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By: Tabitha Thompson,
on 5/30/2014
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I recently finished reading the classic book "Wrinkle in Time" with my eight-year-old. It begins with the famous—and much maligned—line, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."
Writers look down on this opening phrase as being "obvious" and "too moody." It has been the butt of jokes from "Throw Momma from the Train" to Peanuts comics. But I'd like to write a brief defense of Madelaine L'Engle's linguistic choice as well as take a look at what makes descriptions work ... or not work.
L'Engle's phrase, at its most basic, does, indeed, set a tone for the book. And it describes the intensity that the character Meg feels. It also foreshadows the "dark"/sinister beings the characters will encounter, as well as the darkness through which the characters travel during their cross-planetary adventure. So I think that mentioning a "dark night" is thematic and relevant to L'Engle's whole book; she writes it as a fight between love and "the dark."
So what about the complaint that to describe night as dark is too obvious? I would argue that there are all kinds of nights. There are nights that seem like a faint orange hue hangs between the greenness of piled snow and heavy-set clouds. There are purple nights. There are also cold bright nights when the sky is clear and the moon shines like a shadeless pendant bulb.
And yes, there are stormy nights when the darkness seems to swallow up every detail out of reach, as though a cocoon of black velvet envelopes you: a dark and stormy night.
But these days, readers want more than that. We expect writers to paint with words in a more extraordinary way.
On the other hand, overly long or beatific descriptions are considered passé: Flip to almost any page in the classic "Anne of Green Gables" series and you'll find paragraphs of detail like: "a veritable apple-bearing tree, here in the very midst of pines and beeches ... all white with blossom. It's loaded [with apples]—tawny as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting."
While most of us still appreciate (and even love) L.M. Montgomery's lengthy stylistic descriptions for its time, these days such florid language is considered "purple prose."
Needless to say, descriptions can make or break even the best concepts and plots. Writers need not only to be gifted storytellers, but word makers and image creators of a new bent.
One author who excels in this is Mark Zusack. Consider some of these images from "The Book Thief":
- a short grin was smiled in Papa's spoon
- one [book] was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon
- empty hat-stand trees
- the gun clipped a hole in the night
- the summer of '39 was in a hurry
- the smell of friendship
- [the] crackling sound ... was kinetic humans, flowing, charging up
Zusak has an uncanny ability to describe. A grin is offered up as if it is a picture from a film director's storyboard. A sound is described using imagery. A feeling is described as a scent. Ideas are personified and people are chemicals.
So think well when you are describing. Go over your story and take the time to find new ways to bring imagery to your reader. And keep it somewhere between "purple" and "dark and stormy."
Do you have a favorite metaphor or simile? Share it below!
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By:
Little Willow,
on 12/2/2013
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What are your favorite book-to-film adaptations? Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Book Thief? Anxious for the movie version of Divergent? Can't wait to see the next installment of The Hobbit? Leave a comment at Allie's latest Teens Wanna Know article!
Lots of good links from the last few weeks, let's get to it!
It's been tough sledding for Barnes & Noble lately. On the heels of announcing earlier in the year that they plan to
shutter one third of their stores (link is to CNET, I work there), they had an earnings call this week in which they revealed that their
Nook business is struggling, with losses at $190.4 million. Publisher/editor Peter Osnos notes that B&N
has not benefitted greatly from the Borders bankruptcy and wonders if the large chain bookstore is endangered (something I
blogged about two years ago), though it should be noted that the stores themselves are still profitable.
The last of the publishers sued by the Department of Justice for conspiring to raise e-books
has settled. In a
letter to authors, Macmillan CEO John Sargent said "Our company is not large enough to risk a worst case judgment."Apple has not yet settled.
Meanwhile, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin has an interesting look at some
possible directions for the future of e-bookselling, which could get more atomized and dispersed across the Internet rather than concentrated solely with the large online vendors.
In book news,
happy book birthday to friend o' the blog Shawn Odyssey, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson have been cast in the
film adaptation of The Book Thief, and I
gave my shortest interview ever to Ted Fox.
Two of the world's smallest publishers announced a
groundbreaking merger (via
The Rejectionist).
Some authors are
buying their way onto bestseller lists.
Working with publishers can occasionally be quite frustrating, as one author and independent bookstore
recently discovered. When the bookstore wanted to order 450 copies the publisher refused to give them more than 200 (Why? Because they don't do things that way), so the bookstore ended up going to Target to get the books instead.
There really is no such thing as a typical writing path. Malcolm Gladwell has a great post on just
how diverse paths to literary success really are.
In writing advice news, Donna Thorland has
advice on book trailers, Natalie Whipple has a great post on some of the different things to consider when
building a setting.
A blogger plans to review
every bestselling book of the year for the past hundred years.
Atari's co-founder has launched a new venture that hopes to
make the self-publishing process much easier by giving authors the ability to contract out different parts of the process in exchange for flat rates or royalties.
A designer
re-imagined classic albums as book covers (via
Simon the Boy).
The Forums!! I have been receiving lots and lots of writing and publishing questions lately, and time constraints prevent me from answering them all. To save time and to hopefully benefit more people, I answer publicly in the Forums, where I am happy to answer any publishing question I can
right here. You can also review previous questions.
And finally, a photographer put together a truly incredible and dare I say moving Tumblr of Calvin and Hobbes
photoshopped into real landscapes (via
Martha Mihalick), but after it went viral it was
shut down because of copyright claims. Alas alas.
