Most years I have one or two books I’m absolutely can’t wait to get my hands on. A book that’s makes me retire early to bed just so I can get a few extra minutes flipping pages under my dim book light. Alas dear reader, this year is different.
There’s nothing on the “To Be Released Must Read” list this year. For one, my go-to author has not announced a book release this year (yet, I hope). And two, nothing has really caught my eye in the past year to make me mark my calendar.
I need to clarify that I’m still excited about books. I always have at least one on my bedside table and another cued up on my iPod. I’ve just found myself in a unique situation where the things I am currently reading either don’t have a follow-up book or I’m so far into the author’s backlog of novels, that I’ll have quite a while before I need to start vying for new content from them. So I am excited about certain books to read this year. They just don’t happen to be waiting for release.
As for my go-to author, Jim Butcher. It’s been eleven years now that he’s published at least one new novel each year in his Dresden Files series. Two in 2010 if you include his collection of short stories in the same world. For a number of those years, he’s also produced a second or third novel. So it comes with a little disappointment that there is no official release date for his next novel. Although according to Wikipedia and his Livejournal blog (define stalking), the title of book fourteen in the Dresden Files is Cold Days. There’s also talk of a steampunk book he’s working on. I will say, however, if the man publishes a book, I’ll buy. Hardback. The week it’s released. No man-crush jokes.
So with the exception of a possible late release date from my go-to author, the rest of my reading time is open. Speaking of open, I’m open to suggestions. If you have any, please leave them in the comments below.
WordPress ate the first version of this post. It’s never done that before, and when I say ate, I mean mercilessly devoured, leaving no drafts whatsoever, only the title and tags, like little scraps of bone. So, here they are again: three forthcoming novels I’m watching for.
The Wind through the Keyhole by Stephen King, out April 24
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…..*head asplodes*…. ahem, sorry. This is a new Dark Tower story set in long tall and ugly’s youth. The scuttlebutt is something about Cuthbert and werewolves? Whatever, I’M IN.
The Order of the Scales, by Stephen Deas out February 7.
Intrigue, betrayals, dragons. The Memory of Flame trilogy comes packed with all the good stuff, and if you haven’t read the first two books, well you’ve got a month to catch up!
Amazon saith: ”Plotted with the sureness of Robin Hobb and colored with the haunting and ominous imagination of Michael Moorcock, The Scar tells a story that cannot be forgotten.” The Dyachenkos have written quite a few books, and garnered a ton of awards for them. The Scar is the first of their novels to be translated from Russian to English. They’ve got the first chapter here on their website. It’s gonna be goooood, guys.
I modified this from a piece I originally wrote for Science Fiction Writer’s Marketplace and Sourcebook, Writers Digest Books, 1994. Back then, I edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and had just won a Hugo for doing so). One of the most valuable things I learned for my writing was how to read like an editor. Here are a few insights:
Editors read differently than writers do. As writers learn their craft, they learn to critique manuscripts. A critique (often done in a workshop setting) requires the writer to read a manuscript from beginning to end. Writers look for flaws and for hidden gems in the material, sometimes rereading four and five times, looking for the author’s intent.
An editor reads like a reader does—with an eye to entertainment.
If editors spent that much time on each manuscript, they wouldn’t put out magazines. An editor reads like a reader does—with an eye to entertainment. If the editor gets bored, she moves onto another story. She doesn’t try to figure out what was wrong with the one she has set aside. She’s looking for something good, not what’s bad.
When I teach writing classes, I explain the editorial mind this way:
Imagine yourself on a plane flight from New York to San Francisco with a stop in Chicago. A half hour before landing in O’Hare, you finish the book you brought with you. On your layover, you want to buy a book for the second half of the journey. You have forty dollars in your pocket, twenty-five of which you need to bail your car out of long-term parking. Not quite enough left over to buy a hardcover, but enough for at least one thick paperback.
You walk into the airport bookstore and find yourself in luck. The book by Stephen King (or any other big-name writer) that you’ve been wanting to read has just been released in paperback. You snatch the book off the shelves, plunk down your $7.99 and leave, a happy customer.
But suppose you’ve read everything by your favorite big names. Then you look for the secondary names on the list, the writers whose work you sometimes like. You scan the back cover, and read a page or two before deciding to buy any book from these authors.
Suppose none of the books by secondary names interest you. You turn your attention to the writers whose names you have never heard of. Before you spend your money on them, you read the back cover and the front flap. You scan the author bio and the list of previously published works (if any). You read the first page. You read a page in the middle to see if the style remains consistent. Sometimes you read the entire first chapter before taking the risk of buying an unknown. And sometimes you put the book back on the shelf without buying a thing.
