September 27, 2024

Slow and Steady

My actual writing of a decent draft of this novel continues. I planned to say "continues apace," which I thought meant "at a constant pace," and then I would clarify that while the pace is constant, it's quite slow. But I've learned that "apace" means "swiftly," so now instead you get a glimpse inside my writing process, where I pay close attention to choosing each word. And now you have some idea why it takes so long.

I began this draft about two months ago, and I'm still generally enjoying turning my plans into prose. I'm making a lot of changes from the outline as I go, but mostly at a level that only affects a scene or two. Sometimes the work feels like solving a fun puzzle as I figure out which pieces fit best where. Sometimes a cool new detail occurs to me while I'm in the middle of a paragraph—or when I'm walking down the street or taking a shower. Other times, I can't understand why I'm still in the middle of the same paragraph as an hour ago.

After two months, I'm perhaps one-tenth of the way through the novel. That's an exciting amount of progress! It's also so much less than I wished for. My dreams of writing this draft in six months are long gone. Even a year seems ruled out by the reality of the math, though with my eternally unrealistic optimism, I have hopes about speeding up.

But things take as long as they take, or so I've heard. I'm writing right along, continuing at my pace, and we'll be there when we get there.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Rebecca Onion at Slate interviews Emily St. John Mandel about Station Eleven, 10 Years Later: "One thing that doesn't ring true to me about the book anymore isn't necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can't even imagine that happening."

September 4, 2024

August Reading Recap

I had another great month of reading all sorts of books!

THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley: After the British government discovers time travel, a newly formed Ministry decides to test for safety by pulling a few individuals out of the past when they're on the brink of certain death, so their removal won't alter any timelines. Each "expat," as the unwilling time travelers are called, is assigned to live with a ministry agent called a "bridge" who will help them adjust to modern London while watching for any signs of physical or psychological deterioration. The novel's unnamed narrator is the bridge for a (real) Royal Navy explorer, Commander Graham Gore, taken in 1847 from a doomed Arctic expedition. The bridge finds her new housemate charming and quicker to acclimate to the twenty-first century than some of the other expats, and their cohabitation goes well, despite his reservations about living with an unmarried woman. But as she delivers her reports to the Ministry and carries out her duties, she starts to suspect there is more to the time travel project than the bridges have been told.

This novel starts off fun and mostly light-hearted, focusing on the amusing antics of Gore learning about the modern world and the bridge's increasing attraction to him. But the plot soon becomes more complicated, darker, and unpredictable. I really liked the story in both modes, and the way all the pieces worked together. Bradley fully imagines every character and writes Gore and the other expats with reactions and manners of speech that match their eras. The writing is funny and clever, the story unfolds in a satisfying way, and the book was a pleasure to read.

SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson: The subtitle to this book of advice promises "A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way," and from the first page, Bergman is humble and honest about those difficult lessons. "I was a perfect parent before I had actual children," he writes, in an opening chapter that goes on to describe the contrast between his tidy imaginary children and the chaotic real ones. Freedman-Lawson's delightful and detailed illustrations bring both versions to life and establish the visual language of the guide. From then on, it's always clear Bergman is drawing on his real life experiences and has put great thought into deriving lessons that might be useful for other parents.

The guide covers a range of topics, from everyday matters like getting everyone out of the house on time to weighty issues such as bullying. There's advice on introducing kids to new foods, and on introducing them to the concepts of diversity and differences between people. One lovely chapter offers the idea of replacing family trees with family gardens, presenting many possible ways to make use of this metaphor. For anyone who's part of a child's garden, I heartily recommend this book.

Check out photos of a few sample pages here. And to every flavor of human, I also recommend Bergman and Freedman-Lawson's first collaboration, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN.

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver: Damon is born to an addict mother in a trailer home in the southwestern Virginia mountains. Though he soon acquires the nickname Demon, he's actually a good kid who helps his mother keep her act together after she gets clean. His best friend is part of the kind family next door who provide a second home for Demon, and despite a rocky start, his early life is pretty good. But when Demon's mom marries a hateful, abusive man, there's only so much the neighbors can do, and soon Demon is shunted into a terrible foster situation where he's used as free labor on a tobacco farm. From there, Demon's childhood is a string of miseries, until he finds his way back to some happiness—for a while. More tragedies lie ahead, but Demon remains a good kid with people who care about him, and he'll make it through.

Demon narrates his story with a voice that's vibrant, funny, and insightful about both his childhood thoughts and the adult perspective he's writing from. Kingsolver's masterful handling of the narration kept me absorbed in the novel for many hundreds of pages, and while I do think some episodes could have been trimmed, my attention rarely flagged. I was always caught up in caring about what would happen to Demon, and I appreciated getting his view of his world.

Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD to create this novel, and while I knew nothing specific about that story before reading, I could recognize the Dickensian nature of Demon's hardships, the colorful characters, and the occasional commentaries on social problems. It was interesting to read a summary of COPPERFIELD afterward to see how Kingsolver transposed the plot and people into modern Appalachia and used them to examine the region's poverty and the opioid crisis.

SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell: When Shiloh attends the second wedding of one of her oldest friends, she's anxious about whether their other oldest friend will be there. Shiloh has been out of touch with Cary almost since they graduated from high school fifteen years ago, so on the one hand she's eager to see him. On the other hand, Shiloh has been married, had two kids, and divorced since then, and she isn't sure about being seen. Cary is at the wedding, and it's wonderful to reconnect, but also strange, because they have a lot of history together. A lot, and it's complicated. Everyone always thought the two of them were dating, though that wasn't what they were to each other, despite being inseparable. Now romantic possibilities are surfacing, but Shiloh has the kids and ex-husband, and Cary has a career in the Navy and is only back in Omaha briefly. So it's even more complicated, and it's definitely a lot.

This is a compelling novel about characters trying to bridge the gaps between each other, between imagined versions and reality, and between their teenage and adult selves. As I expect from a Rainbow Rowell book, the story is sweet and romantic at the same time it deals with emotional turmoil and difficult family situations. Also on brand: the characters have long, deep conversations as well as witty banter. At times, some of the angsting felt like too much to me, but I was happy to spend time with Shiloh and Cary and to watch their relationship develop.

THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters: Joe's whole life has been shaped by his sister Ruthie's disappearance when the two of them were young. She vanished in 1962 from the side of a road in Maine, where their family went every summer along with other Mi'kmaq Indians from Nova Scotia to work as blueberry pickers. Fifty years later, Joe is dying, surrounded by what's left of his family, his memories of the past, and the consequences of his life choices. Elsewhere, Norma is starting to make sense of a lifetime of confusing experiences, including childhood dreams of a different mother than the anxious, overbearing one she grew up with. Norma has always been aware that she's browner than her parents and that something doesn't add up in their story of a fire that destroyed all her baby pictures. But it takes fifty years for her to find the explanations she's long sought.

The end of the novel is clearly established at the beginning: Norma is Ruthie, and before Joe dies, she will find her way back to the family she was taken from. It makes sense not to withhold this information that would be easy to guess, but I was disappointed that by the middle of the book, almost every other piece of the story was already revealed, and I was losing interest. Though I felt for the characters, they never really came to life for me. Many other readers loved the story and the writing, but I wanted more from it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ed Yong offers a writing case study from his own work: "The start of any piece is known in journalism jargon as the lede. It should be a lure that entices readers and makes them want to read the rest of the story. It should be a trailer, which gives an accurate reflection of the content and tone to come. And it should be a flex, which demonstrates that the writer knows what they're doing. It's perhaps the single most important part of any piece of writing, and the part I spend the most time on. This paragraph took three fucking hours."

August 6, 2024

July Reading Recap

Now that I'm actually writing again, will my reading spree taper off? Time will tell!

MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan: After the Anth have solved all Earth's problems, humanity engineers a crew of beings, known as dragons, and sends them to explore the galaxy. The dragons return determined to prevent any further exploration by isolating Earth in a veil of moondust. The Anth fight back, but the dragons are invincible from their citadel on the moon, and the war is disastrous for humanity. (This is all explained in a four-page prologue.) Eleven thousand years later, a microscopic chronicler wakes up again. A young boy, Ariel, has just stumbled upon the preserved corpse that was the chronicler's previous host, and so this sentient "sourdough starter with a mech suit" leaps into Ariel's body and once again experiences the world. Earth has changed immeasurably, and mysteriously. Ariel lives in a small village dominated by a castle, as well as by a wizard who flies an airplane. Ariel has a handheld video game device and a dog that can talk. (All animals can talk.) The sky remains dust-shrouded, and soon Ariel and the chronicler will set out on an epic quest to revive the war against the dragons.

This novel is a weird and wonderful adventure that plays around with the conventions of genre, quests, chosen ones, and other classic tropes. While the story's patterns are familiar, little about it can be anticipated, and each new stage in the characters' journey brings fascinating surprises and extends the imaginative worldbuilding. MOONBOUND is quite different from Sloan's previous novels, but it has the same gentle humor and lovingly developed characters. (There are also some small references to his earlier books.) Sloan has planned this as the first book in a series, and I look forward to spending more time with these great characters and seeing other elements of the far-future Earth.

DIXON, DESCENDING by Karen Outen: Dixon has climbed serious mountains, but he never dreamed of attempting Everest until his brother Nate suggested it. The brothers have come into some money after their mother's death, and Nate's proposal is that they train together and then take a few months out of their lives to travel to Nepal and climb with a tour group. For Dixon, that means a semester off from the boys' middle school where he works as a psychologist, leaving his favorite kids, including one who is the target of relentless bullying. Still, Nate's dream of Everest becomes Dixon's as well, until he can't imagine not making the trip, and not reaching the summit, whatever the cost.

The novel begins on the mountain and sets up ominous foreshadowing before jumping back to establish what led the brothers there and what they've left behind. Careful shifts between time periods build up the tension as the story circles around the question of what happened. Outen did extensive research to portray the experience of climbing Everest, and her evocative writing captures both the majesty and the agony to be found on the mountain.

Dixon and Nate are Black, a rarity on the mountain that attracts some attention. Dixon's students are also young Black men, but they lack the privileges he grew up with, and his desire to help them doesn't always work out. In the portion of the book focused on the aftermath of the Everest expedition, there's an emotional story about Dixon and two of his students. While that plotline can't live up to the adventure and suspense of the Everest plot, it's well-crafted with high stakes of its own, and Outen ties the threads together in a satisfying ending. I recommend this, especially to others who share my horrified fascination with the idea of anyone climbing Everest.

PEOPLE COLLIDE by Isle McElroy: Eli and Elizabeth are an American couple living in Bulgaria, where she's earned a coveted fellowship. Eli is aware of being the less ambitious one, and he's hanging around with little to do while Elizabeth teaches and writes. Until one day, when Eli discovers that he's taken over Elizabeth's body. Once he reconciles himself to this strange situation, he assumes Elizabeth is in his own body, but she's nowhere to be found and isn't responding to calls. Because Eli can't explain the situation to anyone else, he has to pretend to be Elizabeth and act like Eli is the one who's disappeared. Soon a clue emerges to her possible whereabouts, and Eli is off on a search for his missing wife and his own missing body.

While the body swap is a familiar premise, McElroy bypasses most of the usual components, for good and bad. I had mixed feelings about this novel due mostly to imagining it would be a different sort of story. I was always eager to find out what would happen next, but I wasn't always as interested in where the author chose to take the story as in where I thought it might go. However, McElroy writes well, with excellent insight into the characters and relationships, and they use the premise to explore a range of ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders offers Another Way To Think About "Conflict" and "Stakes" In Your Fiction: "A lot of conflict is really about people dealing with all the weird programming that was crammed into their brains when they were younger, because most people have been indoctrinated with a ton of bad ideas about how the world works. I'm really interested in writing about the conflicts that take place within people. (In fact, one of the most interesting conflicts a character can have is the struggle to see past the toxic notion that life is about being aggressive, fighting, taking what you want, and so on.)"

July 31, 2024

Actually Writing

Since last week, I've been actually writing an actual draft of my current novel! I'd set myself a deadline to reach a stopping point on outlining and other planning, and move on to writing down the words and sentences of the story. I had to extend the target date by a couple of weeks (fortunately I'm on decent terms with my boss), but the deadline successfully moved this endeavor forward.

And it's been great! For a while now, I've had trouble staying focused on work for as much time as I intend, and I worried that writing was going to feel so much harder than planning and therefore even more difficult to stick with. But on the contrary, my writing sessions have kept me absorbed for hours in a row. I guess I do like writing after all, not merely having written.

It's still a slow process, and I'm only a few scenes in. There's some further planning I'm mixing in with the writing as I go, but I expect to keep inching along through the early section of the novel. Once I reach a certain point, I may need to stop writing for a little while and make decisions about some elements that remain vague. My hope is that figuring out these pieces will be easier with part of the story fleshed out.

Though I have all these open questions, I've mapped out the big picture of the entire novel. After two earlier drafts that were more like extended brainstorms, I'm glad to set off this time with confidence about where the story is going.

The outline is serving as a guide, but already in the course of turning plan into story, I've made small adjustments such as introducing details in a different order. With any luck, I'll avoid significant changes to the largest pieces, because the interlocking plotlines are carefully balanced, so one change could require many others. But I'm staying attentive to what makes sense for each scene and letting the story evolve within the framework of the high level plan.

And now, I'm eager to get back to writing!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Maris Kreizman at Literary Hub describes her experience contributing to the New York Times Best Books of the Century list: "First I tried to define 'best' in a way that felt right for me. I settled on the books that changed the way I viewed the world, or changed my idea of what a book can do or be. If you’re a real book lover you know that 10 slots to cover 24.5 years of books isn’t nearly enough to convey everything that's wonderful. So I created some of my own guidelines, namely that I wanted my list to be representative of what I, Maris Kreizman, read: mostly fiction, with some narrative nonfiction and essay writing thrown in."

July 2, 2024

June Reading Recap

I read some great, inventive, and varied novels last month!

THE OTHER VALLEY by Scott Alexander Howard: Odile is sixteen and friendless, and she rarely speaks to anyone at school. She doesn't seem a good candidate to vie for a competitive apprenticeship on the Conseil, but at her mother's insistence, she applies. The Conseil governs Odile's valley and makes decisions about the very small number of visits permitted to the neighboring valleys. In the valley to the west is a town identical to Odile's, exactly as every person and place existed twenty years earlier. To the east, life proceeds twenty years in the future. Visitations are only allowed in cases of extreme grief, so that loved ones may be viewed at a distance. These visits are carefully controlled because any interference could have consequences on the circumstances of future valleys. When Odile accidentally catches sight of a visiting group, the dangerous knowledge changes her prospects, leading to new friends and a chance at a spot on the Conseil.

I'm always excited to read a new twist on time travel, and I'm thrilled when the the resulting story is as good as this one. From the start, I felt immersed in Odile's world and invested in her friendships and career prospects. The tension of the novel comes as much from the subtle shifts in character dynamics as the looming speculative stakes. A plot that plays around with time needs an ending that's clever, logically consistent, and satisfying, and Howard delivers. Highly recommended for my fellow fans of time-bending stories.

THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB by Helen Simonson: In 1919, as Britain recovers from the war and the influenza, new and old ways of life collide in the seaside town of Hazelbourne. Constance, who managed a grand estate during the war, has the qualifications for a career in bookkeeping, but employers want to hire returning soldiers and encourage her to become a governess or get married. Her new friend Poppy is wonderfully modern, riding a motorcycle and running a small business staffed by other lady riders, but Poppy's wealthy upbringing makes her outlook more traditional than she realizes, and she's cavalier about money in a way Constance can never be. Poppy's brother Harris lost a leg in the war and is haunted by all the other loss he witnessed, and since everyone is determined to view him as an invalid, he has little hope in ever finding work or love.

These characters and many more populate this novel that delightfully picks apart the class and social customs of the era while also addressing the numerous ways people suffered during and after World War I. As always, Simonson writes with a clever humor as well as thoughtful compassion. I loved getting to know the wonderful characters, and I was only sorry there were so many that some dropped out in the middle of the book before resurfacing when the many subplots came together at the end. The setting is well-developed, and I learned some pieces of history I hadn't known about. I remain an enthusiastic fan of Simonson's work, and I recommend all her novels.

THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY by Jennifer Croft: A group of eight devoted translators gather for a summit with "Our Author", the celebrated Polish novelist Irena Rey. They are meeting at her home on the edge of the Białowieża Forest to translate her latest masterpiece before it's revealed to the world, as they always do. But this summit is immediately unlike every previous one. Irena's dependable husband is absent without any explanation, so there's nobody providing meals or structuring the schedule. After a couple days of chaos, Irena disappears as well, and her only message is the completed manuscript. The translators are left searching for clues in the text, the house, and the village as their usual solidarity and their sense of purpose fracture.

This novel is funny, strange, and wonderfully meta. Translations don't happen at an author's house this way in reality, but Croft is well aware as an accomplished translator herself, and she has great fun with the premise she's created. The characters refer to each other by their languages rather than their names, and a note at the beginning establishes that the book we're reading was written by the character Spanish and translated by English, who provides disapproving footnotes throughout. The story becomes increasingly unhinged, and toward the end, I wished for things to come together a bit more clearly, but I was always entertained.

THE DEFAULT WORLD by Naomi Kanakia: Jhanvi has a stable job and a community of other trans women in Sacramento, where she'll eventually be able to save up the money she needs for expensive gender-affirming surgeries. But she's tired of waiting, and she's bored by Sacramento. Her old college friends in San Francisco are rich tech workers who spend their leisure time organizing sex parties, and though Jhanvi finds them shallow, she also envies their life. She goes to stay at their communal house with a bold scheme: to marry one of them and become eligible for the generous trans benefits their companies provide.

This is a great premise, and Jhanvi is a great character who is motivated by so many competing desires and constantly reckoning with those contradictions. As always, Kanakia demonstrates skill at teasing apart the complicated nuances of characters and their interactions. However, I thought this novel fell short of what it might have been with a clearer throughline and different pacing. The story often felt disjointed, without enough sense of the progression between events. There's a lot that's compelling in the book, but more that frustrated me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Molly Templeton at Reactor wonders, Can a Book Really Be For Everyone?: "Listening to [Gabrielle] Zevin, I thought about what makes a book for everyone.... I mean the kind of book that can draw packs of teens, writers, parents, readers, and everyone else in a community into a theater on one rainy Thursday afternoon. Is it the presence of universal themes? Approachable prose? Intergenerational narratives? A certain sense of transparency, like you can see what the author is doing even as you appreciate it?"

June 8, 2024

May Reading Recap

Catching up on reviews of the books I read in May:

WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange: Jude Star is a young boy, asleep in a tipi, when white men show up at his camp and gun down everyone he knows. Some years after surviving this massacre at Sand Creek, he's among the men rounded up and imprisoned on a charge of "countless crimes committed by Southern Cheyennes against the U.S. Army." While held captive, he's taught to dress and behave like the white men. He learns to read and write English and finds value in books and writing down stories. Later, he learns to drink alcohol and discovers the escape and agony in what becomes a problem habit. After Jude's story, the narrative shifts to the next generation of his family, continuing down the years to the present, when another young boy survives another massacre.

This novel focuses on one of the families from Orange's debut, THERE THERE, filling in their history and exploring what happens after the conclusion of the first book. I think you could read this new book without knowledge of the other, though you'll probably be curious to go back and learn about the previous events.

In my review of THERE THERE, I wrote "I would happily have read many more chapters about every character," and it was indeed great to get that opportunity for some of them. The portrayals are once again vivid and emotional, and I cared deeply about these characters. Orange weaves together their perspectives well to show how each deals with the same issues, including addiction, connection to heritage, and the desire to tell their own stories.

MEMORY PIECE by Lisa Ko begins as an 80s coming-of-age story that hints at the future of three friends who meet as kids. Giselle is drawn to performance art from a young age. After a childhood in New Jersey, she carves out a life in the New York City art world, creating pieces based in the medium of time. Jackie learns to code before most people have even used a computer. She joins the New York tech scene during the dot-com bubble and is caught between her job at an emerging internet behemoth and the passion project she runs on her own servers. Ellen turns to activism, fighting for squatters' rights as she moves into and rehabilitates a vacant building with a newfound community. Those friends become family for life, but her oldest friends Giselle and Jackie drift in and out of her orbit for decades.

I liked many pieces of this novel, but the whole was less effective for me than I hoped it would be. Ko writes beautifully and crafts fascinating characters and situations. The book's structure is unusual, more disjointed and experimental than I expected, and I wasn't sure what to make of all the choices. I most enjoyed reading about Jackie's experiences with the early internet, while Giselle's art and Ellen's experiences in a too-close-for-comfort dystopian future both unsettled me, in their own ways. This is an impressively different type of book than Ko's excellent debut, THE LEAVERS, and I'm curious to read whatever she writes next.

CRYING IN H MART by Michelle Zauner: Zauner was twenty-five when her mother died, just as the two of them were starting to appreciate each other as people and looking forward to being adults together. During Michelle's childhood and teen years, her relationship with her mother was often difficult, but the one thing they could connect over was food. Michelle grew up appreciating her mother's Korean cooking and their deeper explorations of the cuisine when they traveled from Oregon to Seoul to spend time with relatives back in her mother's homeland. In this memoir, food is a constant backdrop to recollections of their too-short time together and the account of illness, death, and grief.

Naturally, this book that focuses on a mother's death from cancer is frequently sad and covers painful topics, but the many joyful memories, especially around food, keep the story from getting too bleak. Throughout, Zauner does a good job of presenting her thoughts and emotions frankly. I'm not that drawn to memoirs, but this one kept me engaged, and also hungry! I'm lucky to live where plenty of Korean food is available, so I got to try out a number of the dishes that appear in the book.

REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt: Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus who has spent nearly all of his four-year lifespan captive in a tank. Tova is a 70-year-old human who cleans the aquarium at night. Ever since Tova's teenage son died 30 years ago, she's struggled to find a comfortable place among people, but she loves restoring order to the quiet aquarium, surrounded by the exhibits. When Tova finds Marcellus out of his tank one night, she realizes just how intelligent he is, and she even feels that he can understand her. Indeed, Marcellus prides himself on understanding humans better than they understand themselves. Meanwhile, far from the aquarium, a young man named Cameron is about to learn some information that will set him on a trajectory toward Marcellus and Tova, changing all their lives.

This is a sweet novel with a generally light-hearted tone, despite dealing with the subject of grief. Marcellus and Tova are wonderful characters, and I was disappointed when I realized the story was going to be mainly about how Tova and Cameron would connect, with Marcellus increasingly sidelined. But I did enjoy seeing how the human storylines were going to come together, though in the second half there was bit too much delaying of the inevitable. The colorful cast of supporting characters add extra quirkiness to this unique -- and very popular -- book.

BIG SWISS by Jen Beagin: Greta works as a transcriptionist, typing up the recorded sessions of a sex and relationship coach. She and the (not particularly effective) therapist live in the small town of Hudson, New York, so Greta is constantly running into people whose voices and secrets she recognizes from the recordings. She becomes fascinated by one client, nicknaming her "Big Swiss" and eagerly awaiting her next session. Big Swiss was once brutally attacked by a man who served time in prison and is about to be released. Big Swiss has also never had an orgasm. Inevitably, Greta encounters Big Swiss in real life and gets involved in both these situations.

Parts of this novel were a lot of fun and really made me laugh. Before I started reading, I expected a story that was mostly amusing if cringey, but it quickly became clear that plenty of disturbing and violent content was also in store. I was okay with that, though I still didn't anticipate how dark things would get (or how many insects would appear). I liked much of the book's weirdness but found some of it too rambling and unfocused, and the ending fell flat for me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jeff O'Neal, co-founder of Book Riot, reflects on how much of the company's success was a product of the internet landscape at the time: "Twitter and Facebook were growing and growing and there was not an algorithm in sight. If you followed Book Riot on Facebook, you would see everything that we posted. In order. Same for Twitter. One stat that I repeat often to show how different of a world it was: in early 2013, BookRiot.com averaged 14 visits per month per Facebook follower. So for every thousand Facebook followers, we could count on Facebook sending 14,000 visitors per month. Today, that number is closer to 1/10th of a visit per Facebook follower."

