Sunday Salon – What makes a book YA versus Adult?

Recently I have read several adult books that touch on the same themes that many YA books focus on, such as life [sic] in a post-apocalyptic world, or characters who are angels (half angels/bad angels/good angels). Sometimes the background plot of the books are almost identical. Yet the books are very different in tone and impact. What makes them so?

I’ve been thinking and thinking about it.

It’s not The Ear Tuck Effect, because this happens in BOTH genres. (Ear Tuck: one character, usually the male, tucks a lose strand of hair behind the hair of a character in whom he or she has a romantic interest. I have a database of Ear Tuck Events which documents the book name, author, quote, and page number. In spite of having only started this database two years ago, I now have forty entries.)

Someone gave him an ear tuck…

It’s not the subject matter, because this also can be almost identical in both genres, as mentioned in the opening paragraph.

It’s not even the presence of a younger protagonist. Think Dickens. And “coming of age”? To me, that could happen at any age.

Some contend that YA books have more emphasis on appearance, and I agree to some extent, except for the huge exceptions of chick lit fiction and probably romance fiction; huge enough, it seems to me, to negate that theory.

Here are my suggestions about how the two genres somehow manage to be identifiably different, in spite of the similarities:

1. The point of view of each genre is different. This takes several forms.

(a) YA usually is told in first person. If a third person perspective is used, it is not an omniscient narrator third person but just the third person narration of the protagonist (technically known as “third person dramatic narrator.”) This gives a greater sense of immediacy to the story, and allows us to identify better with the main protagonist.

Hunger Games: First person in the book, but third person in the movie – to broaden the audience appeal?

(b) The narrator is very focused on adult caregivers, even if they remain totally in the background.

(c) The narrator is forward-looking to the future, rather than backward-looking to the past and baggage/memories from the past.

2. Style; Tone; Language: The characters in YA speak more plainly, with more slang. With some notable exceptions (like Beth Kephart), YA characters tend to speak in a less “elevated” way and (except for John Green’s books) have less sophisticated vocabularies.

3. Time span: YA novels seem to cover less time. When adult books don’t span years in the plot, memories of the past make up for it.

3b. Outlook: I think that YA protagonists generally have a more optimistic outlook. They think they can change the world, and actually try to do so. Adult protagonists are more resigned. Whereas young protagonists think individuals can actually make a difference, and apply energy and ingenuity to make it happen, I think adult protagonists are more likely to head for the bottle, or the gun. …

4. And last but not least, I would be remiss not to add marketing. Sometimes the way a book is “defined” and what sort of cover it is given, seems to me to be quite determinative of how the book is viewed.

This is a shame in many ways, because I agree with author Maggie Stiefvater, who said on a panel about crossover fiction:

…I have really complicated feelings about this topic. Because when you say something has cross over appeal, it means that you’re saying some things DON’T have cross over appeal, and that means that you’re saying that some books are definitely adult and definitely young adult…

That theory requires you to believe that people only want to read books about people who are like them. Children only want to read about children. Adults about adults. Single women about single women. That’s just not true. Otherwise the market for Silence of the Lambs would be entirely comprised of serial killers.”

Parenthetically, I should add that I don’t think the so-called “new” category of “New Adult” explained here by New York Magazine even applies to this discussion:

Publishers have invented a new category of commercial fiction. It’s called “new adult,” and judging from the titles thus far categorized in the fledgling genre, it seems intended to appeal to women, especially the young women who in recent years have taken to reading books written for teenagers. According to estimates, these not-so-young adult readers comprise a sizable share of the audiences of Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter and are a big reason why those books’ reach extended so far beyond their anticipated demographic. Now the industry is betting that there’s another kind of story that they will buy, featuring all the heartfelt crises of identity that affect adolescent characters, only with real-world settings and slightly more adult insight and adult situations (perhaps even sex!).”

But help me out here! What do I have wrong and what right? What do you think?

Women’s History Month Sunday Salon – Sexual Abuse of Women in the Military

As of the end of September, 2011, 214,098 active-duty servicewomen comprised 14.7% of the total active force of 1.46 million people.

Recently (in part because of the reluctance of some in Congress to renew the Violence Against Women Act), more attention has been given to the rampant sexual abuse of women in the military.

Inappropriately suggestive WWI recruitment poster, part of a historical pattern

For example, The New York Times recently ran a harrowing story featuring one of the SIXTY-TWO trainees at Lackland Air Force Base who were victims of assault or other improper conduct by THIRTY-TWO training instructors between 2009 and 2012. Virginia Messick was unable to complain to her superior, because her superior was the one who raped her.