Editors work the same way. We have limited funds — and limited space. We have our list of beloved authors as well as a secondary list (mostly of unpublished writers who are “close” and whom we’ve been monitoring for a long time). But the difficult buys are the stories from the unknowns. Editors try to buy writers whose work will appear again and again in the magazine, whose name will eventually be on the cover as one of the draws. But it takes time and effort for a new writer to break in. Sometimes it takes years of submissions before an editor will take a chance with the new writer.
Editing is a matter of taste. Remember the airport analogy above? I will have different writers on my A, B, and C lists than you will. I have different preferences. I edit a magazine because my publisher believes that the other readers of the magazine share my tastes.
Editors for other magazines have different tastes. That’s why these editors get hired. They get hired because they have an eye for the commercial, an eye for what readers will like. These editors don’t get hired because they can critique a manuscript well.
So how does that apply to your writing? Stop reading critically. Read for enjoyment. You can’t see a story if you read with a red pen in your hand. Often the writer will do something “wrong” for effect. You will miss that effect if you’re reading critically. You’ll experience that effect if you read for enjoyment.
It’s easy to point out mistakes; it’s harder to see brilliance.
If you find a book that’s spectacular, then go back after you’ve finished reading, and go through it again. Look for the “mistakes” the writer made, and ask yourself, “What effect was the writer trying to achieve?” Assume that the writer knew what she was doing, because if you loved the book, then indeed, she had an expertise you don’t. Learn from that.
And stop critiquing in a workshop. Look for the things that work, not the things that fail. It’s easy to point out mistakes; it’s harder to see brilliance.
If you train your mind toward excellence, then you will become a better writer.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch spent ten years editing fiction, first for Pulphouse Publishing (where she won a World Fantasy Award for her work) and then for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (where she won a Hugo for her work). She is an internationally bestselling author who writes under several pen names, from Kris Nelscott in mystery to Kristine Grayson in romance. Under her real name (Rusch), she has won the Hugo, the AnLab Award, and Asimov’s Readers Choice Award six times. Her short mystery fiction has won the Ellery Queen Readers’ Choice Award twice, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards. Her work has sold in sixteen different countries. For more information on her writing, go to www.kristinekathrynrusch.com.
From the Stacks is a reoccurring feature where PLC reviews less-recently published books that we feel deserve more attention. Today I’m going to be talking about Octavia Butler’s classic novel, Parable of the Sower.
But I don’t want to do a review per se- I want to analyze Butler’s technique, specifically using the opening of the book.
So without further ado, here are the first lines.
I had my recurring dream last night. I guess I should have expected it. It comes to me when I struggle-when I twist on my own personal hook and try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening. It comes to me when I try to be my father’s daughter.
Four lines. They seem simple, but they are packed with information. From these four lines, we know the narrator is troubled, in conflict with the world around her. She tries to be her father’s daughter, but she is trying to be something she is not. That’s a complicated conflict, indicating a desire to please that cannot be fulfilled.
The phrase “try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening” tells us that something unusual is happening, something so unusual that it’s messing with her dreams.
Lastly, the voice of the narrator is that of a realist (I guess I should have expected it.), someone who speaks simply and clearly- even as she talks about a dream.
So in four lines, we get an idea of who the narrator is, and who she is in conflict with (her father, herself, the unusual happenings). Plus, we get a big fat hook- what unusual thing is happening?
Now let’s look at the second paragraph.
Today is our birthday-my fifteenth and my father’s fifty-fifth. Tomorrow, I’ll try to please him- him and the community and God. So last night, I dreamed a reminder that it’s all a lie. I think I need to write about the dream because this particular lie bothers me so much.
Reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement. The connection between the narrator and her father is reinforced by the shared birthday. The role of the father as an authority figure is reinforced by his inclusion in a trinity- father, community, God. These are all part of one whole, and that whole is in conflict with the narrator, who tries to please.
So now we also know that the narrator is not just female, but a young teenaged girl. And we know that she’s as proactive as she can be (I need to write) given her relatively limited agency over her own life. And not only do we know all that, but we know she’s that particular breed of teenage girl who has an especially difficult time choking down lies, or what she perceives to be lies. We either knew that girl, or we were that girl. We understand who she is. We can relate.
Phew. What page are we on again? Oh yes. Page ONE.
