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It's time for another cranky book review!

Christmas Ever After

Pride and Prejudice 2: More Pride, More Prejudice.

So let's talk about sequels to classic novels and why people should stop writing them.

BECAUSE THEY SUCK, THAT'S WHY.

Wait. Wait. Maybe that's unfair. I'm suere that there are SOME sequels to classic novels written in modern times that are very good. I don't think I've read any, but I'm sure they exist.

But....

Still, stop it.

Jane Austen's voice was unmistakable and it has become often imitated and never duplicated. That doesn't seem to stop people from trying. This year is the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice and the stream of sequels seems to be never ending. The latest is titled Longbourn, by Jo Baker, and apparently details the life of the servants that worked for the Bennett family.

Now. We come to my problem. Longbourn may be an excellent novel (although I'll point out here that in every copy of Pride and Prejudice I own...I won't admit how many...there's an e on the end of Longbourne) but IF it is an excellent novel, why can't it stand alone? Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, these stories deal with the life of both the upper class and the underclass and their popularity is legend. So why does Jo Baker need her novel to piggy back on Jane Austen's? Can it not stand alone? Is it merely cheap marketing? This is the core of my issue. Can you not write a novel that stands on its own? Are your characters too weak? Is your premise shaky?

I find this so annoying because I feel like it prejudges authors for me. I look at these books and say "why could I read someone else's take on Pride and Prejudice when I could just read Pride and Prejudice?" Am I missing some great authors? I might be...but if they're so great...why aren't they writing their own books instead of Jane Austen's?

Rank and file.

So, as has been long established, I am a cranky person. And I have been ACCUSED of being especially cranky when it comes to my book reviews. This is a totally harsh and unfair accusation, y'all. My rating system is totally based on merit and most books just don't merit that much.

So let's break it down, are you an author angry about your rating? Are you a crazy fan of an author angry about your rating? Here's how you got there.

If you got a one:
You have offended me. Your book was bad, and you should feel bad.

If you got a two:
Your book was not very good. Did it need an editor? Did it have a hard to follow plot? Maybe it was just painfully mediocre. Maybe it was almost good but went horribly astray. Either way, unlike with the people who get ones, I am not poking voodoo dolls and hoping your career fails.

If you got a three:
Now here's where I feel like there is a flaw in the goodreads.com ranking system. Most of my books are rated threes, and I wish goodreads would fine tune their system to allow for half stars. Because my threes cover a pretty wide range, and this is also wher eI end up comparing authors to themselves. Jim Butcher has become one of my favorite authors, but not all of his books are equally good. An okay Jim Butcher book might rank the same as a really good Jayne Ann Krentz book. To me it's the difference between going out to a fantastic restaurant and getting a good meal and a meal from McDonalds. The so so meal from the Melting Pot is still amazing, but Mcdonalds satisfies in a different way. A so so book from a great author is still great, but a great book from a consistent author may never break into my top books, but I still enjoy them and go back to them time and again. This is where goodreads faisl me a little bit. If I could give half stars, I would. If the number range was broader it would have more flexibility. This is why so many books end up as a three.

If you got a four:

I really really liked it and will certianly recommend it and wouldn't rule out rereading it in the future.

If you got a five:

I have probably already read this book six times or sixteen). It is a childhood favorite I return to constantly. It is a book that changed my life, changed my reading habits, introduced me to something I had never thought of. I recommend this book to everyoen and then follow them around asking them what they're waiting for. I have contemplated proposing to the author.Have you looked at my goodreads? You should. Sort them by rating. Read the 5s. Let me know what you think. Hurry up.

And that's it...that's why I rank books the way I do. I am a terribly cranky person and I hold books to a high standard. I only have so much time and I want the books I read to feel like they are worth it. When they aren't? Yes.Absolutely I will get cranky. Some of the books I love are great. Some of them are terrible, but for whatever reason, they clicked for me, and that's what I'm always looking for.

(and check out my goodreads profile here: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/124964-carrie)

Second Verse, Same as the first

So today I added Margaret Sanger to the list of potential topics to have freshman prove their research skills on. She was a fascinating woman, who did a lot for the cause of allowing woman to control their own bodies, which in turn made a huge difference in the overall ability of women to move in society at large. If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to read My Fight for Birth Control, by Sanger. Then you can be as cranky as I am when you realize how many of the arguments she faced are still being presented to stop women from having control of their bodies and their lives TODAY.

Age is just a number

One of the things that makes me SUPER CRANKY is books that are described as "coming of age" novels. There is no faster way to kill my interest.

Reviewers, you are ON NOTICE

Let’s talk about bad book reviews. And I don’t mean book reviews in which the books get trashed and the author is curled up in a corner crying. Let’s face it, some books suck, and those authors have it coming.

No, I am talking about when the reviews themselves are ridiculously awful. Some publications consistently have ridiculously over the top reviews. I subscribe to a mailing list that sends me one review a day culled from various sources. When I see that they have sent me a review from Rain Taxi I automatically delete it, because I know the odds of me actually learning anything about the book being reviewed are slim to none. This is bad and wrong. 

If I have read through your excessively long review, and come out with no idea what the book is about, but a clear idea that you are a pompous idiot, the review was a failure.

If, instead of being concise and honest, you have danced around the  actual topic of the book for five paragraphs and leave me thinking “well, the book sounds kind of interesting” only to find that when I read the book, what you meant by “an intense exploration of X” you meant “five hundred dull as dirty pages on X”? Your review has failed. 

If your review meanders through an entire genre and  I give up before you even get to the part where you talk about the book you are supposedly reviewing, if you ever do get there,  your review has failed. 