The Department of Defense reports that over THREE THOUSAND sexual assault cases were reported in 2011 alone.

They speculate that the real figure is probably higher, closer to NINETEEN THOUSAND, estimating that only some 10-15% of survivors report assaults. There are a number of factors militating against disclosure, as shown graphically below:

Moreover, it is not as if subjecting oneself to the horrible experience of testifying has positive results. In 2011, only 1,518 of the 3,192 reported sexual assaults were considered actionable by the military, a decrease of 22% from the previous year. Prosecution rates for sexual predators are incredibly low — in 2011, less than 8% of reported cases went to trial. An estimated 10% of perpetrators resigned in lieu of courts‐martial, which effectively means the military allowed rapists to quit their jobs in order to avoid facing charges. Currently, the Navy is the only branch of the military that discharges all convicted sex offenders. Otherwise, per the Department of Defense, an astounding 1 in 3 convicted military sex offenders remain in the military!

Documented consequences of military sexual trauma (MST) most frequently includes PTSD, impairments of social functioning and quality of life (for example, a study found that more than fifty percent of homeless female veterans had experienced military sexual trauma), chronic pain, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.

So what’s being done? Nicole McCoy, who was assaulted several times while in the Marines, said in an NPR interview that her bad experiences started soon after she signed up:

Back in 2008, I had joined the Marine Corps and within almost exactly a year I was raped while in Afghanistan while I was at work. Continuously had to work with the same guy. He held a 9 millimeter to my head and told me that if I told anyone he’d kill me. And then I left Afghanistan after a couple months, still never told anyone.”

Her story just gets worse:

…in January of 2010 I was raped while in a hazmat course. And I went back and told one of the Marines that I was there with and I had told him what happened. He said he would contact my staff NCO. The staff NCO told me I needed to wait until I got back to my duty station, as they didn’t have any uniform victim advocates where I was. So when I got back then they told me that I missed the deadline.”

And believe it or not, the abuse continued. She finally left the Corps in 2011. Now she works as an advocate for change in the military and works to support other victims. But it’s an uphill road. As another female vet, Julie, testified on the same show:

I’m a Vietnam-era vet, and I joined in 1973, and like Nicole, I had multiple experiences with sexual assault. And let me be very clear here: I don’t feel that I’m a victim. This is something that happens to us in the military, because quite often the war that we have is with the guy standing next to us, not necessarily the guy on the other side of the gun.

And let me make a point that I’m not hearing being made: Rank has its privileges, gentlemen, and one of the most important aspects of this argument is that power – power over women is a very, very heady thing in the military. The men who attacked me had rank, and as an enlisted woman, and I wasn’t an enlisted woman the entire time I was in, they had power over me because they had rank. And I did not feel at the time of these assaults that I had the right to make an appeal to anybody else, that I felt that I would have been run out of the Army, and I’d made a commitment to my country.

So I bit on a stick. I kept walking. I didn’t make any appeal, and I simply was the good soldier. And one of the most important aspects of this, and the fundamental problem is that it starts at the top, and – may I point out Petraeus. These guys cannot keep it zipped up. It is at the very, very top ranks. This is an issue of power and the permission to do whatever they want because it comes with rank.”

Read the whole transcript here. And help fight the lack of prosecutions! If there is no punishment, there is no incentive not to continue.

[It should be noted that while women make up the overwhelming number of victims, sexual abuse is not confined to them]. The Department of Defense shows these statistics:

Any thoughts on this phenomenon or on how things could be changed?

Sunday Salon – Why I Love Jo Nesbo

On November 19 I went to hear Jo Nesbo speak at the local indie, Politics & Prose. Although there were many seats available, it was packed, with quite a few who stood throughout the presentation.

Beforehand, a Danish reporter asked what I liked about Nesbo – why I thought he was so popular, especially vis-à-vis other Scandinavian authors. Flummoxed by being singled out, I babbled incoherently, and even said something about his looking like a rock star, which had nothing whatsoever to do with why I became addicted to his books. (…but might have been a factor explaining why all the women of a certain age (including me of course) were packing the seats and looking like aged versions of girls reacting to the boy band One Direction.) (And no, fellow bloggers who received my texts of OMG HE IS SO CUTE are not allowed to reveal that fact in the comments!)

Now that I have had a chance to think it over, however, I believe I can give a better answer.

