The thing I always think about first, when someone mentions e-books or audiobooks, is convenience. It's easier to carry around a kindle etc than a whole bunch of books. It's easier to read a book when you can switch up the formatting to the way you like it best. It's easier to log in and download a new book than going out and buying or borrowing one. It's more convenient to just pop on an audio book and let the story play as you drive or go for a jog or wash the dishes or whatever else requires your hands but not your mind.
In regards to Reader Advisory and recommending books to people there is also something to be said for recommending book without having to deal with the preconceived notions tied in with cover and book design. Many different genres have distinctive cover styles. Just by glancing at the front of a book I can, fairly accurately, tell whether a book is a romance, a mystery, Scifi, fantasy, a popular suspense title, etc. Even within a given genre there are different tropes for cover art. There are certain fantasy books that I can tell just from the cover that I won't enjoy, because I know X-type stories get X-type of covers. I know I, and plenty of other people, get into reading ruts and it's easy to get boxed in by book cover assumptions. Or page number. Or size and design of the book. By taking away those properties it becomes harder to stay in that exact rut you've been in. It also becomes easier to sell someone on a new book if they don't come at it prejudging because of visual aspects.
That being said, there are some drawbacks to these formats. Books don't have to be charged. You can't corrupt a book file, crack its screen, or accidentally delete a book. Also, when reading a print book your hands and mind are occupied with that activity. Reading electronically, for me at least, always has the temptation to go... check my email, scroll down Tumblr, watch a kitten video, etc. There are too many other options. Listening to audio books are even worse. Not only does it take me a lot longer, to listen to a book that to read one , but without the visual aspect of reading my likelihood of getting distracted from the story is almost a certainty. By switching to a less traditional format I lose the ability to do justice to the story.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Fantasy Annotation
Author: Hilari Bell
Title: The Goblin Wood
Genre: Fantasy
Publication Date: 2003
Number of Pages: 371
Plot Summary: When the religious run government turns against the lesser magic workers 12 year old Makenna is forced to watch her mother, a hegewitch, drown at the hands of their fellow villagers. Barely escaping into the woods, she encounters and teams up with the Goblins, becoming their General as they take the war to the humans. Years pass and the government views her as a threat, so they send a war-trained knight to kill her.
Subject Headings:
Witches
Knights and Knighthood
Goblins
Magic
Persecution
Appeal:
World Building
Intricate Plot
Fast-paced
Suspenseful
Similar Authors and Works:
A Hat Full of Sky - by: Terry Prachett
The Gift - by: James Patterson
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Midterm Booktalks
Nothing makes me quite as panicked and anxious as public speaking. Lots of practice has given me some kind of control over it, but I don't go into a presentation without a plan. To that end I needed to know exactly who my audience was and why I was giving this booktalk. So I invented a scenario. Then I designed a script and book descriptions for the people I was talking to. If I was talking to, say, middle schoolers, I would have written something completely different. Because this would have been a more formal talk I would either have memorized my script completely (which I didn't have time for in this instance) or used noted cards. In a more relaxed setting, as long as I was talking about books I had personally (and recently) read I would be more willing to wing it.
Super thanks to my fiance Alex for playing camera man all night. He only laughed at me a little.
Super thanks to my fiance Alex for playing camera man all night. He only laughed at me a little.
Women's Lives and Relationships (Classic) Annotation - Little Women
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Title: Little Women
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Lives and Relationships
Publication Date: 1968/1969
Number of Pages: 512
Geographical Setting: New England
Time Period: The second half of the 19th century
Series: Book 1 of the Little Women series
Plot Summary: Little Women is a young woman's answer to the typical coming of age story. It revolves around the lives of four
sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, and is set during the American Civil War. With the absence of their father, who is away serving as a minister to the troops, they all struggle to figure out who they are and how they fit into their family. Gently supported by their mother, Marmee, they struggle to grow up as they try to make ends meet. Their struggles and adventures are helped along by their kind and wealthy neighbor, Mr. Laurence, and his high spirited
grandson Laurie.