May 21, 2024

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer 2024

I've been planning out my summer reading and getting excited for these new books by some of my favorite authors:

THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB by Helen Simonson (May 7): Simonson writes wonderful comedies of manners. MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND is the charming story of two widowers falling in love despite the opinions of their small English village. In THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR, residents of a small English village are concerned with not only the activities of their residents, but also the start of World War I. This new novel is also historical, set just after the war in 1919, and it sounds like another delight.

THE DEFAULT WORLD by Naomi Kanakia (May 28): Kanakia has published three young adult novels (most recently, JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE) that all portray characters and situations with the complexity and nuance they deserve. I'm excited for her first novel with an adult rather than teen protagonist. The tagline, "A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates," sounds like a wild ride, and the San Francisco tech world setting is an extra draw for me.

MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan (June 11): Speaking of the San Francisco tech world, that's the starting point for Sloan's MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE and SOURDOUGH before each swerves off into a mysterious secretive society, one based around books and the other in food. I adored both and can't wait to see where Sloan is going in MOONBOUND, which takes place 13,000 years in the future. There's a companion website where he's posting material related to the book.

SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell (July 23): I've read all of Rowell's novels, and I love the way she writes about the emotions of relationships between people with humor and heart. After almost a decade of publishing books about magical characters in the Simon Snow series, she's returning to a story of real world adults trying to figure out a relationship together.

SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson (July 30): The first collaboration between Bergman and Freedman-Lawson, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN, offers life advice that's as enjoyable to read and look at as it is useful. I'm willing to bet that even as a non-parent, I'll find guidance in this new book to incorporate into my life and relationships.

LOKA by S.B. Divya (August 13): Last year's MERU launched a space opera series with imaginative worldbuilding, great characters, and an exciting plot. I'm looking forward to continuing the interplanetary and genetic adventures in the next installment!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At CrimeReads, Micaiah Johnson explains how genre communicates a contract with the reader: "This understanding is why I write every single story as a murder mystery author, even though I do not strictly write murder mysteries. The murder mystery author's contract is neither kind nor cruel, but a kind of trickster middle. The murder mystery author gets to behave like an older sibling who is as bullying as they are loving: I will trick you, there will be death, but there will also be resolution. It is the antagonism of the horror writer, but in the form of a game. And, most importantly, it is a game the reader can win."

May 6, 2024

April Reading Recap

I had another great month of so much reading!

ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST by Xochitl Gonzalez: Anita de Monte and Jack Martin are married artists, both successful within their very different styles, but less successful at being married. Though they've always been drawn together, they are often violently at odds and think little of each other's work. Their years of shared passion and separate creativity end with Anita's shocking death in 1985. Less than 15 years later, Jack remains a giant in the art world, but Anita isn't even on the radar of art history student Raquel Toro as she prepares to embark on her senior thesis. Like Anita, Raquel forms a relationship with a more established artist who'd rather shape her to his tastes than appreciate who she is. As Raquel studies Jack's art, she closes in on the knowledge of Anita and all they have in common.

This is a fantastic, unpredictable novel about art, passion, and identity. The characters are wonderfully developed, sometimes infuriating, and all memorable. I was able to envision the artwork, and I liked the level of detail that filled out a whole art world around Anita and Jack. I also had a particular fondness for the details of Raquel's setting, since she attends Brown University at almost the same time I did. In the middle, I grew impatient for Raquel to hurry up and learn about Anita, but the suspense over this inevitability pays off, and all the story's pieces come together in such a satisfying way.

I didn't know until after reading that Anita's life, art, and death were closely based on a real artist, Ana Mendieta. Gonzalez discusses the inspiration in interviews, and Mendieta's family has also commented on the fictional portrayal.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie: When Pampa Kampana is a child, she is visited by a goddess who tells her she will plant a city and live more than two centuries to chronicle its rise and fall. That city, eventually named Bisnaga, grows from a bag of seeds in a matter of days, complete with fully grown citizens who only need Pampa to whisper their histories into their minds. A series of rulers transforms Bisnaga and extends the size of its empire, sometimes through negotiation, mostly through warfare. With Pampa's divinely extended lifespan, she is involved in every dynasty, serving as queen, advisor, or adversary. She records it all in an epic poem recounting Bisnaga's history, and she experiences the loneliness of watching everyone she loves grow old and die while she lives on.

Rushdie is a great storyteller, and this story kept me entertained, but I was less invested than I wanted to be. What created an emotional distance was the narrative's fairy tale quality: the archetypal characters, magically convenient solutions, and things happening in threes or according to other formulas. It's a deliberate style that's written well, and even if it didn't quite work for me, I remained curious about how events would unfold.

It turns out this is the second book in a row I read without realizing its basis in real historical events. Rushdie invented the magical parts, of course, but VICTORY CITY more or less tells the story of the Vijayanagara Empire that dominated southern India in the medieval period, with the names of the rulers, the dates of battles, and so on pulled right out of history.

JAMES by Percival Everett is the story of the runaway slave Jim from Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. As in the original, after James flees to avoid being sold, he ends up traveling down the Mississippi with the boy Huck, who has always been, if not entirely kind, at least friendlier to him than the average white person. The ever-present threat of capture keeps James and Huck's journey perilous, and stealth and deception are often necessary. James is particularly skilled at deception, because survival in slavery depends on maintaining an intricate facade.

The first facade exposed in Everett's version is that every enslaved person is bilingual, putting on a thick, tortuous dialect in the presence of whites, and switching to a refined English among themselves. It's a delightful reveal, both funny and sharp, and Everett continues playing with this and other facets of language throughout the novel. The book delivers further surprises I won't spoil, all as skillfully managed.

I reread HUCK FINN in preparation for this new release, and that was interesting but definitely not required. Parts of JAMES follow the source material, but not all, and that's a solid choice given how constrained Jim's activity is for much of Twain's novel. Everett provides James with a more varied set of constraints, enriching and elevating his story. This is a fascinating reimagining, highly recommended.

SEEK YOU: A JOURNEY THROUGH AMERICAN LONELINESS by Kristen Radtke: In this work of graphic nonfiction, Radtke grapples with loneliness by writing and drawing about both her personal experience and the wider phenomenon of societal isolation. The text moves between a range of topics, including scientific studies and aspects of media history, tying these together with scenes from Radtke's own life and forming connections. The illustrations have a unified style but also cover a range of subject matter, sometimes depicting people in realistic settings, other times imaginatively evoking a feeling, and frequently reproducing news headlines and other documents.

I found the book's material interesting and the art visually appealing. The content is thought-provoking and educated me about subjects both entertaining (laugh tracks, professional cuddlers) and disturbing (psychologist Harry Harlow's monkey studies). At times, I thought the text switched too quickly between topics or fell short of reaching an intended conclusion. My bigger complaint is a number of missed opportunities where the illustrations might have done something that text couldn't, by showing what was being described or using sequential images for more impact.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens: In 1952, Kya is six years old and left to more or less fend for herself in a shack in the marshes of the North Carolina coast. In 1969, in the nearest town, local big shot Chase Andrews is found dead, possibly murdered. Kya is still living a hermit-like existence in the marsh, and at first she's suspected only for her outcast status, but then because her past history with Chase comes to light. The first half of the book is mostly episodes from Kya's childhood showing how she survives, often with only birds for company, interspersed with occasional short chapters about the murder investigation. In the second half, events preceding and following the murder take prominence.

I'm baffled that this unremarkable novel has been a runaway bestseller. The book's strength is the descriptive passages that evoke the natural setting of the marsh Kya loves. Nothing else stood out to me. I was moderately (but only moderately) interested in the story during the first section, and then gradually less so as the book neared its underwhelming conclusion. I found the plot lacking, and the dialogue flat and unconvincing. Millions of readers love this book, but it did little for me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Scottie Andrew at CNN profiles author Lauren Groff's new bookstore, The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida: "Groff understands Florida, in all of its confounding and infuriating glory. She knows that the things that live here are hard to conquer. 'What we want to do is create a lighthouse so that, nationally, people know that Florida is not full of closed-minded people,' Groff says. 'So that they know that there are places here that love and welcome transgender people, people who want to learn about Black history, people who want to pay homage to what actually happened, even if it makes us feel bad.'"