Have a great weekend!
Photo by me
With their vast scope and the unparalleled ability to bore into someone's head, novels have perhaps the greatest potential for affecting us emotionally. As much as I love movies and television, novels have the ability to move me the most.
So which novel most affected you? And what was the part that did it?
As a kid I remember being deeply affected by classics like
Johnny Tremain, The Bridge to Terebithia, My Brother Sam is Dead and
Where the Red Fern Grows.
As an adult, well, I'm not actually much of a crier, but I was pretty moved by
The Sky is Everywhere,
The Secret Year and, of course,
The Book Thief.
What about you?
Art: Never Morning Wore To Evening But Some Heart Did Break by Walter Langley
Brian Percival may direct a film adaptation of Markus Zusak‘s The Book Thief for Fox 2000.
According to Deadline, The Twilight Saga film series producer Karen Rosenfelt is already on board. Michael Petroni, the screenwriter behind The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has written the script. Production could start as early as summer 2012.
Throughout his directorial career, Percival has largely focused on television projects. In 2010, he won the Emmy for “Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special” for his work on the drama Downton Abbey.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 8/19/2011
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I first met Susan in Orlando, FL, last November, on this very (photographed) day. We were scheduled to speak on an ALAN panel—Susan about her wildly brilliant
They Called Themselves the K.K.K, me about the Centennial era that had inspired
Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA). My PDF presentation had not, I discovered minutes before I was to take the stage, been imported to the proper conference techno places, and, in the crazy
Oh no buzz that followed that fine finding, Susan stepped in. She fixed the problem. The crisis was no more.
Susan spoke before I did to the gathered YA crowd. She was so smart, so funny, so wise that if I had not just been saved by her in the excruciating moments leading up to the panel, I might have been jealous. No, that's not true. I'm never jealous when a real talent is in my midst. I'm just proud, as a human being, that she exists.
Ever since Orlando, Susan and I have been trying to see each other again. This past Wednesday, as some of you know, I put the corporate pressures aside, threw caution to the wind, and trained down to the University of Pennsylvania. Susan and I would spend the next several hours walking the campus, sitting in one of my former classrooms, taking charge of an unhappy soda machine, exclaiming over
Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and munching through a tossed salad (but not the peaches we had jointly hoped for). We talked about the things we love. Truly great writing—"crunchy" she calls sentences she celebrates. Landscape as story. Honest and earned research—the kind that digs beneath whatever a Google search can deliver. Reconstruction America. The history of Pennsylvania. Smart, kind editors. Course design. Teaching. Students. Our children. Judging book contests (we both chaired a Young People's Literature Jury for the National Book Awards, we discovered.) We were walking to Susan's car when she mentioned that she had recently been talking with Markus Zusak as part of a
PEN American Center PENpal program. The Markus Zusak? I asked. Mr.
The Book Thief?But of course that was the one, for Susan, too, has written of that Nazi Germany in her widely praised (go to
her website and find out more for yourself)
Hitler Youth.
I have so many things I want to ask Susan. So much I can learn from her. But for now I am and always will be grateful for our day together. For locating, in this turbulent, unstable world of ours, such a fully engaged, deeply seeking mind.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 8/6/2011
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I was told in an ever-so-brief e-mail yesterday. Strangely, the note didn't do a thing to discourage me from the work I am doing to tell William's story in a
Dangerous Neighbors prequel. Most importantly, perhaps, because I just love this book—the guy-oriented nature of it, the pretty fascinating history behind it, and the way it visits me, late at night (my characters inside my dreams, my dreams beginning alongside a mess of noisy railroad tracks, in the clamor of a newsroom, in the rescue of a red heifer). But also because when I look around I see books I've loved—historical novels for young adults—that are absolutely thriving.
Let's consider
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs), a Quirk publication, now in its seventh week on the
New York Times bestseller list (I'm 70 pages in and loving the mix of image and story; expect a full report tomorrow). Let's talk about Ruta Sepetys'
Between Shades of Gray, a book that led me to the marvelous Tamra Tuller of Philomel, and which, in its very first week, debuted on the
New York Times list. Let's talk about
The Book Thief, one of my favorite books of all time, still number one on the list, or, for that matter, the award-winning, bestselling
The Good Thief, still generating much enthusiasm.
Libba Bray didn't do too badly with
The Sweet Far Thing or
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rita Williams-Garcia was deservedly rewarded for her basically perfect
One Crazy Summer, and I recall—do you as well?—a certain series of historical novels featuring glamorously clad society heroines that rocked the lists for a very long time.
Then there are those adult books, historical novels all, with which we are so familiar—
Devil in the White City, The Help, Water for Elephants, The Paris Wife, Loving Frank, so many others—that locked in their places in book clubs and on lists. Struggle isn't a word that I would apply to them.
I believe, in other words, that there is room for those of us out here who have fallen in love with a time and place and have a story to tell. I've been barely able to breathe under a load of corporate work lately. But the first chance I get, I'm returning to William. I left him in a saloon down on Broad Street named Norris House. He's been hankering for some dinner. I've got ideas about a multi-media launch. And this kind of fun is worth having.
By: Maryann Yin,
on 5/25/2011
Blog:
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Jeff Howe has partnered with The Atlantic to relaunch the online book club, One Book, One Twitter.
