of pleasure reading; one of the books on the NYT’s year end best list, Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. It is essentially a work of literary criticism devoted to C.S. Lewis’s beloved series. Miller, who adored the Narnia series, nevertheless felt bitterly tricked when she discovered they were a Christian allegory. Kids, she argues, are literalists, and as heavy handed as the religious symbolism may be, they lack the general knowledge to see the similarities between a story about a magical lion and the Christian messiah. Years later, Miller returned to the books to examine them as an adult. Hers is a smart and fairly serious undertaking, one that I’ve enjoyed in part because her childhood experience so closely mirrors my own. One idea in particular has really stuck with me. She posits that most avid readers, folks who love books (most of you, I imagine), are forever in search of the purity and pleasure of that first book (or books) that so enchanted us. That as adults, we can never quite recapture that absolute delight when our critical faculties were not yet developed, and our immersion in fiction was complete. That we read, now, in some sense, in an effort to get back to the garden.
For me, the books were, in fact the Chronicles (hence my interest in Miller’s book). But I’ve not reread the series as a grown-up precisely because I fear finding them wanting, hollow, devoid of the pleasure they once afforded me. I’m curious to know what your touchstone book was, and if you’ve ventured to read it now that you can, perhaps, see its shortcomings, peek behind the curtain.
By: DGLM,
on 1/6/2010
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Elizabeth Gilbert, Stacey, reviews, New York Times, advice, Add a tag
It occurred to me as a publishing professional reading this painful review of Elizabeth Gilbert's new book that there is a case to be made for unpublished authors having certain advantages over bestselling authors. No track record can be a very good thing when it comes to selling books. Granted, it's very hard to get noticed in the slush pile given the volume of submissions agents receive, and if you are lucky enough to find a good agent who will fight for your book, the hurdles to get it sold are often high and daunting. But let's say you get there and the book becomes a huge runaway hit. Then what? How does one follow up a success like Eat, Pray, Love, arguably one of the most successful books of the last decade? It sounds like from the descriptions I've been reading about Gilbert's experience, not easily. She wrote and trashed an entire draft of this book (I wince every time I think about the author, the editor, the publisher, the agent, and what they must have gone through during this grueling process), and based on Maslin's review, it sounds like she might have been better off doing the same for the final! For all the money and fame, there are real challenges that come with having a hit like Gilbert did, and while the book has certainly made her a millionaire and this follow-up is likely to have strong early sales based on name alone, it sounds like it might wind up being a disappointment because the expectations are just so high. Once you hit that mighty bestseller list, the conversations get more complicated, and the pressure to perform and beat the last one can be challenging at best and impossible to achieve at worst. Sometimes the dream is better than the reality, but isn't that often the case in life? If you are able to enjoy and savor the process of writing, stay focused on the positives, work hard and passionately despite any obstacles you might face, there's a lot to be grateful for doing what you love, especially at the start of a new year.
By: DGLM,
on 1/4/2010
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: opinion, New York Times, e-books, future of publishing, Miriam, Add a tag
I agree with almost everything Jonathan Galassi says in his Op-Ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times about the fact that books, even the ones penned by authors who are considered literary geniuses, are not the product of just one individual spewing brilliance at the world. I go back to my oft repeated point that in this new era of e-books, blogs, vlogs, and all things digital, we’ll still need agents and publishers to act as gatekeepers, shepherds and midwives. My only quarrel with the piece is, of course, Mr. Galassi’s somewhat disingenuous (he is a publisher, after all) implication that Random House (or any other publisher) should be automatically “involved” in these e-book rights (meaning that they would control and derive revenue from them) because of their work in producing the original book. If, as he says, e-books are just another format of a book (like audio and translations), then these rights should be “in play” when a book is sold. And, if the author retains those rights, he or she should be able to dispose of them in any way they see fit without having to involve the publisher of the original work.
What do you say?
By: Lizzy Burns,
on 12/23/2009
Blog: A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Margo Rabb, stealing books, New York Times, Add a tag
Steal These Books, Margo Rabb's essay in The New York Times, explores people who steal books from bookstores -- sometimes, even, it is the author of the book who does the taking. I think my favorite part is the title of the most-stolen book.
