A+F: Writing

Philip Pullman beyond His Dark Materials

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:24:53 +0000

Because of the controversial nature of His Dark Materials, Pullman's other books often get overlooked in contexts like this. Having just posted on the BBC adaptation of The Ruby in the Smoke (4 Feb on PBS in the USA) in the Television forum, I thought I would kick off a topic in the Literature Forum too - not just on the Sally Lockhart quartet but the whole range of Pullman's work (while, perhaps, leaving discussion of HDM to another thread!).

Most of his other work is aimed at younger readers than HDM. There are some real crackers. A particular favourite in my house is The Firework Maker's Daughter - very much in the mould of a classic fairy tale, but fresh and fun. Like some of his other work, it started as a play and has been staged a few times in the UK in recent years. I'm also a big fan of the Sally Lockhart quartet (The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well and The Tin Princess) though the last of them is, for me, the weakest by far.

There's some extremely interesting material in his two non-fantasy novels for teenagers, The Broken Bridge and The Butterfly Tattoo.

Sometime I'll try and post on some of these - but not now since I'm supposed to be working on something else. You can find some of my material on them here.

Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:37:04 +0000

As previously mentioned on a lonely little thread in the "Work in Progress" section, I wrote a book, and it's real enough of a thing that I think I'll start a thread for it here. The book will be out sometime in October -- it's a small publisher, Cascade Books, that doesn't send out books unless they're ordered, so there's not a specific street date and I don't know exactly when they start printing them.

Here is a little blurb that describes the book pretty well:

Quote

Church-camp sing-alongs gone horribly wrong, infatuation with contemporary Christian music, teenage love set to indie rock soundtracks, playing rock in churches and church music in rock clubs, betrayal by Christian rock bands—Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll is a book about how listening to music makes us who we are, and it’s an exploration of the intersections between the evangelical church and the pop music scene. The author, a youth group dropout turned music critic, combines laugh-out-loud humor with thoughtful reflection to describe how his obsession with rock and roll has shaped him, and how living in the shadow of God and guitars can transform all of us.

You're invited to read it when you get the chance! I'll let you know when it's available.

FYI, this is the second book in the "Experiences in Evangelicalism" series (the first was the excellent Jesus Girls) which is a venture of the good people at The Other Journal.

Story of a Girl

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:04:07 +0000

The official release date is 1/10/2007, but it appears to be in stores or on its way to stores now.

Story of a Girl is contemporary young adult fiction (ages 13 or 14 and up), and it is my debut novel. Feel free to discuss, question, praise, condemn here. I may or may not participate, depending on how my ability to not be defensive is doing on a particular day.

If you buy a copy (thank you!) and would like a signed book plate (like a clear Avery label kind of thing you can put on the title page), PM me with your address.

Ask for it at your local indie book store or request it at your library. If you happen to see it in a store, feel free to turn it face out and/or place it strategically on a display table.

I'll post media updates, too. I was recently interviewed for School Library Journal but I'm not sure when that will run. SLJ gave the book a starred review, and Kirkus has also been kind. If you have contacts at local schools/libraries/bookstores who might be interested in a visit or a signing, direct them to my web site (www.sarazarr.com) for info.

John Grisham

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:00:15 +0000

...

Mentor

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 20:18:01 +0000

I posted my thoughts about Tom Grimes' Mentor over in the Stone Reader thread, but thought a dedicated thread on the book was worth a shot in this area.

Has anyone read it?

Here's another link to Michael Dirda's review of Mentor.

Anyone want to share who their mentor is/was?

I'm not an aspiring writer, but I consider Stephen Prince and John Frame to be mentors in the areas of film studies and theology, respectively.

Graphic Novels 101

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:33:13 +0000

So I am trying to bone up on graphic novels. What are some essential titles or series?

Auralia's Colors

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:11:08 +0000

I've started a blog to start some conversations about storytelling, fairy tales, fantasy, and the power of myth, in anticipation of the arrival of Auralia's Colors in late '07.

I'm trying to write my first book ...

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:26:09 +0000

A "How To" Handbook for Living In An Increasingly Effeminized American Culture

I enjoy writing. I've enjoyed writing for years and write quite often, so I'm looking for outlets for this. I have a number of ideas for different books, but I'm leaning towards a cultural commentary guidebook sort of thing (aimed more at my age group, so 20-30 somethings). The book idea I've been working on over the last 6 months or so would be humorous cultural commentary on how American culture has become feminized. I've looked for this book, but I can't find the one that I think should be written. I'm also not aiming for the Christian bookstores. I would much prefer to write something that would be found in Borders rather than only finding select readers within the local Christian subculture.

