RedT Reads Randomly

Love books of all kinds. Just call me Eclectic. Favorites, though, are sci fi and fantasy, history, mystery, YA and children, time travel, dystopian -- the end of the world as we know it, and conspiracy theory and thrillers.

 

 

Poor Pig

Happy Sunday, Everyone.

 

 

Should I be insulted by publisher's attitudes toward white people?

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing - Mira Jacob

. . . because I think I am.  I feel insulted and marginalized; as if we are being denigrated to POC authors by the attitudes that we are purported to have, when publishers send rejection notices to hard-to-classify authors for their hard-to classify literature

 

-- rejection notices that say that white people, specifically white Americans, are too stupid, or closed-minded, or unworldly, to understand books that fall outside our realm of experience.

 

-- rejection notices that say that we as readers can't relate to stories which might introduce us to new worlds, new customs, new traditions, new characters who are different than we are.

 

i am disgusted, not only that our publishers are making the decisions to reject excellent works by authors they don't know how to categorize, but also because they are blaming it on their white American readers.  

 

It makes me angry.  Very angry.

Or maybe disappointed is a better description.  And also frustrated.

 

however, this post isn't supposed to be all about me.  

 

Besides, if publishers can make a white reader uncomfortable with these actions, I can only imagine how demeaning and frustrating it is to authors trying to break through the barriers.   And an even bigger Besides, why are they so limited in their views of what any reader wants to read?

 

A few weeks ago, Publisher's Weekly hosted an event to honor the up-and-coming stars in the publishing arena.  Mira Jacobs was the keynote speaker, and this is how her speech began.

 

"True story: a few months ago, a producer from a literary show on Boston Public Radio asked me to read a section of my book on air. I sent it to him and he said he would need to edit it down. I totally got it. Radio is a different medium. Stories need to change. Sure! Change away. Then I got the edits back. . . . My characters' names, he wrote, were confusing. . . . And then there was this other note, even stranger . . . In a sentence setting the scene up, I had written 'three East Indian teenagers, kids of immigrants, sit talking on the roof of the house.' In his notes, the producer had crossed out East Indian and written 'ASIAN INDIAN'. As if that is a thing that anyone has ever said to anyone else, . . . and the note went on: 'Alas! – – not kidding, he really said Alas! like he was some Victorian maiden – – Alas! Americans aren't familiar with the term East Indian -- it's just not something we say over here.'

 

[See what I mean?  We've all been dumped into some nebulous group where we just don't understand stuff like, I don't know, Geography, I guess.  

It's occasions like this when I feel ashamed that I have to make my check mark in the "white" box. sigh.

Ok, back to the speech -- you'll like this part.]

 

 

This is when my soul kind of made a Chewbacca noise. That horrible howl.

 

I took a deep breath. Oh, who am I kidding? I took a shot of whiskey. Then I wrote back. 'Alas!' I wrote – – mainly because I wanted to see if it would turn me into a white lady in a petticoat – – 'Alas! – – I am from America! I was born here, and have lived here for many decades among other Americans, other East Indian Americans, even, which is what we are called, but if that makes you uncomfortable in someway we can always use the broader term South Asian.

 

We used South Asian.

 

I was not OK about this for days. . . The thing really got under my skin . . . And I couldn't figure out exactly why until I talked to my best friend, Alison, and she said, 'I think it's the way he cloaked his casual racism in his profession, like it was only professional to point out to you how confusing you are to his audience.'

 

Here is the thing about how discrimination works: no one ever comes right out and says, 'We don't want you.' In the publishing world, they don't say 'We don't want your story.' They say, 'We're not sure you're relatable' and 'You don't want to exclude anyone with your work.' They say, 'We are not sure who your audience is.'

 

I believe that. I believe that there are still some people in this industry who are not sure who my audience is. But I do not for a minute believe that is because my audience doesn't exist."

 

Isn't that a great beginning?  She is intelligent, cogent, and humorous.  If it made you want to read the rest of the speech, click on the link below.

 

I haven't read the book yet, but I'm going to; it sounds great.  She's received accolades from white people and people with many other skin tones, from East Indian people, Asians,  Europeans, and Americans, old people and young, women and men, in short, from Readers, Readers who like Stories.