April 30, 2024

Same Old Story

Obviously I'm a sucker for any essay headline promising the narrative of a novelist who spent a decade working on a book, or who rewrote their novel a dozen times, or who tried to sell five different finished manuscripts before finally getting a publishing deal. I've linked to many such essays in this blog over the years, and I've read countless more.

This is a frequently told sort of story because it's a common experience. Probably more published novelists could recount some version of that essay than the number of authors who published their first attempt at a novel after only a draft or two in a year or two. Novels involve a great big hunk of ideas and words to imagine, reimagine, write, and rewrite. Generally even if some of those stages go quickly, others require a lot more time.

Today I read the latest iteration of the essay to appear in Literary Hub, where I often encounter these. "The Pilgrim's (Lack of) Progress, Or, Sorry I Took So Long to Finish My Novel, Or, On the Value of Restarting" is the headline for Justin Taylor's account of writing REBOOT (which used to have even more subtitles than the essay). He explains:

Depending how you reckon, writing it either took me nine years or it took me a month.

I started it on New Year's Day 2014 and the first thing I did was write longhand for a week. The second thing I did was fail for seven years. I don't mean that I spent seven years trying to complete a draft. There were plenty of drafts. I mean that I spent seven years trying to make work something that would not work, that I felt increasingly certain could not work, and yet found myself revising and restarting time and again, always in a state of perfect hopelessness except for when I came to my senses and abandoned the project once and for all, which I did at least once a year.

When Taylor eventually writes the draft that works,

...the only way I could allow myself another attempt was to first make a rule that I would not revisit any of the old material. Drafts, outlines, character descriptions, the handful of passages I thought were good: all off-limits. I would not even peek at them to refresh my memory of what they contained. I had to start from absolute zero—a hard reboot, if you will—and anything that survived from those prior drafts would be there not because I'd salvaged it, but because I'd created it from scratch all over again.

I finished the first successful draft of the novel on April 3, 2021, twenty-eight days after I started. Though there would be another year of revision before I sold it (year eight), and then a year of working with the editors who bought it (year nine), the novel was basically done.

I found much about this identifiable, though my version of the experience follows a different sequence of steps. Most crucially, I haven't yet achieved that decisive story beat, the publication of the novel that occasions the publication of an essay about the arduous journey that's now in the past.

The scale of the journey has been on my mind as I turned another year older this month. When described in hindsight, a long road to publication seems impressive, even mythic. But in the middle, well, it's not a story until it gets an ending.

April 2, 2024

March Reading Recap

I've still been doing a lot of reading, which means I haven't been doing so much writing, but I sure have been doing a lot of reading.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND by Jennine Capó Crucet: Ismael Reyes (call him Izzy) is twenty years old, and so far his only ambition in life has been to capitalize on his resemblance to the singer Pitbull and make some easy money as a celebrity impersonator. After a cease and desist letter puts a stop to that, Izzy comes up with a plan to model himself after another Miami-associated personality, Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. Izzy figures that all he needs is a sidekick, some shady dudes who can hook them up with shady work, a girl, and maybe an exotic animal, and soon he'll be rich and powerful. As it happens, an exotic animal in Izzy's vicinity is aware of his scheme: The orca Lolita has spent decades confined to a too-small tank at the Miami Seaquarium, but her senses range much farther. Lolita observes Izzy and even infiltrates his thoughts as he seeks out the pieces of his plan. The search leads Izzy into questions he's long suppressed about the circumstances of his childhood journey to Miami on a raft from Cuba, questions that return him to dangerous waters.

I would not have been drawn to this book if not for my admiration of Crucet's previous novel, but I'm so glad I read it. This is a weird, audacious story, often hilarious and sometimes horrifying. Izzy is well-developed as a basically sweet kid who is completely out of his depth in striving to become a gangster. Lolita is an even more fascinating protagonist, and all her biographical details are taken directly from real life. Through omniscient narration, Crucet moves between their perspectives and those of other characters, while also commenting on Miami culture, history, and climate change. And don't worry if, like me, you know nothing about Scarface, because Crucet provides all the necessary context -- and said in an NPR interview that her goal was for people to "read this book and then never have to actually watch it."

FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS by Ursula K. Le Guin: The four stories in this collection are closely linked, and all take place on the planets Werel and Yeowe, which are also closely linked. On Werel, a system of slavery dominated society for thousands of years, and Werelians brought that system to the previously uninhabited Yeowe, where variations emerged. Finally, uprisings lead to decades of revolution and eventual liberation on both planets. During that turbulent period, Werel and Yeowe also begin accepting envoys from the Ekumen, the consortium of worlds that appears in much of Le Guin's fiction. Each of these stories shows some aspect of the transition to liberation, by focusing on a variety of characters from different places, with different societal positions.

I really liked getting to know all these characters while gradually learning more about the larger story of their worlds. Throughout the book, Le Guin is doing what she does best: imagining complex, plausible cultures and bringing them to life through specific character experiences. As the book's title suggests, forgiveness plays a role in every story. So does love, and characters from vastly different circumstances coming to understand each other is a recurring theme. I recommend this to any Le Guin fan, and I think it could serve as an introduction to her work.

GET IN TROUBLE by Kelly Link: I've often heard Kelly Link and her work referenced, but I don't think I'd read any of her stories before picking up this collection. The first story, "The Summer People", provides a good introduction to Link's style, because it starts with a character who is preoccupied by real-world concerns (illness, bad parenting, work), and the reader gradually comes to understand that she's also dealing with something weird and supernatural. Most of the stories similarly blend familiar situations, especially involving relationships between characters, with speculative elements of some kind. I enjoy this combination in general, and I liked Link's approach, though I sometimes wanted more exploration of the speculative parts, and several endings left me puzzled or disappointed.

Two of my favorites in the collection are both set in a world where superheroes are common. In "Secret Identity", a teenager travels to New York City to meet up with the man she's in an online relationship with. The way the story cleverly unfolds, first the reader has to figure out what's going on, and then the main character does. "Origin Story" is about a meeting of old friends, one of whom happens to be a famous superhero. In both stories, as in the collection overall, the character relationships are well-developed and specific, and there's a bit of humor as well as some real emotion. The most emotionally affecting story is also the most grounded in reality: "The Lesson", focusing on the tension in a couple's relationship as they attend a wedding while waiting for their surrogate to give birth to their child.

KINNING by Nisi Shawl: In the wake of the early twentieth century's Great War, a group of revolutionaries aim to prevent future conflicts by spreading peace and empathy. Their method is the fungus-based Spirit Medicine that creates bonds between fellow inoculants, who become able to sense each other's emotions and even communicate telepathically. The sister and brother scientists, Bee-Lung and Tink, along with the rest of the crew of their aircanoe, are on a mission to distribute the Spirit Medicine in their travels across Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, another sister and brother, the royal children Mwadi and Ilunga of Everfair, are vying to inherit the throne when their father abdicates. Their stories and those of many other characters converge over questions of Everfair's future, and then become further entwined through Spirit Medicine.

This sequel to EVERFAIR brings back many of its characters, but the story has a different focus and scope than the decades-long nation-building of the original, and it's not particularly important to know what happened before. Though I was curious to return to the story world, this book's plot didn't interest me nearly as much as the first. The idea of an empathy-spreading fungus is intriguing, but I didn't care for the way it played out. The characters spend a lot of time being caught up in sensuality that I wasn't feeling, and the mechanics of strains and cores eventually become tedious. While this wasn't for me, I applaud the originality of the concepts, and I hope the story finds the right readers.

THE THREAD COLLECTORS by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman follows two couples separated during the Civil War, one Black, one white and Jewish. When William flees out of slavery to join the Union Army, he leaves Stella behind in New Orleans. While he keeps up the spirits of his fellow soldiers by playing his flute, she embroiders handkerchiefs with maps to help more men in their escapes. At the military camp, William befriends a fellow musician, Jacob, who writes letters recounting their experiences to his beloved wife Lily. She's back home in New York City, where she organizes women in sewing quilts and making bandages to aid the troops and further the abolitionist movement.