Chapters on the effeminized culture would include chapters on Film, Sports, Technology, Manners, Politics, History, Economics, Schools, Religion, Christianity, Church, College, The Military, News Media, Television, Bookstores, Relationships, Marriage, Family, and the American Identity. Each chapter would look at examples of how that particular subject is becoming effeminized, a couple funny stories about this, and then solutions and suggestions for how not to follow along with it.

I realize that this is a potentially offensive subject for some. I also realize that if I succcessfully finish the book and get it published, name calling could result. But there are things I wouldn't be writing - I am NOT blaming women for this. There is no reason to argue that the feminization of our culture is women's fault. I am NOT saying that the feminine is bad, nor am I equating things I don't like simply as "feminine." What is bad is an overly feminine culture, just like an overly masculine culture would be bad (look at the Middle East, or early towns in the American west).

So, questions,

- does anyone have any reasons for me to write or not write this book?

- does anyone think using the terms "masculine" and "feminine" is just too offensive in our overly sensitive culture today?

- does anyone think that criticizing or making fun of the feminization of our culture is, for any reason, wrong?

- do any guys here have any examples for me, of how they have been annoyed/bothered/changed by the effeminization of our culture?

PASTE Magazine

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:51:15 +0000

I seriously think Paste Magazine is the the best magazine on newstands today, right up there with Relevant and Focus on the Family.....just kidding.

Anyway, it is exactly what it states, "a thinking man's Rolling Stone.
What do you guys think of the mag?

Pauline Kael's Library

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:02:50 +0000

Pauline Kael�s library.

There�s some great stuff in it�several things you�d expect to find, but also, as the Globe notes, �some ringers.�

I considered pasting in any one of several paragraphs of the not-long story, but in the end decided on the following, which, as a fan of Sarris, nevertheless made me smile:

Kael and Sarris were famous critical antagonists. Her first edition of his ''The American Cinema" has just two markings in it, ''nonsense" (next to Sarris's assertion that the western resists parody and satire) and an extremely large exclamation mark next to Sarris's stating that his directorial chronology ''represents a weighted critical valuation."

I was also intrigued by this:

In Robert Warshow's ''The Immediate Experience," Kael underlined his stating as a reason for going to the movies ''because I took all that nonsense seriously." In the margin, she added a furiously squiggled, ''huh?"

I�ve tried twice to read The Immediate Experience, but I�ve yet to succeed.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:35:51 +0000

Do any of Kazuo Ishiguro's works deal directly or indirectly with Japanese culture?

How much influence of Ishiguro's Japanese heritage is displayed in his writings?

Any comments would be appreciated.

The Ale Boy's Feast

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:53:45 +0000

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs362.snc4/44559_427616622318_209103512318_4672318_2390585_n. jpg

So... I have about 30 days to revise 30 chapters.

The book will arrive in March 2011.

Blood's a Rover

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:36:49 +0000

This book is mentioned in our Best Books of 2009 thread by J. Henry Waugh.

I was just reminded of it while reading through a recent Entertainment Weekly. In it, Stephen King devotes his entire column to the audiobook version of Blood's a Rover. The column doesn't appear to be online but is excerpted here:

[King's] latest “The Pop of King” column is titled, “Big Audio Dynamite: The Blood’s A Rover Audiobook Rocks, Thanks to Many Wild Characters — and One Stellar Actor.” In it, Mr. King talks about how much he enjoyed the latest audiobook adaptation of author James Ellroy’s latest book, Blood’s a Rover. And while he credits the book’s characters and many twists and turns, he also pays special attention to the performance of voice actor Craig Wasson. Mr. Wasson has read other Ellroy books before, in addition to narrating the audiobook versions of John Grisham’s An Innocent Man and John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies, but this particular performance has apparently blown the author away.

In his column, Mr. King writes, “[Wasson's] a fine actor, but he’s a mad hot audio reader. The unabridged audio version of Blood’s a Rover is, quite simply, the best audiobook I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard hundreds. Good readers interpret novels and give them life. Great readers seem to live inside the books they’re performing. Wasson is one of those. The audio of Blood’s a Rover is 26 hours long and his voice held me mesmerized for that whole time.”

Neither library system I use has the book on CD, although one has ordered the e-audiobook. That's enough to finally break me down and get me to figure out how to use that iPod I got off Freecycle several months ago. Initial attempts to download CDs on to my computer, then load songs on to the iPod were unsuccessful.

I'll try again, with the goal this time of downloading the audiobook files.