 

i'd like to know how we as Readers can influence the publishers who are blocking our access to great books and then blaming it on us.  Doesn't seem right.

 

 

 

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mirajacob/you-will-ignore-us-at-your-own-peril?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Books+920&utm_content=Books+920+CID_ef79bcb33f083eb598275dbbd40845a9&utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters#.xvYBj5LMR

Debunking fight scenes in fantasy battles

Just found this blog post by a brand new BLer.  Here's an excerpt:

 

"You’ve seen the classic fantasy weapon and armor tropes a thousand times in books, films, and games: A heroically-muscled strongman in full plate armor locks blades in an epic swordfight with his opponent. A pair of unarmored duelists dash back and forth across the deck of a ship trading banter over an endless series of feints and ripostes. A lithe, slender woman peppers her less mobile, armored foes with arrows as she dances to safety, but struggles to lift a full-size sword.
The scenes are certainly exciting and dramatic. But unfortunately for Hollywood, none of those things are particularly realistic — at least not as far as real-world Earth history goes."

 

but you can read the whole thing at mightythorjrs Fantasy / Historical Fiction / Sci-Fi and Star Wars Reviews. (Wow -- that's a long one.)

 

anyway, drop by and say hey, if you're so inclined.  I already followed him because he likes what I like.

Favorite reads of September 2015

Out of twenty books, half were four-plus stars.  Woohoo!

we won't talk about the five books with two stars or less.

 

two of the Outstanding ones were nonfiction:

 

Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds First edition by Keen, Sam (2007) Hardcover - Sam Keen  The Wright Brothers - David McCullough  

 

 Sightings by Sam Keen.  Keen has been a bird-watcher since childhood and he has written a series of essays highlighting the birds who have appeared at particular moments in his life and enhanced those moments creating particularly poignant memories.  Filled with beautiful language like this:

The Mourning Dove’s song is a ticket to travel, a time machine, a magic carpet that whisks me into the elsewhere. Time past, time present, and time future swirl into a single continuum. The remembered joy of the limitless mornings of childhood alternates with the sadness of the approaching twilight . . . 

I added it to my ebook library already so I could save all the highlights, but I'm asking for it on my Christmas list as well.  It's one of those you need to have in hand.

 

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.  My first McCullough, but definitely not my last.  This was super interesting and had me plowing through the Internet looking up more about the life and times of the Wrights.  It was fascinating reading.

 

Two historical fictions:

 Girl Waits with Gun - Amy Stewart  The Four Books by Lianke, Yan (2015) Hardcover - Yan Lianke  

 

Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart.  it's 1914, and the Kopp sisters are on their own, determined to figure out how to make it in a man's world without the benefit of having a man to make sure they get it right.  Pleasepleaseplease let it be a series.  I want more.

and yes, it's on my To Buy list.

 

The Four Books by Lan Yianke.    The experiences of a group of people who were located to a Re-education Camp in 1950s China.  Not an easy read, but a compelling one.

 

 Two Epic Fantasies:

The Desert Spear - Peter V. Brett  A Crown for Cold Silver - Alex Marshall  

 

The Desert Spear by Peter Brett.  The second book in the series, and we switched emphasis from the northern part of the hemisphere to the southern.  I was very disappointed at first, but it didn't take me long to recover.  Turns out the southern part was every bit as fascinating as the northern part.  Next book is already available so I don't have to wait. Yay!  And I will be adding this series to my personal library. 

 

A Crown For Cold Silver.  And this one too.  I just finished, and haven't fully processed it yet, so don't know what I want to say, except that I loved it.  It's a rich and complex world, there are plots inside plots, not everything, or maybe even most things are what they seem to be, and everything is covered: life, death, family, war, motivations, moral ambiguities.  It's big, and there seems to be no clues out at all as to when the next book is scheduled.  I'm waiting.

 

Three time travels:

The Future Memory Man: Episode Five of The Chronicles of the Harekaiian - Shanna Lauffey  Memoirs of a Dead White Chick - Lennox Randon  Traveler - Dennis W. Green  

 

 I love time travel.  But just because I do doesn't mean it gets a free pass.  Two of my two star reads this month were from the TT category.  