1. I think Nesbo has been blessed with a good translator. I have read other Scandinavian crime fiction in which the dialogue seems stilted and even bizarre. Since these same authors are so popular in Scandinavia, I have to believe it is an artifact of translation.

2. Most other Scandinavian crime fiction writers I have read add two elements to their stories that Nesbo doesn’t: (1) the bleak, cold weather plays a large role; and (2) social and/or political issues are even more salient than the crime.

Nesbo focuses on characterization, and his stories could take place in any setting. Plus, his books are action-packed and often edge-of-your seat thrillers. I love that about him. I prefer to read about social issues and weather in magazines!

3. Last but not least, there is the fantastic protagonist of his long-running crime series (he has authored other, unrelated books as well), and that character is Oslo police detective Harry Hole. (Learn how to pronounce the detective’s name here.) Harry Hole – brilliant and unconventional, is a walking embodiment of existential pain. He has internal demons that beset him constantly (his colleagues think of him as a sullen alcoholic, but there’s more to it than that), and the only distraction he knows is to pursue the external demons who go about in the world and take away the lives of those not ready to give them up. This compulsive, obsessed, hard-boiled, self-destructive loner is irresistibly endearing, and apparently irresistible in other ways too. Harry Hole is someone you want to nurture, beware of, hang out with, benefit from, and be around to find out what he’s going to do next.

But, that’s just my opinion. What do the rest of you think who like Scandinavian crime fiction? Why Nesbo? Or why not?

(The “New York Times” reported “Even the prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, is a fan. He once started to recommend Mr. Nesbo’s novel “Redbreast” to the king, until he remembered that the story involved an assassination plot against the Norwegian royal family.”)

Sunday Salon – A Close-up Look at FictFact, a Wonderfully Useful Service!

I follow a lot of series. There are the YA trilogies, there are mystery series, paranormal series, and all kinds of series. A blogger put me onto FictFact (and gaaah, I can’t remember who! …which is why I need services to help me keep track!).

FictFact lets you keep track of of all your series. First you browse by either author, title, series name, etc. to find the ones you are following, and then click to add them to your series profile. You also check off which books in the series you have already read.

When your data entry is done, you are ready to have FictFact do the work!

Now, when I go to the site and click on “My Series,” I can see a spreadsheet showing Series Name, Author, Next Book Due, When the Next is Expected, and My Progress in the Series.

I can also rate books, get recommendations based on the series I follow, make recommendations, see who else in FictFact is following the same series, join discussion groups about them, and so on.

From time to time you receive notifications like this in your email:

The following book(s) are out this week in the series you are following!

The Kill Order (Maze Runner Prequel)
#4 in Maze Runner
By James Dashner
Publish Date:8/14/2012 – Coming Soon!

But my favorite part is the browsing feature. Here are the categories:

By Series
By Author
Most Popular Overall
Most Popular by Genre
Book Release Calendar
Discussion Groups

What sort of series are on the site? Everything! And if they don’t have it, you can suggest it. I have suggested four, and they were very responsive and added them right away. These are the ten most popular series overall (across all genres):

1. Sookie Stackhouse (Charlaine Harris)

2. Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)

3. Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling)

4. Black Dagger Brotherhood (J. R. Ward)

5. Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

6. The Stephanie Plum Series (Janet Evanovich)

7. Night Huntress (Jeaniene Frost)

8. Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson (Patricia Briggs)

9. MacKayla Lane (Fever) (Karen Marie Moning)

10. Dark Hunters (Sherrilyn Kenyon)

You can also see most popular series by genre. The genres include:

Romance
Science Fiction
Contemporary
Fantasy
Paranormal
Thriller
Mystery
Historical
Adventure
Young Adult
Suspense
Horror
Christian
Humor

All in all, FictFact is a worthwhile and fun site to check out. (For the record, I have 62 series registered with them. I probably follow more than that, but those are the ones for which I would like to receive notifications.)

Anyone else use this or similar services to keep track of books?

Sunday Salon – In Which I Actually Assent To A Personal Meme – Twenty Things About Me

Twenty Things About Me

1. I love orreries – the more unusual, the better. (An orrery is a model illustrating the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the Solar System.) If I could, I’d have them sitting and hanging everywhere.

This one shows Liverpool at the center of the universe, but except for that one aberration, it is a beautiful example of an innovative orrery

2. I love the word hermeneutics. If Jim and I ever get the two dogs we would like to have, I could see naming them Herman and U-ticks, although since we have already picked out names (Deuterium and Tritium, or, more familiarly, Doody and Tritty) we probably need FOUR dogs.

