It's not often that we receive a request from a publisher that makes me downright giddy, but yesterday when Flannery forwarded me this message:

"Frances Hardinge has been called one of the best kept secrets in childrens/YA literature but as a huge fan of hers (and also working on her books) I don’t want her to be a secret, I want to help as many people as I can discover her."

I kind of got more than a bit excited.  My response to this message went something like this:

A) You had me at Frances Hardinge.
B) WHERE DO I SIGN UP??

Only...you know...I did try to at least appear slightly more professional than that.  I've made no secret during my time here at The Readventurer that I am a huge Frances Hardinge fan.  Remember when I:

• Challenged both Noelle from Young Adult Anonymous and Maja from The Nocturnal Library to read one of her books...within a two month period?  (I didn't even realize I had done that until today.)
• Lugged one of Frances Hardinge's books on a four hour bus ride to New York so I could hand deliver it to my friend Heidi and insist that she read it?
• Used A Face Like Glass as one of the main reasons I still have hope for YA fantasy?
• Wished I could sample the cheeses of Caverna?
• Gushed all over the place for my reviews of A Face Like Glass and The Lost Conspiracy?
• Listed A Face Like Glass as one of my favorite reads of 2012?
• Checked out the short story anthology Under My Hat just so I could read her story (okay, and Margo Lanagan's) and then return it to the library?

That last one may or may not be a more recent occurrence that I've been keeping under my hat (tee hee) until now.

So today I will quite happily participate in spreading the word about the excellent works of Frances Hardinge.  Since you've already heard a lot about me and my opinions, I thought I'd share some thoughts from my favorite reviewers about this fantastic author:

"I hardly know where to start when it comes to Hardinge's spectacular novel. For one, let me assure  you  that it blew me away and, despite being a Middle Grade Fantasy novel, I found that it was every bit as thought-provoking and intelligent as YA and Adult reads, if not better because of its subtleties, cleverness, and surprising plot twists."
--Keertana at Ivy Book Bindings, writing about A Face Like Glass

"I am overcome with Imperious Feelings demanding that I find the Right Words to write this review. Fly By Night is Absurdly Brilliant. This is not an overstatement."
--Ana at The Book Smugglers, writing about Fly By Night.

"The Lost Conspiracy isn’t just a darn good story, it’s a story that can open your mind and change the way you approach life.  It will ask you to question the meaning of stories, acknowledge the importance of understanding one another, understanding yourself, and knowing what you need from life.  It is a story of stories in which we get to wonder how much of what is made up just might be true, and how much is really just conspiracy.  The Lost Conspiracy exists so that when you pass the point where the stories end, you will know you can go on."
--Heidi at Bunbury in the Stacks, writing about The Lost Conspiracy

"A writer who asks a lot from the reader is a writer who believes the reader can deliver.  That’s a writer with a lot of respect for her audience. It’s a risk for an author to demand so much, and I want Hardinge to be rewarded for it. That’s because it’s a risk for a reader, too.  A reader has to have faith in an author to invest so much in a story, and I think Hardinge pays back on that investment, a hundred times over.

Reading The Lost Conspiracy is like climbing the mountain and turning around to see the world laid out at your feet.  Only, in this case, the mountain is a volcano."
--Megan Whalen Turner, writing about The Lost Conspiracy

Today marks the release date for the paperback edition of A Face Like Glass, and the publisher has very kindly offered up a copy for us to give away.  Open internationally!

P.S. - I also happened to notice that the U.S. hardcover editions of The Lost Conspiracy and Well Witched are only $6.80 today over at Amazon!

Last week, I briefly referenced this article from ABC news (“Emerging ‘New Adult’ Genre Puts Smut Fiction on Bestseller Lists”), to support the idea that reader demand was already having an impact on publishing.  I expressed some skepticism about whether New Adult could be classified strictly as “smut fiction,” but didn’t delve too far into arguing the point.  Welp, this week the outrage hit the fan in a major way (and understandably so).  Storify has a round-up of some of the responses to this piece.  While I agree that it is troubling that ABC News would lump all New Adult fiction into one “scandalous” (and no doubt, ratings-boosting) category, a huge part of me wants to say, WHAT OF IT, ABC??!  The ominously threatening opening to their video segment, “Racy reads with sexual themes are finding a PASSIONATE fan base with young girls all across the country”, read in a tone that says “WE SHOULD ALL BE FRIGHTENED AND ASHAMED” is what really upsets me about the whole piece.  If we’re going to get angry about this, let’s get angry that the slut-shaming of young adult women still sells.  And then after that’s passed, we can of course sit back and laugh openly at ABC News’ obvious and total ignorance of the New Adult genre.

This week was full of outrage, it seems.  Flavorwire had a fantastic round-up of support for libraries from authors throughout history, in response to British children’s author Terry Deary’s crankypants view on libraries (from The Guardian):

“Because it's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that.”

Yes, because of course every single person in society has access to a school library.

NPR’s book blog also had a wonderful round-up of LGBT characters in graphic novels, written partly in response to the announcement that DC Comics has hired noted gay rights opponent Orson Scott “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous” Card to write a series of Superman comics.  DC Comics also announced that Batwoman will be getting hitched to her long-time girlfriend Maggie Sawyer soon. 

And in a last bit of outrage (my own, this time), I’d like to invite some public ridicule of this piece over at (where else?) Fox News: Four Things Jane Austen Teaches Us About Love.  The only thing that cools my anger over this piece is imagining Elizabeth Bennet emerging from the pages of P&P to verbally dress down the author.  Because obviously, if there’s one thing we all learned from P&P, it’s that playing hard to get, flattering a man’s ego, and being overly virtuous are all excellent ways to procure a husband.  Bahahaha.

Three independent bookstores have joined to bring a class-action lawsuit against Amazon and the big six publishers, alleging that their use of DRM on ebooks has created a monopoly for Amazon.

The Digital Reader also reported that new book recommendation site Bookish may be more “marketing tool” and less reader community.

And to end with our weekly wrap-up of the more fun news (pretty scant this week!):

• The cover for Just One Year by Gayle Forman was revealed. USA Today also posted a short excerpt. 

• Both the Nebula Awards and Audies nominees were announced.  Galleycat has a great round up of some free samples (and in some cases, free complete versions) of the Nebula nominees.  The Readventurer will once again be participating in the Armchair Audies.  This year we’ll be listening to and evaluating the nominees for best solo narration – female.

• Stacia Kane had some new info and a snippet from her upcoming novella (told from Terrible’s point of view).
• As part of Blackberry's Keep Moving campaign, Neil Gaiman wrote twelve short stories based on Twitter prompts from his friends and followers, one for each month. You can download and read the entire Calendar of Tales (PDF alert) or you can wait to purchase the calendar that will match the stories with original artwork. 
  

• And over at The Onion, they had this heartwarming and realistic tale of publishing success.