Book Discussion: Hipster Christianity

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:55:01 +0000

On the recommendation of those in the Hipster Christianity thread, I'm creating a dedicated topic for discussing the book itself. The other thread remains for discussion that branches off from the book into related topics. This distinction can be fuzzy, so if you're posting here, please pause to consider whether your thoughts belong here or in the other thread. Thanks.

Video Book Reviews

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:34:26 +0000

Jeffrey has posted some links to videos he's made discussing his life and interests, but I don't think that fits the intended subject of this thread.

The Washington Post recently posted a video review of Mona Simpson's My Hollywood, and the results are ... painful. I love Charles as a writer. I've quoted his stuff in this forum several times. But as a video guy, he makes a good print reviewer.

Judge for yourself.

Although I found the humor mostly painful, I appreciate the effort and look forward to future video book reviews from other book reviewers. If anyone has good examples to share, please post them here.

I suspect that, as with so many other areas, like movie reviews, the best writers don't make for good on-camera personalities. Writers tend to read what they've written for print, and it doesn't work as broadcast-friendly text. Charles is, at least, animated and doesn't look uncomfortable, even if he is a bit awkward.

Also, look at all those edits! Some thought went into this. It's not the one-shot, on-the-cheap spot I was expecting.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:14:56 +0000

I'm approaching the halfway point of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I had noticed the book's popularity and had been interested in seeing the film adaptation now playing, but hadn't gone out of my way to chase down the book. My wife had been more interested, but when the audiobook came through for her last week at the library, she was immersed in another book. "Wanna read this?" she asked me.

I was enjoying a Donald Westlake audiobook, but not so much that I couldn't lay it aside to sample Larsson's book. And wouldn't ya know, by the end of disc 1, I was hooked. The title character, who isn't introduced until about two-thirds of the way through that first disc, is what made the difference. Clearly, there were shades of where the story was heading, with certain chapters beginning with a recitation of sexual-assault statistics from Sweden. I had heard the movie had a difficult-to-watch rape scene and suspected I'd soon get to that point in the book.

I just did today. The story has become darker and more troubling, but I can't say I want to turn away. All the geopolitical themes and political machinations don't really interest me. There's a core mystery to the story about a young girl's disappearance and possible death, and a journalist who's chasing down the details. How the title character fits in I can't say, but I'm looking forward to completing the book.

If you've read this volume, or either of the sequels, please feel free to chime in here, but use SPOILER tags if you're going to discuss story revelations.

The reason I wanted to start this thread has to do with the elegance of the translated text. I may simply be fooled by the excellent narrator who's reading the audiobook, but it seems to me that the novel has a literary quality that sets it apart from a lot of fiction on the bestseller list. And I wonder if, in translating the book, that elegance of prose is somehow added, or if it must be in the original. Sorry if that sounds like a foolish thing to wonder about, but I've noticed that a series of books my wife enjoys by a Russian mystery writer named Boris Akunin (that's a pen name) also has a certain literary flair in the translated English.

Can anyone speak to how translation can introduce a literary quality that wasn't in the original? Maybe it's not the case with Larsson. Maybe he's widely admired in his homeland as an excellent writer. I'm not sure. Maybe no one else agrees with me that the author's translated words are in any way exceptional. Whatever the case, add your thoughts.

why read literature?

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:40:18 +0000

I've been thinking about the observation below since I read it a while back. It doesn't look like the article was discussed around here. I'm not interested in whether English majors can get jobs or in the state of the academic job market.

"In this country and in England, the study of English literature began in the latter part of the 19th century as an exercise in the scientific pursuit of philological research, and those who taught it subscribed to the notion that literature was best understood as a product of language. The discipline treated the poems and narratives of a particular place, the British Isles, as evidence of how the linguistic roots of that place — Germanic, Romance, and other — conditioned what had been set before us as “masterpieces.” The twin focus, then, was on the philological nature of the enterprise and the canon of great works to be studied in their historical evolution."

As a childhood reader of the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia and a graduate of Jesuit universities, I confess that the above scientistic rationale for lit has had an impact on me. I also had an interest in teaching for a while until I realized that I'm just not that good at planning and preparing lessons (and really have no idea of how to figure this out). Now that I'm firmly devoted to business, I wonder about the reasons for reading literature.

What do you think?

Telling Tails

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:01:57 +0000

Saw this on agent Chip MacGregor's Facebook page:

Article from archives of The Atlantic on fiction writing and imagination.

Telling Tales by Tim O'Brien

Mockingjay

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:43:53 +0000

I saw a sign recently at Borders promoting a 12:01 a.m. release-day story event to sell suzanne Collins' Mockingjay, a YA novel I'd never heard of, by an author who was/is completely unknown to me. I know there are some YA writers and experts at A&F, so I thought I'd ask: Just how popular are the books in Collins' series? Have I been living under a rock? I'd heard of the Harry Potter and Twilight books, of course -- the other books that generated midnight release-day parties. But Mockingjay?

