Posted on by seasonsshadow

Opinion: New York Times Bestseller Achievement Does Not Promise a Good Read

Maybe I’m old and getting grumpier, or maybe the world I live in is truly getting sneakier and less whimsical. I remember times when I would go to the bookstore and be drawn in by things like “#1 New York Times Bestseller!” written on the cover. However, it wasn’t until recently that I learned exactly how one gets on the New York Times Bestseller list. If you’re like me and were living in the land of assumptions, let me lay it out for you.

The New York Times takes in information from certain vendors both brick-and-mortar and digital. Each week, it’s essentially a popularity contest of sales – Who in which genres sold the most copies that week, as reported by the vendors who report to the New York Times (which will be abbreviated to NYT moving forward in this opinion piece). There are different parameters for digital media and ebooks, but the general idea is the same.

When I found out that not all bulk sales were immediately discounted for this contest, I became a little disillusioned. Now, MOST bulk sales are discounted, but not ALL OF THEM.

The next thing I found out was that there is no criteria for the content of the book, just the parameters of genre. The NYT Best Reviewed list is something else entirely.

Think about that for a minute. If someone wrote a book, marketed it as fiction, wrote 300 pages of paragraphs filled with sentences like “And then I saw”, “And then I went”, and “And then I thought” over and over and over, and 10,000 people bought it because they thought it was funny… that would make it on the list. The book could be written as though dictated by a child in their rambling story phase, with many grammar and spelling errors, but as long as it is reported as selling well, then it makes it on the list.

What started me on this whole rabbit hole was listening to an opinion piece about Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals. Now, the events that sparked the YouTube video I was listening to happened back in 2017, so it is by no means new news. However, if you live under a rock like I do, you may have missed it. If that’s the case, allow me to paraphrase it for you.

Handbook for Mortals upstaged The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas on the NYT Bestseller list. Position #1. It was widely unknown by the online reading community prior to this. The displacement sparked controversy because it was thought Lani Sarem bought her way to the top of the list for her debut novel.

Before I looked into this more, I thought that had to be an obnoxious and very well-coordinated effort on the part of the author and the author’s friends to go and buy at least 5,000 individual copies of this book over the period of one week.

Silly me, there are companies to do that for you!

Companies like Result Source Inc. If you go to their website, which it blew my mind to find out was still active, you can submit your contact information. The entire thing has been stripped down to a simple “contact us” link. Probably because of the unwanted attention scamming a bestseller list got them.

Now, this is not the first time a book has been flat out removed from the NTY Bestseller list, but in my opinion, it is certainly the most interesting.

I wish I could say that there was a source of reviews I trusted. Goodreads was a promising effort, but the amount of 1-star review bombing that’s happening there based on the author’s behaviour or opinions. Can we please implement a 2-tiered system? This author gets 1-star because of reasons X,Y, and Z. Their book, A Tale of Mischief, 5 stars. Amazing. This tells me that I might have a good time if I find this book at a used bookstore, but not to order from the author themselves, or from a standard bookstore.

What’s your opinion on good books written by questionable people? I’d love to know in the comments!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

What’s in a Holiday?

Whether you are writing something that takes place in our world or a world you’ve made up yourself, likely you’ll at least be mentioning some kind of holiday. Maybe it’s a feast day, a civic holiday, a festival, or a ceremony to honour the dead. Maybe you’re expected to spend it with your family, with your friends, or with your neighbours. Is there food involved? Do you bring some with you, or are you expected to fast? There are so many facets to holidays that I think it’s always worth thinking about the little pieces that go into making up a holiday, and how you can utilize real-word knowledge to build believable celebrations for your own story.

Anyone can make a holiday – but how do you get yours observed?

Who has heard of National Talk Like a Pirate Day? How about National Love Your Pet Day? Now what about Valentine’s Day? And Easter? These are all called holidays, but they all have different functions. Easter, you may get offices and city workers getting one or two days off to observe Good Friday and Easter Monday. Valentine’s Day, people know when it is, it is widely recognized, but it is typically not taken off work (unless you have big plans). National Talk Like a Pirate Day is more obscure. Most people don’t know when it is, why it came about, or what exactly you’re supposed to do to celebrate it.

You can actually register a day as a national holiday of your choosing, but it means next to nothing without widespread knowledge about what the day is for, what you are supposed to do with it, and when it is.

Here in Canada, we recently phased in a new holiday. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

What is it for? To increase awareness of the First Nations children who did not return home from residential schools, and the ongoing and very real impact residential schools had on families. In Canada, the Gordon’s Indian Residential School remained open until 1996. I was 5 years old. This is not ancient history.