That's it for us this week!  Stop by and tell us what we missed!

Today, we're very happy to welcome Phoebe North, author of the upcoming young adult science fiction book, Starglass, to the blog. The novel, her debut work, is being published by Simon & Schuster and will be released on July 23rd of this year.  We're very excited to check it out for several reasons but most of all because Phoebe knows what's what in science fiction. Until recently, she was one half of Intergalactic Academy, a blog that was devoted to reviewing YA science fiction. She also contributes to YA Highway and Strange Horizons, and runs her own website. Plus, if we're in the cone of silence here, the three of us have been conversing with Phoebe about science fiction books on Goodreads for years. We asked her to write a guest post for us and she delivered by contributing another addition to our Book vs. Movie archives. She's comparing Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein's popular military sci-fi book to its 1997 cinematic remake.  How will they stack up? 

I should preface this edition of Book vs. Movie with the disclaimer that I am not a fan of the novel Starship Troopers. I'm not even entirely sure I much like Robert Heinlein. I read Troopers for the first time last year, when my husband bought me a copy for our anniversary. Days later, I called out to him as I sat in the tub reading.

"Why did you want me to read this?" I asked, as I fought the urge to submerge the old paperback in grimy, soapy water. "It's terrible."

"I didn't think you'd like it," he replied. "I thought you might find it interesting."

To me, Starship Troopers's loathsome qualities are innumerable. Firstly, it's essentially a plotless bildungsroman, which would be fine if protagonist Johnny Rico were the least bit interesting. Instead, he's meant to be a sort of everyman Ur-soldier in this futuristic world where only military members are full citizens with voting rights.

(Defenders of Heinlein might object here that Heinlein said that citizens could complete civil service to gain voting rights, but that's not supported by the text.)

Characters in this military utopia--almost all men--act more like mouthpieces than actual characters. And they're mouthpieces for exceedingly conservative and now-outdated modes of thought. Dubois, Rico's military history instructor, lectures his students on the cause of juvenile delinquency: it's because no one spanks their kids anymore. 

After a long lecture scene--during which Dubois sneers at a "shrill" female student--Rico joins the military infantry despite his father's objections. His global military society is currently engaged in a war with extraterrestrial bugs. Sounds promising enough, but the next several dozen pages are spent in a lengthy, nostalgia-tinged reminiscence on basic training. The science fictional elements are thin; Heinlein infodumps on powered armor exoskeletons exactly once, but this is recounted with all the thrilling passion of an episode of Antiques Roadshow (though that might be underselling the suspense of Antiques Roadshow). Eventually, Rico's mother is killed, and Rico realizes that we really should be pre-emptively slaughtering our enemies. He fights the Bugs, of which we learn little about biology or society. The "narrative" (as it were) concludes with Rico as an officer and his father serving under him--having learned the foolishness of trying to deny his son his citizenship. (i.e. manhood)

So that's the novel. As a progressive ("shrill"?) peacenik feminist, I found little to like within its pages. The character of Rico was flat; the others were more like set pieces or author avatars, meant to allow Heinlein to posture at will. In truth, it felt like a particularly humorless military propaganda piece more than a novel, and the characters and world were so bland and underdeveloped that, in retrospect, I have no idea why this book has entered the SF canon.

Which brings us to the film. I once heard the 1997 film adaptation referred to as a "travesty" during a conference panel on military science fiction. If the original novel were one close to my heart, I could understand such an emotional reaction. It is certainly different from the novel--satirical, rather than earnest; aggressively campy, rather than infused with machismo.  Supposedly, the film adaptation began its life as an unrelated work; the novel, which director Paul Verhoevan claims to have never finished, was only optioned well into production.

While I agree with Verhoevan's declaration that Starship Troopers is both boring and depressing, I'm not sure I entirely buy this story. Because in certain ways, the film Starship Troopers is stunningly true to the book--particularly in terms of extrapolating how a society built on Heinlein's principles might appear to outsiders.

Starship Troopers (the film) is filled with hammy acting and ridiculous posturing. But I wouldn't quite call it a parody of Heinlein's work. It's most easily understood as an in-universe propaganda film. In fact, propaganda shorts are spliced into the larger narrative (which, as in the book, sees Johnny Rico go through training, lose his mother, and then go to war) to clue you in to the broader conceit. These propaganda shorts are hilarious:

What the story loses in exosuits (not present here), it gains in a winking self-awareness and a sense of humor. Heinlein's novel treats every aspect of his overly conservative, militaristic society with crushing gravity. While the characters in Verhoevan's film likewise view their situation earnestly, we (as viewers and outsiders) are allowed to view some aspects of this society as absurd.  And it is absurd--a world in which a military history professor would assert that  veterans "took control  and imposed a stability that has lasted for generations since" after "social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos."

Those evil social scientists!

The film's also got a more meaningful and fully-fledged romantic subplot with a beginning, middle, and end. In Heinlein's novel, Carmen remains a cipher--representative of Rico's unattainable desires for sex and female companionship but never a character in her own right. Here, Carmen actually does stuff rather than acting representative of those mysterious and wily females.

The film also has Neil Patrick Harris.

So score one for Hollywood. Verhoevan's Starship Troopers takes a narrative framework that is slow, dull, pedantic, and propagandistic and turns it into an entertaining--if campy--satire of military propaganda itself. I must admit that there were several moments while reading Heinlein's work where his positions on military violence and citizenship were so outragous that I wondered if he could possibly be serious. Verhoevan seems to have decided that it really doesn't matter if he was. The most sensible framework for this story was, to him, and to me, one which points out the essential absurdity of it.

But what do I know? In the world of Starship Troopers, I wouldn't even be allowed to vote.

Thanks for the comparison, Phoebe! I (Flannery) have to give props to any person who can use a word in a blog post that I have to look up. (bildungsroman, for those who are wondering)  I tried to listen to Starship Troopers once on audiobook and I only made it through one disc before I gave up.  