3. I love raw dough. It is a struggle to get myself to finish baking cake or cookies or brownies when all that great raw dough is right there for the taking.

4. I love being surprised in a book. It could be because it is so good and I hadn’t expected that, or it could be a great twist (as with Fingersmith by Sarah Waters or Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn), or it could be that the book gave me a great insight. Or it could be that, like To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal, (paraphrasing poet Seamus Heaney) it caught my heart off guard and blew it open.

5. I love when I plant something and it actually grows instead of dying. This is such a rare occasion it gives me the greatest joy.

6. I love conveniences that I don’t take for granted even though I was born at a time when we’ve always had these things: indoor plumbing, electric lights, heating and cooling, showers…..

7. Roadside wildflowers make me very happy.

8. I love toponymy (the study of the origin of place names). Whenever we go on a road trip, I take along a relevant book (such as one of my favorites that pretty much works for the whole southwest: The Place Names of New Mexico by Robert Julyan). Knowing the background for the names of, e.g., Truth or Consequences, New Mexico or Show Low, Arizona gives you a whole new insight into the place.

9. I love outsized stuff and undersized stuff: like baby vegetables or baby ketchup bottles or giant roadside attractions. (…which is, by the way, why I like Las Vegas, in spite of the fact that I don’t gamble, shows are too expensive, I’m allergic to cigarette smoke, and I get apoplectic over all the female exploitation going on. Because if you can ignore all that (LOL), there are all those miniaturized places that are so fun to see!)

10. I love book festivals. What a great opportunity for us to get to hear some fine minds in action!

National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., September 2011

11. I love magazines

12. I love street art

Seen while at BEA in New York in 2011

13. I love hot and cold together (e.g., hot fudge sundae)

14. I love racing my husband in puzzles and games – especially when I win.

15. I love encountering outstanding turns of phrase by an author. For me, no one beats Michael Chabon at that: take this example from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: “the trumpeting of foghorns and melancholy steamships” under a sky that is “a bright superman blue” and “cloudless but for one lost lamb overhead.” Great or what?

16. My favorite star is Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, is expected to go supernova anytime now in the next million years! I check it regularly….

17. The person I’d most like to have a gossip session with is Cleopatra. She was purportedly not as attractive as the many women who have portrayed her in film, and probably looked like this coin that she approved:

But this amazing woman, the last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, had affairs with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and supposedly had remarkable political savvy.

18. My favorite movie genre is musicals – usually, the older the better.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

19. We hold birthday celebrations for Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, and Galileo Galilei. (Unfortunately, Galileo’s birthday – February 15 – is also Feynman’s death day, so that’s usually double tribute day.)

A young Richard Feynman

20. If I could be a different person, I’d be one of those women who lived in an old-fashioned looking house (but with all the modern conveniences and wiring and so on) and it would be full of quilts (that I made, of course) and peonies (that I grew) and herb baskets and spices and jams and colorful everything, and it would always be clean (miraculously: not by my own efforts) and everything would be bright and breezy (wait, am I segueing into a song from The King and I?) and I would sort of waft through and gravitate from cozy chair to cozy chair with whatever book struck me at the moment except when I was making pasta from scratch for dinner which would only take 20 minutes or so because, after all, I would want time to sit out in the English country style garden with the lilacs and morning glories and poppies and snapdragons and so on, which I would be able to do without sneezing.

Sunday Salon – Joint Review of “Faith” by Jennifer Haigh

Note: This review by Jill is followed by separate discussion sections by Jim and Jill, since we both read the book and disagreed on its merits.

On Good Friday in 2002, Father Art Breen is called to the headquarters of the Boston Archdiocese. He receives notice that he is being suspended because of accusations of child abuse leveled against him by an anonymous accuser. Shocked, he is told to vacate the rectory immediately, and repair to an apartment the Church rented for him.

It takes no time for the news to make the newspapers and for everyone to know. Art’s younger sister Sheila, who narrates the story, reports that their mother, appropriately named Mary, is staunchly loyal to her son, and refuses to believe he could have done such a thing. Their brother Mike immediately assumes Art is guilty, and feels nothing but loathing toward Art. Sheila is on the fence, but desperately wants to find out that Art didn’t do it. Their father has no opinion, since he is in the late stages of alcohol-induced mental decline, and lives far in the past.

There is a Mary Magdalene in this passion play as well – Kath Conlon, the daughter of his housekeeper Fran. Kath, beset by demons, becomes a friend to and disciple of Art. But when Art is crucified for the alleged abuse of Kath’s son Aidan, here the story diverges from the four Gospels, becoming Sheila’s “fifth gospel,” as she calls her memoir within a book.