What are you supposed to do on this day? Well hopefully, you’ll attend some First Nations run events. Speeches. Reconciliation Ceremonies. Performances. Or maybe just look up an article about the history of abuses around you.

When is it? September 30th.

It took the Canadian government 2 years to phase in this holiday. Phase one was announcing the day as approved by the government giving the civil servants that day off, and encouraging events and demonstrations linked with the Every Child Matters movement. Phase two was to roll out the holiday as a civic holiday for salaried employees. It is now celebrated every year.

So. If you are making a holiday for your story, consider whether the government would approve it to be a civic holiday. If not, would there be any exceptions to that? How about backlash? Would the citizens work around this judgement, carrying out their celebrations in the evening when everyone had finished their daily duties? Or would they take it upon themselves to call in sick and celebrate anyway? In a capitalist and consumerist hell such as the one we currently live in, would they need to use their vacation to get the time off? Would this cause upset and dishonesty?

I’m not saying you should know the answers to all this. I’m just saying you should think about how a character REALLY FEELS about the holiday you mention, the holiday you create on a whim as an excuse to have a cool festival or a day off work. Holidays impact people’s emotions and mentalities regardless of who they are in the great machine that is society.

Why do we Celebrate the Days we do?

Do you live in a religious country? How many of your religious holidays are civic holidays? In Canada, there are two. Easter and Christmas. You still have to go to work and/or school on things like Ascension Day. What pushes a country to observe some religious holidays but not others? Why is it only Christian denomination holidays that are considered for civic holiday status here?

Well, Canada is (as of the 2021 census) 52% Christian or similar. That’s not a big majority, but it is still the largest of any singular other group. Besides. Those that don’t care about Easter (such as myself) can plug themselves into video games and thank the unrelated religious views for the extra day off.

At the end of the day, I can choose not to celebrate the holidays I don’t have any attachment to because our holidays are very centred around the family. Family events. Family dinners. Sure, some community events happen too, but there are rarely any social consequences for not appearing at gatherings. Not on a large scale anyway.

But what would happen if that wasn’t the case? What if it was a mandatory religious observation? What if they took attendance? What if there were very real and very severe consequences to skipping a holiday’s traditional activities?

Things to Consider When Making a Fake Holiday

What is the basis of the holiday? Is it purely a political observation? A religious observation? A seasonal festival? Something to do with your ancestors? The fertility of the land or people? Is celebration or observation restricted to a certain gender, race, religion, occupation, or class?

Is the holiday still celebrated in the spirit of the reason it was created? Are some of the older generations going to feel one way about the festival or holiday while the children feel another? Are there protests against it? Are there conflicting views about how to celebrate it? Does it cause a societal divide if certain characters are seen observing certain rituals or superstitions?

Does it matter to your character? Are they expected to be a part of it by their family or their peers? Would they prefer to stay at home and read or play video games while the world celebrates without them? Do they want to avoid certain people so they don’t have to explain for the millionth time why they’re not celebrating? Is it inconvenient because their favorite stores or attractions are closed?

Of course, the reader doesn’t need to explicitly know any of this. You don’t have to give them a background on the last 100 years of celebrations and a graph showing attendance. What it WILL do, is build up the environmental storytelling when your character navigates through the day, making comments that imply a world that lives on past the reader’s experience.

After all, you want to build a full world that the reader is eager to explore through the character, or you create a character that the reader is eager to explore through the story. And if you can manage both, you’ll be golden! These are the two most successful ways to retain a reader, and if your world lacks the depth created by social and societal interactions, that severely limits your avenues of interest.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Have You Heard the 2023 Word of the Year?

Rizz: Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness, this term is from the middle part of the word ‘charisma’, which is an unusual word formation pattern.

Oxford University Press

Okay. You know what? I’m not mad. There were a lot of contenders for the word of the year I would have been far more upset with. For example “Swiftie” was in the running. I don’t think that counts. It’s a nickname. Just like “Belieber” or “Blockheads”.

And I will never NOT be big mad that the 2015 word of the year was an EMOJI.

But rizz? It’s fun for a couple of reasons. First, it’s one of the few words where the shortened form is taken from the middle of the bigger word. The examples that Oxford University Press gives are “fridge” from the word “refrigerator” and the word “flu” from “influenza”.

The second reason I think it’s fun is that it’s similar to other slang words from the 1920’s or thereabouts. Razzmatazz was documented in and around 1917 and meant showy, or sparkle, or robust and enthusiastic. Razz appeared around the same time but also meant something completely different – to heckle someone or to give them a hard time.