No, I'm not going to tell you! Click through and find out.
Oh, and apparently? There is a hip factor to stealing book. Must be the reason I haven't stolen one.
Inspired by Rabb's essay, The Paper Cuts Blog at the NYT asks people what books they have stolen in Out Stealing Books. So far, 31 people have fessed up.
What intrigues me about the conversation at the blog is the people who mention stealing library books. Yes, it's always wrong to steal. Stealing from the bookstore is bad; if cuts into the profits of the store itself, and takes away from the royalties for the author twice (once because you didn't buy that book, twice because you prevented someone else from doing so.) It's a bit sad to read people happy to get back at "the man" with their book stealing. Or to read how they believe its OK because they like to read. I wonder who they think is to blame when stores go out of business, or book prices are increased to take into consideration such theft?
But stealing from a library means that you are now preventing so many other people from reading that book. What a selfish act, to think "my ownership is more important than your reading." With a bookstore, at least, the person who wants to buy that book will probably end up finding another copy or asking the bookstore to track down another copy. While at a library, chances are you took the only copy; it's out of print; and doing an ILL costs the library money. (No, really. See all the library news that mentions ILL in budget cuts, either eliminating or reducing the service or adding and increasing ILL fees).
By the way, Margo Rabb visited Tea Cozy back in 2007 when promoting her book, Cures for Heartbreak
Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.
© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
By: DGLM,
on 12/2/2009
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: reading, holidays, New York Times, fun, lists, NPR, Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Miriam, Add a tag
When I was a kid, the best thing I could imagine getting for my birthday or Christmas was a book. My family was, shall we say, “economically challenged,” and there wasn’t a lot of money for expensive presents, so books were the perfect gift. As far as I’m concerned, they still are. What else will keep you occupied for hours and days after the unwrapping frenzy has passed? After all, you can only use the Pedi Egg so often. And that chopping device your aunt gave you has “regifting” written all over it. But, open a book, wrap yourself in a blanket (or the Snuggie your cousin, Marge, gave you) and pour yourself a glass of wine or cup of cocoa and you’re set for a delightful time. Here are some book lists to shop from:
Michiko Kakutani's Top 10 Books of 2009
NPR's These Aren't Your Geek's Graphic Novels
The Guardian's Top 10s
PW's Best Children's Books of 2009
By: DGLM,
on 11/30/2009
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: reading, New York Times, fun, lists, Margaret Atwood, Jeannette Walls, Joanna Scott, Colum McCann, Hilary Mantel, Jim, Add a tag
by Jim
Oh, jeez. The New York Times has released their list of 100 Notable Books of 2009. As is always the case when this comes out, I feel a touch overwhelmed. It’s exciting to know that there are always more great books out there to be read, but at times it gets a bit daunting that you can never even hope to catch up. Or is that just me?
I already have Let the Great World Spin and The Year of the Flood set aside for my holiday break reading. And I want to read Half-Broke Horses and Wolf Hall. And Follow Me sounds fascinating. Ack!
Anyone else excited or frustrated by year end lists? See any titles that for sure should be skipped?
By: DGLM,
on 11/13/2009
Blog: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: James Frey, Rachel, Jayson Blair, reading, opinion, New York Times, memoir, nonfiction, truth, Add a tag
Recently, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, addressed the W&L Journalism Ethics Institute for its 48th anniversary. This prompted a debate around the water cooler and on blogs and made its way to discussions on news programs. For, if you remember, Blair resigned from the New York Times in 2003 following an investigation that found he had plagiarized and fabricated a lot of the stories he had written for the paper. Some of his reporting was on the Iraq war and the Beltway sniper attacks. It was understandable that people were surprised that Blair would be addressing the Journalism Ethics Institute because we trust reporters to tell us the truth. We don’t expect them to fabricate or edit stories to make them more entertaining, as Blair did.
What about memoir authors who fabricate stories? James Frey and the debacle involving A Million Little Pieces comes to mind. Frey received a lot of attention from his book when it was published--Oprah praised him, A Million Little Pieces was in a million little bookstores, everyone talked highly of this new talented writer. But upon investigation, Frey’s story was proven to be inaccurate in parts, and some readers who had once been fans of the memoir wanted their money back.