Howe explained in the announcement: “I’d always intended to relaunch One Book, One Twitter … It has a new name—1book140—but what hasn’t changed is the global, participatory nature of the affair: The crowd is still in charge.”
Twitter readers will choose the book to read in the online book club. You can still vote on the following titles: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, The Keep by Jennifer Egan, Snow by Orhan Pamuk, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, and Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead. Reading will commence on June 1st.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
What am I reading now? The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman
For your reading pleasure, I present The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
The Book Thief
One of my absolute favourite quotes comes from Cornelia Funke‘s Inkheart:
Some books should be tasted,
some devoured,
but only a few should be
chewed and thoroughly digested.
The Book Thief, without a doubt, falls into the latter category. From the opening pages of the prologue it was clear that this book needed to be savoured. And that’s exactly what I did.
Now, I could discuss at length all that I loved about The Book Thief but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to offer you a glimpse. Why? Because this is a book best experienced as it rests in your hands.
The narrator is Death. That’s what struck me immediately. Death’s tone, pace and honesty. His tone is solemn. His pace is steady. His honesty is brutal. Death isn’t cruel but, for the lack of a better word, human. How can that be? Well, because he feels. Though he may resist at times, he feels the same as you and me.
It’s not hard to tell that the responsibility that rests solely in Death’s hands weighs on him. But this isn’t his only job. He also sets out to tell the story of Liesel Meminger. The reader recognizes instantly that he takes this task just as seriously. You hear it through the compassion in his voice and the fondness in his recollections. Death no longer wields a scythe but simply his two hands.
My advice when it comes to The Book Thief is to take your time. There’s a lot to ingest and digest. But, believe me, it’s worth it.
What am I reading now? The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Once upon a time
I caught a little rhyme
I set it on the floor
but it ran right out the door
I chased it on my bicycle
but it melted to an icicle
I scooped it up in my hat
but it turned into a cat
I caught it by the tail
but it stretched into a whale
I followed it in a boat
but it changed into a goat
When I fed it tin and paper
it became a tall skyscraper
Then it grew into a kite
and flew far out of sight …
~ Eve Merriam
By:
Inderjit Deogun,
on 1/13/2011
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What am I reading now? The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Last year, on Sunday, May 23, 2010, the Rainforest Action Network examined the paper policies of American-based children’s publishers with the report Turning the Page on Rainforest Destruction. The RAN found that:
Five out of the top ten American children’s book publishers have public environmental and paper procurement policies that pledge to reduce the companies’ impact on the climate, protect endangered forests, increase the use of recycled and FSC certified fiber and maximize resource efficiency. However, despite these important policy commitments, wood fiber from Indonesia is ending up in children’s books.
This got me thinking: How do Canadian-based children’s publishers measure up? So, using a completely unscientific approach, off I went. I had a singular goal: How many publishing companies have an environmental/paper policy on their respective sites. Three out of the top nine Canadian children’s publishers that I researched have such policies. HarperCollins Publishers Canada created HarperGreen, Raincoast Books has a clear environmental record and Scholastic Canada established their green initiatives.
Like RAN and the companies identified above, Eco-Libris believes that “[c]hoosing recycled and FSC certified paper helps protect the world’s forests, species and climate.” For the second year in a row, Eco-Libris illustrated their stance on this issue by launching the Green Books Campaign. Sponsored by Indigo Books & Music, on Wednesday, November 10, 2010, at precisely 1:00 PM Eastern Time, 200 bloggers took a united stand to support books printed on environmental paper by simultaneously publishing reviews.
Reading green is not only about reading those books that discuss green issues but also reading those books that are published using green methods. The movement calling for sustainable practices is underway. Changes need to be made and there’s no reason why we cannot start with children’s publishing.
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Most readers skip them entirely. But I went to my bookshelf and randomly picked up five award-winning YA novels, and all of them had prologues. Maybe it’s an easy way to hook the reader into the story or set the tone of the novel, but to me, a prologue should be hacked out of every manuscript like the dearest darling ever written. Why? Because I haven’t read many (or any) novels where the prologue intrinsically added to the overall story.
In most novels, the prologue is nothing more than a blah blah blah of backstory. As a reader, I like the backstory woven into the action. I want to speculate about the story in an interactive way, and the prologue tips the writer’s hand.
I’m going to pick on the most amazing of books as a concrete example to my point.
Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief is a brilliant book on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. I loved the book, but I hated the prologue. Let’s take a look for a minute:
Zusak’s prologue is titled Death and Chocolate. An unknown narrator tells us we are all about to die and introduces himself.
I could introduce myself properly, but it’s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
Okay, so the narrator doesn’t introduce himself per se, but we get the idea. Then the narrator introduces us to the story and gives the reader some bullet points to consider:
- A girl
- Some words
- An accordionist
- Some fanatical Germans
- A Jewish fish fighter
- And quite a lot of thievery
One of the points of the prologue seems to be sure that the reader understands the concept of Death as narrator, but the writing in this book is so beautiful and so perfect, Zusak doesn’t need to make an announcement to readers. We get it. A few pages into chapter one, readers understand that the narrator is some kind of ethereal and omniscient being. We may not know who or what he is, but that adds to the mystery. With a carefully placed detail in chapter one, Death’s presence could be perfectly clear.