Language is always evolving, and it’s interesting to see what happens as we move forward, especially with how things trend on social media and the internet. For those of you who have read 1984, do you remember the dictionary department? They were continuously working on making the dictionary smaller and smaller. Ignoring the fascist ideology behind their reasoning for doing so, I feel as though we are moving consistently in the opposite direction. Expanding our ability to understand and communicate with one another in a society that is progressing through movements and trends at break-neck speeds. Scary, but also interesting.

So tell me! Are there any words voted “Word of the Year” that angered you? Or are there slang words that have recently cropped up that just tickle you the right way? I’d love to know in the comments!

References
Posted on by seasonsshadow

When Can Distractions Help Us Focus?

While I am writing this, I am watching a show with my friend online. It means that I am going slowly, but it is also keeping me in one place to complete this post which I have been procrastinating for almost a week. Similarly, when I have book scenes to write, I jump into some related ambiance. If I am drawing or colouring then I load up the latest podcast from Morbid and listen to that.

At school, I caught all kinds of flack for “multitasking”. I was told that my attention span was short. I was told that I would do a better job if I just did one thing at a time and focused on that. I was told that I couldn’t possibly be retaining information from studying if I was also blasting punk rock into my ears.

Okay, maybe they were right about that last one, but that’s because I just wanted to sing all the songs and my textbook was really boring.

The average attention span for a single-factor task is about 8 seconds. Do you know what the average goldfish’s attention span is? 9 seconds.

Notice that I said a single-factor task. This would be something that stimulates your senses on a very basic level. Think of scrolling YouTube Shorts, or TikTok. Not mindfully looking for videos, but just letting the media come, one after the other. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to your interests, it doesn’t necessarily provide any information, but it does stimulate you visually. For a few seconds.

One more thing I want to touch on before I talk more about attention is why I put multitasking in quotation marks above.

Multitasking implies that you are actively attempting to accomplish more than one thing at a time. Please take note of the word ‘accomplish’ there.

Do I think I am accomplishing watching this show with my friend? Nope. It is on in the background, but I am more or less ignoring it while I write. I am accomplishing writing. I am not accomplishing active consumption of this show.

So then if this isn’t multitasking, what is it?

Selective attention is the ability to filter out stimuli that aren’t important in favour of stimuli that are important.

Part of the problem with attention spans is that there are SO many distractions available at the tips of our fingers. How many people have their phones around them at all times? How many different notification settings are there? Blinking lights, vibrations, sounds, little icons, screen activation, and the list goes on.

So when you have notifications coming at you, emails to check, noises coming from outside, maybe a pet distracting you, maybe a roommate or a child commanding your attention, it can be a lot. This is where the selective attention comes in. Get yourself a good pair of headphones. Find something that you can ignore. Put that thing on to intentionally ignore. While you are busy ignoring that thing, do your actual thing.

What’s the difference between this and multitasking? Multitasking you are doing more than one thing with the intention of making progress or consciously interacting with all the things you are doing. Selective attention is when you only anticipate making progress or being a conscious and mindful consumer of one thing, regardless of what else is happening. With our attention being pulled in many different ways, it’s super easy to interrupt your train of thought. Ping! An email. Bark! Your dog sees something outside. If you have one thing that is bigger, better, louder, and more forward than the other things, it drowns out all those little attention grabbers and distractions. Then you can commit much less effort to ignoring the one thing, and focus on your task.

Music without lyrics, ambient music mixers, shows you’ve seen before or don’t care about, podcasts that have hosts with nice voices, movies you’ve nearly memorized at this point, white noise, sensory videos for babies, and video game soundtracks are all great choices to actively ignore.

TL;DR – Multitasking is bullshit, but if you utilize one distraction to drown out the invasive attention-grabbing stimuli around you, and then actively ignore your selected distraction, you can conquer tasks easier.

I’d love to hear what kinds of things you do to help you focus! Let me know!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

A Sandwich by Any Other Name

Sandwich. Noun. A type of food where there are two or more pieces of bread (or a split roll, or other starch) with filling in between. Eaten as a light meal. Alternatively, it can be two structural elements that secure a low-strength core. Lastly, it can be an open-faced sandwich when there is only one piece of bread or starch, and ingredients are placed on top of it.

Sandwich. Verb. To insert or enclose something between two other things, typically of a different material, quality, or character from the bit being enclosed or inserted.

Nope, this is not a post on my opinions regarding whether pizza is an open-faced sandwich or vice versa. Neither is it a deep dive into the myths and legends of where the term originated. I’m starting this post with a definition of “sandwich” so it can lend some professionalism to the rant that follows. I want it to descend into madness with a shred of credibility.

This post is about constructive feedback/criticism and the term “compliment sandwich.”