About two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about all the long books that are sitting unread and collecting dust on my shelves. I found some partners for future readalongs of books like Gone with the Wind and War and Peace when I eventually get to them, but I decided to start my quest to finish some of these literary doorstops by attacking one of the alleged hardest books to get through--Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. After email pleas and Twitter inquiries, I started out last Sunday, February 10th, with ten other co-readers. The other valiant readers include Catie, my fellow Readventurer, Molly from Wrapped Up in Books, Heidi of Bunbury in the Stacks, Jessie from Ageless Pages Reviews, Maggie from YA Anonymous, editor-in-training Maggie M., and my roommate from college, Maureen. (I'm leaving out the rest of our roster as some people found the book unsuitable for their current mood, which Heidi's boyfriend was jokingly (or not) placing bets on. (How many people would/will drop out of the readalong.)) Here's the schedule we are following on our, as Catie coined it, "infinite readalong.":

Week One: 2/10 - 2/17, start at beginning, end at “What the hail...Struck says something that’s lost in the roar of a high-pressure toilet.” (105) 

Week Two: 2/17 - 2/24, start at “The feminized American stood at a slight...”, end at “some broad mock-supplicant’s gesture Schact’s just now made.” (219) 

Week Three: 2/24 - 3/3, start at “You can be at certain parties and not really be there”, end at “who told the guy to go peddle his linen someplace else.” (317)

Week Four: 3/3 - 3/10, start at “The sky of the U.S.A.’s desert was clotted with blue stars”, end at “rocketing people’s waste into the forgiving chill of infinite space.” (418)

Week Five: 3/10 - 3/17, start at “Marathe did not quite sleep”, end at “Marathe think of many windblown sparks.” (508)

Week Six: 3/17 - 3/24, start at “The following things in the room were blue”, end at “in a fish-eye lens, lifting: ‘Ready?’” (619)

Week Seven: 3/24 - 3/31, start at “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: InterLace”, end at “both seeming to be shrieking for help.” (716)

Week Eight: 3/31 - 4/7, start at “A disadvantage of your nasally ingested cocaine...”, end at “and past Hal, his face unspeakable.” (808)

Week Nine: 4/7 - 4/14, start at “The ceiling was breathing.” End at “I was impossible to knock down.” (902)

Week Ten: 4/14 - 4/21, start at “Gately’s cognomen growing up...”, end at “and the tide was way out.” (981, END)
*page numbers correspond to the First Edition, 1996. ISBN: 9780316920049

It breaks down to roughly 100-120 pages per week what with all the footnotes. During the first week, most of us found the format of the book unlike anything we have read in the past. Infinite Jest jumps from character to character with sometimes no introduction, and from year to year, with each sponsored by a corporate entity so they are no longer numbered but rather tagged with a sponsored product so we have to try to figure out if "The Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad" is before or after "The Year of the Whopper," "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment," "The Year of Glad," or our particular fan favorite, "The Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar." If you are familiar with the book, if you would like to read along with us now, if you are reading IJ sometime in the future and feel lost/lonely in your quest, or if you do not care to be somewhat spoiled, here are short blurbs of the sections we digested in Week One:

EXTREMELY SHORT SUMMARIES OF THE WEEK ONE SECTIONS:

O, Year of Glad: Hal Incandenza, tennis player, at the college hearing with his uncle, C.T., where the panel is trying to determine if they should admit Hal. Hal is silent for the entirety until they prod him, after which he explains himself very eloquently, but as it turns out he was creating a raucous instead. He ends up being taken away by an ambulance.
O, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: An addict is waiting for a woman to deliver drugs to his house. He has obsessively planned and cleaned to get ready for the stupor-filled days that will follow. Ends with the telephone ringing and the doorbell ringing simultaneously and the addict on the floor, unable to decide which to address first.
O, 1 April - Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad: Hal(10, 11,14) and the conversationalist/his father talk about Hal’s ability to memorize portions of the dictionary, his mother’s dealings with medical attaches and diplomats and whatnot, his father’s drunkenness, etc.
O, 9 May - Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Hal wakes up extremely early for tennis drills while his brother Mario sleeps. As he is getting ready, Orin (O) calls on the telephone.
O, Year of the the Depend Adult Undergarment: The medical attache in Boston comes home on a Wednesday evening, the one night of the week his wife has plans and can’t attend to all his needs. He gripes on about having to figure out something to eat and sort the mail. While doing the latter task, he finds a weirdly marked entertainment cartridge which was postmarked from Arizona and had smiley faces and Happy Anniversary on it (it is not his/his wife’s anniversary.) He watches the beginning and the TP (teleputer) reads 1927h.
Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar: In dialect, Clenette talks about life in the Brighton projects. Wardine, her half-sister, was beaten with a hanger by her mother, who thinks Wardine is tempting her mother’s boyfriend Roy Tony with her youngness. Reginald, who has a crush on Wardine, and Clenette help clean Wardine’s back. In another section, Bruce Green is introduced, as well as Mildred Bonk, an unfortunately named but beautiful young woman. The two both grow into depressing versions of themselves, have a child together, and move into a trailer in Allston with a drug dealer called Tommy Doocey who keeps snakes.
O, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Hal and his brother Mario (called BooBoo here) are laying in bed at school and Mario keeps asking Hal about God. It is revealed that Himself (H & M’s father) has died and there is a discussion about whether the Moms (their mom) was suitably sad. A last and separate sentence is added to note that the medical attache of earlier is still watching the weird cartridge at 2010h.
October - Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: We meet Orin Incandenza, Hal’s older brother, who is a football player (punter) in Arizona. He hates mornings, lives in a yellow-tiled condo filled with roaches he can’t get rid of, and sleeps with a lot of women he calls Subjects, one of whom watches a documentary about schizophrenia in this portion and Orin is reminded a bit of Hal. (also, he is reminded to call Hal (Hallie) when the subject of PR interviewers delving into the unmined pasts of the players is discussed)
O, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Hal is 17 and at Enfield. He talks about getting high covertly and who does/does not know he does it. We find out the Moms’ name is Avril Incandenza and that C.T.’s actual name is Charles Tavis. At this point, Hal’s father has already passed away. Also, it is revealed that the Moms has three sons (so presumably Hal, Orin, and Mario are the only kids) and two of them are “high-functioning.” (Mario being the one not, I assume.) There’s a lot of description about the design of ETA, where Hal smokes, and how he gets away with it. (i.e. the failed pro alumni of the school don’t give a crap what students do.) The medical attache is still watching the cartridge, on repeat, at 0020h the next day (April 2) before his wife gets home. He has wet himself and the recliner he is sitting on.
Autumn - Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland: We meet Don Gately, a narcotics addict who burgles to feed his habit. His MO includes a straight shunt of the power lines, which is ultimately his downfall because he uses this method when robbing the ADA who prosecuted him as well as a rich man in Brookline who was meant to be away at the time of the burglary. The rich man turns out to home, ill, and a Quebecer very involved in the nonsense I am having a really hard time following (and also have no interest in following.) Gately and his friend proceed with the burglary but it turns into a robbery after they tie the man up. The man dies. This section ends with what is presumably the back blurb/details to the cartridge that was delivered to the medical attache.
3 November - Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Jim Troeltsch, at ETA, roommates with Ted Schact and Michael Pemulis, who are both gone from the room. Troeltsch is sick, hopped up on different medicines, and having nightmares/daydreams. (DFW says Troeltsch is “awake and almost twelve” but not sure if this is part of the daydream or if actual age.)
O, As of Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: About H/O/M’s father James Incandenza and his father, also James Incandenza. The elder was an actor and the younger was a filmmaker, among other things. The world’s longest footnote is included in this section--a rundown of all of JO Incandenza’s films, which includes several different versions of Infinite Jest. It is revealed that JO Incandenza committed suicide at fifty four in the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar.
Denver Co, 1 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: A quick interlude with Orin, still a punter for the Cardinals, in Colorado. He is dressed as a bird, doing promotional vid work for the team, and he is miserable about it since he is afraid of heights.
O: I *think* this is Hal, going on about a big brother/little brother program at ETA and about how early kids get into drugs at the school. He then talks about a recurring dream he has about playing tennis on a gigantic court against an unknown opponent, with his mother as the one decipherable spectator.
O, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Kate Gompert is in a psych ward on suicide watch. She has attempted suicide several times in the past and has a long conversation with the resident on duty about her feelings of depression. She mentions that she smokes weed and buys from a dealer who calls it “Bob Hope,” which indicates that she is in the same dealing area as several other characters. She also mentions one dealer who keeps snakes in a tank--which would be Tommy Doocey, who lives in the trailer with Bruce Green & Mildred Bonk from earlier on. Kate repeatedly requests that they give her electro therapy to help get her out of the pain she’s in. (which may or may not be caused by giving up smoking--or rather, giving up smoking leaves her depression out in the open.) In a separate paragraph, the medical attache’s wife finally comes ohome at 0145h, 2 April YDAU and sees him in the recliner. He has no response but she looks to see what cartridge he is/was watching. Next, on to Gerhardt Schtitt, who works at ETA and spends a lot of time with Hal and Orin's brother, Mario. It is mentioned that Mario Incandenza is 18 years old here. 
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: We are introduced to Tiny Ewell, an alcoholic who has just finished detox and is now in a taxi on his way to Enfield VA to do rehab. While in detox, his roommate is a yellowed-from-hepatitis man who repeatedly turns the air conditioner on all different levels, chain smokes, and has long hair and glasses with one lense missing. (just in case we find out who this person might be later on...) It is mentioned that at detox they sometimes take your shoes away and give you foam rubber slippers embossed with smiley faces on top--smiley faces like those embossed on the cartridge the medical attache is still watching? At the end of this section, we revisit the medical attache, who is joined in watching the cartridge by his wife, the Saudi prince, the prince’s physician, and a few more people.
O, 30 April - The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Marathe, a wheelchair assassin, meets with Steeply, another covert operative of some sort who is dressed as a woman, on a mountain in Arizona. The two talk about whether or not Marathe is a double agent and about the cartridge (“the Entertainment”) that the medical attache and about a dozen other people are now affected by. It sounds like the cartridges are multi-sensory experiences and perhaps some sort of chemical or bio-warfare. Also, they mention DuPlessis, who was associated with Marathe. DuPlessis is the sick man who died when Gately burgled his house earlier.
Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: Hal and other upperclassmen are in the locker room at ETA. More talk about the buddy system, using lemon Pledge for sunscreen (does this really work?!), and Hal’s secret smoking. Confirmation that Mario is the middle child and Hal is the youngest. One brief paragraph about Marathe and Steeply still in Arizona.  (We stopped in the middle of a section, so this section will begin next week's assigned reading.)

