 |
| Where I write books and book reviews. |
 |
| Books I love to read. |
Today I was writing a book review (that you can read next door at my other blog,
Victorian Scribbles) and it got me to thinking about what makes a good read in fiction. I read lots of books, and I review books in various genres, but the ones that stick in my mind seem to share certain characteristics, no matter what their genre.
1. Some kind of a problem to be solved. Yes, "the story problem" that creates the story arc for the protagonist, etc. The plot. Still, reading it
that way, it seems so . . . pedantic. For me, "plot" or "story problem" boil down to some kind of a puzzle or challenge that needs to be worked out--one that engages the reader as well as the protagonist. You really want to know how it will end. One of the appeals of a good mystery is that you find yourself hot on the trail, trying to solve it along with the protagonist.
2. Interesting characters that can make me suspend disbelief enough to go along for the ride. For me, they don't have to be the p.o.v. character. Watson, purported teller of Sherlock Holmes tales, is the perfect filter to make me suspend belief regarding Sherlock Holmes's astounding mental and physical prowess, because Watson is believable, and he believes in his friend. Nick, in
The Great Gatsby, pulls the reader into his awe of Gatsby so that a reader is invested in the outcome for this tragic figure. In
The Lightning Queen, a YA novel about gypsies and Mexican-indians, the author, Laura Resau, makes us care about the dignity of both groups and their traditions, while pulling us into their world of fate and magic and healing through the eyes of two endearing characters.
3. A reader learns something they didn't know, even though it's fiction. This is true in all of the above. But let me add Cara Black's Aimee LeDuc adult mystery series, where every new mystery is a free trip to Paris, and Kate Morton's novel,
The Secret Keeper, where a reader travels back and forth in time to unravel a dying woman's story behind the mesmerizing event witnessed years ago by her daughter--a secret going back to World War II. Right now I'm reading a gripping middle grade novel by Julie T. Lamana,
Upside Down in the Middle of Nowhere, that takes a reader into the terrifying lead-up to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Many of us read
about Katrina in 2005 when the storm hit New Orleans, but this book makes you live through it.
4. Emotional involvement. I love a book that plays on my emotions, and all of the above books do that. A special emotional aspect I enjoy, though, is humor--witty humor, not slapstick. For me, one of the simple pleasures in reading is to find myself chuckling, or even laughing out loud. The Sherlock Holmes mystery I reviewed next door--
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ruby Elephants--was one such book, but library shelves and bookstores abound with good, humorous fiction, and for those of you who write, I would advise you to find a way to inject a little humor in your story. It's almost irresistible to re-read a truly funny book.
How about you? What do you find the most important elements in a good read? Can you tell me the titles of some good reads you think I (and others) might enjoy?
This will be a shorter post than usual, guys. I had emergency eye surgery the day after I wrote my last post, and I am still essentially working with one and a half functioning eyes.
We've been talking about what the blogosphere holds for the writer. You already know the answer to that....a lot. You can spend all time trolling the Internet just reading writer's blogs, advice columns or sites that will help you do this, that or the other better. Unless I have a specific problem, I don't spend a lot of time cruising the virtual highway. I just don't have time.
If I am online, it is to find out what is being published and what is worth reading. There was a time when I read everything that came out, good, bad or indifferent...but again...I don't have the time any more. (I should also add that as a librarian, reading everything that came in was part of my job.) Another part of the job was reading the review sources....Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book, etc. All of these are available online for free, in condensed forms.
However, I have been relying on these sources since my library school days, and I have learned that not every book makes it to the "the Bigs" of the review world. That's when I discovered bloggers-who-review. Some bloggers drop a review or two into their posts from time to time. I like lots of reviews, all in one place. (Again...that time-saving thing.)