When was the last time you had a delicious sandwich loaded with ham, swiss cheese, fancy pickles or preserves, and greens, and called it a “rye sandwich” because it was on rye bread? In the same vein, if you told someone you were having a rye sandwich for lunch, they would likely assume you were trying to be clever and were drinking alcohol instead of eating.

So why on earth do we call it a “compliment sandwich” when the thing in the middle is something that needs to be worked on, and the outside “sandwiching” components are compliments? To make this feedback tactic reflect its name, we would need to offer up an issue, a compliment, and another issue. Alternately, we could call it an “issue sandwich”… But who wants the boss to come down and tell them they have an “issue sandwich” to deliver? Sounds ominous in the same way a “knuckle sandwich” sounds ominous to a kid on the playground.

Personally, I feel as though this tactic was introduced because of bad bosses. They didn’t communicate with their employees unless there was an issue, and that breeds all kinds of resentment.

A long time ago, I worked for a large corporate company. As an employee, I never heard a peep from head office or the regional directors unless they were unhappy with something. When I was promoted, there was a weekly call with corporate. They, without fail, offered a compliment, gave us something to work on, then ended with another compliment.

Know what’s worse than knowing you’re getting a weekly issue to work on? Knowing that your boss is obligated to come up with something you can be complimented on. Compliments don’t mean much if the person giving the compliment is required to think of something good you are doing in order to deliver something they want you to change.

In my current position, feedback is a near-daily experience. I don’t mind it (usually). We’re all trying to create the best version of our writing possible for the game. Extra eyes for things like spelling and grammar, the validation that others think lines are funny or particularly appropriate, and even the comments requesting changes are all welcome and appreciated.

When your higher-ups are not required to give you a compliment and you get one anyway, it feels genuine. It feels earned. Even if it’s just a comment that says “haha” or “lol” you know you got it because your writing was actually funny, not because they had to single it out in order to provide you with something else they didn’t like.

Effective feedback will give you a path to follow. “I don’t like the way this is written, can it be funnier?” or “I see where you’re going with this, but I don’t think it works in this context. Can I see some alternate ideas?” or even “This doesn’t sound as romantic as it should.” Point one! Ham up the punchline! Point two! Come up with a couple different ideas! Point three! Make it cheesier/more romantic!

The higher-ups here are clear with WHY they don’t like something. This may be shocking, but most employees are not psychic. The employees in this scenario are given direction and provide lines and work that is closer aligned with the collective vision for the submission.

Doesn’t this sound like a win-win? Something that would reduce time waste as employees and employers alike are clear on their path forward?

So throw out that grody compliment sandwich, make an effort to tell people when you like something, and always be open to talking something out!

Let me know if you have any favourite deliveries for criticism or feedback! I’d love to hear people’s preferences!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Inspiration, Creativity, and Writing Prompts

One of the things my new job has given me is an appreciation for the use of writing prompts. Don’t get me wrong, I utilized this tool when I was bored or wanted to do a writing exercise, but I had never considered it useful beyond that. Now I write for 7 hours a day (more or less), 5 days a week, and I have been gifted with the revelation of how writing prompts can be a weaponized tool against stale characters, stale scenes, and writer’s block.

We’ve all heard the advice of “just get something down,” in one iteration or another, right? Using brackets when you’re stuck [Hero does something clever], throwing the general idea down in all caps “I can’t believe you think I’m a child! I’m SOMETHING THAT’S NOT THAT, and it’s time you recognized it!”, highlighting a section, flagging it with comments, whatever, just keep going. Sound advice, right?

As one popular meme says, “Well yes, but actually no.”

Returning to where I’ve left off in a section can be like arriving in the bedroom to find my coffee pot. Why is it there? What was I doing? What were my intentions with it?

This is to say, I feel like returning to a section I’ve left off to insert content can be choppy and ultimately confusing for me and the reader.

So! Weaponizing writing prompts. Have you ever seen those “642 things to write about” books? I’ve had one since 2016 (ish) and I picked it up in the situations I mentioned in my opening paragraph. When I wanted to do a writing exercise or was bored. Admittedly, these things didn’t happen often, so roll forward to 2023, and maybe 50 have been filled in?

My plan was to write 1 full page, back and front, every day. Without fail. No matter what. I would not go in any set order, I would just flip through until I found one I thought I could do and then do the page. I’d flip through again, and select a second page, for a total of one, back and front equivalent, page.

May 31, 2023. I FINALLY got the thing completed.

I learned a few things from it. One, this necessity of having to do a set number of writing prompts really raised my productivity. Two, my willingness to push the traditional script boundaries has not only been more prevalent but has been met with more acceptance. Three, I feel as though my wit has become a little faster, a little sharper.