Some authors don’t really care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story might just be a story. But is it unfair to truthful memoir writers when an author, such as James Frey, fabricates tales to sell books? Does it prove that Frey is a talented writer that we believed his tales? Or is it infuriating to have loved a book as a memoir and find parts of it to be complete fiction?
How much tweaking should be allowed in memoirs to make them entertaining these days, and do you care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction storytelling?
-Rachel
By: Roger Sutton,
on 11/9/2009
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, Boys reading, Roar roar roar, Add a tag
The New York Times Best Illustrated Books list is out, along with my review of The Lion & the Mouse. What a great book--I wish they had given me twice the space. When I sat down with it and my two young neighbors, the two year old boy announced, looking uncertainly at the cover, "lions are scary." His more intrepid four-year-old sister took over the narration from there ("Look out for the bird!") until the end, whereupon the two-year-old said, "lions are NOT scary." Now it's his favorite book, so we gave him a copy for his birthday, along with a little plastic lion he can carry around in his hand. What's your talisman?
By: Kristin Nelson,
on 10/14/2009
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: news, New York Times, client books, bestseller lists, Add a tag
STATUS: It was a great day I have to say.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? WOMAN by John Lennon
To bring you a special squee moment!
Wait, I’m a professional.
I interrupt this royalty statement tutorial to give our client Jamie Ford huge congratulations for hitting the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list coming in at #15 for Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet (and after only being on sale for five days).
Yes, that’s more like it!
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 9/24/2009
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Great Ladies, New York Times, Picture Books, Cats, Children's writers as sneaks, Add a tag
On October 3, the Eric Carle Museum is sponsoring a panel discussion about the legacy of NYT children's book editor Eden Ross Lipson along with a display of books from an exhibition Eden had been planning for the museum, "The Silent Cat." While it is NOT true that the Caldecott Committee awards extra points for unexplained feline wanderings in illustrations, it is definitely one of the more offbeat but persistent tropes of the picture book. Mordicai Gerstein will be on hand to discuss and sign copies of his and Eden's new picture book Applesauce Season (in which a dog performs the cat role en travesti.)
By: Kristin Nelson,
on 9/22/2009
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, advances, bestseller lists, Add a tag
STATUS: Blogging a bit late tonight. Busy day.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? MR. JONES by Counting Crows
The answer is yes.
The answer is no.
The size of the advance paid can increase the likelihood of success as the publisher is more likely to commit significant resources toward a title that a large advance was paid for.
However, the size of the advance is not a guarantee of success for any specific title.
I remember reading an article in Publishers Weekly last year (and I wish I had saved it). The article outlined two thriller titles being released by two different publishers. Both thrillers were in hardcover and the lead titles for their specific imprints. Both titles had a solid six-figure advance. Both titles had significant resources allocated for the marketing and promotional push. Both titles were from debut authors.
One title hit the New York Times Bestseller list. The other title had, in the publisher’s own words, “disappointing sales.”
So what happened?
Quite simply, no amount of money can force a public to want and buy a book. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. If the publishers knew what created that ground swell to catapult a title onto bestseller lists and a million copy sell-thru, they’d do it for every book.
It’s a dangerous to assume that the size of the advance paid is the only indicator of possible success. (Or that a publisher who has paid a large advance will always pay attention to that title rather than embrace a newly bought title that might sell even better.)
And every agent I know has a story of a little book that could. The book that was a hard sell, that didn’t have a big advance, that had almost no marketing or promotional budget attached and yet defied all the odds.
A great success story that exemplifies this exactly is agent Deidre Knight’s 90 Minutes in Heaven—a book that was not sold for a lot of money and certainly wasn’t released with a lot of hoopla. Initial print run was by no means huge. The hardcover sold modestly well but then when the paperback version released, an explosion happened. The book kept gaining traction. Word of mouth. The ground swell that money can’t purchase started to happen. In the end, I don’t know exactly how long the title stayed on the bestseller list but I do know that it was for more than a year. This book has now sold millions of copies.
So does a large advance equal large success?