Zusak also uses the prologue to introduce the motif of color in the novel. It’s an important part of the book’s theme and is again wonderfully written. But the explanation of color could have easily been weaved into the main story.
As for the list of items to consider in the story, just let me read the prose. I don’t need a list or an announcement of characters. I just want to read.
So Zusak has a stunning book that’s beautiful and literary and heartbreaking and uplifting, but the prologue doesn’t add much to the power of the manuscript, so why have it? The writer’s mantra has always been that every part of a book must serve the story. Does the prologue ever serve
By: Briar K.,
on 8/12/2009
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A while back, the wonderful Tay posted a review on The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I read the book, and thought it was so wonderful and special that I simply had to review it myself. Tay's awesome review can be found below mine, so you can compare our experiences with the book.
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is the inspiring story of a young German girl who is growing up in the midst of World War II. Abandoned by her mother, underfed and constantly reprimanded by her loving but fierce foster-mother, Leisel Meminger is a girl who finds all the brightness of life in words. Words are her greatest love and her most infuriating enemy—words are the things that allow her to live but Hitler to control and rule.
Hitler, Leisel realizes, can change a country’s image of Jews by using words to warp them into something disgusting, malicious, and sub-human. He can take a country that is scared and off-balance, and use words to soothe and hypnotize. Hitler uses words as his single greatest weapon, and without them, he would be powerless.
On the other hand, Leisel uses words to explore and grow. She uses words and books as her sanctuary in the fear-filled world of Nazi Germany. She uses words to light the eyes of the frail Jewish man in her basement, reminding him of sunlight and happiness as she describes clouds that resemble ropes and a brilliant dripping sun. Leisel uses words to spark happiness and gain knowledge—without them, she would be powerless, too.
This tale of words and power is told in the point of view of an unlikely narrator—Death himself. Death is not God, nor does he even decide when one will die; his job is simply to carry away the souls of the deceased. The best souls, we learn, sit up to meet him, reluctant to die but accepting all the same. Death is in the perfect position make to such striking observations about death and war—he likens himself to the best Nazi, killing and killing and yet still being asked for more.
For the first half of the novel, I was fairly interested in the subject of the story and intrigued by the unorthodox choice of narrator, but was not bringing the book with me everywhere as I later would. It was no chore to read, but it was no great treat either. However, once half of the book was finished and I was now fully acquainted with the cast of characters and the author’s writing style, the story began to pick up. I found myself increasingly interested in the events that took place and by the end of the novel I was practically ripping at the pages, shaken and moved by the beautiful description and the heartfelt dialogue. The author introduced the story’s ending about three quarters in, but the warning did not dilute the power of the end, it made it more poignant. Somehow both times the ending was explained (the first merely an outline, the second fully fleshed out) it was shattering and breathtaking.
The Book Thief takes a while to get started, but once you’re hooked, you simply can’t stop reading. It’s a powerful story of loss and happiness, love and heartbreak, reading and rule and life. Four and a half evil daggers.
Yours,
Briar
Set in Germany in the early 1940’s, The Book Thief is the heartwarming a
nd heartbreaking story of a foster child, fourteen books, many colors, an accordion, death, a Jewish fist fighter, a basement, two wars, a kiss, and a boy with hair the color of lemons.
Liesel Meminger has witnessed more than her share of horrors. Her father disappeared when she was little, and an aura of mystery still surrounds his name. Her brother died on a train on the way to their foster home in Molching, Germany. And there are more horrors to come, though Liesel has no way of knowing. Through it all, Liesel turns to books as a refuge from the death, abandonment, and fear that fills her life, and the lives of all those around her.
Liesel’s long and illustrious career in book thievery begins with The Grave Digger’s Handbook, stolen from the snow at her brother’s burial. Next comes The Shoulder Shrug, stolen from fire. Liesel continues to steal books wherever she can find them. But her personal peace cannot last, and soon the danger of the war looms closer, lurking even within her own home, drawing her always closer to the inevitable. Liesel’s life becomes one of secrets and lies, and truth comes from the most surprising places.
This book is simply amazing. The author has a way of making the smallest details- the color of someone’s eyes, or the texture of their hair- the most important, and mystery is interwoven with every event, no matter how tiny. The unusual format, cavalier use of foreshadowing, and, shall we say, unconventional narration make the book a bit confusing in places, but really drive the point home. On the whole, this is a fabulous, yet absolutely heartbreaking book, and an unusual perspective on World War II. I give it the full five daggers, reluctant that there are no more to give.
Yours,
Tay
Ooh, after the week I've had with babysitter woes, I have really been looking forward to my Friday post where I get to let my hair down, sit back, and ponder the inane, quirky habits of that ecelectic species, writer.
This week's spotlight gelled for me in a dream last night. I haven't had the best luck with working things out in the subconscious before, but man, last night, the stars must have aligned because when I woke up, what I dreamt actually made sense.
You might be a writer if...you swoon for writers like they were rock stars.
I mean the Leif Garrett/David Cassidy kind of swooning, where your heart gets up to some crazy erratic pace and your head feels so hot, you think you might lift off the ground or explode. Yep, that's what great writing does for writers.
Sound melodramatic?
Okay, maybe just a little, but what writer hasn't had that moment when a turn of phrase in a piece stopped them dead in their tracks. Where they sat there, saying it out loud, letting the words roll and bump across their lips as they savored the flavor of great writing.
