The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article criticizing (if that’s a strong enough word) the darkness in YA literature. Publishers, the author says, “use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.” As someone who has always enjoyed young adult literature, you can imagine this struck a nerve.

I’ve blogged before about genres that don’t seem to get enough respect, and so I’ve spent the last few hours trying to find a way to put a new spin on this issue (because, really, this is just another iteration). But then I came across this response, which didn’t fit with my thoughts at all but still felt oh so right. I still believe issues such as this (and, as another example, the V.S. Naipaul crap) need to be talked about. Tonight, however, I’ll let others do the talking for me. In the meantime, I think I’ll go read a dark and threatening book.

Coming as a big surprise, I’m sure, there was no rapture Saturday. Or, perhaps those of us left behind are just getting a free pass on the whole earthquake-plague-destruction thing. So now that we’re buying green bananas again, and now that I’m sure I’ll get to listen to Lady Gaga’s new album (out today!), I’ve got to pick a new book to read. My Twitter friends, you see, were involved in a what-is-the-last-book-you-want-to-read discussion.

I couldn’t think of an answer—I have a hard time picking pizza toppings so one book out of the hundreds (thousands?) I’ve read is pretty much an impossible to make choice—so I asked my parents for their opinions.

“I wouldn’t be reading if I knew I only had a few days left to live,” my dad said.

Thanks, Dad, for introducing reason and ruining my fun.

Later that night, I started reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. Why? Well, I haven’t read it in about 15 years, and I recently found it in a box of old books (totally not as good this time around, even with my love of YA and MG books). But then I felt silly since, hypothetical or not, I still seemed to be inadvertently answering my question of deathbed book. What if the rapture came and I were judged on my reading selection (really, if we go so far as to accept that the rapture is true, salvation by book choice is just an additional baby sized step toward total insanity).

So I jumped in Melissa Kwasny’s The Nine Senses. Why? Because I’m trying to read more poetry, and a writer friend recommended it to me (totally a great choice for transitioning a fictioneer to poetry, so thanks Terry!). But then I had to put it aside, because I find that I get more out of it if I read it slowly, in daily chunks.

After that, I forgot about the coming rapture, because apparently my short term memory ranks only slightly above goldfish. Or perhaps because it’s hard to remember something that you’re not actually concerned about. So when Saturday came, what book was I reading? Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by way of the audio book that’s on my iPad. Why? Because some sort of restaurant screw up with my sirloin tips in plum sauce put me in bed for a full 18 hours and I was bored (totally not the way I’d planned on spending my fake last day).

So now that the imminent threat of rapture has been removed (whew!), I suppose I’m off the hook, which is good, because my three end-of-the-world choices all turned out to not be right for me. And so, to make my indecision (and, perhaps, bad decision making) look better, I’m declaring this whole one-book question to be incredibly silly and way too difficult.

And if you were wondering, that goes for desert island books, too.

Back in 2006, I started setting reading goals for myself. I was a year into my new major (professional writing after time as a natural science major, a chemical engineering major, then a microbiology major) and looking for ways to get my creative mind back on track. That year, I set myself a goal of 50 books and 15,000 pages. I met both goals, and I’ve been doing it every since (tweaking the numbers every year of course). But lately I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t do more. Not particularly for any big reason—mostly because I like making lists and checking off goals (hence my Day Zero project, then my 100 Days of Writing experiment).

I started looking for other challenges, to see if any sounded appealing. What I found (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), is that my particular brand of goal-setting neuroses is nothing compared to some people. There’s a book a day challenge (seriously, people have done this), a challenge to read books you “should have read in high school,” a challenge to read a book by authors whose names begin with each letter of the alphabet, and tons of others (Goodreads has a whole section for this). Then there are the writing goals: NaNoWriMo (and its many offshoots), the Inkygirl word count challenge, and the entire #writegoal group on Twitter.

Some of it seems a bit much to me (though I suppose I’m not really one to talk), but I’m also interested in the idea of having goals to push you along. Especially when those goals are of such a nature that you are responsible to no one but yourself for completing them (or not completing them, or lying about completing them, etc.). Does anyone else use goals for motivation and/or accountability? Does setting a goal affect your outcome? I know for me I’d read just as much without my Excel spreadsheet tracking every book, but the Day Zero and 100 Days of Writing stuff I did (am doing) really helped to amp up my productivity—something I believe I was fully capable of without the pre-set challenge, but that helped make it more fun in the meantime.

This does not even remotely compare; photo courtesy of CC licence, by DerekL on flickr (click through)

Went to an estate sale on Saturday for a guy who’d owned a used book store for many years, then closed up shop and took all his stock home. Basement was literally waist deep with books, the main floor and upstairs only knee deep. Had to climb on piles of books to get to other books.