I can only imagine how confusing all of that must be for people not familiar with Infinite Jest, as it is sometimes confusing for us, as people currently reading it. I thought the entire book was going to be about Hal Incandenza, though I knew it was going to be very mixed-up in terms of the timeline. Other readers were astute enough to set me straight early on about how sprawling the cast of characters is. I will try to update every week with summaries and some of the thoughts and discussions that are going on in our Google document. 

Here's this week's thoughts and comments:

• Heartbreaking quote: “I’d tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear.”
  
• Reader comment: "I kind of can’t stop reading the book, even though I have no idea what’s going on.  My husband asked me what this book was about and I opened my mouth to talk but then just had to close it again and shake my head because there’s no way to describe what’s gone on so far without sounding like an insane person."
  
• We are torn about whether the ebook or the physical book is a better bet. Those with e-readers don't love that they can't see the visual evidence of progress and the footnotes are a bit harder but the paperback/hardcover readers are finding that the weight of the book is annoying (my word, not theirs).
• Quote: “The moment he recognized what exactly was on one cartridge he had a strong anxious feeling that there was something more entertaining on another cartridge and he was potentially missing it. He realized that he would have plenty of time to enjoy all the cartridges, and realized intellectually that the feeling of deprived panic over missing something made no sense.” (26) I sometimes feel this way about books.
  
• Several of us are finding DFW's technology inventions (Teleputers? Cartridges?) a bit clunky and we have to keep reminding ourselves that this was written in the mid-90s. 
• The hardest parts to get through and fully understand seem to be those dealing with the political issues.
• Most of us agreed to NOT put off our weekly reading until the last few days of the week. This book is not a breezy read and it is legitimate work to try to read tens of pages in one go. 
• At least three of us found Kate Gompert's chapter to be the most readable from the first week's sections. And we wish there were more female characters in this book. 
• Some things keep recurring: worrying that if you speak, no one will understand you; pot addiction; Byzantine erotica; Toblerone; bugs; sweat stains on pillows/bedsheets; your worst nightmare becoming reality (noticed by Maggie M.).
• Several of us are wondering how JO Incandenza's movies, 5 of which were titled "Infinite Jest" are related to "the entertainment" and this book. There are several possibilities we are keeping in mind, including the idea that the book is a written version of one of the movies, that one of the movies IS "the entertainment," and whether the confusing nature of the movies is meant to be the same with the book, namely that readers are meant to be confounded whilst trying to figure out what the hell is going on and how everything relates to everything and everyone else.

So, we are 10% done with this book. On to 20%, eh? Feel free to discuss anything in the comments section. Spoilers for the first 10% are welcome, as that's where we all are but PLEASE DON'T INCLUDE SPOILERS FOR THE OVERALL BOOK IN THE COMMENTS. If you'd like to join our readalong and think you can catch up, email me at (our blog name @ gmail) or tweet me @ our blog name. In nine weeks, we'll be done with this infinite readalong. 

A Good Man is Hard to Find
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Narrator: Marguerite Gavin 
Publication Date: 1953
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Audio Sample
[Goodreads|Audible]

Blurb(GR): This book of short stories revealed O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation.

Review:

I enjoy all kinds of writing.  I like the simple, breezy writing that’s entertaining and takes very little effort to understand.  I like the dense, loaded writing that takes weeks of thought and discussion to fully unpack.  The remarkable thing about the writing of Flannery O’Connor is that it somehow seems to encompass that entire spectrum. 

Her writing is without a doubt easy to digest, but I would never in a million years call it simple.  Reading her prose feels less like reading and more like having her thoughts and imagery mainlined into my brain with no translation necessary.  And yet, she also packs a massive punch of history and depth into her stories – a depth of meaning that, for me, sometimes didn’t become fully apparent until I’d thought about these stories (and mostly about these characters) for days.  She has this incredible, consummate control over her words that I’ve rarely (if ever) seen.  She manages to be succinct, yet descriptive; bare, yet three-dimensional; meaningful in a fraction of the words it would take a lesser writer.  Her characters are so three-dimensional it’s like they spring up in your head, fully alive. 