 

But these three. these three are brilliant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out this month

Thanks to Whiskey in the Jar Likes to Read.  Way back in July she posted about the movie Suffragette which comes out this month.  I'm posting this to remind myself to search for the movie house which has it for viewing.

 

 

is this completely original?

A Crown for Cold Silver - Alex Marshall

"She couldn't wait for him to meet Choi -- when the laconic met the terse, who knew what might go unsaid."

 

I've never heard this particular word combination before.  Has anyone?

 

it feels a little bit genius to me.  (Yeah, I know I don't get out much.  And I'm weird.)

And maybe it has to be taken in context.  But I love this sentence.  And several others that I haven't bothered to   share. 

Who is Alex Marshall?

A Crown for Cold Silver - Alex Marshall

and why is s/he making me care so much?

 

A Crown For Cold Silver is the epic fantasy debut novel by Alex Marshall.  But Alex Marshall is the pseudonym for some renowned author who is doing a very good job of keeping his identity quiet.  Who is she, or he?  Orbit the publisher has refused to disclose so much as the gender of the author.  It is a very big secret. . . 

 

making for wild speculation all over the Internet.  There are votes for George R . R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie, Brent Weeks or Daniel Abraham, Charles Stross or Alistair Reynolds.  Maybe even K. J. Parker (because he doesn't have enough aliases already?)

 

not one woman in any of those guesses.  I'm pulling for Elizabeth Bear.

 

since I can't say for sure whether it's a he or she, I'm just going to go with the word "they" when I'm speaking of the author from now on.

 

so I've tried to glean some clues.  First of all.  They said "drank" instead of "drunk!"  Can I get a YaY on that?  But then I was saddened when they used sunk instead of sank.  How screwed up is that?  Not much of a clue there.  But here's one;  they use whinging instead of whining.  Sounds British or Australian, right?  But they threw me off when they spelled leaped instead of leapt.  Very tricky, this one.

 

Anyway, enough speculation.  All I know is, they can write and I like it.  I'd read 180 pages over the weekend, and this morning, I read them again.  Because I couldn't help myself.  

 

 

I'm on page 226 of 626, and according to rumors, there are two books to come.  I'm already waiting.

Why has no one yet written the book for this?

 

Otse the Iceman was discovered in an Italian glacier in 1991.  We've been studying him for twenty-five years. He has viable blood cells and we know there are at least nineteen people walking around on the European continent who are related to him.

 

we know he was forty-five years old when he died 5300 years ago.  We know what he ate for his last few meals and we know his diet for the last several months of his life.  We know his health, his occupation, his status, his tendencies.  He had tattoos.  We know how he died.

 

we know he had good shoes.  His shoes were so good that a California company has re-engineered them for sale to the modern-day customer.

 

 

 https://vimeo.com/82244789 

the video shows the owners of the OTZ shoe company making a pilgrimage to the discovery-site of the mummy.

 

This is the shoe.

 

and apparently there's a curse, ala King Tut's Tomb.

 

so all this is fascinating.  Where's the chronicler to tell us his story in fiction form?  Someone should be all over this.

 

 

Source: http://www.iceman.it/en/node/226

As first lines go, this one seems promising

A Crown for Cold Silver - Alex Marshall

"It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre."

Page 1 of 646.

 

got my weekend read right here.

Need Your Help - Nomination for THE EAGLE TREE on Kindle Scout

THE EAGLE TREE: The miraculous story of a boy and a tree

 

Can you help? 

 

My new novel THE EAGLE TREE has just been accepted for the Kindle Scout "preview for publishers" website -- you can VOTE for this novel to receive a publishing contract. 

 
Please vote here >>

 

[30 days only -- vote by Oct 15]

 

 

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1A8QDLLTYQG43

 

 

(if you're curious, here's how Kindle Scout works)

Source: http://nednote.com/eagle-tree
Reblogged from Ned Hayes Writing

I know nothing about this.

Open House for Butterflies - Ruth Krauss, Maurice Sendak

Except that it looks like I need it.