The evildoers that inhabit this story cut a destructive swath through the faith of many believers. Maybe, Sheila thinks, we’ve just got to carve out our own love in the world, because the Church presents too many questions for this cast of characters with no obvious answers. How Sheila gets to this decision runs underneath the story of what really happened with Art, as if Sheila is making her way along the stations of the cross to be reborn, if only she can be.

Discussion by Jill: Jim and I had quite different reactions to this book. Jim grew up in a family a bit like the McGanns, and so to him it seemed almost like he was reading a family memoir. Because of his personal experiences, he could fill in the blanks and flesh out the characters, who seemed as real to him as his own Mom, his Uncles Jim and Mickey, Father Frank, and the rest of his family and community in Chicago where life was organized by the parish to which your neighborhood belonged. And indeed, I have been able to get to know his family enough since we have been together to appreciate how important secrets, denial, and “a canon of approved stories” are to “lace curtain Irish.”

But since I have had only a few real life equivalents enabling me to flesh out the bare bones glimpses we got of the characters in the book, I was actually kind of bored at times. The narrator, Sheila, was a cipher to me, and even Art did not start to come into focus until the end. Only Mike, the hot-headed brother with the too-controlled wife seemed real to me.

Discussion by Jim: I can’t fathom how Jill can say the characterizations were “bare bones.” Just as almost everyone knows enough about Jewish families to enjoy them in fiction without elaborate background descriptions of their culture, nearly everyone knows enough about the Irish to obviate detailed descriptions of their culture.

Haigh knows a lot about Irish foibles, and can capture them with a few deft sentences. For example, Mary, the mother, never drinks alcohol at home. As the author explains,

She hadn’t had a pint in donkey’s years, had avoided the stuff entirely after Ted [the father] got bad. For years you couldn’t have a sip in his presence; it wasn’t worth the grief. I witnessed these arguments many times as a child: if Ma drank one, Dad considered it permission to finish the case.”

She also understands the perplexity with which many Catholics view the more abstruse doctrines of their faith. In light of the sex abuse scandals in the Church, Mike’s wife, who is Lutheran, argues that their son should not receive his first Holy Communion because he is too young to know what that is supposed to mean. Mike says that the boy accurately repeats the meaning of communion (the doctrine of transubstantiation) right out of the catechism. But, his wife counters, he doesn’t understand those words. Mike replies, “Nobody does.”

Sheila, the narrator, is not a cipher. She is the only character in the book who overcomes the extreme reluctance of the Irish to discuss any uncomfortable or embarrassing issues. Her brother, Mike, simply assumes Art’s guilt without talking to him. Her mother sinks into a state of denial and never considers the possibility of Art’s guilt. Sheila, on the other hand, approaches Art directly and ultimately learns the truth.

The story is compelling and plausible. The characters are well developed and nuanced.

Rejoinder by Jill: I am right because I like the sound of saying that, AND moreover, I am not an essentialist, and would not presume all Irish families are alike, even if all happy families are alike (per Tolstoy). Therefore I wouldn’t consider taking a leap of faith (to use Kierkegaard in the service of making a clever double entendre) to flesh out the characters, rather than relying on the author for help in that department.

Evaluation: I wasn’t thrilled with the characterization, but Jim loved it. Regardless, there is plenty to think about in this book, and it is a gold mine for book clubs.

Jim’s Rating: 4/5
Jill’s Rating: 3/5
Compromise Rating: 3.5/5

Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

Sunday Salon – In Which I Confess My Fondness For “Frippers”

“Frippers” is a portmanteau coined by my husband Jim for “fur rippers” which is an adaptation of “bodice rippers.” Yes, I have been having fun lately with Patricia Briggs and her Alpha and Omega Series about love and romance among the werewolves.

This series centers around the sexy, strong (but gentle, of course) alpha wolf, Charles, who deeply loves his omega wolf mate, Anna, and wants to tear apart anyone who even looks at her crossways. This would not be difficult for Charles, who also happens to be the chief enforcer for his “da”, the “Marrok”, or head of all the werewolves in North America.

An alpha wolf is a dominant wolf in a pack, and very prone to violence. An omega wolf, much rarer, is a “zen” alpha wolf – one who “has all the protective instincts of an Alpha and none of the violent tendences.” Omegas confer peace and serenity onto other wolves, and thus are very valuable, especially in those critical beginning days of managing the change from human to werewolf. Charles, a werewolf for centuries, is immediately drawn to Anna, a werewolf for only three years. Anna has no problem standing up to this enforcer wolf who makes all the other alphas quake, and she and Charles have great chemistry. I especially love when she controls the wolf in him by tapping him on the snout.