Most of the prompts were fun, and I challenged myself creatively to fill in the space provided with each exercise. There were definitely ones I kept passing again and again because I just had no ideas.

For interest’s sake, the two that remained until the last day, the ones that I found most challenging and least inspiring were “Find a passage in your favourite novel. Re-tell it, using only one-syllable words.” & “You are suddenly unable to recall any words that are not proper nouns. Excuse yourself from a very formal dinner party without drawing much attention to this fact.”

So, even though some days it was a slog to come up with something I thought was good, I can say I recommend this exercise. If you’re not the kind of person who wants to go out and buy a book, take one of your thousand blank journals, and grab some prompts from the internet. My personal favourite is whoever runs the writing prompt Tumblr (now apparently available on facebook?) I’ve left the URL in my reference section.

If you are at all extroverted, then I recommend taking it one step further. Go to an improv class. Having to come up with and actually articulate ideas on the fly with other people providing input is a bit scary, but trust me, by the end of it, you will be a faster brainstormer. You will feel less stigmatized about throwing out ideas which you feel may or not be good at. Let others build off of you, and in turn, build off them. Learn different ways to approach lines of logic by paying close attention to the other participants and how people react to their ideas.

It’s worth your time, I promise.

If nothing else, it will make you a little more brave, socially. If you’re anything like me, every little bit helps.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

I Before E Except After C is a Joke

Many a day, I review things I write, or things I say, and think to myself “I’m so glad English is my first language.” Not because of the inherent advantage it gives me, but because honestly? It’s a sheer disaster of a language. I would not want to learn it, especially if my foundational language was something nice and orderly.

Teachers try and make it easier on us. They try and come up with fun little sayings to help students learn how to spell.

How many of you spell ‘beautiful’ by mentally saying “Bee-e-a-utiful”? Or ‘nauseous’ by mentally breaking it up into “Na-use-o-us” (‘No use of us’ in a Scottish accent)? How about ‘amateur’ as “A-mate-u-r” (A mate you are)?

One of the ‘fun’ rules teachers LOVED to pound into me as a kid was “i before e, except after c,” which, did you know there’s a second part? I didn’t. It ends with “or when sounding like ‘a’ as in neighbour and weigh,” which… I suppose, shortens the list of words that don’t follow the rule.

I will not lie, I sat here sounding out words when I discovered that. Science. Psy- ANCE? Sigh-Ance? Sss-iiiiiii-ence??? Weird. Wee-rd. Forfeit. Fore-fit. For-feet? Nope. Still writing this post.

Was it Terry Pratchett that said English is 4 languages in a trenchcoat?

Thieves. We’re all a bunch of dirty word-thieves. Thieving words from every language we come across. Which is funny to me, because Old English is the root of the problem with the i before e exceptions, so not only are we thieves, but we can’t even get our OWN garbage together. Now we have words like guru. Kindergarten. Cafe. Glitch. Patio. Ketchup. How are we supposed to keep a straight face when teaching people how to grammar in this Frankenstein’s Monster of a language?

Statistically, the odds are about 3 to 1 that an i comes before an e.

Why can’t we just say that?

Any kid that knows the word ‘ballet’, or is learning how to spell ‘hors d’oeuvre’ already knows words are a disaster, it will NOT surprise anyone to hear “if you’re unsure, do ‘ie’ as it is statistically more probable.” Except, obviously, worded in a way small humans would appreciate.

Why maintain the lie “i before e, except after c” is a rule? It messes with people. I have had a lot of arguments with other adults both as one and before I was one about this.

It’s believed that spelling bees are only done in English. I mean, take German and Japanese for example. German, if you can sound it out, you can spell it. Japanese has 3 different writing systems. One, is for foreign words – typically phonetic as per their language rules. Another is the general writing system. The last is Kanji, the complicated pictorials similar to or taken from Chinese. These can be difficult, but it’s not a spelling thing, it’s a word association thing.

All this to say, please, can we stop making up “rules” for kids to learn? Especially if they have more than like… 5 native exceptions?

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Book Review – March 23rd

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Hello friends! We have a theme! I also took a long time to decide if I was going to review THIS book! Now, let me back up. For those that have read my blog post about the books I would like to read this year (which can be found here), you may be looking at this post and your calendar. You are right, Memoirs of a Geisha was scheduled for May, not for March. The Master and Margarita was scheduled for March.

Yeah. About that.