The answer is yes and the answer is no. All the stars ultimately have to align.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 9/17/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: E.L. Doctorow, Sam Tannehaus, New York Times, Add a tag
I have found the time, after too much time, to look back over the 186 pages of the novel-in-progress I had been writing before edits of other books came in, and client work, and a mini-house makeover (paint, the excision of cob webs, the scrubbing of a deck, the lightening of closets). I sat there, yesterday and early today, on the living room couch, and I read.
The proper foundation, I have discovered, has been laid.
It is time to take the book forward, to see, as E.L. Doctorow in this wonderful New York Times video interview says, just what the book will reveal itself to be. You work it out as you go along, he says.
Yes, indeed. You do.
By: Katie B.,
on 8/28/2009
Blog: First Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Books & Reading, Vanity Fair, Daniel Handler, Literacy Links and Articles, Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Ted Kennedy, Sylvia van Ommen, The Surprise, Winged Chariot Press, New York Times, Apple, iPhone, Lemony Snicket, Add a tag
Remembering Ted Kennedy, America’s Eulogist
Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum remembers Senator Ted Kennedy as America’s “unofficial eulogist laureate.”
Frustrated Novelist Julia Child Finally Tops Bestseller List
Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking debuts at number one on the New York Times bestseller list this week.
Lemony Snicket Threatens a ‘Dreadful’ New Series
The Guardian features a humorous article announcing that “elusive author Lemony Snicket (aka author Daniel Handler) is working on a four-book series as a follow-up to the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Apple joins with Publisher to put First Picture Book on iPhone
The UK’s Winged Chariot Press is the first publisher to offer a children’s picture book for the iPhone, publishing The Surprise by Sylvia van Ommen.
Blog: BOOKFINDS (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Salon, Alice Hoffman, Alain de Botton, New York Times, Book Review, Add a tag
It’s open season on book critics apparently. On the heels of the Alice Hoffman-Roberta Silman feud, Alain de Botton is upset with the fact that Caleb Crain gave his book, The Pleasures of Sorrow and Work, a bad review. De Botton commented on Crain’s blog:
Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon - so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.
Geesh. Hoffman’s remarks pale in comparison but are still pretty bad. Hoffman got a lukewarm review for her new novel, The Story Sisters, in the Boston Globe by critic Roberta Silman. Hoffman on her twitter called Silman a moron and an idiot. She also insulted the Globe and the city of Boston. Hoffman goes on to give out Silman’s email address and phone number. Hoffman apologized and took down her twitter account but was mad at the fact that Sillman, gave away the plot of her novel. Memoirist Diane Joseph said that Hoffman’s apology was pretty passive aggressive.
Mary Elizabeth Williams has great article in Salon about Hoffman and past author-critic feuds. There are some good ones. Stanley Crouch vs. Dale Peck. Caleb Carr vs. Laura Miller. Richard Ford vs. Colson Whitehead and ironically Alice Hoffman was once the in the critic’s place when she gave Richard Ford a bad review for The Sportswriter. Mrs. and Mrs. Ford went out back and shot copies of Hoffman’s book with a gun.
Touché!
{image courtesy of Salon.com}
By: Lizzy Burns,
on 7/5/2009
Blog: A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: books, New York Times, Add a tag
Over at the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about The Best Kids' Books Ever.
There's a bit of a logical fallacy with a twist of semi-research involved is wanting to write about kids books: I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation — because they aren’t in school or exercising their brains.
Considering all of us who have been blogging and writing about the assigned summer reading, Kristof's "we need summer reading lists" makes some of us sigh. He may not state it explicitly, but he's really talking about how kids who don't read on their own over the summer can be encouraged to read. Which, frankly, involves more than a "best kids' books" list.
Kristof then makes the leap to "these are the books I/my kids loved, so they are great for everyone!" Conversation at his blog then turns to "my favorite books."
And you know what?
That's cool. I don't agree that the books Kristof and his kids think are "the best" are going to be "the best" for everyone; and reluctant readers need more than an assigned reading list to discover the joys of reading. But this is his personal favorite list -- and you know what? That's cool.