The first time I read this book, I was unaware of almost everything Butler was setting up. I was simply hooked and along for the ride. Returning to the first page after reading the entire book, I can clearly see everything she’s doing, and I can only hope that someday I write an opening that is as genius as this- an opening that is stuffed to the gills with information, yet reads like velvet.
Because everything set up in those first lines is true. Lauren is a protagonist almost never seen in science fiction, a black teenage girl, an empath, and a practical, pragmatic mystic. Not a fluffy Trelawney type of mystic, but rather the type of mystic who makes a secret cache of food and supplies, planning for the worst case scenario while everyone around her fiddles among the flames. She’s the kind of mystic who learns to shoot a gun, who does shoot a gun even though her unwanted empathic power means she suffers the wounds of others as though they are her own. She’s just that hard, that she’ll shoot anyway, because she wants to survive. And she wants to survive, not just because of natural instinct, but because she believes herself to be the author of a new religion. And the truly original thing is that she’s not the least bit annoying about it.
I am already WAY over my word limit, so let me conclude by saying this:
If you like post-apocalyptic fiction, you should read Parable of the Sower.
If you like edgy YA, you should read Parable of the Sower.
If you like social science fiction (meaning SF that gives more consideration to human relations than hyperdrive), you should read Parable of the Sower.
If you like to ask yourself questions about God and the nature of religion, you should read Parable of the Sower.
If you like absorbing, tightly plotted books, you should read Parable of the Sower.
If you want to be a better writer, you should read Parable of the Sower.
Basically, if you are literate, you should read Parable of the Sower. You can buy it here. And if all my ravings have not yet convinced you, there’s a much more in-depth review, a proper review, up yonder at Coilhouse.
For the holiday week, we’re digging into the archives and bringing up some buried gems you might not have seen the first time around. I just reread book #4 on this list last week and got a lot of comfort and a new short story from it, so this post felt ripe to revisit. Happy Turkey Day Y’all, and see you next week.
I love to read books on writing. Here are my 5 favorites, selected primarily for inspiration, rather than just instruction.
5. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
A zen approach to writing, and one of those books you don’t need to read chronologically but can just skim through based on mood. Goldberg’s chapter topics vary from the workman “Don’t Tell But Show,” to the surreal “One Plus One Is A Mercedes Benz.” Here, instinct is king, and discipline is his queen.
4. Take Joy by Jane Yolen
A sweet little book, that begins by sensibly pointing out that since we choose to write, perhaps it is not the act of writing that makes us miserable but the specter of publication that can hang over every scribbled word. All we can count on, Yolen writes, is the joy in the process of writing. A great book for anyone who gets the fidgety sweats as soon as they open up Word.
3. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
This is one of those viral books. A friend read it and immediately gifted me a copy. I read it and immediately lent it out to someone else. Since I don’t have it on hand I can’t quote from it, but I can tell you The War of Art is waged against Resistance, Resistance that tells you not to try, Resistance that is un-creation, Resistance that says it’s easier to watch TV, to take a nap, to organize your desk, Resistance that drags even harder on your heart and mind the closer you get to the finish line. If you’ve ever written a novel and then spent an excessive amount of time tinkering with it instead of shopping it, you know Resistance. If you ever wanted to write a novel but felt too inadequate to even try, or got five pages in and became overwhelmed and quit, you know Resistance. Buy this book and become a warrior for Art.
2. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
The first book on writing I ever purchased, as a pink-cheeked little teenager. Absolutely indispensable for anyone new to the spec fic game, it explains how to create fully fleshed fictional worlds in a easily digestible format. From this book I learned, among other things, that if you want to catch ideas you need to spread a net, and that all magic has a price.
1. On Writing by Stephen King
I come back to this book over and over. It never fails to comfort, to inspire, and to make me laugh. I guess it’s just King’s inimitable style, but this book feels like talking to an old friend who knows a shit-lot more than you do. It’s my chicken soup book.
Honorable mention goes to the Write Great Fiction Series by Writer’s Digest. I own Beginnings, Middles, & Ends, Plot & Structure, and Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint, and they are all great reference books.
Of course, I’m always looking for more books to read. Got a great book on writing not listed here? Tell me about it the comments! Thanks!
From five years old to fifteen (when girls, booze, and pot took over my life) I had my Reading Tree.
My Reading Tree
As you can see, it sits in the P’s backyard, limbs formed into a cone-shape, which nestled my awkward, adolescent body quite comfortably. There had even been a hole in the trunk deep enough to squirrel three books (and later, two issues of “Barely Legal”), much to the chagrin of Charley the Squirrel, who lived in our backyard, and found his cubby full of useless square, bound pieces of parchment.