Apparently, everyone and their dog wants to read that right now. When I searched for it, there were already TEN holds on it. My library system is pretty good, but they only have 2 copies of the damned thing. As of writing this, I am hold five of eleven, so there is some hope that I can have it by the end of May. In similar news, since I am skeptical that I will like many of the books on my list, I am not purchasing them.

This book kind of underlines why.

First, I want to address the lawsuits that surrounded the author, Arthur Golden, after the publication of this book. For those of you that don’t know, Geisha culture is a fairly tight-lipped affair, so speaking out about practices, norms, expectations, and events hasn’t been very widely approved of. Golden’s Memoirs certainly spurred a flurry of information and fact-finding, but I honestly can’t say it was for the right reasons.

One of the women that Golden interviewed for background had requested that her identity remain a secret. That was not respected as he thanked her in the acknowledgements, and although I’m sure the author meant well, caused a lot of problems for this woman. She received death threats and it caused a strain on her interpersonal relationships. Golden was sued for breach of contract and ended up settling out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Now that I’ve mentioned that, please buckle in for a not-very-friendly review.

Do you remember the book “A Million Little Pieces”? Do you remember how it was marketed as a memoir, but then a little while after, it came out that the author James Frey was making his story more dramatic so it had to be remarketed as general fiction and/or misery literature?

Memoirs felt a lot like that, but more… amateur. Like you know those fanfictions you wrote in high school, where you shamelessly self-inserted yourself into a story and your love interest of choice notices you for your *whatever trait you choose*? Your voice, your hair, your eyes, your singing, your height? Well, that’s sort of how this started. Everyone notices Sayuri’s eyes. They’re pale and unusual.

Now, I don’t typically mind this, because people are unusual! People have a lot of cool traits! There’s usually something of someone to look at and appreciate! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sucked into the story in the first few chapters. However, the moment Sayuri gets to Gion, everything goes downhill and the entire rest of the story made me increasingly more uncomfortable.

When I ranted to my partner about the plot, he summed it up really nicely by offering me “Sounds like it’s a whole book of terrible people making terrible choices.” It’s not ALL really that bad, but… I found myself unable to get much evidence to the contrary.

I typically try my best to read a book objectively. Just because I don’t like the plot, doesn’t mean that I think the book is bad. So why then, did this super popular book get such a low rating from me? I alluded to it in the paragraph talking about fanfiction. Arthur Golden has a degree in art history, in Japanese history, and one in English. He interviewed Mineko Iwasaka for her deep knowledge and involvement with the Geisha lifestyle.

AND YET. Some of the language and connections that he used and made felt like he had learned about certain aspects of life in an okiya and as a Geisha, and then just ran away with them. Some may argue “yes. That is what fiction is. You learn about something, or you speculate on something, and you write about it.” Which yes. Yes, that’s how that works. I’m not arguing that. What point I hope to slide in here is that when you are writing something on a topic that’s so tight-lipped, you have to be careful which face you decide to show in your writing. The book was written for an English audience, and how do you think people received it when he compares Geisha to escorts and prostitutes? He allegedly rewrote Memoirs three times, each from a different perspective, until he settled on Sayuri’s.

To Golden’s credit, Sayuri is believable as a narrator. Her personality is consistent throughout the book (almost to a fault) and you go through the book (mostly) being able to get behind her motivations. Not all authors can say that, especially when the author is writing a gender that he does not identify as, from a culture that he does not identify with.

What all this blather is trying to say is: Arthur Golden writes his book very well, on a topic that was done not very well.

It’s sort of like the uncanny valley. The book falls too much into ‘realism’ to be completely dismissed, but aspects of it are so squidgy and uncomfortable that it’s hard to completely settle into it.

All in all, take it as it is – fiction, and maybe watch the equally problematic cinematic release featuring Chinese actresses and save yourself some time.

References:

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Book Review – February 18th

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury – Introduction by Neil gaiman

Rating: 4 out of 5.

“Fire is bright and fire is clean”

Captain Beatty

Hello all. I want you to know that I took a long time to decide if I would review this book. Not because I didn’t know how I felt about it, but because I would have to tread carefully if I yelled my opinion out there for everyone to read. Even with my currently small audience. But hey. This is my blog. If there’s a place where I should be able to say what I think, it’s here.

It’s not controversial, it’s not hating on anything, it’s just a really relevant topic in today’s polarizing media.

For those who have NOT read Fahrenheit 451 or have not seen the movie, it is set in a dystopian future where it is illegal to read books. Instead of putting fires out, firemen are a squad of people who, when books are discovered in someone’s otherwise fireproof house, SET fires to get rid of the illegal material. As the story progresses, our protagonist expresses his solidifying dissent with the order of things. He makes a choice and receives consequences for this action. How’s that for talking about the book without giving any spoilers?