Once a month I check my two favorite sources, Richie's Picks and Good Reads. Good Reads has recently become affiliated with Amazon in some fashion which seems to annoy my fellow readers. I am not going to get into a political debate over book reviewing. I scan through Good Reads not so much for the quality of the reviews, but mainly to see what people are reading. If there are a thousand plus reviews or likes of a book I've never even heard of, I check Amazon for the review. That is, I check Amazon if it is an adult book. If it is a children's book, I click on over to Richie's Picks
Richie Partington doesn't so much review books as to write short essays about them. He includes lengthy passages from the book (so you can get a taste of the writer's style) , compares them to other books (not necessarily books of the same genre or author...just books that ring a bell in Richie's head.) He keeps a year's worth of "recent" reviews online, but has an archive of his "Richie's Best of the Year" going all the way back to 2005. Richie's selections are eclectic. He reviews whatever floats his boat (I am still waiting to have one of my books in Richie's Picks). What I like about this blog is that Richie gives you more than enough information for you to decide whether this book is worth your time or not. Like I say, so many books, so little time. That's why Richie is my reading guru.
Don't forget to enter our latest book giveaway for our own Jill Esbaum's book.See Jill's post for information. This is one of your last chances, since the deadline is June 18th.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
I really, really enjoyed Mark Haddon’s The Red House: A Novel
. (This is the same guy who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog Who Barked in the Night-time.)
There are writers whose work I enjoy and whom, I fancy, I could even emulate.
And then there’s a book like this one. It breaks so many rules, including hopping from head to head to head in a single paragraph. Punctuation was non-standard. Some paragraphs were stream of consciousness, and while I didn’t always follow ever ripple, I still enjoyed it.
I guess when you are a master, then rules are there for the breaking.
Here's the publisher's description:
"Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.
But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt."
Here’s a sampling. The first is a sly commentary on what it means to be a writer:
He’d been looking forward to it for the last couple of weeks. A town of books. All this learning gathered in and offered up. Trawling, browsing, leafing. But now that he was standing in the bowels of the cinema bookshop… That smell. what was it, precisely? Glue? Paper? The spores of some bibliophile lichen? Catacombs of yellowing paper. Every book unwanted, sold for pennies or carted from the houses of the dead. Battersea books home. The authors earned nothing from the transaction. Salaries less than binmen he’d read somewhere. He thought about their lives. No colleagues, no timetable, no security, the constant lure of daytime television. The formlessness of it all made him feel slightly ill, going to work in their dressing gowns. So much risk and so little adventure.
And here’s a bit from POV of eight-year-old Benjy:
Benjy loves being in the countryside, not so much the actual physical contents thereof, horses, windmills, big sticks, panoramas, more then absence of those things which press upon him so insistently at home. He occupies, still, a little circle of attention, no more than eight meters in diameter at most. If stuff happens beyond this perimeter he simply doesn't notice unless it involves explosions or his name being yelled angrily. At home, in school, on the streets between and around the tow, the word is constantly catching him by surprise, teachers, older boys, drunkk people on the street all suddenly appearing in front of him so that his most-used facial expression is one of puzzled shock.
It seems like Twitter has supplanted blogs (to my sorrow, I like blogging quite a bit). And for all I know maybe Tumblr and Pinterest are the cool things now.
I don't have either of those, although I do have a GoodReads account, a Facebook, and a FB author page. And a Twitter account, @aprilhenrybooks. If it weren't for Twitter, I wouldn't have found out some most excellent news a couple of nights ago. I'm waiting for more official confirmation, but until then, here's an article I just read about Twitter.
The Harvard Business Review looked at what makes for a good tweet.
Good:
- Random thought
- Self promo
- Question
- Info
Not so good:
- Opinion/complaint
- What I’m doing
- Presence maintenance
- Conversation
Read more about what works best with Twitter here.
Publishers Weekly says, “Is it time for a Miss Manners intervention? These days it’s tricky to keep up with the name-calling surrounding citizen reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, and Twitter.
In the biggest recent dustup, over a one-star January 13 Goodreads review of Kiera Cass’s The Selection – a YA novel about a lottery that allowed 35 teenage girls to compete, a la The Bachelor, for a handsome prince – the war of words got heated enough that one commenter referred to a citizen reviewer as “that bitch.”
What no one in the article addresses - and I’m not feeling up to putting it out there in the comments - is interacting with readers who love your books. I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all.
For example, a year ago, this review popped up on Amazon for Shock Point
.