Various problems and adventures ensue, what with rogue wolves, evil witches and vampires, and the like, but the big draw of these books is the relationship between Anna and Charles.

Discussion: What’s so appealing about bodice and fur rippers? I’ve prattled on about this before: the appeal of the strong bad boy who can make a female weak in the knees but yet it is she who tames him, for he adores her. Women are socialized to want this in so many ways! And frippers have an advantage over rippers: when the hero isn’t being a sexy handsome great big guy, he is an attractive great big doggy, whose fur you can run your hands through and against whom you can cuddle up and sleep.

Evaluation: I had a great time with these books. They are totally M&M books: no nutritional value and probably deleterious to the maintenance of your mental acuity, but they taste so good that you can’t stop eating them.

Rating: 4/5

Publication Notes: On the Prowl is in a collection of novellas published by Berkley Books, 2007. Cry Wolf and Hunting Ground are published by Ace Books, part of the Berkley Publishing Group, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Sunday Salon – Should Parents Preview What Kids Read? Guest Post by Author Laura McNeal

Note from Jill: I had the good fortune to hear Laura McNeal give this talk, and yes, she is as funny and warm and wonderful in person as her talk (and her books) would indicate. She is, you probably know, the author of the National Book Award Finalist Dark Water (see my review here) and co-author with her husband Tom of a number of noteworthy YA books including the poignant and uplifting story The Decoding of Lana Morris (see my review here). You can also visit her website and read not only news about the McNeals, but you can see the lovely graphic art with which she decorates it. (And don’t you secretly agree with me that ONE PERSON should not have SO MANY talents? Can’t we have a more democratic distribution of positive attributes?)

Here is Laura McNeal:

Three things are on my mind as I work at my desk these days:

1) Why on earth am I writing fiction?
2) Are east coast Ring Dings better than, worse than, or exactly the same as west coast Ding Dongs?
3) Can reading save the world?

Since the question of which snack cake is obviously the most critical (given the precarious health of Hostess Brands), we’ll save our taste test results for the end.

I think people who write fiction have an abnormally strong desire to make sense of things that do not make sense, which is how life is most of the time. A + B + C is not equal to D. I think writers want to tell the truth and also to feel better about what the truth is, so they will tell a funny or lyrical story about A + B + C not adding up to D.

For each writer, the need to do this comes from different sources. My mother was a Mormon home economics teacher who read novels and taught me to make my own pants, and my father was a Mormon Air Force pilot who read only history books about people killing one another in wars. When you cross a religious optimist-my mom–with a religious pessimist-my dad–you get a fiction writer who spends her high school years wearing unfashionable pants. A + B = C. You might also get a person who likes death-defying sports. My brother. A + B = D.

But can reading save the world?

Of course! And just as soon as I get my degree in engineering, I’m going to write the app that helps you do it. As I envision it now, you click on the app and see a list of books picked by me because it’s my app and I used to be an English teacher and I miss that power to boss people about reading. If you click on the title of a book, say, Tess of the d’Urbervilles or War and Peace, and you read the plot summary and realize that something sad is going to happen in the book, such as a good character dying young, and then you say, “No, I can’t read that because it’s too depressing and I have enough stress in my life already,” your smart phone will book you into a 5-star hotel room and change your Facebook password to something in Portuguese that you can’t remember.

Then it delivers lightly blanched vegetables sustainably farmed nearby, homemade bread that is still hot, and chocolate. You eat, and you lie down on the bed that is also a window seat overlooking the ocean and you start reading the great book that has sad parts in it. If you try to check e-mail while you’re bogged down a little in chapter two, feeling the onset of sympathetic stress, the app will tell you why great novels, especially if they describe sad events and tragic mistakes, curb the natural tendency of human beings to be self-absorbed. A voice with a Russian accent-it’s Vladimir Nabokov-will say, “Beauty plus pity is the closest we can get to a definition of art.”
So you read some more. If you stop and try to order some shoes on Zappos because you can’t stand what a jerk Alec d’Urberville is, Franz Kafka will say, with his charming German accent, “A book must be the ax to break the frozen sea inside us.” If you start looking for cute kitchen designs to post on Pinterest, P.J. O’Rourke will say, “Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

So you give up and read. You read after supper and late into the night and on until morning and even though you cry-you’re definitely going to cry when you read some of the books that save the world-you discover that you feel so much better now. You check out of the hotel and go home, and, magically, no time at all has passed so you’re not late for anything (that’s why it costs $2.99), and the fact is you’re significantly nicer. You’re a tiny bit more conscious, each time you check into and out of the Hard Books Hotel, what true love is and what the great, important questions of existence are and how things can go wrong and how vulnerable and similar other people are, even if they’re completely different from you, if they’re Himalayan or homeless or rich or patriotic or prematurely pregnant or 85 years old or they fought in the Napoleonic Wars.