Everyone has their own favorites; and Kristof isn't the first to think his personal favorites are universal. Parents do it all the time -- and so do librarians, teachers, and other readers. Actually, everytime a librarian tells me they only booktalk books they love, I back away a bit, because they are doing what Kristof is doing -- only recommending personal favorites. At this blog I do review books that may not be my personal favorites but that I know, upon reading, will be favorites for others.
On a side note, he recommends On to Oregon! (aka Seven Alone)
© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
By: Kristin Nelson,
on 6/17/2009
Blog: Pub Rants (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, client books, bestseller lists, Add a tag
STATUS: We are dancing around the office; we can’t believe it!
What’s playing on the iPod right now? GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN by Cyndi Lauper
It’s no small feat to hit the NYT series list. Looking at who was on the week before last, it was even scarier. At that time, there was only one non-vampire, non-paranormal title on the list (Diary of A Wimpy Kid).
Then last week, 39 Clues popped back on making that two titles on the NYT Series list.
Now I’m happy to report that there are THREE titles on the Series list. Coming in at #6, The Gallagher Girls land a spot.
HUGE CONGRATS ALLY!
SERIES
8 NIGHT WORLD, by L. J. Smith. (Simon Pulse, paper only) Supernatural races form secret societies. (Ages 14 and up)
9 WARRIORS, by Erin Hunter. (HarperCollins, hardcover and paper) Four clans of cat warriors aspire to meet up with the StarClan. (Ages 10 to 14)
By: Rebecca,
on 5/28/2009
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Nixon, Bernstein, Phelps, Frankel, Hersh, watergate, Woodward, New York Times, Politics, Current Events, American History, Smith, A-Featured, A-Editor's Picks, Media, Washington Post, Gray, Add a tag
Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, looks at The New York Times decision not to break the Watergate story. Ritchie, who has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades, reveals that it was a series of mistakes, not just one, that led to The Washington Post breaking the story. Ritchie’s book, Reporting from Washington, was also ahead of the pack, identifying Deep Throat as being in the FBI months before Mark Felt confessed.
Watergate is back in the news thanks to the recent confessions of a former New York Times reporter, Robert M. Smith, and his Washington bureau editor, Robert H. Phelps, about how they failed to report a hot tip on the Nixon administration’s involvement in the cover-up. Preparing to leave the paper in August 1972, to attend law school, Smith held a farewell lunch with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, who revealed that his agents had found evidence of “dirty tricks” being employed by the Nixon reelection campaign, leading to the top levels. Smith reported this to Phelps, but he was leaving on a month-long vacation and let the story drop. The rest of the media has relished reporting on how the Times let the political story of the century slip away.
Of course, the rest of the media–with the notable exception of the Washington Post– fumbled the Watergate scandal as well. Even at the Post, the story was almost the exclusive property of two green reporters from the Metro section. Those who covered the national news dismissed the idea of presidential involvement in the Watergate burglary as being highly implausible. Washington correspondents may not have liked Richard Nixon, but they respected his intelligence and held it inconceivable that he would jeopardize his presidency by bugging his faltering opposition.
Without detracting from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s assiduous reporting, we know now that their chief inside information was coming from the FBI’s deputy director, W. Mark Felt. He systematically leaked in order to prevent the White House from derailing the FBI’s investigation. The insights Felt provided the Post kept the story alive for months.
When the Watergate burglars were arraigned, it was initially seen as a local police story. Since the New York Times’ Washington bureau only covered federal courts, the Times buried a short report deep inside the next day’s paper, while the Washington Post put it on the front page. Max Frankel, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, discouraged his correspondents from pursing Watergate. “Not even my most cynical view of Nixon had allowed for his stupid behavior,” Frankel later lamented. It went on that way for the rest of 1972, with the Post running story after story, and the rest of the media sharing the Times’ reluctance. Further clouding the Washington bureau’s judgment was its condescending attitude toward the Washington Post, which the New Yorkers regarded as little more than a provincial paper in a government town–a step or two above Albany. Despite Woodward and Bernstein’s prodigious output during the summer of 1972, Frankel insisted that their reporting failed to measure up to his standards of reporting. Small wonder, then, that Robert Smith’s tip never made it into the “paper of record.”