Like nothing I’ve ever seen, and so terribly sad to hear the sound of pages rending from their spines when stepped on.

And so terribly sad to hear the estate salespeople say that it was the last day of the sale, 50 cents a box, on Monday they were all going to the dump because nobody wanted them. They’d tried the local libraries, high schools, prisons.

And so joyful to see so many people enraptured by all those old books, climbing to find treasure. And so terribly sad to know that all of us combined would barely make a dent, and in a day or two they would be food for a landfill, to decompose in its endless plastic belly and covered by old mattresses, broken vacuum cleaners, rotten leftover chicken.

Among us one old man on his hands and knees in the corner, picking trampled books off the floor and arranging them into neat stacks twenty books high, doing so when I got there and still doing so when I left.

In two hours I read a thousand titles, fought the urge to find a shovel, stopped and nearly cried once, nearly shouted with glee once, nearly elbowed a young woman to get at a hardcover set of Updike, nearly found the December 1923 National Geographic for a middle-aged man with a box full of faded yellow covers and one book on building patio furniture.

I saved seven boxes that day, and that night I mourned for the rest.

This is the book I want to read.

I’ve been reading books in translation lately, or by writers who are fluent in more than one language. One of my goals for this year is to broaden my reading horizons, so to speak. I’m trying to read more books by non-whites, non-Americans, and non-females (since I fall on the other side of that reading divide. But on the non-American front, I seem to be switching to French writers. The books I tend to pick—even before I know it’s a work in translation—were originally written in French. Most notably Édouard Levé’s Suicide and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (and I just bought Gourmet Rhapsody, her other book). And it’s making me wish I knew more French.

Don’t get me wrong—the books were superb, but sometimes while reading, something would remind me (or perhaps I’d remind myself) that I was reading a translation. And I’d wonder: Did the writer intend for it to be like that, or is this word, this turn of phrase, etc., the best that we can do in English, the closest we can get to the meaning?

I know things change in the translation process. To improve my French I sometimes work the other way and read books I’m familiar with in English (that were originally written in English) but that have been translated to French. One book in particular I know well enough to remember long passages, and it always stops me when the meaning has to be twisted to make it work in the new language.

So I’m finding more and more that I want to read books in their original language—French or otherwise, but I’d prefer to continue with the language that I know well enough to be communicate in (though, let’s be honest; my accent sucks). I’d like to know the language well enough that I could pick up a book written in that language and read it. Read it—not translate it. Any book creates distance between the reader and the subject, the author, the meaning, and while I enjoy work being not being spelled out for me, I don’t much care for the added distance the translator (through no fault of her own) creates.

Has anyone else had similar thoughts? Does anyone here know a second language well enough to be able to comment more directly on the differences introduced when words change from one language to the other? Do you pay attention to which of your books are translations? (I sometimes have a hard time remembering when it’s a classic book.) How do you feel about the authenticity of the experience of reading a translated work?

The main character for The Hunger Games has been cast. Jennifer Lawrence will play Katniss Everdeen in the trilogy, the first film of which is set to be released next year. The speculation over who will play which character has been ongoing for some time now, but now that the casting has officially begun, it’s in full flow. I’ve got some mild opinions myself, but I’m trying to reserve them until I actually see the movie because, hey, I’m not a casting director.

But it’s hard to see a beloved book turn into a movie. Exciting too, of course (though I know some people who disagree with that assessment), but there’s always risk involved. I can no longer remember, for example, how I first pictured Frodo, or Harry Potter, or Lyra Belacqua, or Elizabeth Bennett, or Briony Tallis. Now, when I read those books, I see the actors instead of the portrait the author painted for. Of course, we like to see casting directors that use this vision in the casting, producers and directors that make it come alive once the cameras roll, but I think we all know that this doesn’t always (usually?) happen.

And then there’s the way the plot is shaped, tweaked, to make it fit the different medium. I’m not one of those people that stresses over every detail that is changed—I understand that putting a book on the screen verbatim would make for a boring production—but over time I sometimes find myself unable to remember exactly which things were brought in from the book and which were brought in for the film. (This actually happened earlier tonight, when my sister made a comment about a different piece of work, and I had to remind her that the book actually contradicted her statement exactly.)

I’m excited to see this book on the big screen, I really am. But I’m nervous too. I know, though, that no matter what I’ll see it, and most likely buy it when it comes out. But until then, I’ve got over a year of waiting, and wondering.