And oh boy, does she write some reprehensible characters.  Never before has an author so quickly succeeded in making me not only hate her characters, but anticipate their downfall with a sort of sadistic glee.  Her characters are good, upstanding country people who feel reassured by their habits and place in the world.  And it’s oh so easy to sit on high and judge them for their willful ignorance – to feel holier, more worldly.  Meanwhile, they’re feeling holier than everyone else in their community – set apart.  But by the end, Flannery O’Connor shows you (more like punches you in the face with the fact) that the joke’s actually on you and her characters both.  The world of Flannery O’Connor is a brutal, violent place where no one is ever safe or set apart – especially not her readers and ESPECIALLY not her characters.

One of my favorite stories in this collection is Good Country People, about an upstanding southern mother and her thirty year old, “crippled” daughter who holds a Ph.D in philosophy but who still lives at home and is viewed as a child due to her condition:

“Nothing is perfect.  This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings.  Another was:  that is life!  And still another, the most important, was: well, other people have their opinions too.  She would make these statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it.”

With that tiny paragraph, she says more about their relationship than I could ever say in any summary.  The story follows Joy, (who has rechristened herself “Hulga” in an act of rebellion) as she decides to condescend to have a fling with a simple, travelling bible salesman, gets more than she bargained for, and stumbles over her own true core beliefs in the process.  My other favorites were A Good Man is Hard to Find, A Stroke of Good Fortune, A Circle in the Fire, and The Displaced Person.  (A couple of these are available for free online so I've linked to them here.)

Narrator Marguerite Gavin is excellent as always.  She nails all of the different Southern accents...and tackles more N-bombs than I'm guessing she's ever said in her entire life.  I know there's been some claim that these stories are racist, but I would wholeheartedly disagree.  Rather, these stories are about racism and about racist characters - one never gets the sense that Flannery O'Connor holds these beliefs herself or is complicit.

Perfect Musical Pairing
Tammy Wynette – Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)

This book is the muddy green of a baptismal river and the rusty brown of old blood…It’s the starched white of new handkerchiefs and the tattered yellow of a family bible…and it’s soundtrack is Tammy Wynette.

I started reading Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series about two years ago, when only three of the books were out. I read all three of them in one weekend, devouring them for the fun paranormal series they are and loving Merit for kicking serious ass more than once in every edition. Since that weekend, I’ve been following the subsequent installments, though with the author’s quick publishing rate (a new book every six months), I haven’t kept up as quickly as I would like to. What’s that? I seem to have a horrible tendency to be complete crap at keeping up with series? Well, maybe you should consider keeping your opinions to yourself! So, the seventh book in the series, House Rules, came out last week and though I have yet to read it, I knew I could not pass up the chance to see what Chloe Neill is like in real life. The answer: totally normal, in an “I’m pretty sure she’d be fun to chill with and I seriously considered asking her if she’d like to go to the roller derby with my friends and I after the event which is where I was going but I didn’t because I think she would’ve been weirded out” kind of way. I just remember going to see Patrick Rothfuss a few months back and he talked about how it is kind of awkward to go from a book event, where everyone there thinks you and your writing are amazing back to your hotel, where you sit on the bed, turn on TV reruns of Hoarders, and try to remind yourself that there are lots of people out there who think you’re cool. Anyway, Neill got to the event early, set up some swag on her table, and perused the books around where the event was being held. When the bookstore employee introduced her, she skipped the reading, which I was okay with, and just spent about forty-five minutes or an hour answering every question the crowd had.

So far, Neill has been working on 3-book contracts. There have been seven so far, and there will be at least three more, depending on sales. (the eighth (Biting Bad) comes out in August) Originally, she thought the main storyline would fill eight books but eight are finished and there’s more to tell. Though she has no set end point for the series right now, she said she’ll continue to write them as long as Merit keeps growing as a character and as long as the mystery remains. Later on in the event she shared that she is not planning on closing up the series soon, per se, because she still very much loves the characters and they are still fresh for her. Well, except for McEttrick. She admitted that he can be sneaky and hard to get a handle on. There will not be any more books in her Dark Elite YA series, but she has played around with the idea of a spinoff-type series, where it is a second generation and the main characters in that series are the adults. It would be darker, she says, and concentrated on human-vampire relations.

I found Neill’s story to be very intriguing as she did not always dream of becoming an author. In fact, she did not even start writing until 2005 and she joked that the only literature course she took in college was titled “African Novel,” though she did go to a liberal arts college where most of her exams were essays. (I hear that!) She began writing after a marriage fell apart and she spent an extensive amount of time reading every Regency romance out there. At that time there wasn’t a ton of vampire fiction out but she said that she was a fan of the Anita Blake series…well, until the series changed at least. She also loved Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series and wrote some fan fiction for that series. She created a character and had the character interact with others from the Dark Hunter series and after doing this, she got the idea for Merit’s character. After that, it was quite a short road to publication. Neill wrote the first Chicagoland book in four months. At that time, some publishers were still accepting unagented manuscripts and hers (3 chapters and a query letter) was picked out of “the slush pile” by an editor at Penguin, and they bought the first two books. She did not even have an agent until after that point in time.  Neill said she initially went to that specific imprint, New American Library, because it published Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, which she is a fan of.

Someone in the audience asked who Neill pictures when she pictures Ethan’s character, while implying that this discussion had been going on for quite a while and that the answer is David Beckham. Since I am not super tapped into the Chicagoland gossip, this came as news to me. Neill confirmed that initially she never did but after that series of underwear ads that Beckham did, she admits that he is who she pictures in her mind when she hears Ethan’s dialogue. I was sitting in the audience at this point thinking, “But his voice is kind of weird and I don’t picture him with that voice,” and then Neill said, “Well, except for the voice.” Thank you for that. Seriously. The next question was about why she chose to give the vampires silver eyes when they have heightened emotions. Neill answered this by saying that it was mostly just because she wanted them to have some outward sign of emotion and the silver was just because she likes the color more than gold.

