What is the most villainous move on the market?

I keep checking my drafts folder thinking "Maybe I was smart and started a post about this book around the time I finished it, so I have something to work off of now." And every time I check I am disappointed that there's nothing there. I also continue to NOT start a post about whatever book I just recently read, thus continuing the cycle. Hooray, responsibility.

At some point I was wandering around my local bookstore thinking about how I would change the layout and looking for something new to read when I stumbled on Chuck Klosterman's book I Wear The Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) and I thought "Why not".

I read his Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs a while ago (pre-blog) and I think I read Fargo Rock City around that time as well, but I can't really remember which doesn't say much for that book. It does, however, serve as a good reason for me to keep this blog up so I can, you know, remember what I read. Anyway, I haven't read any books from Klosterman in awhile BUT I do read the guy regularly cos at some point he took over writing the NYTimes Magazine column "The Ethicist" and while I read embarrassingly little of the newspaper (despite the fact that it's delivered every weekend AND comes with an online subscription so I could read it ALL THE TIME) I always read his column. So I figured this would be an entertaining option.

Klosterman talks about the concept of villains in pop culture and what that says about us. How villains may be evil, but they're also the character people seem to like the best. He talks about the thin line between vigilantes and criminals a la Death Wish and the guy, Bernhard Goetz, who did his own version of Death Wish. He talks about 80s hair bands and 90s gangsta rap, how terrible we collectively were to Monica Lewinsky and not Bill Clinton, and what a successful dick Perez Hilton is.

Here's what Klosterman says the book is. Or rather, what it isn't:

And most notably, [this book] will not be a repetitive argument that insists every bad person is not-so-bad and every good person is not-so-good.  Rational people already understand that this is how the world is. But if you are not-so-rational - if there are certain characters you simply refuse to think about in a manner that isn't 100 percent negative or 100 percent positive - parts of this book will (midly) offend you. It will make you angry, and you will find yourself trying to intellectually discount arguments that you might naturally make about other people. This is what happen whenever the things we feel and the things we know refuse to align in the way we're conditioned to pretend.

Here's the thing. Much like his other two books, I honestly can't remember much about this one. I know I'm behind on my reviewing but it hasn't been that long, yet I can't remember any details of this book.  And I read Bad Feminist longer ago, and yet I remembered enough of that one. I do remember vague feelings while reading it: entertaining but kinda pretentious. Even looking at the titles of the essays isn't bringing back any memories, although skimming through random pages is helping. And It's making me think "Hey, this sounds good! I bet I'd like this" before I remember that "yes, I've read this. Supposedly."

I guess if you see this sitting around, give it a try. If you're a fan of Klosterman, you'll probably like it. If you're not, it's not bad, just not really memorable. I may read it again at some point and at that time I'll update this if I come up with any new thoughts.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 9

Klosterman, Chuck. I Wear The Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined). Scribner, 2013.

October Reading Wrap-Up

How did October go for me? I honestly forgot that one month ended and a new one began and therefore I didn't get around to writing my wrap-up post till now. Good job, me. But now I've remembered that November is actually a different month (and by that I mean I'm finally getting around to reading blog posts and saw Kayleigh's wrap-up) which means it's time for me to tell you what I read last month! Hooray.

Number of books read
4
Misery by Stephen King
Maus II by Art Spiegelman
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
I'm Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

Number of pages read
1,022

Percentage of fiction read
50% - whoa 1/2 non-fiction

Percentage of female authors
50% - BAM

Percentage of white authors
100% - sigh

Percentage of US authors
100% - double sigh

Percentage of ebooks
50%

Percentage of rereads
25%

Percentage of review books
0%

Books written by decade
1950s - 25%
1980s - 25%
1990s - 25%
2010s - 25%

Books by genre
Horror - 50%
Graphic novel - 25%
Memoir - 25%

Look how even last month was! That's nuts. Except around white US people. That was pretty much status quo, which I really need to work on.

Change requires intent and effort

I should really catch up on my reviewing because I feel like every book I've been writing reviews for I read roughly a billion years ago. At this rate December is going to be FULL of horror story reviews.

Anyway, remember how awhile ago how people were reading and raving about Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and how having a review around that time would have been really relevant? Yeah, I'm just getting to it now.