And then became insanely curious to learn about the person who wrote that. So much so you, say, maybe googled them? Checked out their wikipedia page? Looked for interviews. Driven by the haunting memory of that amazing combination of letters and sounds that became greater than the sum of its parts.
I know. I'm swooning again.
I didn't used to swoon so for writers, not before I became one. I always read a lot, tons, but honestly, I wasn't all that into remembering author names. It was all about book titles, or even more simply, the story itself.
Now that I am a writer, now that I'm constantly working to improve my craft, I've become a closetcase fan of other writers. Then again, it may only be me who thinks my curiosity and interest is secret. I've seen my friends give me that funny look when I start going on and on and on about how I'd love to have Markus Zusak and his family over for a grill party. Kids would be playing on the swing set (I have no idea if he has kids. I do.) Spouses would get along great. And we'd talk about whatever. Not necessarily books, but life. I mean, who wouldn't want to kibbutz a little with the person who wrote:
As it turned out, Ilsa Hermann not only gave Liesel Meminger a book that day. She also gave her a reason to spend time in the basement - her favorite place, first with Papa, then Max. She gave her a reason to write her own words, to see that words had also brought her to life.
"Don't punish yourself," she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness too. That was writing.
Do you have a lighter lit and are waving it in the air like me? I mean, gees, that's just one line. The whole rest of the book is just as strong.
Zusak is just one example on my ever growing list of authors I'd love to meet and talk with. I don't mean interview talk. I mean Paris, early 20th century, Picasso taking on Modigliani talk. I mean, Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald. You know, arguing and debating, chewing and reforming and rewriting what makes good art in a seedy bar with a good French wine. They argued. They debated. They drank. They lived. They created. They changed the world.
God, what a time that must have been. An unending concert of ideas matching pitch and being reworked into something new and brilliant.
I'm swooning just thinking about it.
*****On a very little side note to rising fame and writer fortune, my book, Dragon Wishes, was an Honorable Mention in the San Francisco Book Festival this week. I feel like a rocker who's finally playing decent venues. Hopefully, one day, it'll be the Met.
Set in Germany in the early 1940’s, The Book Thief is the heartwarming and heartbreaking story of a foster child, fourteen books, many colors, an accordion, death, a Jewish fist fighter, a basement, two wars, a kiss, and a boy with hair the color of lemons.
Liesel Meminger has witnessed more than her share of horrors. Her father disappeared when she was little, and an aura of mystery still surrounds his name. Her brother died on a train on the way to their foster home in Molching, Germany. And there are more horrors to come, though Liesel has no way of knowing. Through it all, Liesel turns to books as a refuge from the death, abandonment, and fear that fills her life, and the lives of all those around her.
Liesel’s long and illustrious career in book thievery begins with The Grave Digger’s Handbook, stolen from the snow at her brother’s burial. Next comes The Shoulder Shrug, stolen from fire. Liesel continues to steal books wherever she can find them. But her personal peace cannot last, and soon the danger of the war looms closer, lurking even within her own home, drawing her always closer to the inevitable. Liesel’s life becomes one of secrets and lies, and truth comes from the most surprising places.
This book is simply amazing. The author has a way of making the smallest details- the color of someone’s eyes, or the texture of their hair- the most important, and mystery is interwoven with every event, no matter how tiny. The unusual format, cavalier use of foreshadowing, and, shall we say, unconventional narration make the book a bit confusing in places, but really drive the point home. On the whole, this is a fabulous, yet absolutely heartbreaking book, and an unusual perspective on World War II. I give it the full five daggers, reluctant that there are no more to give.
Yours,
Tay
The book is dead; long live the e-book. Or so the hype and scare-mongering would have us believe. As a writer, I have as much reason to be curious about the likely impact of e-books a anyone, so I snuggled up with the Sony e-book reader and a glass of wine and gave it a chance to prove itself.
‘E-book reader’ is a naff name. Surely I am the reader? Never mind. I opened Anna Karenin. Within the first page (=screen) the straight quotation marks, dull font, US spelling and poor tracking were making it a teeth-gritting experience. The standard text size is about 7 point to squeeze most of a page onto the screen. Zooming in, the text reflows and the page count at the bottom of the screen updates. The e-book reader now says it’s showing page 45 of 4,502. That’s rather daunting. You can’t see at a glance how far through you’ve got – 45 of 4502 is 1%, so that would be about page 5 of the ‘real’, 500-page book. If I was on page 683 of 4502, the maths would be harder.
I miss the satisfying wodge of completed, crinkled, warm pages in my left hand and the pristine pile on the right, tightly packed and full of promise. Instead, there’s just the orphaned current page. It isn’t even a page – it’s a fragment, a disembodied, lost messenger from the rest of the book which is – where? Nowhere; stolen. The book has been dismembered and thrown to the winds, like Osiris. An e-book doesn’t feel as if it exists – every ‘page’ you’re not looking at winks out of existence, like some elusive quantum particle. You can’t flick through the pages, which I hated. Without flickability, it’s impossible to check which character with a long Russian name (or three) is which.