Next, she spoke quite a bit about her writing process. Because the books have such a strict deadline, she has to be organized and diligent which she says is actually hard for her, as she is a procrastinator by nature. She spends about two to three months writing a first draft and then three to four months editing the prior book after it comes back from her editor. Though Neill says she is good at dialogue, she finds plotting much harder and has to work with her editor on it. (She later said that if you like the series, it’s because of her editor.) Neill writes a short outline of what will happen in the book before she starts out and she has to write every day and achieve a minimum word count of about 1000-1500 words per day to stay on track. Amazingly, she still has a full-time job. She says she doesn’t think she’d be any good at full-time writing because she needs a routine and things to do all the time. As it is, she squeezes in her writing every evening by sitting in bed with her laptop and keeping Adult Swim on in the background. If she can keep her concentration on writing, it can be finished up in an hour but like the rest of us, she often succumbs to the interwebz. On the weekends, she spends about five or six hours writing and doing marketing stuff for her books. In terms of how she approaches writing, she said she used to just do random scenes and patchwork them together but too often she’d forget she’d written something and lots of stuff would need to be cut so now she just writes straight through the story.  All of the installments are about 93,000-96,000 words and she ends up cutting about 10,000-20,000 words every time and adding the same amount of new material back in.

An audience member asked the author if she wrote the people she knows in real life, to which Neill answered no, but she admitted that many of the characters’ mannerisms are based on real-life people and everyone close to her thinks Merit is supposed to be Neill herself because they have very similar personalities and reactions to things. She also thinks that Merit and Ethan will get a good ending together, their “happily ever after,” but that everything being la-di-da and sunshine and butterflies isn’t what Merit wants or needs. She needs someone to butt heads with and disagree with to be happy. 

Another point was added in the “Neill is awesome” column for me when she talked about how much she loves Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb’s In Death series, which I love still in anticipation of the thirty-sixth or so installment. Someone asked her about the reaction from readers after the big plot twist of book four, Hard Bitten. She said that she got many horrible emails after that book was released and won a nod from me when she said, “It’s the internet age. People’s tastes are different. What can you do?” Exactly. She said that what happened wasn’t meant to be a cliffhanger—she meant it to happen as it did, with some finality. She doesn’t want to just throw in twist to be “M. Night Shyamalan-ing” everyone. (nice one) The next question was about the Gabriel prophecy in the books and whether that is still important. Neill said very much so and that she has that ongoing arc in mind as she writes the next books in the series.

At nearly every author event I go to, someone asks the author how much say they have concerning the cover art for their books. The answer is almost always “barely any,” “just a bit,” or “I can say I hate something but that’s about it.” The answer was the same in this case, and Neill joked about trying to get Merit’s bangs on the cover in the last few covers with no luck. When asked if she thinks the Chicagoland Vamps series will ever be adapted for television or the big screen she said there are no plans in the works but that she’d love to see it and thinks it would work better as a television series. (I concur.) After this comment, someone asked her if, since she likes to write dialogue, she’d ever considered writing scripts. She said yes, though she really doesn’t have any free time. She joked about how she would love to write an episode of Castle, minus the mystery bits.  I took this to mean that she just wanted to write an entire show of witty banter. 

A few random asides: We’ll find out more about Jeff in House Rules, she thinks Lacey is like that friend we all have who just repeatedly makes the worst decisions, and she agrees that the series needs a new female bad guy. (she misses Selena but doesn’t see a way to bring her back.)

And that, folks, is another author event. I guess I’ll never know if Chloe Neill would’ve gone to the roller derby but I do know that you should all go see her if she’s coming anywhere near you on this tour. If you miss her, I bet she’ll be on tour again in six months for Biting Bad. 

Last week’s Tools Of Change conference brought a whole heap of news about the future of the publishing industry, with most of it centering around (no surprise) the rise of ebooks and self-publishing.  It’s refreshing to read about the optimistic approach to the future that this conference apparently embraced.  I really liked this article from Publisher’s Weekly, which recapped a key note speech given by Tools Of Change founder Tim O’Reilly, and this article from Huffington Post, which was written by Smashwords founder Mark Coker.  Mr. Coker writes in response to the news that Apple’s ibookstore will now feature a whole section for self-published books and highlights some of the reasons why more and more authors are choosing to self-publish.  Granted, as the founder of one of the major distributors of self-published works, he has a bit of a stake in this whole thing.  I still found his article to be pretty well-reasoned.  In particular, this passage really resonated with some thoughts I’ve had before:

“Readers are the new curators. Readers -- not publishers -- have always been the ultimate arbiters of what's worth reading, and reader word-of-mouth drives book sales. In the old world of publishing, publishers and retailers could only guess what readers wanted to read. Today, each time a reader downloads, purchases or reviews an ebook, this data becomes an expression of reader sentiment that ebook merchandisers can mine to identify books worthy of extra promotion. I predict the long-admired gatekeeping function played by publishers will eventually be viewed as detrimental to the future of the written word.”

I think we’ve already seen this happening.  This week The Telegraph had (yet another) article about the rising popularity of young adult books with more sex.  In the article, they seem to lump all of this in with the growing “new adult” genre, and theorize that much of this trend has to do with adult readers clamoring for young adult reads.  Whether or not this is true, I think this trend can mostly be attributed to reader demand, and the fact that the most popular releases in this genre have mostly (or all) been self-published (at least at first) is very interesting to note.

Certainly the landscape of publishing and book-selling is changing dramatically, and will continue to change.  Last week, we reported on Amazon’s recent acquisition of a patent to resell digital media, like audiobooks and ebooks.  I jokingly wondered if this would be the future of the used book store.  Well, it turns out that this topic is apparently more serious than I thought.  Reporting on a discussion of “First Sale” rights that occurred at the Tools Of Change conference, Publisher’s Weekly summarized presenter Bill Rosenblatt’s opinion on the ramifications of whether digital files will legally resold or not:

“If digital resale becomes a reality, Rosenblatt said, the big winners will likely be consumers, used content retailers and libraries—in fact, he said, unless the law allows digital resale, libraries will be ‘eliminated’”

(So I guess it’s not all optimism then…at least for libraries.)  Barnes and Noble also reported lower than expected revenue from their Nook division this week, sparking more pessimism in the bookseller’s market.  Harper Collins CEO Victoria Barnsley went so far as to say that in the future, charging patrons to browse books at brick and mortar stores wouldn’t be “that insane.”  Um, I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there, Ms. Barnsley.  That, in fact, would be insane.  If booksellers want to still be relevant then they have to embrace the new landscape and adapt.  I don’t think that nickel and diming their customers is a great way to generate more revenue.  On the other hand, I have approximately zero expertise in book-selling so what do I know?

Goodreads made the news again, with The New York Times reporting on the growing popularity of the site.

And now for some fun news: 

Here’s the cover of the first of the brand new editions of the Harry Potter series that will be released this fall (just in case you’ve been living under a rock).

For all the Maggie fans – this week she blogged about the title and the cover (!!) of her upcoming sequel to The Raven Boys.

Melina Marchetta announced that she is writing another Lady Celie mystery and that it will probably be from Banyon’s point of view (eeeeeeeeeeee!).

Little, Brown books for young readers will be bringing Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things to the U.S. They’ve also acquired the rights for her book Wildlife (coming in 2014) and another untitled work.

