Yes, my Kindle sleeps next to me

I am the proud and unassuming owner of an Amazon Kindle. It was given to me almost a year ago by my good friend, Evan, who said “If anyone in the world needs one, Monet – it’s you.” And boy did he create a monster. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love books. I love how books smell, especially borrowed books from the library (smoke, powder, cheese?). I love the overall aesthetic look of books and I love how if you’ve read one book enough, you can open it right to your favorite parts. And there’s something to be said about how awesome your bookshelf looks crowded with books. But seriously, the world of the e-reader is just as awesome. Here are my top five reasons why you might want to consider coming to the dark side: 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 »

I have two things to admit: First, that I read fantasy. And second, that I feel no shame in this. I believe firmly that there is something to be learned from any book, be it good or bad, literary or otherwise; I’ve banished the phrase guilty pleasure from those I use to describe different aspects of my reading habits. For example, while I know that world description is a huge thing for some readers, reading fantasy, more than any other genre, has taught me how much I hate long-winded descriptions, and so I leave this out of my own stories, because I don’t want my readers skimming entire pages.

But while I enjoy some fantasy (yes, certain works are horribly formulaic, and I don’t like that in any type of writing), I despise most fantasy book covers. With few exceptions, they seem to me childish, to play into fantasy archetypes rather than to break them, and to have too many design elements competing for attention. Not to mention I hate having a character’s cover image fighting against the one I develop in my own mind. These complaints, of course, go for any genre of books, but I tend to see these problems most in the fantasy books, where simplicity is almost always discarded in favor of chaos and where the cover seems to be more interested in making the book fit into the fantasy genre rather than making it stand out.

Read more »