Perhaps Anna Karenin wasn’t a fair trial as I know it already, so I switched to The Book Thief, which I haven’t read (I know, shame on me). I was immediately lost. There are none of the clues and cues that a printed book gives. How long is this book? What’s it about? What’s it like? In a real book, the cover, the weight and colour of the paper, and the layout (font, size of margins, position and content of header, position of page number, twiddles and decoration) all convey messages and set up expectations. I had never been as aware of page design as when there wasn’t any. After a chapter or two, I’d had enough and turned to the paper copy, languishing on the ‘books to read’ shelf. It felt like coming home. While the e-book uses a mundane, blocky type for the title, the paper book is exquisitely designed, with carefully chosen fonts that communicate the character of the tale. The grey, backlit screen of the e-book (the much-vaunted E-Ink technology) has a deadly pallor that drains the text of life – which I suppose might be appropriate in this particular case. The hardback’s creamy paper is easy on the eye and gives a sense of antiquity and seriousness. On paper, The Book Thief uses the real estate of the page creatively; it also has large pages. It’s a strange choice for e-bookising as the specialness and solemnity bestowed by the extravagant use of white (not grey!) space contribute hugely to the character of the book.
I missed a lot reading the e-book. When I re-read on paper what I’d just read on screen I found I’d missed some of the elegance of the style, felicitous use of language, even points of plot. And it wasn’t just because I was re-reading: I read the next chapter on paper first and then in the e-book, and still noticed more on paper. On the screen I saw the grammar – not even style, just grammar – and picked out grammatical ‘errors’ that were allowable elements of style. I wonder if this is because with my own writing I correct grammar on screen, but style and other elements on paper. It would be interesting to know if other writer/readers find the same.
Turning the page in a real book is an event. In a picture book, particularly, the action of turning the page is often integral to the story – it’s a moment of suspense, then discovery, of changing scene or surprise. Turning the page of an e-book means pressing a button; the screen goes momentarily blank before the new page appears. I found its blinking into oblivion distracting and distressing. Brief panic – where’s the story gone? It breaks that meta-suspension of disbelief that lets us believe the story is all there is and the outside world has vanished, and reminds you every time that this is not really real. People say they stop noticing the screen’s blank stare of bewilderment after a while. I’m a master of the blank stare of bewilderment, and I don’t need books or electronic devices doing it back to me. If I became immune to it, I’d be disappointed in myself. Interestingly, I did on one occasion lift my hand to turn the page in the usual way – and was frustrated to have to lower it and press the button.
One of the selling points of the e-book reader is that it’s light, so you can take lots of books on holiday. It always weighs the same, whatever you’re reading, however many books it holds. But the weight of a book tells us something about what the pages contain. We value things that are heavy – a weighty argument, gold … Light is lite is superficial. All e-books weigh the same (nothing) and all look the same. It makes a difference whether we read a book in hardback or paperback, in an old Penguin with an orange cover or a shiny new edition. The e-book reader robs books of their individuality. It is, indeed, a book thief. It does not deal in ‘books’ at all, but in texts that it tries to persuade us are the same thing (which, of course, they are not).
All e-books look the same to everyone else, too. I will talk to someone on the train who’s reading something interesting, but not an anonymous e-book. (It will make a good disguise for pornography.) And how will we judge new potential friends if we can’t scan their bookshelves? It will be hard to open their e-book reader and scan its contents discreetly.
The e-book reader is pretty unsatisfactory if you want to read a literary novel. But literary novels account for few of the books published each year. Some non-fiction and reference books could be usefully bought and used as e-books, particularly if the interface of the reader were improved to make moving around simpler. And there are plenty of fiction not read in nicely designed editions. My father is in his seventies, and reads a lot, usually science fiction. I gave him the e-book reader and he read the script of A Clockwork Orange, all the way through – or to within six pages of the end, when the battery ran out. He is not bothered about the page layout and said he would use it if there were books he wanted to read available (there are), if it were cheaper, and if the books were cheap.
This last point is significant. An e-book has no physical substance – it’s just a downloaded file. The cost to the publisher is similar to producing a paper book until the files are shipped to Far-Off Lands for printing; thereafter, it is zero. No paper, no binding, no shipping, no warehousing, no stock movement, no returns. They should be much cheaper than paper books, but they are not. Why? Surely if publishers gave away e-books with printed copies for now (which will cost them next to nothing) that would encourage customers to get e-book readers? They could read the real book at home, but carry the e-book to read elsewhere. When enough people have readers, e-books could be 99p. This is not ridiculous. I asked a publisher for some figures and it would be possible for an unillustrated, mono book (there’s no colour e-book reader yet anyway).
That’s fine if we really want e-books. But even if e-books are cheap, the reader is expensive. Is a family supposed to share one, and take it in turns to read? Or pay £200 for each of four or five? Do we give one to each child, and replace it as regularly as we replace lost/stolen/dropped/washing-machined/trodden-on iPods and phones? (Incidentally, neither of my daughters was remotely interested in the e-book reader, despite being complete technojunkies.) And when some books are produced only as e-books, what will there be for people who can’t afford an e-book reader? I have a horrible feeling that e-books could undo all the good work for literacy rates that Gutenberg started: if only the rich can afford to read, aren’t we back where we started?
Laura Miller is a vigorous reader; the reviews and essays she writes—for Salon.com, for New York Times, for New Yorker, those stature zones—speed forward with a sort of exhilarating fury, a faith in books and their significance, and a determination to say precisely what she means. If I haven't always agreed with her (do two people ever see eye to eye on every book?), I've always greatly admired her, and when David Foster Wallace died so tragically a few weeks ago, it was Laura's words to which I turned first; she wouldn't appease, she wouldn't heal, but she might help me understand.