Old Charley, Dealing With Homelessness
Useless pieces of parchment?
Oh Charley, if you only knew.
Those books, my Reading Tree, the solitude of being away from my family and my painful adolescent world, teleported into 1840′s England with Pip, Joe, and Mr. Wopsle; I cannot even begin to explain to you now the impact the Magic of Books had on me. I’d zip through three hundred pages in an afternoon, completely enthralled by the worlds opened up to me by these great (and sometimes not very talented–I read a lot of John Grisham and Hardy Boy’s books too) writers.
Now, though, I’ve found that books have lost their magic hold over me. Why? Could it be that modern writers do not have the skill of enrapturing readers? No, I don’t think so. Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, Richard Russo, George Pelecanos, all have a skill level as great as Dickens, Fitzgerald, Lee. No, books have lost their magic for me because of two reasons.
The first reason aligns with my decision to become a Writer of Great Importance. Somehow, I flipped a switch and could no longer read books without using my Critical Eye. And you know what I found? Where I used to read five to ten books (there were some marathon summer sessions) a week, I now struggle to read fifty pages in a sitting. Reading has become a punch-in and punch-out job, an ingredient in the recipe to become a W.G.I.
I spend more time trying to study writing technique, mentally critiquing each scene–well, she made the decision to do this, but that doesn’t support the allegorical subtext she’d been building up to this point; purple description there; how does this scene advance the plot, build tension, grow character; wow that’s a fascinating description, how can I steal (ummm…borrow) that one–that I lose what drew me, as a child and adolescent to books in the first place.
And that’s sad. Don’t you think?
That in my life, books have become TPS Reports.
The second reason, I think, is common even for non-writers. I blame the educational system (great, just what the public schools need, more fault for crushing the innocence and freedom of children). I remember when I was a kid teachers would hand-out a Summer Reading List, which I’d devour during the first week of summer, loving every second of reading the recommendations of my teachers, who at that time, I didn’t loath. It wasn’t until high school, for me, when book reports and pop tests in English class drove me from the bound texts of “popular classics” to the abridged yellow and black Cliff’s Notes. Once teachers made reading a necessity for a good grade, it seemed only natural I’d find the most productive way of achieving this requirement. I mean, isn’t that what forming us into proper worker drones is all about? Productivity?
Now, I’ve noticed, book reports and/or worksheets with study questions begin in grammar school (maybe earlier by now, preschoolers getting handed both a bottle and a Q/A sheet). By the time kids reach high school and plot and structure and character are being deconstructed on a grand scale, long gone is the innocent magic of novels, the free pleasure of reading, replaced by the necessity to become a literary mechanic, getting under the book’s hood to determine how the plot engine and characterization transmission work in tandem to motor the car. This might work for some teens (the ones desiring to be book mechanics, IE, lofty, high-society literary critics), but for most of us, taking apart the guts of books, seeing the innards, the tricks, the technique, causes the magic of the bound parchment to evaporate.
No wonder the next generation gravitates to Internet and movies and TV. They aren’t being bashed over the head with study questions and analysis requirements on “Grey’s Anatomy” (course, what is there to study there, McDreamy’s pouty face and how it speaks to 21st Century sex mores?), they can just sit back and watch the magic show.
So, I’ve decided to try my best to return to the purity of reading. Not thinking, analyzing, deconstructing; just reading for the entertainment of the thing. It has been hard, to click off my “professional brain”, to disconnect years of technician training, but I’ve found the more and more I read, the better I’ve become at doing this.
Can you believe that? A thirty-year-old man relearning how to read.
One of the reasons we bought our current house was because it had enough room to build shelves for our many books.
I’m the easiest person ever to shop for. Books, books, more books, gift cards and money to buy books.
And if you’re expecting a gift from me, three guesses what I’ll be getting you. Yep, that’s right.
I love books. I love reading. I recently wrote about why in this post at Amy writes.
When I was a kid, I always had my nose in a book. I went through book phases: kitten books, horse books, Boxcar Children books, Ramona books, Nancy Drew books, Judy Blume books… I’m shocked there are pictures of me as a kid that actually show my face, seeing as it usually was concealed behind a book.
As soon as my children were born, I couldn’t wait for them to read. I even tried to inspire them in utero, reading aloud to them each night. Poetry mostly. Shakespeare, Browning, Eliot. I just knew my reading would encourage their developing brains to appreciate words and meter and rhyme.