This novel offers a lot of historical detail, but I didn't get much else out of it. In writing the book, the authors set out to "explore the Civil War experience through two underrepresented lenses" (Black and Jewish), and I was often conscious of that motive rather than transported into these experiences by the story. The characters rarely felt like real, complex people living the events from within their era. Despite that, the four characters' stories move along well enough, if a bit unevenly. Though the two women and their sewing are highlighted by the title, cover, and description, this is as much or more a story about the men, and what little impact the sewing has on the plot seems forced. William and Jacob's shared love of music, and the friendship that grows from it, is more effectively portrayed and might have been a better source for the title.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the New York Times, Anna Holmes celebrates the 100th year of The Boxcar Children: "But the food in 'The Boxcar Children' is so central, so memorable. For the Alden children the days and hours are marked not by school lessons or play dates but by meals and the position of the sun. Bread is 'fragrant,' with 'crusty ends.' Cheese in wax paper is 'golden.' Early in the book, Jessie, a 'little housekeeper' in line with the gender roles of the time, devises a makeshift refrigerator: a small pool of water in which she stores milk ('cold as ice') and butter ('cool and sweet')."

March 6, 2024

February Reading Recap

When I'm not busy figuring out character arcs, I've been reading away:

COME AND GET IT by Kiley Reid takes place mostly inside a dormitory at the University of Arkansas. Millie is one of the resident assistants for the dorm, and she's good at it. Even when students make clueless comments about race or class, Millie keeps up her facade of perky responsibility and patiently smooths over conflicts between residents, like the three roommates in the suite next door. A couple of her fellow RAs are much less invested in the job, and as Millie's friendship with them grows, she adopts some of their slacker ways and cares less about doing everything by the book. Agatha is a visiting professor who first connects with Millie for help setting up interviews for Agatha's next book about attitudes toward money. The interviews provide such great material that Agatha talks to Millie about spending more time in the dorm to observe students informally -- in other words, to eavesdrop. What begins as a harmless arrangement develops layers of complications over time to threaten consequences for everyone involved.

This story is all about people listening in on what other people say and how they say it, and the reading experience constantly delivers the juicy thrill of eavesdropping on an outrageous conversation. Much of the novel is seemingly unimportant discussions that go on surprisingly long, and I expect some readers will find it slow, but I remained entertained by everything the characters had to say. Reid demonstrates her skill at rendering realistic dialogue for characters of all backgrounds once again, as she did in the faster-moving SUCH A FUN AGE. Though it takes time for the plot of COME AND GET IT to really get moving, Reid sets the characters on their eventual trajectories from the start and uses tiny moments to build up an intricate plot. I loved how nuanced and quietly complex the story is, and I really admire Reid's craft.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray: The Barnes family is under financial strain because of the global recession, and that's pushing every family member into situations they don't want tell the others about. Teen daughter Cass worries her best friendship will end if a class divide grows between the two girls, and she becomes increasingly desperate not to lose the relationship. (Increasing desperation eventually drives all the characters.) Her younger brother PJ has his own friendship issues, but the boy he met on a gaming forum is the one person who seems to be on his side, and may have a solution to all his family's problems. Their parents, Imelda and Dickie, are overwhelmed with concerns of an adult nature, complicated by a past that's far darker than their children realize.

I'm always interested in stories about family secrets, and this one is well constructed, unfolding to reveal more and more surprises. I liked how even though these characters interact daily and are all impacted by the failing family business, each is largely occupied with a plot the others are completely unaware of. Those separate plots are set up in a section for each character before the perspectives interleave in the final section. The structure allows time to really sink into the distinct points of view, but because the parents' sections are quite long, I got impatient waiting for an update on the kids' stories. Though I wasn't sorry to read 650 pages of this book, I think it could have been shorter.

I'm glad I read this, but it won't be for everyone. Along with warning about the length, I'll mention that one POV is written without any periods or commas, every character makes terrible decisions, and the story gets disturbing in numerous ways. If none of that scares you away, you might also be a reader who will appreciate THE BEE STING.

HOLLOWPOX: THE HUNT FOR MORRIGAN CROW by Jessica Townsend: After a difficult first year as a junior scholar in the Wundrous Society, Morrigan Crow is excited to finally begin her magical education in earnest. Her new set of classes is strange and thrilling, and she's so caught up in learning and practicing that she barely has attention for anything else. Still, Morrigan can't ignore the increasing number of disturbing incidents involving Wunimals. These sentient creatures, who normally behave like any other member of Nevermoor society, have started attacking humans in the manner of senseless beasts. While a disease is suspected, even the Wunsoc can't figure out how to stop it, and fear and prejudice is spreading. Morrigan is just a kid, so the adults don't want her trying to find a solution, but she may be in a unique position to help.

I'm continuing to enjoy this series, and how with each new book, we're learning along with Morrigan that there's more to Nevermoor and Wunsoc than was apparent before. The suspense is high in this installment, and the story goes to some tough places and covers them thoughtfully. Morrigan's friendships keep developing in great ways, with this book particularly focused on the idea of found family. I look forward to the gang's next adventures, so I'm joining the wait for the fourth book, expected later this year.

UNLOCKING THE AIR AND OTHER STORIES by Ursula K. Le Guin: For this collection, Le Guin compiled her stories from the 1980s and 90s that aren't science fiction. I didn't realize that when I checked it out from the library, but I was glad for the opportunity to read a different side of her work. Unfortunately, I wasn't that taken with most of the stories. I don't want to pin my disappointment on the lack of scifi, because I'm happy to read realistic fiction, and many of these stories aren't entirely grounded in reality anyway. But my sense after reading them was usually that something was lacking, either in the follow-through of an intriguing setup or in my understanding of the point. The writing is great at a sentence and paragraph level, of course, and Le Guin develops some good characters and relationships, but I wanted more from these stories.

The opener, "Half Past Four", was one of the most interesting to read: In each scene, a set of recurring characters are remixed into different versions of lives and relationships to one another. I enjoyed figuring out all the pieces of each iteration, but the ending left me feeling like I didn't get it, a recurring experience with this collection. The most effective story for me was "Standing Ground", which depicts a tense situation at an abortion clinic from different points of view, though I was also confused by the abruptness of that ending. "Ether, OR" is about the relationships between residents of a small town that doesn't remain in a fixed location. The characters are strong, and the premise is a fascinating one, but I was surprised it mostly provides background flavor more than it impacts the events.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Andrea Blythe considers the importance of food in storytelling, on the page, on screen, and in games such as Pentiment: "Some of the most interesting moments in the gameplay is when Andreas joins one of the local families for a meal. The act of sitting down for lunch or dinner plays several important roles in the game, including marking the passage of time by moving the day forward. It also reveals a significant amount of information about the family and their social class, as well as being a space for discussion, local gossip, and family arguments. It also allows us to see what kinds of foods were eaten during that time period in Bavaria, enabling the player to feel more connected to this historical moment."

February 29, 2024

Arc-itecture

I've been thinking a lot about character arcs this month. Despite the amount of time I've already spent planning and attempting drafts of the current novel, I realized I didn't have a clear enough sense of what should be driving and changing the characters over the course of the story. Sure, I'd set up events in the world for characters to respond to and conflicts to develop between them, but I couldn't make the pieces of the plot fit together in a satisfying way. One big reason was that I'd never worked out all the details of what's behind the characters' goals, how those motivations evolve during the story, and the consequences for the ending.

I have traditionally considered myself to be good at characters and bad at plot. But "Character is plot, plot is character," as F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have said. What comes most naturally to me as a writer is inventing people who have complicated personalities and relationships and backstories, just like real people. The challenging part is making them also like fictional people, who have a compelling reason to participate in a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Given how much of that beginning, middle, and end I'd already constructed before tackling that part, it seems my weakness isn't so much plot as the character-plot intersection, the character arc.

So I've been refreshing my memory of the principles of character development and plot structure. It might sound artificial to reduce a complex character to a formula of goals and motivations, or corny to frame everyone as pursuing an acknowledged want while truly seeking an unrecognized need. But these pieces of writing advice get repeated over and over because they describe common features of many succesful stories, and I find them useful blueprints to reference.