Laura has a new book due out soon, The Magician's Book, and its premise intrigues. It's the story of a woman—Laura herself—who fell deeply in love with the Narnia tales as a child and grew disenchanted as a teen. Finally, she allowed her adult self a rebounded intrigue, allowed herself to return to the land of Narnia. What had C.S. Lewis done with his tales to bring this child in? How had it shaped what and how she would read later? Who else had fallen under Narnia's spell? What in the end makes for a literary reader?
http://www.magiciansbook.com/
All this past week, perhaps even more, I've been talking about The Book Thief with my friend Andra. She read it after I did, we wrote nearly each day of its power. Two nights ago, she turned its final page, and when her husband arrived home, he found her devastated, not wishing to leave the company of the characters she'd met. As I'd lived this, too, as I still have not escaped The Book Thief's spell, I understood. I recognized, in Andra, a kindred heart, a reader who, in Miller's words, pays exuberant attention.
Laura Miller has spent an entire life paying attention to books. I'm betting that we should pay attention to this one.
I'm also wondering what books have seized your heart and have changed who you've become.
By:
Heidi Estrin,
on 12/11/2007
Blog:
The Book of Life
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OK, here's your big, last-night-of-Hanukkah present: an embeddable flash player so you can enjoy The Book of Life on your own web page, blog, or social network!
And to go with it, I've uploaded a bonus episode, "Meet Markus!" This is a live, unedited talk recorded at the independent bookstore Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida with Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief.
Let me tell you a little more about the new podcast player widget, provided by Big Contact (btw, I must tell you that they have excellent customer service! They were a huge help to me when I ran into trouble setting up this player!). The player you see here is just an image ... for the real player, please look on the sidebar to your right. ---->
(If you're not viewing this post at www.bookoflifepodcast.com, you can see the player here.)
You can scroll down the list of episodes and click on any title to play that show. The little tab with the musical notes will give you the Show Notes for that episode. The tab with the lines takes you back to the full list of all episodes. The + tab tells you how to subscribe to The Book of Life podcast. And the tab with the people on it helps you embed the player on your own site, as does the big button below the player that says "Play my show on your site."
Please do try out the new player, and consider putting it on your site to bring the show to an even wider audience! Let's get even more people excited about Jewish books, music, movies and web treasures!
As always, you can also click the play button on this old familiar flash player to listen to the podcast now:
Or you can click MP3 File to start your computer's media player.
Background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.
How do you like to do it?
Read, I mean. When I was a kid, I used to read upside-down. I would lie on my back on my bed, with my book in my hands, and then carefully slide backwards, head first, over the side until the crown of my head touched the floor. Then I would read until my ears started to pound. Why? Um, do teenagers' brains lack oxygen?
I also read while washing the dishes. This was my chore every fourth week, and I hated it. I would prop a book behind the sink, plunge my hands into the suds and wash the dirty plates and greasy pans and sticky forks by feel, not looking away from my book. When I got to a page turn, (which happened every few seconds or so because I was reading like I was slurping fuel) I would do a fast hand-drying swipe on my pants and flip to the next two-page spread. Voila! Books* got read, and forks got...re-washed.
I saw a bit of advice recently that suggested that writers should imagine themselves in a comfortable reading place when they are about to compose words. Yeah, I get that. Good advice. If you like chairs.
Where do you like to read? Is that the place you go in your head when you write?
*See: A Simple List of Books, FYOL
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Thank you for the updates. You posted such a fantastic clandestine shot of New Your. Love it.
I was hoping you were going to say Atari was coming out with a device that let you enjoy stories on your television. Er ... wait.
That was an awesome interview.
Yeah, the interview was great :). And so was the article about the different paths to success. I remember reading about Ben Fountain's long road to success in Poets & Writers. Pretty amazing, especially his wife.
Barnes & Noble got a long-needed thumping. Some of the executive arrogance was gone from the financial report and the conference call.
In particular, they seem to have learned that when someone is thinking about buying a tablet, the name B&N doesn't spring to mind. That should've been obvious, but I guess it wasn't.
They still don't seem inclined to listen to their customers, though. The executives clearly know better what their customers want than the customers themselves do.
Their BN.com operation continues to lose them money after more than fifteen years, but all they had to say about that was "we're repositioning [it]." I don't know what that means. Are they going to clean up the user reviews? Are they going to start moderating their forums? Are they going to have people updating the site on weekends, so that Amazon doesn't get a 2-day jump on new titles and reduced prices?
B&N execs don't seem to grasp just how infuriating the Philippine customer disservice operation they've used for the past couple of years is. Nothing at all was said in the financial reports or the conference call about this matter.
B&N is a long way from financial collapse, but they've been bankrupt in customer-orientation for a long time. I don't know if the B&N execs don't notice, or if they just don't care.
Loved the Gladwell article, particularly since I have a Ben Fountain novel sitting on my top To Be Read Shelf.
I have never understood B&N's move away from stocking their store with actual, you know, BOOKS. Especially with Borders gone, they had a chance to increase their power as a place to go browse, read, and hang out.
Instead they took up prime retail space selling e-readers. (If I wanted to read online, I'd be home in my pajamas reading online; I wouldn't have come all the way out to the store!) Instead they started carrying fewer books, stocking their stores with random junk you don't go to a bookstore to buy.