I believe some of this work has already paid off: both of my kids are natural storytellers. My daughter even constructs her narratives with a classic story arc, ratcheting up tension with each new, “…And then…” or “…Little did she know…”
Imagine my elation when she learned how to read. Each night we worked our way up from board books to early readers, until now, finally, we’re getting into chapter books. Huzzah! Hello, Little Women! Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle! Hello, Ramona the Brave! Mama is happy.
Except…
There are so many other things she’d rather be doing. She’s a busy girl, with things to see and do and explore. And as much as she loves reading with me at bedtime, getting her to sit still to read during the day is next to impossible.
Even today, sick with an earache, I set her up on the couch with her pillow, her blanket and the many books she got for Christmas.
What could be better? I thought of the days I’d spent sick on the couch, enjoying that time to do nothing but read.
But my daughter groaned. She didn’t want to read. She wanted to be up and about. Couldn’t she sit over on the floor and play with her dolls and still get better that way?
I admit, I was disappointed.
She hasn’t yet caught the reading bug. I can sense she’s *almost* there. Now she takes books with us in the car to read along the way. Now she shows interest when the Highlights magazine comes in the mail. But still, she’d rather sit and listen to me read to her than put in the effort herself.
*sigh*
Part of me worries she won’t catch the bug. That she’ll grow up to be a non-reader. Odds are, she won’t. But still… I shudder at the thought.
So, aside from making books available to her, reading with her at bedtime, and setting an example for her by reading books myself, I’m a bit at a loss what to do. How do I inspire her to read, short of standing on my soapbox and proclaiming the mysteries of the written word to her?
And not just my daughter, my children, but what about society as a whole? Increasingly, we read less and less. Book sales continue to decline. As does the reading competency of our average citizen. As an aspiring Young Adult novelist, this casts a gloomy pallor on my target audience.
So I’m hoping to hear from you. How should we, as writers and parents and teachers and citizens, inspire the next generation of readers? How have you inspired those in your life to read? What has worked? What hasn’t worked?
I’m looking forward to your comments. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here finishing up this book I’m reading…
I just finished reading Tehanu, by Ursula Le Guin, last night. I’ve read Tehanu before, but decided to revisit it. I’m a big believer in rereading books. My reason in doing so is twofold. First, there are the books that I read to enjoy a nostalgic comfort, like Little Women or Watership Down, Harry Potter, or the Little House on the Prairie series. Those books, mostly classics and young adult fare, I turn to on cold, rainy days, or when I’m feeling out of sorts with the world. Other books I reread not just for my own enjoyment, but to study the techniques of other writers. That’s not to say that Alcott or Rowling aren’t worth studying, or that I don’t learn anything from them, but simply that I still read their works passively, as opposed to reading actively, with a critical eye.
Active reading means never losing oneself entirely in the story, but always watching, listening, analyzing, dissecting each page as one goes. This is an invaluable technique for writers, because any actively-read author can be your instructor. Personally, I look to Le Guin for the deft way she weaves social commentary into her plots, as well as for her clean, lyric prose. If I want a crash course on page-turners, I pick up pretty much anything by Stephen King. If I want to study how to handle a multiple-pov novel, I read George R. R. Martin.
Sometimes I read books that I don’t fully enjoy, to see if I can figure out why I am not enjoying them. That way I don’t make the same mistakes in my own work. Don’t get me wrong, if it’s torturous I toss it aside, but if it’s merely bad I’ll finish it. Recently I read a novel, Title Redacted, with a heroine and plot similar to my own work in progress. I found the book boring, and this alarmed me, for obvious reasons. I thought about it for a while and realized the heroine of Title Redacted, while powerful, was still passive. Things happened to her, rather than her doing things. I realized I had made the same mistake in my own book and am working now on addressing it. So in the end, reading a poor book has helped to make me a better writer, or at least a more aware one.
If you want to learn to write, you have to read. Read everything! And like any avid reader, I am always hunting for recommendations, always hungry for new authors. Who do you like to read for fun? Who do you turn to when you are trying to learn how it is done?
As for my go-to author, Jim Butcher. It’s been eleven years now that he’s published at least one new novel each year in his Dresden Files series. Two in 2010 if you include his collection of short stories in the same world. For a number of those years, he’s also produced a second or third novel. So it comes with a little disappointment that there is no official release date for his next novel. Although according to Wikipedia and his Livejournal blog (define stalking), the title of book fourteen in the Dresden Files is Cold Days. There’s also talk of a steampunk book he’s working on. I will say, however, if the man publishes a book, I’ll buy. Hardback. The week it’s released. No man-crush jokes.