The New York Times finally got a handle on Watergate when it hired the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In January 1973, Hersh scooped even Woodward and Bernstein by documenting how White House hush money had gone to the Watergate burglars. Reporters for other papers were developing their own leads and the rest of the pack piled on top. Ever since then–right up to the current revelations–Washington reporters have puzzled over why they missed the Watergate story for so long. The White House press corps came in for the harshest criticism, accused by former press secretary Bill Moyers of being “sheep with short attention spans.” But White House reporters, dependent on White House sources, were no more likely to uncover White House scandals than police reporters were to expose police graft. It took a couple of young, ambitious, local news reporters to think the unthinkable.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 5/25/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, marketing communications, Eric Konigsberg, writing for hire, Valerie Haboush, college essays, The Poet of Property, Add a tag
So there I was, taking a break from not writing, reading the New York Times, about to rush right past the Real Estate section (I own my house, and I'm not moving) when a headline—The Poet of Property—caught my eye. Since I've written about real estate and architecture since I started my business at the age of 25, I thought I might stop to discover what I might learn from a NYT-worthy subject.
I learned, among other things, that Valerie Haboush, the story's star, pens "property descriptions" and "online biographies of brokers" for a nice little sum, collecting between $150 and $250 for bios featuring such lines as "She dabbled in merchandising before realizing her true calling, residential sales," and he "built his career from the ground-floor up, ultimately earning the kind of success that most agents only dream about," not to mention he "possesses an innate gift that allows him to connect with individuals, understand their needs, and deliver results that often exceed expectations." She is able, I also learned, to write 50 such bios each week.
I couldn't help myself; I just kept reading. And then I got to the end. Where I learned that Ms. Haboush doesn't just write for real estate brokers. She writes, for an unspecified sum, college application essays for the children of, well, anyone who might ask, I imagine (though the story lists brokers). Herein are the penultimate words of the story.
“Sometimes they’ll come to me with an outline, or else I’ll interview them first,” Ms. Haboush said. “My feeling is, it’s a very competitive world, and everything you’re writing about yourself, you have to sell yourself, you have to position yourself in the best possible light. If that child can’t write an essay — well, that’s not my business. Let’s at least get that kid into the school.”
Ms. Haboush has no idea what her track record is with school applications. “I always tell them to let me know if their kid gets in, and I never hear from them again,” she said.
What say we, I wonder?
By: Roger Sutton,
on 5/13/2009
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, New York Times, Reviewing, Add a tag
The New York Times obituary for Eden is a gracious tribute but does that thing I hate: "Eden Ross Lipson . . . was a force in bringing the enchanting but often overlooked world of children’s literature to wide public awareness."
The REASON children's literature is overlooked is because we persist in regarding it as ENCHANTING.
Okay. I'll stop shouting. And, to answer a query on yesterday's note, Eden was terrific at negotiating between the world of the professional children's-book critic and that of the Times children's-book-reviews reader, the educated parent. She knew what I didn't know about what they didn't know.
By: Roger Sutton,
on 5/12/2009
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New York Times, Reviewing, Great Ladies, Add a tag
Former New York Times children's book editor Eden Ross Lipson died this morning. She was the editor who first hired me to write for the Times, and she taught me a lot in regard to how to write for a general audience about children's books. We became pals over the years and I'll miss her. For our November, 2000 special issue on "the Future of Children's Books," I asked a couple of dozen writers and critics to name one book to put into the time capsule for future child readers, and you can read about Eden's choice here.
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There are many things about this piece that annoy me but mostly it is that she finds examples to support her conclusion rather than the other way around. She wants there to be a "parent problem" (whatever the hell that means) and then goes looking for books that will prove it exists. And yet it does not. Some parents are stupid in YA fiction, some aren't, just like the real world. The point of teen lit though is the teen characters - and generally teens are not always so impressed by their parents...part of being a teen.
Anyway, annoying and certainly more about the adults reading YA then the teens.
I found this as a critique about children in books:
http://scclnews.blogspot.com/2009/08/problem-of-precocious-children-and.html
There's also Rachel in Friends, who has a baby and then the baby is basically absent most of the time...and children in movies are always super wise or scary smart. (See Jerry Maguire, everything Abigail Breslin is in...)