The New York Times provides some background.

The “Hunger Games” trilogy unfolds in a grim future-world where children are sent into an arena to fight to the death. Ms. Collins has described the story as rooted in the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

While dystopian fiction for teenagers has been around for decades, it has recently experienced a small revival in books like “The Maze Runner” by James Dashner and “Incarceron” by Catherine Fisher. Many of these books have also built a considerable audience among adults.

Much of the conversation about the “Hunger Games” trilogy has happened online, from fan fiction to Facebook pages devoted to the series.

Library Summer Reading Program

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:41:23 +0000

My kids are heading for the finish line with their summer reading program at the local library, They read 12 books and receive a coupon book good at local retailers. Lots of free stuff, and since we read to them all the time, why not participate?

Last year we discovered that one particular library branch has a summer reading program for adults. Sarah and I each read five books over the summer and were then permitted to choose a free book among some select titles that had been donated to the library. These titles are set aside from the other donated books that come in, atlhough I'm not sure what the criteria are. Sarah got The Zookeeper's Wife; I got a recent Joyce Carol Oates hardcover.

Neither of us has read our award book from last summer, but that hasn't stopped us from completing the summer reading program again this year. Tomorrow, if we can squeeze it in, we'll be making a trek to the library, where we'll pick up our books.

I'm not sure if the book-award selection dwindles as the summer goes on, or if it's periodically refreshed. It may be the case that those who finish the program earliest have the most options to choose from, but I can't sweat that. I finished book five only this week. I couldn't have done so any sooner.

Does anyone else partake of a libary-sponsored summer reading program? What are your incentives -- other than reading the books?

What we're reading

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:29:29 +0000

Hey all:

I thought it might be worthwhile to do an analogous thread to 'What We're Watching' in the Film section - i.e., books that we found worthwhile, but we're not sure they merit an entire thread.

Anyway, here's a book that I've found enlightening recently:

Epileptic, by David B. - this is a French autobio-graphic novel, telling the story of David's childhood/adolescent/early adulthood years in the shadow of an older brother with intractable seizures. To say the least, his parents were not traditionally minded, so the family visited macrobiotic communes, acupuncturists, magnetists, among others, in seeking a cure. As this occurs, David feels increasingly angered by his brother's sickness, as he realizes he is powerless to offer any meaningful aid. The artwork on the pages is quite distinctive, as David often depicts a heavy dose of spiritual forces that are involved in these trials for a cure - the darkness on display on certain pages is almost overwhelming at times, yet I found this to be a worthwhile window into this family's suffering.

Anne Rice writes novel about Jesus

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:17:58 +0000

I know it sounds improbable. Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, supposedly tells the story of Jesus's early years, "in his own words," says Rice.

I don't know what else to say.

Charlie Brooker sums up the Writing Process

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:37:03 +0000

From The Guardian

"I've been writing for a living for around 15 years now and whatever method I practise remains a mystery. It's random. Some days I'll rapidly thump out an article in a steady daze, scarcely aware of my own breath. Other times it's like slowly dragging individual letters of the alphabet from a mire of cold glue."

Matt

Long Islanders want independent bookstore to close

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:50:52 +0000

File under: "Truth is stranger than fiction."

National Book Festival

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:18:32 +0000

The second annual National Book Festival will be held on the Mall in Washington, DC, on Oct. 4. I went last year, with my wife and our then 3-week-old daughter in tow, and it was a blast. We brought along books for the author signings. Sarah brought her Mary Higgins Clark book, "Daddy's Little Girl," and I brought the latest Tim O'Brien novel, "July, July," and my copy of Edmund Morris' "Dutch," all of which are now signed and sitting on our book shleves at home.

For a full list of authors appearing this year, and for further details on the festival, go here:
http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/programs/autho...hors/index.html

I don't own copies of books by any of the authors attending this year's festival, but I'm intrigued by Dana Gioia, whom I've heard several times on the "Mars Hill" audio journals, and I loved Stephen Carter's "The Emperor of Ocean Park," which I checked out from the library. Also, I listened to the audio verion of Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate," and it's superb, deserving of all the recognition it's received. Sarah likes Carolyn Hart, so we may do the festival again this year.

Since I probably won't be in line to have anything signed, I'd like to take advantage of the pavilion-specific events, but those haven't been announced yet. Last year several of the authors talked about their latest books and about the craft of writing.

This link will provide an updated itinerary by mid-September:
http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/programs/pavil...ions/index.html