An entire novel is large and ungainly, and I like using techniques that let me see the big picture by turning it into something small, such as a few sentences that remind me what's important to each character. Readers will eventually get something so much more elaborate and interesting than those sentences, but having those at the heart of the story gives me confidence that the structure is solid.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In a wide-ranging essay, Matthew Salesses questions the Possibilities of Climate Fiction: "I can think of several norms we have in America for contemporary fiction that might get in the way of our ability to story (and therefore comprehend) hyperobjects, especially those that have to do with agency and the project of the individual, such as a character-driven plot (internal causation over external causation). It should be clear right away how a focus on the individual might make it difficult to handle massively distributed objects that no individual is personally responsible for yet whose consequences every individual must deal with."

February 5, 2024

January Reading Recap

I started off the year with a lot of reading!

THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD AND OTHER STORIES by Ursula K. Le Guin: What Le Guin excels at is imagining a culture and bringing it to life with well-considered, fascinating detail, and the stories in this collection really show off this talent for approaching science fiction anthropologically.

In several of the stories, Le Guin revisits a culture she created earlier and takes the opportunity to explore the implications at leisure. "Coming of Age in Karhide" uses a young person's perspective to explain the practical workings of the Gethenian gender and sexuality established in THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS. "Unchosen Love" and "Mountain Ways" are love stories set on the planet O, where marriages involve four people, linked in a specific arrangement. These stories are all light on plot but strong on developing the characters and the complicated dynamics of their relationships.

The world of "Solitude" is one where relationships are nearly forbidden, and the way Le Guin explores that idea with characters from inside and outside the culture is thought-provoking and affecting. In "The Birthday of the World", the narrator is so deep inside a particular religious tradition that the reader only gets to understand it gradually, as Le Guin masterfully unspools the story.

The book ends with a novella, "Paradises Lost", that's just the sort of generation ship story I've been wanting to read. The main characters are the fifth generation born on a ship that left Earth bound for a distant planet. The journey will end in the next generation, when these characters are old, and so they grow up viewing the ship as their entire world and never really understanding the irrelevant concept of a planet. Le Guin depicts life in this limited situation with insight, developing the plot carefully and cleverly. It's a captivating finale to a superb collection.

THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula K. Le Guin: Something disturbing happens when George dreams. After particularly vivid dreams, he wakes to discover the world has changed to match whatever he dreamed, and he's the only one who remembers the old reality. Desperate to stop the dreams and their unpredictable consequences, George turns to drugs, and that gets him sent for therapy with Dr. Haber, a specialist in sleep and dream disorders. Haber thinks George's claims sound delusional, but he's eager to put George into a dream state and study the EEG. If Haber can get to the bottom of what in George's dreams is making him so afraid, maybe he can learn something that will do good in the world, and also elevate his status as a researcher.

I really liked this short, smart novel. It was published in 1971, and early on, it felt very of that era to me, especially when Dr. Haber delivers long, expositional monologues. I couldn't find a connection at first to the later Le Guin stories I'd just read, but as the story develops, more of her subtlety and interests emerge. The way the plot unfolds chapter by chapter is so clever, unexpected, and ultimately moving.

JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE by Naomi Kanakia: Tara is the first trans girl to attend Ainsley Academy. On the surface, everyone at the all-girls school is welcoming and supportive, but Tara is finding it hard to fit in. She isn't rich or white like most of the other students, and she's a nerd who loves reading famous speeches but still performs terribly in the debate club. Though she's been able to transition socially at home and school, she hasn't started hormones due to oppressive state laws and her parents' concern that an investigation by child welfare services could endanger their visas. Only when Tara interviews for a spot in the school's elite club, the Sibyls, does she find somewhere to belong, with true friends who fully accept her. But then the school administration questions whether Tara is eligible to become a Sibyl, sparking a controversy that splits the club and soon spreads beyond the school. Tara has to decide if she's willing step into the public spotlight and speak out for herself.

Through Tara's first person narration, Kanakia portrays a realistically complicated character who has mixed feelings about so much in her life, as real people do. I enjoyed the character's honesty and nuance, and I felt for her in the story's joy and pain. Other characters are also well developed, especially Tara's parents, who are supportive and trying hard, but don't always get things right. I wished the dialogue had been smoother, and the plot was a bit unevenly paced. Despite some flaws, I'm happy this book is here.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride: By 1936, most of the Jewish families of Pottstown, Pennsylvania have moved off of Chicken Hill, but Chona Ludlow convinces her husband that they should stay in what is now a mostly Black neighborhood. Though traditionally the Jewish and Black communities haven't mixed, Chona's grocery store serves everyone, and she intends to keep running it. She also intends to keep speaking out and fighting back against hate and injustice whenever she spots it, no matter how much trouble it causes. So when a Black Deaf boy from the neighborhood is orphaned, Chona is happy to take him in, and to hide him from the state authorities who want to place him in a horrific institution. This leads to whole new levels of trouble, though, with a series of repercussions that involve a wide range of people from in and around Chicken Hill.

I liked so many parts of this novel, but there are so many parts, and I was frustrated they didn't all come together as well as I expected. The book is packed with characters, and it takes some patience to get to know them all, because whenever one is introduced, there's a recounting of their life history, and sometimes that of their ancestors. I mostly didn't mind that digressive style, since McBride is a great, funny storyteller who has imagined a terrific cast. Where the book fell short for me was the plot: While a lot of pieces are set up to connect by the end, I found that ending rushed and unsatisfying, with a number of threads and questions left dangling. Still, these characters will stay with me, as I know they will for so many other readers.

ERASURE by Percival Everett: Thelonious "Monk" Ellison has published a number of novels that have gone largely unread. His work is experimental and difficult, and he's often criticized for choosing subject matter that is anything other than what readers consider representative of Black life. Monk is enraged by the popularity of a new novel, We's Lives in Da Ghetto, praised for authentically depicting the Black experience. After a series of family tragedies, Monk is left caring for his aging mother and strapped for cash. He spends a week writing a parody, My Pafology, a novel full of every infuriating stereotype, and sends it to his agent to distribute under a pseudonym. To Monk's horror, an editor snaps up the manuscript for an outrageous sum, and it's on the way to becoming another runaway success.

I was excited about the premise of this novel, but I didn't enjoy reading it as much as the book I was expecting. Though the novel contains the entire text of My Pafology in all its painful glory, what happens to Monk as a result of publishing it takes up less of the main text, and gets less wild, than I anticipated. Large stretches of the story are about Monk's family, and while his reaction to his mother's decline is emotional, that plot didn't interest me as much as directions I thought the publishing satire might go. The text is also peppered with experimental passages I didn't understand. I'm left thinking that I'm probably repeating all the sins of Monk's critics, and that this book is operating at a higher level of satire than I'm able to appreciate. (As one example, I learned afterwards that familiarity with Native Son would add another layer of understanding.)

I'm interested to watch the new movie adaptation, American Fiction, and to read more of Everett's many and wildly varied books.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Millions, Nicholas Dames shares an excerpt from his book about the history of the chapter: "The conventionality of the chapter places it in the middle of a spectrum of form: too ordinary to be easily apparent as a particular aesthetic method or choice, too necessary to eliminate in the name of an antiformal freedom that claims to speak on behalf of pure 'life.' That intermediate position is a place, we might say, where form's deliberate artifice and life's unruly vibrancy mix most intimately. The chapter has one foot in both restriction and freedom, diluting the force of both: a not very severe restriction, a somewhat circumscribed freedom."

January 30, 2024

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter 2024

In my previous post, I looked back at the highlights of my 2023 reading. By now, my 2024 reading is already well underway, and I'm looking ahead to the new books I've been anticipating:

KINNING by Nisi Shawl (January 23): I didn't actually get much chance to anticipate this one, because I only just learned the good news that Shawl has written a sequel to EVERFAIR. In this alternate nineteenth century, Black American missionaries and white British socialists come together to turn part of the Congo into a new nation that offers safety and progress. Plus, there are airships and other steam technology. I read the first book in February 2020 (Shawl was an honored guest at the last strange FOGcon) and then put a lot of other information into my brain, so I'll need to refresh my memory of the story, but I remember that I enjoyed the world and characters.