I'm with Colleen, Just found what she was looking for.
I'm really tired of journalists who complain about YA and it's clear that they don't read much of what is currently being written. Worse, they insist on comparing the genre to what they read in their teens.
I read a good amount of YA and I'm often impressed with the parent characters. I recently read Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan and thought how lucky Blake was with his parents. Melanin Sun has a sensitive, loving mother and Bobby in First Part Last has mature, loving parents and does Tao in Whale Talk. For every poor parent Just can rattle off, the rest of us could counter.
But she is missing the point. Parents are presented from the teen's point of view and the stories aren't about the parents, they're about the teens.
I was just agreeing with you on FB -- the point of Once Was Lost was not so much the father's issues; it's a book for young adults, so Dad's issues -- and Mom's, really -- fade in contrast to how their decisions impact their daughter.
I find it interesting that teen readers don't tend to complain about "bad" parents in the books they read. It's something adult readers seem to be far more concerned about. How much of that concern comes from the fact that adult readers identify more with adult characters in the books they read? A "bad" parent could too easily be a comment about themselves.
But teen readers care far less about the adults in their books. They're busy identifying with the teen characters, and do not feel threatened by "bad" parents. Plus, many teens find their own parents less than satisfactory (they'll grow out of it and discover a richer perspective in time), and so "bad" parents on the page do not come as such a surprise.
Young adult books are not about parents. They're about a teen's view of his or her world, and how the reader hopes to make a difference in it the way their parents, apparently, have not.
In the real world, parents and teens are human - most of us doing our best, but falling short of perfection.
Colleen, did you listen to the podcast, also? Books shouldn't diminish parents? And then the comments that say books should show teens how wonderful their parents are. It's rather sick (and talk about overparenting) -- parents even want to control WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THEM. Sigh.
Celia, thanks! Didn't all the babies in Friends disappear conveniently -- Ross's son seemed to appear once a year, if they were all lucky.
Susan, often people find what they want (Or don't want.) Such essays like this usually are about what the writer wants to see/read, not the true shape of affairs. For example, in the library one parent would often complain about all the "fantasy books with girls and no realistic fiction for boys." The next parent? "too much realistic fantasy for boys, where the girl fantasy books"?
Tanita, I remain shocked that the father in Zarr's book is used to illustrate "bad" and that Just appears to do it without any sense of irony at all. If that is bad? Well, call protective servies on 3/4 of the parents out there.
Elaine, I totally agree with you! As an adult reader of ya, what i look for is not "is the parent 'bad'" but "are the characters believable? are they fully realized?" Which I find more important than telling fifteen year olds via books, "admire your parents."
Wow. Thanks for highlighting this article. There are definitely some semi-cliche parental archetypes in YA, but they cover the whole spectrum of parenting, and anyway -- there's nothing wrong with parents being flawed characters!
I only get cranky with authors when they make parents oblivious/absentee for the sake of moving the plot forward. The three sets of parents in my WIP are all flawed -- but it's implicit in my mind as I write them that they're doing their best, even if the teen protags end up needing a little therapy.
And the truth is, when I was a teenager, my quite wonderful parents were the villains in my life more than a few times.
For anyone who's interested, my crit partner Frankie wrote a post on parental archetypes in YA on our group blog back in November. Agree or disagree, this is a rundown of the trends she's found.
The article caught my eye as I was reading through the NYT Book Review. When I came to the end, my thought was, "And your point is...??" What did she intend the reader to take away from her essay? It seemed to be rather unfocused and, yes, she did appear to find titles to support her belief. (It was a little shocking to see that Just is the Children's Book Editor for the Times.)
For one thing, as someone pointed out, many teens believe that their parents are terrible. Perhaps it's good for them to see depictions of parents that are worse than theirs ever dreamed of being. And secondly, some young people certainly do have parents that are out of work, drug addicted, and totally not there. Perhaps the percent isn't right on, but there are families out there that would make Just's hair stand on end. Don't we all see them at our libraries?
It sounds as if the podcast may shine a different light on Just's written words, but this struck me as a whole lot of nothing...