Subject Headings:
March Family
Nineteenth Century
Sisters/young women/girls --New England -- History -- 19th century
Appeal:
Character Driven
Family Saga
Feel-good
Moving
Similar Authors and Works:
Little Women is book 1 out of 4 and all the rest are well worth reading. In order they are:
- Good Wives
- Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys
- Jo's Boys: and how they turned out
- The Penderwicks - Jeanne Birdsall -- While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.
- Dragons of Silk - Laurence Yep -- The last book in a series, this book tells the story of four generations of Chinese and Chinese-American girls that are all bound together by the family tradition of raising silkworms.
- The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew - Margaret Sidney -- Book 1 in a series, it tells the story of the widowed Mrs. Peppers and her five children. The book follows the struggles they face as they try to keep fed and clothed, etc, but also the great love they have for each other as a family. Any of the books in this series would be a great read-alike
On a totally different note, however, there was something I noticed when rereading this book as a fully grown adult with other concerns besides simply if I like the story and characters or not. In a lot of ways that my fantasy and SciFi books are not, this book is easy to read. It's relaxing. Because I don't have to sit here and wonder if this novel is going to pass the Bechdel Test. I don't have to take a second and cringe because the main female character has just done something completely stereotypical and dumb because OF COURSE the main male character has to be allowed to save her dramatically at least once. How else is she supposed to go from hating him to falling in love with him? Honestly, Women's Lives and Relationships is a genre I kind of wish didn't exist because I wish it didn't need to exist. Because it makes it feel like, well if all the women's stories are in this genre, then all of the other genres are mostly going to be men's stories and that sucks.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
SciFi Annotation - Steelheart
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Title: Steelheart
Genre: Science Fiction
Publication Date: September 2013
Number of Pages: 400
Geographical Setting: Chicago
Time Period: Modern setting, slightly in the future
Series: Book 1 of a projected "Reckoners" series
Plot Summary: More than a decade ago, a mysterious event known as Calamity created
Epics—powerful beings straight out of the comics, complete with both
incredible abilities (invulnerability, illusion, transmutation) and
silly weaknesses (smoke, UV light, being attacked by someone exactly 37
years old). Thus far, the Epics appear to be wholly corrupt, with
villains rising up to subjugate humans and take over the world. David’s
father was killed by a ruthless Epic named Steelheart, and David, now
18, has waited 10 years for revenge, certain that he holds the key to
Steelheart’s weakness. Hooking up with a ragtag group of rebel
Epic-killers, David and crew knock off Steelheart’s subordinates and
lure him out. Although readers may not be surprised at the twists that
arise, the near-constant action, Sanderson’s whiz-bang imaginings, and a
fully realized sense of danger (the brutal opening scene alone will
hook many) make this an absolute page-turner. (Publishers Weekly, vol 260, issue 28, p)
Subject Headings:
Superhuman abilities
Coming of age
Dystopias
Revenge
Teenage boys
Imaginary wars and battles
Appeal:
Fast-paced
Compelling
Suspenseful
Action packed
Intricate world-building
Similar Authors and Works:
- Subject Seven - by James A Moore : Subject Seven--the dangerous alter-ego living inside a teenage boy--has escaped the government lab in which he was created in order to seek out others like him and build an army capable of destroying their creators.
- Little Brother - by Cory Doctorow :Computer hacker Marcus spends most of his time outwitting school surveillance, until the day that San Francisco is bombed by terrorists -- and he and his friends are arrested and brutally interrogated for days. When they release Marcus, the authorities threaten to come for him again if he breathes a word about his ordeal; meanwhile, America has become a police state where everyone is suspect. For Marcus, the only option left is to take down the power-crazed Department of Homeland Security with an underground online revolution.
- The Second Angel - by Phillip Kerr : In the year 2069, plagues and climatic changes have wreaked havoc on the world, and a new virus that can only be cured by an infusion of uninfected blood runs rampant, with the moon housing America's federal reserve of the priceless commodity.