First, I want to comment that during the climax of the story, there is a very blatant social commentary about feeding people a conclusion that feels nice, and that they would expect to see rather than the truth of the situation.

** LOOKS AT SOCIETY ** DOES that sound familiar!?

Second, I want to comment on the REASON why books became illegal. This is the part where I know I need to be careful. So, in that vein, I am stating the reasons, according to Captain Beatty.

“Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters.”

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Page 55, Captain Beatty

“Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Page 57, Captain Beatty

** LOOKs at society harder** how about now!?

We are supposed to be able to identify when something is bad. Bad things exist. Do we WANT them to exist? No. Bad things, by definition, are bad. But like I said in my post previously, if you only ever get one sociopolitical, socioracial, or socioeconomic viewpoint, how is reading supposed to broaden your horizons? If all of our books are neat, and perfect, and comfortable, how will we know how to deal with things that are uncomfortable when they inevitably happen in real life?

If you have some suggestions on the above, I’m all ears. Except for “Ignore all bad things forever and strive for societal perfection by destroying everything in our past that was bad and uncomfortable.” This advice will be yeeted so far out the window you may not even see it.

You have no power here. I’m from Canada. Know what Canadians did to the indigenous population? Do you know anything about residential schools? If not, please know that Canada has TRIED the ‘lets pretend it never happened and we are good people’ angle. Know what it caused? Broken homes. Trauma. Abuse. Neglect.

Spoiler?

Pretending that everything is fine and nice and we’ve never done anything wrong in our life? Doesn’t work.

We need to understand our societal development and be comfortable enough in our own progression to read something from the past, or something that might be controversial, and say ‘Hey. Here is a viewpoint. Let’s discuss it.’

So why then, did this book only get four stars if I identified so strongly with the message? Even though it was published in the 1950’s and I’m saying it applies to us even SEVENTY YEARS LATER?

I felt the ending had a bit of a ‘rocks fall and everyone dies’ ending.

Yes, shh, it’s symbolic of the progression of society and Montag’s journey forward and transitions into new worldviews and perspectives. We still dropped a bomb on the town and killed everyone. Rocks fall. Everyone died. I didn’t like it. I thought it was abrupt. 4 stars.

If you’ve read this book, I’d love to know what you thought about it, and if you identified with it as strongly as I did. Alternately, I have NOT seen the movie, so I would be interested in learning what the tone was!

If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that is all a story is about, they are very definitely wrong.

Neil Gaiman
Posted on by seasonsshadow · 2 Comments

12 Books You HAVE to Read Before You Die!

Okay, okay. The title is clickbait. No one cares if you have read these twelve books, and nothing in your life will be harmed if you’ve never heard of these books. Except maybe April’s read – it depends on how many nerds you know and interact with.

So I don’t know about you, but I hated the time in high school when they would demand we read certain books. They said it was important. That the ideas in them were integral to our manifestation of self to think about. Be made aware about. Animal Farm, One Flew Over the Cucoo’s nest, the Catcher in the Rye, Life of Pi, and the Giver are the titles that stick out in my mind. And I’m going to add my thoughts as a grain of sand in an entire opinion beach full of other people’s grains of sand.

The Giver? I couldn’t tell you what that was about. I think it made me sad and frustrated at the end so I put it out of my head. “But Emma,” you might say. “The book was supposed to evoke feelings!” Okay, cool, but my child-self did NOT like sad books and as such I said “Thank u next” to whatever that lesson was.

Life of Pi? A child deals with the trauma a series of unfortunate events evokes by referring to everyone as animals and takes a really depressing sea voyage. Obviously that’s been paraphrased within an inch of its life, but you get the idea. A bunch of people thought it was an important enough story to make it into a movie, so that’s cool. I don’t know, I’m not sure what they were trying to teach us with this one. Maybe just deal with your trauma as much as you are able?

The Catcher in the Rye? I have no idea. Some kid skips school and wanders around and thinks about things. It’s supposed to be a ‘coming of age’ story. I can’t decide if the coming of age is just an outdated concept within the narrative, or if I didn’t get it because I’m a girl.

One Flew Over the Cucoo’s nest. This doesn’t even get a question mark at the end. Did it make me think? Yes. It made me think about how terribly we treat other people, how terribly we have treated other people, and how shitty it was to have any kind of “mental illness” in the past.