I anticipate that this app is going to be so successful once I get the cooperation of the Four Seasons Hotel that I’m going to be able to launch Hard Books for Young People. The Hard Books for Young People app rolls parental supervision of reading back to 1977 standards as they were applied in my own religious yet paradoxically laissez-faire household. Back then, as you know, children roamed the earth without cell phones. I rode my bike in traffic without a helmet, ate Ding Dongs and Doritos, and read books that people now would call “completely inappropriate.” If my mother had read them first, she would have worried herself sick and stopped me from trying, vicariously, all the things I then decided not to try in real life, such as heroin and teenage pregnancy.

If you are a nervous–which is to say normal–parent of 2012 and you click on the app I’m working on, your smart phone will not tell you everything that happens in the novel your 13-year-old has just picked up in the library. Instead, it will say, “Recalculating.” It will bring you a cup of tea and say, “You know, a book is not a speeding car driven by a drunk person. It’s a slow-motion film of the accident.” Then you and your phone, which has muted itself, will go sit in the garden and read War and Peace.

As you might expect, this app is also equipped to deal with problems posed by a young person holding a phone and a book at the same time. Let’s say the young person picks out A Separate Peace because it’s on his summer reading list and he’s only on page two when he goes on Facebook and types WHY DO I HAVE TO READ THIS STUPID BOOK IT IS SO DEPRESSING!!!!! If that happens, the phone delivers Ring Dings or Ding Dongs to the young reader’s home. The reader eats and flakes of chocolate fall into his phone and magically disable all functions, so when he reads he gets no interruptions, and an amazing thing happens. He becomes someone other than himself for a while. He feels what the Greeks called catharsis: the purging of strong emotion through art. This is so much better than the purging of strong emotion through Facebook insults that the reader becomes significantly nicer at home and at school. Here’s the thing, though. Hard Books for Young People only works if you have so many books on your shelf, books you fell in love with at the Hard Books Hotel, that your child respects you when you say, “Put down your phone, Sam. Put down your phone and go read a book.”

Postscript: If you are not currently reading War and Peace or Tess of the d’Urbervilles, you can either Google “Ding Dongs + Ring Dings” or believe me when I say that I ate a Ding Dong and then I ate a Ring Ding and they tasted exactly, precisely, identically the same because, as it happens, they are produced by the same company in the same factory.

East coast Ring Dings

West Coast Ding Dongs

Sunday Salon – The Importance of Diversity in Fiction

In April, YA author Sarah Ockler had a great post about the difficulty with finding YA books that don’t feature “white authors, white characters, white faces, white girls.” As she notes, YA authors of color are writing books, but booksellers aren’t stocking or promoting them. She asks:

Why is diversity in fiction important? Because diversity in life is important. And when we exclude—intentionally or otherwise—characters of color from our work, we do send a billboard message to readers. We tell them that people of color aren’t there, aren’t important, aren’t worthy of our stories. That they don’t deserve to be part of the conversation of our books. That reading isn’t for them. That they don’t matter. That they don’t even register on our radar.”

Ockler isn’t the only YA author who has spoken up about diversity. Francisco X. Stork, another favorite author of mine, made some interesting comments in his interview over at The Book Smugglers:

My hope is that in reading my stories, the reader will notice and then forget that my characters are Hispanic. Even though, my young heroes will always be specifically Hispanic, I would like them to represent what is essential in all young people regardless of race and ethnicity. I would like the reader, whatever his or her background, to look into the soul of my characters and see his or her reflection.”

Reflection can be a two-edged sword. It would be great for white readers to realize they can identify with characters of color. What about the effects when readers of color encounter so many white characters? (See, for example, the post “The Elephant in the Room” by Elizabeth Bluemle, here, and numerous posts on this subject by the talented and indefatigable Zetta Elliott, such as the one here.)