If you use some over the top language that I am unable to decide if you are saying the book is good or bad (This book was a visceral experience. Like a punch to the stomach. Like seeing your first love walk by with another woman while you sip an espresso in a small café in Paris.) your review has failed. I don’t care if it made you think of the guy you had a crush on in high school, because that doesn’t tell me anything about the book. For all I know, thinking about that guy fills you with a sense of dread and nausea and what you are really telling me is that this book is very, very bad. JUST SAY THAT THE BOOK IS VERY, VERY BAD.

Be blunt! Be honest! Be concise! Be realistic about the fact that people are reading these book reviews because they want to know about the books not because they want to know what ACT words you can still remember. So next time, professional reviewers, when you sit down at your computer, please stick your florid, overwrought prose where the sun don’t shine, and just let me know if I need to tell the author to do the same.

I wonder as I wander

So today for Reverb10 I'm supposed to talk about how I cultivate wonder in my life. And it's a very sparkly, rose colored glasses idea but is it something I do?

I don't think so. Not really. I don't wake up in the morning and gaze in awe at the possibilities of the new day. If I was that kind of person, this wouldn't be a crankyblog, let's be honest. I guess I find wonder in my faith and the belief that God is still working in the world, but I don't know how I cultivate that, other than to be a Sunday school teacher.

I do think I cultivate a slightly different definition of wonder. I WONDER about a lot of things. I like to explore the world and learn new things. To find new ideas, new knowledge, and learn things that it never even occurred to be to think about. As a result, my list of books I've read and want to read looks a little...like I have some kind of split personality. hah.

Maybe I find wonder in finding new things to wonder about.

Black Friday

Actually, today turned out to be an excellent day and I got a mad deal  ($150 smackers!) on a KitchenAid stand mixer, which is basically the best thing that could happen short of the man of my dreams showing up on my porch to propose. For the record, if that was to happen, I would have preferred the mixer to a ring. And everyone was civil to everyone! There was one lady ahead of me in line who was doing a lot of the sighing and eye rolling to which I saw, clearly, I am dealing with an amateur here because I spend that much time in line on a Monday  night trying to buy milk.

But today what's making me cranky is the "best of" 2010 book list by the New York Times. The fiction list sounds SO boring. It's all coming of age and family drama and...you know what's interesting to me? Other than Jonathan Franzen, they aren't books people seem to be talking about. I'm really tired of being told that the best books are ones that sound like I'm supposed read them, rather than ones that sound actually interesting. Best of what? Not the bestsellers, I assume. Best of books that reference family drama and "coming of age"? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Also, people, 3-D movies. Sure, it's got some cool effects, but is that really necessary? The glasses are heavy, and uncomfortable, and not so hot over the glasses you're already wearing when you are nearsighted as crap. MEH!

But on a non-cranky note, Tangled was totally cute. Some of the best music Disney has had in a movie in a while.

Hey, not to be all Seinfeld about it, but what IS the deal with phonics? do they still teach that in school? And isn't it weird that they don't spell phonics phonetically?

So, people who don't read confuse me AND make me cranky. "I don't like books." What is that? That's like saying "I don't like music" or "I don't like movies." What? How can you just not like books? There are so many different kinds of books! You just...don't like them all? You have no interest? What is that? I wish someone would explain it to me, because it makes no sense.

 How many books are there in the world? How can you read one or two in high school and then just assume there is nothing out there you would like to read? That makes no sense. The Scarlet Letter sucked, people. Don't write off literature at large because Hawthorne had issues, ok? Moby Dick is like an extra 200 pages long because Melville felt compelled to write extensively about rope tying, and teenagers who needed to slam the door and yell "you don't understand me" are probably the only people who really loved Catcher in the Rye.  So step away from your high school reading list and read something awesome, read something trashy, read something that sounds like V.C. Andrews had a baby with Stephanie Meyers (they could call it ReDawnsme), but for the love of Pete, read! Go to the library, ask for a recommendation. They actually teach us to do this in library school. It's called Reader's Advisory. We have mad book skills! Get help, get a library card, get a book, get a clue.

The real beauty is between the covers.

I know I just posted but the cranky is burning within!

BOOKS ARE NOT DECORATIONS. Books ARE beautiful. And they smell good. The design of old books, the soft leather covers on some, the colorful boards of others are undoubtedly decorative. I have shelves and shelves full of the books and I consider them gorgeous.

That said. Books are for reading. If you are one of those people who sells, or heaven forbid, BUYS books by the foot, I would like to punch you. I just saw a listing on etsy for a "Dicken's book stack" that they described as "shabby chic" which is stupid in almost too many ways to count.

To choose a used book, I might choose the prettiest cover. This is true. But I would not buy a stack of Dicken's books because they are pretty unless they were also books I wanted to read. There are millions and millions of books in the world. Who has time to decorate with books they don't care to read? Who wants to keep a stack of books tied together with ribbon? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?

I own a truly lovely copy of Hiawatha. It's smalller than average, just about the size of my palm. It's fat and colorful and altogether charming. I do not have it on display, and the only time other people have seen it is when I have taken it somewhere to read because it is the perfect size to fit into my bag.

Buy books to read them. But buying them to fill a space? You'd be better off to have left the shelves as empty as your head apparently is.

Oooooh. I'm going to be SO CRANKY...in the morning. When I'm not so sleepy. Hee.

However, a brief cranky moment. Today I went to a book fair and two of the major authors did not show up. No reason is given on either author's website for their absence (although one author's facebook mentions a reason that is the subject to a rant all its own). This makes me soooooooooooooo cranky. People traveled to see you. People wanted to see you. You  clearly agreed to be a featured author and were in all the advance advertising, and you can't even be bothered to so much as share an explanation? Way to be dismissive and rude.