Animal Farm? This one I got. I thought that it should have been taught in social studies/humanities/history; whatever it’s called where you’re from. Where should it have gone in the curriculum? Right before you learned about the holocaust and all the terrible things that were done there. Or right before you learned about residential schools and all the terrible things that were done there. Or right before you learned about any other genocide! Cultural, racial, religious, I give 0 fucks which. Too many people have the “Well it wouldn’t happen here and now” mentality, but surprise! It’s happening right now! Giving a plain example of the small changes and slimy pitch tactics required from politics to completely change a country’s mentality will never stop being important.

Where was I going with this? Oh right. Sorry, I got on a little tangent there. Let me just get down off of my soapbox.

Books. You might be looking at the above and thinking to yourself “Well this girl hates reading if she has such a low opinion of those books.”

BUT JUST WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

I stumble upon lists with dramatic titles such as “100 books to read before you die” and “10 most popular books of 2023, how many have YOU read?” and “You can’t count yourself a lover of classics if you haven’t read these 50 titles!”.

Normally, I don’t really pay attention to these outrageous claims. I don’t really care what I ‘should’ and ‘should not have’ read and what I should have taken away from each experience. Do you want to make someone hate reading? Give them a huge list of titles that were written between 1800 and 1920. Tell them that if they don’t make it through the list, they can’t say they’re a reader. Boom. Resentment.

This year, I decided to take a look at the books that were currently being harped on as ‘must reads’ and you know what? I was pleasantly surprised. I think the last time I looked at similar lists was in 2008. Spoiler, back then 95% of all the titles were written by old white male Europeans. The other 5% was a white Englishwoman and like… 3 people of colour from Europe. This year? I saw a lot more diversity. It’s a good trend people, keep it up.

One more thing I should probably go over is that I’m white. I’m SO white. I have a Ukrainian background, but I was born and raised in Canada. My parents were born and raised in Canada. Half of my Grandparents were born and raised in Canada. My Great Grandparents were from Ukraine and surrounding areas. But I’m still white enough to make mayonnaise jealous and I’m not connected enough with my heritage to claim to be anything aside from Canadian. That DOES NOT MEAN I want to read a whole bunch of old white guy literature. It may be really good stylistically or thematically, but if you only ever get one sociopolitical, socioracial, or socioeconomic viewpoint, how is reading supposed to broaden your horizons?

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, hosted out here remotely on the hill I will die on.

So you’ve stuck with me to this point, I’ll deliver the goods. I picked 12 books that showed up repeatedly on ‘should read’ lists from multiple sources, and I assigned them all to a month of 2023.

MONTHTITLEAUTHORYEAR PUBLISHEDPAGE COUNT
JANUARYThe Count of Monte CristoAlexandre Dumas18461250
FEBRUARYFahrenheit 451Ray Bradbury1953250
MARCHThe Master and MargaritaMikhail Bulgakov1967430
APRILThe HobbitJ. R. R. Tolkien1937310
MAYMemoirs of a GeishaArthur Golden1997450
JUNEDon QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes16201100
JULYThe Time MachineH. G. Wells1895100
AUGUSTOne Hundred Years of SolitudeGabriel García Márquez1967410
SEPTEMBERMoby DickHerman Melville1851430
OCTOBERCirceMadeline Miller2018400
NOVEMBERJane EyreCharlotte Brontë1847540
DECEMBERPride and PrejudiceJane Austen1813430
2023 book a month reading list

Yes, there are still a lot of white men on this list. Yes, there are some titles on there that I personally feel I should have read by now. Take, for example, Pride and Prejudice. I’ve only had a copy sitting on my bookshelf for 10 years. Have not read it yet.

At the time of writing this, I somehow managed to make it through the Count of Monte Cristo in January. Fahrenheit 451 is in my hot little hands and things are looking good to be done in February. The Master and Margarita has a huge waitlist in my local library, so we’ll have to see if I manage to get it for March.

I’m simply not going to write a review about the Count of Monte Cristo in this blog. It’s not going to happen. The rest of them I’m hoping to cover in an alternating fashion with grammar advice and other writing tidbits.

Why does the Count of Monte Cristo get the boot? Honestly, I started to write one up, but it went all over the damn place. There’s so much that happens. To talk about any one particular part that’s not strictly structure, thematic timing, and/or literary style, you have to set up the whole damned plot. At the end of the day, you can go read a review for this book that covers the structure, timing, style, etc from someone much smarter than me, or who has a fancy degree from a nice university. Spark Notes or Wikipedia will provide you with the plot. Myself? If I know people who like Sherlock Holmes, I’ll tell them to read it. Otherwise, I probably will just wear my badge of honour for getting through 1250 pages in 3 weeks while working a full time job and also not becoming a hermit.

I’d love to hear other people’s reading lists for this year, or suggestions of things I should check out!

If you have the time or the brainpower, leave me a comment about it!