The rest of my anticipated reads are the second novels published by authors whose debuts I really liked. Second novels are notoriously tricky, because they're often written in much less time, from ideas that haven't percolated as long, under the pressure of trying to replicate a success. I'm eager to see what these writers have done next, whether they match my expectations or not.

COME AND GET IT by Kiley Reid (January 30) is billed as "a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior" involving a college senior and a visiting professor. That sounds like a fitting follow-up to SUCH A FUN AGE, a page-turner about class, race, and privilege involving a babysitter and her employer.

WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange (February 27) is both a sequel and prequel to THERE THERE. In the first book, a variety of Native characters with connections to Oakland have plotlines that converge suspensefully at a powwow. The new book deals with consequences from those events and also goes back into the past to explore generations of Native history.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND by Jennine Capó Crucet (March 5): I wouldn't normally pick up a book described as "Scarface meets Moby Dick," but since I was a big fan of MAKE YOUR HOME AMONG STRANGERS, I'm going to check this out. Crucet's first novel followed a first generation college student in a story that was compellingly told but I guess pretty conventional. Nothing sounds conventional about the story of a wannabe gangster on a quest involving a possibly magical killer whale. It promises to be a wild ride.

ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST by Xochitl Gonzalez (March 5): As it happens, one protagonist of Gonzalez's second novel is a first generation college student (at Brown University). The other is an artist who died dramatically in the previous decade, and the student investigates her story. I admired the complexity and layered conflicts of OLGA DIES DREAMING, and this sounds like an even more intriguing setup.

MEMORY PIECE by Lisa Ko (March 19) follows three friends from the 1980s into the 2040s. That's a premise I'd be drawn to regardless, and I'm especially excited it's been written by the author of THE LEAVERS. I was so impressed by the riveting plot and deft handling of family secrets in that novel, and I can't wait to read more.

January 18, 2024

2023 By The Books

I had a great reading year in 2023. Happily, reflecting on my past year of reading with enthusiasm is the norm for me, because I'm fortunate to get the chance to read most days, I always have a book or two in progress, and there are so many great books to choose from. I only wish I was a faster reader so I could enjoy even more of those books! It's possible I'm finally getting a little speedier, though: In 2023, I read an almost unprecedented 51 books. (Or maybe I simply spent more time reading at the expense of more writing progress.)

Last year, a couple of things changed my reading habits some, especially by leading me to more books that weren't published in the past year or two. I joined a book club for the first time, and every club selection was from at least five years ago, some from decades back. The book club has been a good experience in reading even more widely than I already do, and I've read a number of books I wouldn't have picked up on my own, including some memoirs. (I'm still not much of a fan of memoir.)

The other reading innovation of 2023 is that I borrowed far more ebooks from my public library than in previous years. I've used the Libby system sporadically for a while, but sometime in 2022 I started relying on it more, and last year I took full advantage. I sometimes get on waiting lists for brand new books, but I especially use Libby availability as a prompt to check out books from past years that I never got around to. (If you read ebooks or audiobooks and aren't already using Libby, jump on this bandwagon!)

Between the overlapping changes of book club and library borrowing, I read a higher percentage than usual of books that weren't new releases. A recurring pattern lately has been that around two-thirds of the books I read were published that year, and in 2023, it was less than half. Still, around two-thirds were from 2020 or later, and except for book club picks, I mostly stuck to books less than ten years old, so it's not as though I've significantly veered from my preference for contemporary reading. (A recency bias, if you will.)

That habit is continuing to work out well for me, because almost all my favorite books of 2023 were published in 2023, and the oldest is from 2019. But beyond that similarity, my favorites are wide-ranging, spanning a variety of genres, topics, and styles. I've wrangled them into some groupings below. (Find my full review of each book at the linked monthly reading recap.)

I didn't expect my top picks to include so many mystery and crime stories, since I don't think of myself as gravitating toward those genres. None of these are exactly prototypical examples, and that's consistent with my attraction to stories that resist categorization, subvert formulas, and do multiple things well. HAPPINESS FALLS by Angie Kim (September) is a gripping, twisting mystery and also a portrait of a family in the midst of multiple crises. It starts as a missing person story, and then the mystery widens as the family members realize how much they don't know about each other, particularly the child who is unable to speak. In I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU by Rebecca Makkai (June), the characters use a true crime podcast to re-examine the case of a student murdered at their boarding school decades ago. As the investigation unfolds, former classmates grapple with the impact of the events, the role of memory and nostalgia, and the ethics of turning crime into entertainment. Both these mystery novels impressed me with how realistic the scenarios stayed even as the plots satisfyingly thickened.

The crime novels on my list offer a fascinating look inside the criminal world of a specific place and time. In AGE OF VICE by Deepti Kapoor (January), readers follow the central character from an impoverished childhood to a comfortable life serving a powerful, corrupt family in early 2000s Delhi. CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead (August), the second book of a series, portrays the shady side of Harlem in the 1970s, featuring a cast of thieves, gangsters, and dirty cops. Both books bring their settings to life with the help of multiple character viewpoints and masterful prose.

Specificity of place and time is a common feature of many of my 2023 favorites. THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith (December) is the most firmly historical fiction, combining details of real historical people and events with wonderfully imagined characterizations. The story covers much of the 1800s, focusing especially on prominent London literary figures and a bizarre court case about a disputed inheritance (so it's a crime story as well!). In MOBILITY by Lydia Kiesling (August), we meet an American teenager in 1998 Azerbaijan and follow her into adulthood and around the world on a personal coming-of-age journey that also tracks the climate change narrative we're all a part of. ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT by Sarah Thankam Mathews (April) doesn't hinge quite as much on setting, but the main character's life is shaped by graduating into the recession of the late 2000s. She finds a job in a city where she doesn't know anybody, and in the course of the layered novel, she fulfills her longing for friendship and love. Nuanced character dynamics are prominent in all three of these books, and really in all my favorites.

The novels I've discussed so far are grounded in reality. Now I'll turn to my favorites in the speculative genres, but even some of these draw heavily on real world places and times. I read two excellent horror novels that are also historical. LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle (April) depicts solitary women homesteading in 1915 Montana, a landscape that's brutal and dangerous enough before the story's horror element emerges. How the women come together to survive frontier life is as much a part of the story as how they handle the mysterious contents of the main character's steamer trunk. Similarly, the threats faced by characters in THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS by Matt Ruff (March) are sometimes supernatural but just as often a consequence of being Black in 1957 America. (This is another second book in a series.)

Setting plays a big role in the delightfully original LIGHT FROM UNCOMMON STARS by Ryka Aoki (April). Amid the Asian communities (and cuisines!) of San Gabriel Valley, a trans violin prodigy is taken in by a teacher who made a deal with a devil, the two befriend a family of extraterrestrials who run a donut shop, and joyful hijinks ensue. By contrast, time is the critical element in RECURSION by Blake Crouch (December). That's because it's a time travel thriller where characters jump between alternate timelines in a clever and intricate plot that made my brain hurt. It might seem a bit forced that I've grouped these two wildly different books together this way, but what they share is that both surprised me by how emotionally affecting I found them.

My final three picks leave the real world entirely, since they're all science fiction of the space opera variety. The distinctive protagonists of TRANSLATION STATE by Ann Leckie (June) come from different planets and cultures, but a search for a fugitive translator brings them together with repercussions that may affect diplomacy between all sentient species. In MERU by S.B. Divya (February), most humans are confined to Earth while their improved genetic descendants roam the stars without needing protection from the vacuum of space. When the human main character is permitted to explore a distant planet, she travels as a passenger inside the body of one of the post-human characters. The robot narrator of SYSTEM COLLAPSE by Martha Wells (November) hates spending time on planets and wishes its humans would finish up their mission and get off this particularly unpleasant one before even more goes wrong. The first of these wonderful novels is set in a larger fictional universe but can be read as a standalone, the second is the promising start of a new series, and the third is the latest installment of an ongoing series. All involve intricate and imaginative worldbuilding, exciting plots, and complex characters.

I've already started 2024 with some great reading, and I can't wait to read on!