Middle grade teachers, don't miss this book! It grabs you from the first few sentences and doesn't let up until the very end. It is very believable and real. I would put this in the hands of any middle school reader (reluctant or not) and then let it work its magic. Even better, create a buzz by showing it to your students and giving them a preview of the plot. Warning: be sure to have a blank tablet nearby because you will need to start a sign-out to avoid a classroom cage match situation. When the reader finishes and asks you for another book like this (trust me, they will) give them 'Girl, Stolen', also by April Henry. Again, you'll be glad you did.
The guy signed his real name and said what state he came from. A little googling turned up an email address. I sent him a thank you note. He sent me a nice note back.
And this coming March, I’m going to visit his school. I’m super excited, and it never would have happened if I hadn’t reached out.
Sure, it might not always be a good idea. I see my books reviewed on blogs, Good Reads, Amazon, etc. Only sometimes do I respond to a positive review. But usually I think it’s worth it or at worst, neutral.
Read the whole PW article here.
I spent some time catching up on my "Monster of the Week" series for Halloween. These are three examples, all on done on post-it notes.
Check out the flickr set!
My Blog
In honor of Hallowe'en, the challenge this week on another illustration blog is "
goblins, ghouls and ghosts".
There have been headline-making serial killers over the years. Names like
Ted Bundy,
Ed Gein,
Alferd Packer and
Albert Fish.... all men. Very few women have entered the ranks of serial killers. The majority of women serial killers used subdued methods for their crimes, the most favored being poison. Enriqueta Martí had no time for poisons. She was a self-proclaimed witch in Barcelona, Spain in the early 20th century. She sold charms and love potions to earn a living, but had other activities to occupy her free time. Based on clues pieced together after her arrest, Enriqueta abducted several local children and held them captive until she killed them and boiled their bodies, using the bones in her potions and the flesh to consume. She had already murdered at least six children, when her last abductee, a young girl named Angelita, was rescued alive from Enriqueta's lair. She described to police a tale of murder and cannibalism. According to the girl, she had been forced to partake of human flesh. Her "meal" had been the remains of another child, kidnapped by Enriqueta a short time earlier.
On the basis of Angelita's story, police raided Enriqueta's home. A search revealed bags of bloody children's clothes, blood-caked knives, jars and vials of bones and human fat and several scalps of blond hair.
Enriqueta was arrested and convicted in 1912. Enriqueta was attacked and lynched in prison by fellow inmates. Although it was a lurid, front-page account, Enriqueta's story was overshadowed by a bigger one... the sinking of the Titanic.
Happy Hallowe'en....
again.
This week's theme: SFG: Goblins, Ghouls and Ghosts. (Oh my!)
With Halloween just around the corner I thought it might be fun to look under the beds and in the closets for the next challenge. Have a howliiiiing good time with this one!
Be sure to label your illustrations with the appropriate labels as well. Label your entries with your name and the challenge label, in this case SFG: Goblins, Ghouls and Ghosts.
The SFG Challenge runs Thursday to Thursday, and was created to offer every member an opportunity to stretch their creative muscles and post their interpretations on a specific theme.
Remember, this is a completely voluntary challenge designed solely to stimulate creativity and promote participation. Please don't hesitate to post your other work as normal.
On a side note: this is the last week to take advantage of the special advertising rates for SFG members. E-mail me for more details or to take advantage of this great deal!
The next challenge begins Thursday, November 1st, 2007.
Have a great week SFG'ers!
-Jeff
is one of them.
Thanks for sharing Richie's Picks, Mary Ann!
When I was thinking about which resources to share, he was up there with my word-a-day sites and Booklist.
His taste is impeccable.
He KNOWS Children's Literature.
I value his opinion.
Hope you're soon back seeing 20-20.
Your Fan Esther
Thanks for posting despite your vision issues, Mary Ann. I'm hoping your eyes are 100% soon! And I agree with Esther about Richie really knowing children's literature.
Thanks for posting about sites that offer more than a basic book review. I like the sound of Richie's Picks, I'm always looking for something different and new to read.
Thanks all...Funny things that i discovered Ritchie years ago through his Amazon reviews. I had to find out who this guy was and...hey...guess what...he had a website where he did this all the time! He used to focus primarily on YA , but he has branched out into all the children's genres in the last couple of years. All I know, is that if Ritchie says it's good...it's good! (Or at least we agree on what's good! Maybe we were separated at birth.)