By Artist Laura Freeman

Ockler includes a “primer” for white authors on addressing diversity, which begins with:

Actively diversifying our fiction does not mean…Giving a character almond-shaped eyes or coffee-mocha-latte-chocolate-hazelnut-caramel-cappuccino-colored skin. In fact, as a general rule, writers seeking inspiration solely from Starbucks menus probably need to dial down the caffeine.”

Her whole article is worth reading, and worth contemplating.

Meanwhile, the 5th National Black Book Festival is next weekend in Houston, Texas. The Harlem Book Fair is coming up in July.

I know last year, at BEA (taking place again this year this coming week), I really, really missed diversity. How has the situation gotten to the point that there are separate book festivals? How are whites to find out about all the great writing in the black community if the major book festivals aren’t more integrated?

Note: “Diversity” does not just mean “of color” of course – kudos to those YA authors who have incorporated differently abled characters into their fiction, including (to name some but thankfully not all): Laura and Tom McNeal (The Decoding of Lana Morris), Francisco X. Stork (The Last Summer of the Death Warriors and Marcelo in the Real World) and John Green (The Fault In Our Stars).

Sunday Salon – Celebrating the Scorpio Races With November Cakes

As you may recall from memorizing every post on my blog, I thought The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater was not only a wonderful book, but one of my top ten reads for 2011. And of course, it wasn’t just me who thought this:

Awards and Accolades

Michael L. Printz Award Honor, 2012
The Odyssey Honor Award 2012 for Best Audio Production
Los Angeles Times Book Times Award Finalist, 2012
ALA Notable Books for Children, 2012
The New York Times Notable Childrens’ Books of 2011
Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of 2011
Amazon’s Best Books for Teens 2011

And as you may also know, this author not only writes books, but composes music for them, plays the music, makes the book trailers (including the cut-paper art) and no doubt she also dances backwards in high heels. Recently, she invented a recipe to go with The Scorpio Races, and posted it on her blog, here.

In The Scorpio Races, the characters are very fond of the special “November Cakes” baked during race time, which are gooey and drippy buns, in spite of there being no Purell or Wet-Wipes on this mythical Irish island. (See, and you thought I couldn’t criticize her!)

But since, in my house, we do have Purell bottles every five feet or so, I thought it would be safe to try to bake these, and so I did.

Finished November Cakes - looking sort of perfect - made by Maggie Stiefvater and shown on her blog

Maggie’s instructions were great, but I still had to make adjustments. (For some reason, I can’t copy and paste the recipe, so if you open the window with the recipe, here, you could follow along with my changes.) For example, I didn’t have regular milk, but I had buttermilk, since I had just made scones for breakfast (see my recipe, here). And I never have been disappointed when I substitute buttermilk for milk.

After the first rising, but before the second rising

I also didn’t want to buy whipping cream for just two tablespoons, so I just used melted Breyer’s vanilla ice cream. (In our house, Breyer’s vanilla is a staple, like salt. We always have it.) As far as I know without a comparison, it worked fine. Lastly, after applying glaze to half the buns, I tossed a bit of rum into the glaze for the second half. Just a dash, you know, to show that the products of Maggie Stiefvater’s intellect aren’t just for young adults….

As for other changes, my oven is fast, and the buns were quite done after only ten minutes. And they were huge! In fact, when I took the dough out of the oven after the first rising, the dough was STILL MOVING – PULSATING even!, and I feared A SMALL BABY ALIEN was going to pop out of it any minute! But after I waited in fascination for a while, no alien emerged, so I transferred the dough to greased muffin tins, and left them for a second rising.

Rolls after the second rising

When I dumped out the buns to put on glaze and icing, instead of turning them over, I left them upside down, because that would maximize the area of glaze/icing absorption. And no one cares that they are upside down when they’re busy swooning over the taste!

Finished November Cakes, soaking in goo applied to a maximal surface area by being upside-down. Oh gosh, is there one missing already in this picture?

And yes, they are swoony, just like the romance between Sean and Puck in the book. If you haven’t read The Scorpio Races, you are so missing out! You can hear the author read Chapter One and also listen to the music for it that she composed and also plays on the same web page, here. Or, check out Maggie’s interview with the readers of the audio version, here. (Steve West, who reads for Sean, is um, okay looking….)

And make some November Cakes! It’s worth the effort! (have Purell around for after….) For future reference, by the way, I plan to try adding 1/4 cup of orange juice to the filling, to make it a bit more orangey.

And while you’re eating, or thinking about eating, or even regretting all the cakes you already ate, here’s some additional music composed and played by the author to accompany you:

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. where bloggers share food-related posts. Stop by her blog and see what’s cooking this week!