I know that compared to the winter they’re having in places like New York and Boston we don’t have all that much to complain about here in Michigan, but what can I say? Anything below 65 degrees is enough to make me forlorn; anything below 45 is going to make me downright cranky. And this weekend was by far the coldest we’ve had all year, not to mention we got more snow, more wind…yeah. You get the picture. What I’m trying to say is that I spent the past 72-ish hours wrapped up enchilada style inside 3 blankets and made myself as unproductive a human being as possible (except for the three hours during which I felt that a hockey game would be a good way to warm up). So today I’ve got a motley collection of links that I’ve been randomly amassing over the last while. Enjoy! And may spring arrive quickly.

This is apparently old, old news, but I only just found out about it. Apparently an artist was commissioned to create a sidewalk mural out front of a public library in California a few year back. The artwork included a large number of tiles, many (all?) of which bore names and associated images of famous thinkers. Except that, once finished, people began to notice that many of the names were misspelled. Einstein was Eistein, Shakespeare was Shakespere, etc. When asked to correct the work, the artist, a former teacher, threw what essentially amounts to a temper tantrum, defending her mistakes as part of the art.

Want to know what books were bestsellers the week you were born? I know this has kept me personally up at night. Well wonder no more. Read more »

Earlier this week I had lunch with a friend at Europa, Spokane’s premiere place for pub atmosphere, fresh food, fun mojitos, and fantastic deserts. As I left the restaurant, the space across the hallway caught my eye. It had been an empty office when I last visited the restaurant, but was now filled with shelf after shelf of books. Of course I had to investigate.

Here’s what I want when I visit a bookstore:

-Affordable popular books that everyone has told me I should read, but I didn’t want to spend the money on, but then do once I find a cheap(er) used copy.

-Beautiful books that make me take them off the shelf just because I have to touch their cover and feel their weight in my hand.

-Rare books that I can’t purchase anywhere else and therefore invite me to browse and spend more time hunting for treasures.

-Unusual books that make me realize that although I didn’t know they existed, they are the kinds of books I always wanted to read.

These books should be presented in a warm inviting space, preferably in an older building with beautiful floors and interesting fixtures. The bookcases should allow enough room to squat down to investigate the lower shelves and placed such that I automatically meander through the store, discovering  exciting finds on my way to the register. I also prefer a comfortable chair in a corner or two so I can spend some time examining a book before I buy it, or revisit with an old familiar text that I’d forgotten I loved as a kid. If I can be really picky, I want a few tables scattered around the place so that I might come back to write or maybe play a game of checkers with a new friend. Read more »

Hello. My name is Kathryn Houghton, and I enjoy non-literary genres. In the past few years, I have read the following books:

• Harry Potter (YA fantasy, 7 books plus three others mentioned in the series)
• The Wheel of Time (adult fantasy, 14 books, plus an encyclopedia, with one more book forthcoming)
• Mistborn (adult fantasy, 3 books)
• The Hunger Games (YA fantasy, 3 books)
• The DaVinci Code; Angels and Demons (adult fiction, probably closest to mystery)
• The Abhorsen Trilogy (YA fantasy, 3 books)
• The Sword of Truth (adult fantasy, 11 books)
• The Other Boleyn Girl (adult historical fiction, probably leaning toward women’s fiction)
• The Inheritance Cycle (YA fantasy, 3 books, with one more forthcoming)
• What-the-Dickens (YA fiction/fantasy, one of those story-within-a-story things, sort of folktale-esque)
• The Wicked books (adult fiction/fantasy, though I still contend that the first book, at the very least, is literary)
• His Dark Materials (YA fantasy, 3 books)

Okay, I’ll stop there because a comprehensive list would be too long, even if I limit myself to books read in the last five years. And here’s the thing. This isn’t a confession because I’m trying to reform (though I do try to balance my reading habits among a number of features). Nor do I need, or want, a support group. Instead I’m here to make a case for these poor books that so often get left behind in literary circles. They’re called trash, junk. And when we do read them, we call them guilty pleasures, as if they’re bad habits, in need of some type of justification. This has got to stop. Read more »

Those writing goals I’ve talked about the last two weeks have gotten me thinking: What is it that makes a reader? We’ve all heard the depressing stats in the past few years about how little we, as a people, read. (Here are a few studies/sources: 1, 2, 3.) There’s some evidence that e-readers and e-books are turning this trend around, but on the whole, we’re still a country much more likely to surf the Internet, play a video game (angry birds, anyone?), or watch television than we are to open up a book. So what then separates those of us that do make reading a regular occurrence? At what point did we take a different path than others? Or is some of it nature as opposed to the proverbial nurture? I’ve got my own opinions, but I’m curious to hear what others think. And here, for your mental pondering, is what I consider to be my own path toward becoming an avid reader. Read more »