- Blackout - by Robison E Wells : A mysterious virus is spreading through America, infecting teenagers with incredible powers--and a group of four teens are about to find their lives intertwined in a web of danger and catastrophic destruction
Other notes: I am, and will always be, extremely biased toward Brandon Sanderson. He is one of my favorite fantasy authors and has tremendous skill in that arena. However, this book is quite a departure from his other works. It is pure science fiction. It reads like a comic book in novel form. It is simpler than, for example, Elantris or his Mistborn trilogy. But that isn't to say that it is any less of a quality book. When I say simpler, I mean easier to read. Aimed for a slightly younger audience, or at least accessible to a slightly younger audience than some of his other works. The world he creates is just as intricate. The plot, while more straight forward than the others he has written, has enough twists and turns to keep the reader enthralled til the last page. (Then, if you're lucky like me, you get to read a bonus version of the first chapter with comments and notes included from Sanderson himself.)This would be a great book for anyone to read, but I would absolutely recommend it for those middle and high school reluctant readers. Or that kid who only reads his comic books and manga. With its comic book feel it would be a great transitional tool to wield.
Prompt 7 - Book Controversies
The book controversy I found most intriguing was the issue surrounding Gunter Grass. Unlike the scandal of other fake memoirs, such as "A Million Little Pieces", Grass doesn't make up fake truths about himself in his books. Instead, Grass leaves a key piece of information out. During World War II Grass spent some time as a member of the SS. But the problem wasn't that he hid it in his memoir "Peeling the Onion". The problem was that he spent about 60 years after the war publishing books and making waves in the political world without mentioning that little fact.
Now, I'm not going to touch the content of Grass's secret, as that is a whole other type of discussion. Who Grass is as a person, how people should view him, how they should view his political activism is a conversation that could fill any number of blog posts. But beyond that, in terms of the literature I think there's two very different things to consider.
The first and foremost is that, when writing a chronicle of his life, Grass told the truth, at least as far as we know. The great revelation was in the book, not discovered some time later like with other memoir issues (e.g. A Million Little Pieces). Whether you agree or disagree with who Grass is, whether you choose to buy the book or not, is up to each reader individually. But what you see is what you get for the content, just like with any other memoir.
The second thing to consider is the rest of his body of work. But the one thing people need to remember, is that the author is not his characters. I see this kind of argument a lot. "How can you like that book? It was written by X-author, who is a terrible person." or "How could Y author, who is such a big feminist, write a character like that?" And every time it boils down to, the author is not their characters. Unless you want to live in a world that contains no fiction at all you have to allow for that distinction.
In the end, in this situation, the decision is as it ever was. You either buy the book or you don't. You either know everything about the author or you don't. In times past, before we became so celebrity focused there was a pretty big chance most of the readers of a given book didn't know anything about the authors they read. The work stood on its own. Maybe it was better that way.
Now, I'm not going to touch the content of Grass's secret, as that is a whole other type of discussion. Who Grass is as a person, how people should view him, how they should view his political activism is a conversation that could fill any number of blog posts. But beyond that, in terms of the literature I think there's two very different things to consider.
The first and foremost is that, when writing a chronicle of his life, Grass told the truth, at least as far as we know. The great revelation was in the book, not discovered some time later like with other memoir issues (e.g. A Million Little Pieces). Whether you agree or disagree with who Grass is, whether you choose to buy the book or not, is up to each reader individually. But what you see is what you get for the content, just like with any other memoir.
The second thing to consider is the rest of his body of work. But the one thing people need to remember, is that the author is not his characters. I see this kind of argument a lot. "How can you like that book? It was written by X-author, who is a terrible person." or "How could Y author, who is such a big feminist, write a character like that?" And every time it boils down to, the author is not their characters. Unless you want to live in a world that contains no fiction at all you have to allow for that distinction.
In the end, in this situation, the decision is as it ever was. You either buy the book or you don't. You either know everything about the author or you don't. In times past, before we became so celebrity focused there was a pretty big chance most of the readers of a given book didn't know anything about the authors they read. The work stood on its own. Maybe it was better that way.
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