If they want to prepare for a movement of the market away from print books, they should work on their cafe space. Make it even more friendly as a place to plug in, read, write, meet friends. The cafes are already there, and they provide an experience that shopping online at home doesn't.
I loved the albums-to-books post! Thanks for the link. :)
Being sued for 'breathtaking amounts' because a publishing company has supposedly conspired to raise the cost of ebooks sounds a bit insane to me. I mean, surely, companies can charge whatever they want for their own product? Could this whole thing be a kind of money-grab by a Government Dept?
Thanks for the very interesting links, Nathan :)
However, on second thoughts, I suppose the charge refers to the major companies supposedly making an agreement whereby they're not going to undercut each other on a certain price for a certain product - ebooks. Again, I don't see a problem, really, especially as independent publishers and self-publishers could then gain an advantage by charging much smaller amounts for their ebooks. I imagine that indies and self-publishers would have a harder time making sales, so being able to undercut the big boys would help the aforementioned find their own niche in the market.
Folk who would rather pay less for ebooks might have a case for being disgruntled, but then we'd all rather pay less for everything not just ebooks. And with larger companies more people need a slice of the pie, so it makes sense that their products would cost more than those of someone doing it alone or with only a few people involved.
I don't know how you keep up with all the changes. I rely on you to find the news. Thanks for doing the hard work that only requires me following links!
Hi Nathan! Thank you so very much for taking the time to do this. It is always very helpful!
Rebecca
Cool picture!
And great links, so many of them, thank you! :)
I thought the story about how the bookseller went and bought books at Target was pretty funny. You can't even chalk that up to Publishing practices - that's more about bureaucracy, and how crazy it gets! :)
On the other hand, it's noticeable that when all the stories about sock puppet reviews were going around, there were letters of protest, and much gnashing of teeth and pointing of fingers. But authors talking about buying their way onto bestsellers lists - with the blessing and guidance of their publishers? Where's the hair pulling and the accusations and the righteousness about that?
Seems like a double standard.
Although, on a - not a double standard note - I wish they would stop giving Barnes and Noble a hard time. Seems like there's an article every few hours about how Barnes and Noble is messing up. I wish they would leave Barnes and Noble alone for awhile, ease up on the pressure and let them think.
The records as book covers were pretty funny.
And I liked your interview, although I'm holding out for the 'elephant in the room' or maybe the 'middle-aged' Mick. :)
Oh, I wanted to respond to Wendy.
@Wendy - I'm not an expert, but from my understanding, no, this wasn't a money grab.
What the Publishers did was white collar crime. It was a felony that could have meant not only heavy fines, but jail time. The reason the penalties are so stiff is to discourage corporations from doing this. They can make ALOT of money through anti-trust actions (which is what this was), so the penalites have to be even higher to make it a very unappealing option if they get caught.
Five Publishers were sued not for raising prices, but for getting together to control the market. They all cut a deal with Apple, and then forced Amazon to take the same deal.
Coporations are not supposed to:
a. Get together and agree on a policy.
b. Force a less preferred retailer (Amazon) to accept it.
This is about competition. Business are supposed to be in competition with one another, they are not supposed to get together to try to control the marketplace, and hurt one retailer over another.
The point of this is to protect the free marketplace. If we didn't have anti-trust laws, we'd probably have one big corporation that controlled everything as it amassed all the wealth. It would be a corporate dictatorship, and no, I'm not exaggerating. This is why a free and competitive marketplace is such a big deal. Competition is supposed to help protect the consumer against corporate greed.
What the Publishers did cost Amazon money, and it cost the consumers money, too. Several States have successfully sued to get the consumers their money back. But the real issue is the llegal collusion.
I hope that all made sense, like I said, I'm not an expert. You could google 'anti-trust' law and get alot more information.
One of the best feeling in the world is when you're hugging the person you love, and they hug you back even tighter.
You know, I saw those Calvin and Hobbes photos and I'm not sorry for the guy. There was absolutely no credit given to Bill Watterson on the post I saw. I realize that doesn't mitigate copyright issues, but it struck me as incredibly rude.
Thank you for the updates, Nathan! I just read your old post discussing the idea that bookstores may go the way of the old record stores. I totally agree with you.
We had a lovely little independent bookstore downtown in my New England suburb. Back in October of 2007, Borders opened up a huge store in a newly built shopping plaza about a three-minute drive from downtown. The indie store survived for a little while longer, but eventually most everyone started shopping at Borders instead. It was a sad day when the indie store went out, but I couldn't really blame anyone for choosing the corporate giant, with all the advantages it offered.
Then, almost two years ago, I saw the standard email from the CEO of Borders announcing the closing of the business. I actually wrote an open letter response outlining what I believe to be the formula for success when it comes to brick and mortar bookstores. They have to give the consumer something an online store simply cannot, in the form of face-to-face interaction.
Amazon has many great forums, but it's not the same as getting together with a group of people in person and passionately discussing a book you've all read. The immediate back-and-forth dialogue, the constant interruption of each other because you wholeheartedly agree or passionately disagree.
You must create a place where local authors come and speak, and university professors offer lectures, a place where people get to know their neighbors over a cup of coffee and some lively discussion. You have to build a literary community center...that also sells books.
Sorry for the long comment—I’m really passionate about this subject!