 

(I've become so acquisitive lately.)

 

apparently, there's an effort being undertaken to re-publish the "lost" works of Sendak.

 

i love this illustration.:

Anyone know a good one?

Bicycles. Good for you? Or a menace to society?

The Wright Brothers - David McCullough

Everybody knows building bicycles was how the Wright Brothers made their living.

 

"Bicycles had become the sensation of the time, a craze everywhere."

 

one side says, the bicycle is "a boon to all mankind, a thing of beauty, good for the spirits, good for health and and vitality, indeed one's whole outlook on life. . . . for physical exercise for both men and women, the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century."

 

 

 (Of course there will always be those who have to test the limits.)

 

and the other side (because they always have to be there to spoil the fun) proclaimed the bicycle as "morally hazardous:".  

"Until now children and youth were unable to stray far from home on foot. Now, . . . fifteen minutes could put them miles away.… Young people were not spending the time they should with books, and more seriously suburban and country tours on bicycles were 'not infrequently accompanied by seductions.'"

 

obviously, women's clothing was not conducive to bicycle riding.  It could be that this young woman may have contributed to the outrage.  (I say, Good for You, Unknown Brave Woman, who must surely be documented somewhere.  She had to have made her mark in the world, right?)

 

 

 

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh. I just installed the newest update in my iPad and now I hate the keyboard.

its totally non responsive for editing.  If I'm just typing, it works fine, but when I try to fix my errors, it just sits there.  Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

 

desperation setting in.

 

thanks everyone, for weighing.in.  It's all good now.for now.  Of course, it was the simple solution that worked.  (I always forget the number one rule -- try powering down!)

Most gardeners don't have such a bleak outlook

Please Undo This Hurt: A Tor.Com Original - Seth Dickinson

"I dream of gardening . . . I am bare-handed, turning up the soil around the roots, grit up under my fingers and in the web of my hands. I am making life.

But down in the zucchini roots I find a knot of maggots, balled up squirming like they’ve wormed a portal up from maggot hell and come pouring out blind and silent. And I think: I am only growing homes for maggots. Everything is this way. In the end we are only making more homes, better homes, for maggots."

 

 

I can kind of understand where she's coming from. This whole half of the state seems to be having a losing battle with webworms this year.  I fear for the trees.

It's here! It's here!

In January, (doesn't seem that long ago -- I was searching in the summer months) I posted about the new Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, illustrated by Jim Kay. and due out in October.

Remember how excited we all were?  Amend:  some of us were.

 

gotta admit, I'm less than thrilled with the cover.  I guess I was expecting something a little more sophisticated, given the above illustration.

 

However, if I were willing to shell out $160 for the collector's addition, it could look like this:

so much prettier.

 

i think I'd rather send the $160 to Rowling's charity.  Seems wrong to spend so much on a book.  I wonder if, if I donated $160 to her charity, the gift could be the collector's edition.  

 

Sorry.  I think I'm feeling bitter.

 

For $100, you can get all seven with the very cool Hogwarts Spine.

Oh well.  

 

Who would do such a thing?

Irresponsible Reader posts a weekly feature, Saturday Miscellany, which I enjoy.  This week, he included a  link to an article on  the proper treatment of books.  I wanted to save the reference, and I've noticed a couple or three posts lately which were lamenting the condition of borrowed books when they are returned.  Besides, I could identify with the author's opening story:

 

"When I was in third grade, my teacher instituted a Mini Economy in our classroom, and I started a library, planning to exploit my enormous collection of Misty of Chincoteague and American Girl books.

 

When the first due date arrived, I realized my mistake: One of my favorite books had been returned in shreds, a huge split down the middle of the spine dividing the first half of the pages from the second. It was held together by mere threads.

 

I don’t recall who left my book in such tatters, but I do know one thing: A fierce protective instinct awoke in me that day. In the nearly two decades since, I’ve acquired stacks on stacks of books, but I rarely lend them out. The more I love them, the more I resist lending them."

 

My problem with lending books isn't so much getting them back damaged as never getting them back at all.

 

Click the link below to read the rest of the article.

 

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop-ruining-books_55f9a7eee4b0d6492d63ea5b