Heidi over at Bunbury in the Stacks has an interview with Marcus Sedgwick and a giveaway for his latest release, Midwinterblood.  I know that Tatiana really enjoyed it and I’ll be reading it soon!

The winners of the 2012 Cybils Awards were announced!  Flannery worked long and hard in the YA sci-fi/fantasy category and we’re very excited that Seraphina took home the top prize.  (As an aside: how awesome is this outfit inspired by Seraphina?  I only wish medieval-looking leather utility vests were appropriate for PTA meetings.)

And finally, I just want to chime in with the rest of the internet right now and say that our president is awesome.  I won’t forget it.

Go see Cory Doctorow if he's coming anywhere near you on his February 2013 tour for the sequel to Little Brother, Homeland, which was released last week. I've only read two of his novels, the aforementioned Little Brother and Pirate Cinema, which was released in 2012 but I have so much respect for his online presence and activism that I knew I wanted to see what his book tour would be like and it exceeded all of my expectations. It was also my first time inside the main Seattle Public Library, which is a crazy-looking  modern architectural building downtown. With the topics of discussion and the number of intelligent people around, the fact that the auditorium we were in is encased in concrete with gigantic black metal sliding barn doors and curtains closing it in definitely made me feel like I was part of some super-secret "question the system" club. The library representative began by introducing Doctorow and mentioning the blog post he did for the library blog. In case any of you aren't familiar with Doctorow, yes, he is a novelist, but he is also co-editor of Boing Boing and very active proponent of liberalizing copyright laws. (most if not all of his books are available for free online as well as through traditional outlets) Doctorow won my heart when he made a joke about one of my recent favorite reads, Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose. He read about twenty pages from his new novel and said beforehand that there would be some spoilers but they wouldn't really come as a surprise, just obvious ones, like if someone got angry that Twelve Angry Men had twelve angry men in it. 

After reading from the book, Doctorow talked quite a bit about several legal cases and current legislation battles he finds interesting. I had no idea a lot of it had gone on (and I'm guessing many of you are in the dark as well). In Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (2010), it was found that a school in Pennsylvania issued laptops to its students and was remotely monitoring their behavior AT HOME. (taking pictures of them in their bedrooms, etc.) Though that case was settled, providing students with school-issued laptops is extremely common and there are all sorts of suspect third-party programs on many of them. After talking a lot more about the creepiness of many anti-theft software companies and how far-reaching the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 (CFAA) goes, he segued into the most emotional discussion of the night. 

Doctorow was good friends with Aaron Swartz, an extremely intelligent programmer and activist who, sadly, committed suicide last month at 26. Swartz wrote a section of Homeland and also the afterword. Doctorow spoke about what an amazing person Swartz was and how extreme the charges brought against him were (if convicted, he could've faced 35-50 years in prison and over a million dollars in fines), essentially because he believed that people should have access to information. I do find it rather appalling that many Wall Street criminals get away with stealing money and people who commit horrific crimes often have significantly lighter sentences, but a programmer who makes publicly-funded research available to people faced such an enormous legal battle. (Yes, I do know that I am oversimplifying the situation but I can easily think of hundreds of things that the government could and should be spending its money on instead of prosecuting people like Aaron Swartz.) Doctorow said that if you'd like to be involved in keeping information more open-access, you should get involved with groups like DemandProgress or the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Because it was the first stop on Doctorow's tour, he got choked up speaking about Swartz's suicide. He said that he promised Aaron's family that he would discuss suicide at all of his stops to honor Aaron and I know I wasn't the only one whose eyes were watering up as Cory talked about what he wished he could've told Aaron. He said that in this age of technology, it is easier than it has ever been to know more about people than we ever have before, but we can't know how someone is feeling unless they tell us, and unless we ask. Later, in the question and answer section, an audience member thanked him for all of his words about depression and suicide and told the audience that we should keep in mind that for every murder in the US, there are two suicides, and we never hear much about them. (1) I've been thinking about this a lot recently, especially after reading my local suburb's weekly newspaper which informed me that two weeks ago we had four suicides. Four, in one suburb, in one week. 

The question and answer session followed and it was unlike any other at a book event I've been to, and most of you know I try to go to as many as I can. Doctorow's fans are intelligent.  The first person just asked him how he felt being immortalized in the popular webcomic xkcd, to which Doctorow jokingly replied that he'd actually been in several, thank you very much. He is usually portrayed in a hot air balloon "up in the blogosphere" with goggles on, but he said he's actually afraid of heights so the only thing he'd actually ever be doing in a hot air balloon is cowering.

The next few questions were of interest to me but I was concentrating so hard on what Doctorow was saying that I probably messed up transcribing. An audience member asked what he thought of country to country cyber warfare, which Doctorow answered by saying that he finds it immensely irresponsible because the potential for blowback is so high. Malware can easily (and inadvertently) affect systems that were never intended to be involved, though he's not sure what we can do to support nonproliferation at this point. I'm not sure if it was at this point but sometime during the event he told a story about a programmer who showed that he could take control of pacemaker software and essentially insert a bug into it that could end up killing the users. Such dangerous potential. Along similar lines, another question was about why lawmakers would spend their time passing laws like the one from recent weeks which made it a felony to unlock your phone. (I wish I was kidding) Everything is dependent on computers these days and we all have an obsession with trying to lock them up and keeping people safe, but the answer is probably not keeping ourselves safe individually but by making the system safer--but not through censorware. (content filtering) Every word out of everyone's mouth at this event made me want to know more about computers and the internet. One audience member even said, "The more you talk, the more I feel like I am totally f*cked." To that, he said get involved. SOPA failed because so many people wrote to their lawmakers and spoke out against the proposed legislation. 

I had no idea until the next question came up that the Seattle Police were experimenting with a drone program, which basically included using unmanned small aircraft for monitoring. The questioner asked what Doctorow thought of the city using CCTV to monitor Seattle's harbors for Homeland Security and using drones. (incidentally, Mayor McGinn grounded the drones just a day or two after this event because there were so many privacy concerns) Doctorow talked about how prevalent CCTV is in London, where he resides. He said it hasn't really had much effect on how much crime is committed, though it has had some effect on how many people are convicted of crimes. To this, he said that prevention should be the actual goal. He told an anecdotal story about a friend of his, a lawyer, who was stabbed and killed outside a tube station. Did the recently installed CCTV prevent his murder? No. Even if it did eventually provide evidence against his assailants, what good is it if it doesn't prevent the actual crime? He said that use of surveillance also lessens the feeling of community we have with our neighbors. No one likes being watched. 

To a question about why he decided to write a sequel to Little Brother, Doctorow said he never intended to do so but that he had an idea for a scene and he went with it. He said it was immensely satisfying to revisit all of his old characters. He also said that he'd recently written a short story for the White House about emerging technology. His task was to write short fiction on how some sort of technology could be applied in the field. Imagine their surprise when he turned in a story about how activists and protesters could manipulate a police drone program by tapping into it and then maneuvering  entire crowds of people around to evade police. Everyone had a laugh about that one. 

I had my copy of Pirate Cinema signed after the event and Doctorow was pleasant and approachable to everyone despite having been up since 2am that day. He even drew a skull and crossbones on my title page. The only (and I mean ONLY) downside to this event was the fact that I had to listen to some douchebag coder from Google treat an out-of-town intern at Amazon like an infant while I was waiting in line.  I was this close to calling him out on his nonsense. Learn some social skills, dude. 

Seriously, go see him on tour if he's coming anywhere near you. Your brain will thank you.

City of a Thousand Dolls
Author: Miriam Forster
Publication Date: 2/5/2013
Publisher: Harper Teen
[Goodreads|Amazon]

Blurb: The girl with no past, and no future, may be the only one who can save their lives.

Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a little girl. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. She makes her way as Matron's errand girl, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city's handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die.

Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls' deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls—but also her life.

Review:

My first read of 2013 and, well, my advice is - skip it. I finished it so you don't have to. It is sad mostly because City of a Thousand Dolls is written so earnestly and with such good intentions. You can tell that the author meant this novel to be about diverse characters and diverse cultures. Too bad it's just not that great of a novel. It is simply lacking in sophistication and maturity.

City of a Thousand Dolls is another Asian-inspired fantasy which I would advise fans of good, clever, inventive fantasy not to bother with and read Alison Goodman's Eon duology instead. On the other hand, if you are not picky or experienced with fantasy, or don't mind your YA very young, sure, go for it. The world-building here is interesting enough, at the very least exotic. Its roots are hard to pin-point (unlike, let's say in the case of obviously Japanese-inspired Stormdancer). There are touches of Japanese culture here, with fans and tea ceremonies, dark skin, castes and names of India, demographic politics of China. All in all these pieces create if not a unique and new imaginary world, but it least different from the "normal" Western ones.

At the center of this story is the City of a Thousand Dolls, a shelter and a place of study for unwanted girls. This city is necessary because of the Bhinian Empire's rigidly enforced two-child limit, which, as it usually does, means that its citizens are more invested in keeping sons and getting rid of girl children. The City has several schools (Houses) that teach the abandoned girls music, medicine, and seduction (basically, your common high class prostitution) and assassination skills. When the girls reach adulthood, they are practically sold to the highest bidder.

The main character of the novel, Nisha, is an assistant to the City's Matron and, as often in such novels, a special kind of girl, or so we are told. The main plot of the book is Nisha's investigation of sudden deaths of several City's girls.

Not to go into any great detail, the reasons why City of a Thousand Dolls didn't work for me are the ones that I keep writing about over and over again. The quality of writing is more of MG level, which makes the whole attempt to write romance into this story with passionate kissing and such quite a failure. The romance is juvenile and void of complexity, there is no other way to describe it. The hierarchy of the City is shaky. Sometimes it's hard to understand why certain people have the audacity to be disrespectful to their superiors and of course there is the usual "special snowflake" cliche that makes our heroine special without her doing and being anything special, but having a special position in this world nevertheless. The reasonings and motivations are unclear too sometimes. Why such angst and surprise at the news of arranged marriages or employments when the main purpose of the City is just that - to find unwanted girls places to live or work once they are of age? Plus, circling back to the issue of arranged marriages and such, isn't this too tired of a trope to base a story on, the only reason for angst and conflict? It's pretty much the most worn-out trope in speculative YA right now.

And the last thing that makes the book so... young is the talking cats. I'm sorry, but I believe that talking animals belong mainly in children's lit, unless it's Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Basically, I found this novel very simplistic and immature, albeit well-meaning and generally decently written. It just doesn't match the level of quality I prefer in my books. But sure, give it to your 12-year old. Wait, but how would you explain it to be appropriate to have schools that educate mistresses and prostitutes and assassins in an MG book? A lot of strange disconnect in this novel...

2/5 stars

Idaho State Senator John Goedde stirred up some righteous indignation last week, when he sponsored a bill that would make Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged required reading in Idaho’s high schools – going so far as to require that students pass a test on the book as a graduation requirement.  He stirred the pot a little more by saying “That book made my son a Republican” when asked why he chose it.  I personally find this whole scenario (both the bill itself and the righteous indignation) to be pretty silly.  I think high school children should have open, free access to any book they wish to read (including Ayn Rand).  I don’t believe that the required reading of Atlas Shrugged is likely to “turn” anyone Republican (perhaps the fact that the Senator’s son grew up in a predominantly Republican household had some measure in forming his political beliefs…?  Ya think?).  Nor do I think that any required high school reading is likely to brainwash school age children toward one set of beliefs or another.  I really enjoyed this response from The Daily Beast, in which author Michael Moynihan states in part: “If Goedde’s bill was serious and in danger of passing, it would have exactly the opposite of its intended effect. By mandating her books be studied in school, it’s likely that Rand’s influence on the young would be immeasurably lessened forever.”  Haha, indeed.  Maybe this bill is a good idea after all?

Amazon continues its bid to take over the world (although, not China apparently) by announcing the upcoming launch of its own currency last week.  “Amazon Coins” will essentially have the same value as U.S. currency so I’m not exactly sure what the point of it all is.  *Downloads another song with seemingly limitless fake money.*

Amazon also filed a patent at the end of January that will allow the company to “resell” digital files like audiobooks and ebooks.  So for example, a user could potentially transfer the digital rights to a song or a kindle book to another user for a “used” price.  Could this be the future of used book stores?

This week in fabulous soap box blogging, Kelly from Stacked writes in defense of introvert learning styles (see the comments for additional discussion) and Sarah from Clear Eyes, Full Shelves writes about the “right” way to read a book (spoiler: there isn’t a right way).

NPR Books had a series of great articles about the state of the publishing industry right now – and (surprise!!) – not everyone thinks it’s all doom and gloom.  I know that I personally get very tired of the “sky is falling,” “publishing is DEAD!!” posts so I really enjoyed their more well-rounded point of view.  Also, for all the Little House fans, check out this interesting/nerdy NPR article about why Laura’s sister Mary likely did not lose her sight to scarlet fever.

New shelving/book recommendation site Bookish launched last week.  So far, it seems a lot less user-driven than Goodreads, but it could be a potential competitor down the road.

In entertainment news, Emma Roberts will play the lead role in a television adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s Delirium for Fox.  No word yet on whether writer Karyn Usher will be able to translate the premise of the book into something that actually makes sense.  There were also some very exciting casting announcements for the upcoming film version of The Book Thief. 

And of course, the biggest news of the week: Washington D.C. and Seattle once again kick butt and take the top spots for “most literate city.”  Woohoo!  Suck on it, rest of the U.S.!

Stop by and let us know what we missed from your corners of the web!