I'm not sure when I first heard about Roxane Gay's collection of essays, but I know a bunch of people with good taste were reading it and saying good things about it so at some point I saw a copy on sale at my local bookstore and decided I must have it. It was a good call.

As I pretty much literally just said, Bad Feminist is a collection of essays. Most of them deal with feminism. Actually, I guess all of them deal with it in varying degrees, some more overtly than others. Some are about how she's a bad feminist because she falls short of certain feminist values, others are about feminism and race, my favorite is about Gay's love of Scrabble. There are a bunch of pop culture references (Hunger Games, Gone Girl, Django Unchained) that I'm sure are going to date the book in the future but for now I enjoyed. The pop culture reference make difficult topics more accessible.

The book is split into 5 sections:
Me, which, duh, focuses on her with essays like "Typical First Year Professor" and "To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically" (the Scrabble essay)
Gender & Sexuality, which is the longest section and has pieces like "How To Be Friends With Another Woman" and "Blurred Lines, Indeed"
Race & Entertainment, which has "The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances of 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help" and "The Morality of Tyler Perry"
 Politics, Gender, & Race with "The Politics of Respectability" and "A Tale of Two Profiles"
and finally Back to Me with Bad Feminist, Takes 1 & 2

She's tackling some serious topics, and while the essays aren't necessarily light-hearted (at least not all of them) they don't feel like you're being lectured to, or worse yelled at. Things don't feel hopeless and those pop culture references give you a way to think about and work with these ideas and a language that is easy to understand.

To the title. She calls herself a "bad feminist" saying:

I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. I am not terribly well versed in feminist history. I am not as well read in key feminist texts as I would like to be. I have certain...interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but I am still a feminist. I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself.

Pretty much she is a feminist, if not a "Professional Feminist." So you know, she's an actual feminist instead of some idea of what one should be or has to be. Love it.

I wish I had this as an ebook (or I guess had it as well as an ebook) so I would have a bunch of quotes already highlighted to share with you. You should probably just read this.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 172

Gay, Roxane. Bad Feminist. Harper Perennial, 2014.

Book Memory meme. How long can I go without cheating?

I realize my blog has been a bit survey/meme happy this month. There's a reason for that: I am lazy. Wait, no, I'm always lazy. This month is different because work has been intense throughout October. Quarter closes are always more hectic than usual, and the fall is always when things start to pick up after the relatively-slower summer and October is when both of these come together in a hurricane. My mantra for most of this month has been "Just get to the 31st. Get there. Once we get past that, it's clear skies." I was going to try to write another review but instead Sarah (who has been my survey/meme source this month and THANK YOU for that) graciously posted this meme so I'm gonna do that instead.

The rules to this thing are answer the questions in the image below without searching your books/the internet for answers. Also something about tagging 5 people to do this but I'm going to skip that part cos REBEL. But you should probably do it too, so we can all see how terrible our memories are. I'm sure Google has ruined mine.

1. Name a book written by an author called Michael: OH MAN, look at me being able to answer the first one. The Poet written by Michael Connelly, which I read for a college class AND he came into the class to talk so I also got my book signed. So there you go. One question DOWN

2. Name a book with a dragon on the cover: That Ergon one? It looks like "dragon" but with vowels at the beginning. Some copies of The Hobbit probably have a dragon on the cover.

3. Name a book about a character called George: Curious George the monkey. That's a George character. Now, let's see. I'm supposed to name the book so...Curious George Goes To The Zoo? I have no idea if that's actually a book but it sounds like it could be, right?

Name a book written by an author with the surname Smith: Zadie Smith? Is that her name? If so White Teeth? Am I right?

5. Name a book set in Australia: In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want something other than a memoir/travel type deal? Then The Rosie Project DOUBLE ANSWERED.

6. Name a book with the name of a month in the title: Uh oh. I think I'm in trouble now. OK I've tried to come up with something for a solid 5 minutes and I'm getting nothing. But I double answered 5 so yeah, I'm still good.

7. Name a book with a knife on the cover: Kitchen Confidential by Antony Bourdain? I actually think it might be a sword, but he probably USED it like a knife.

8. Name a book with the word "one" in the title: Um. Crap. I'm blanking. Does Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? count? There's a one shoved in there. Cos otherwise the only thing my brain is giving me is "This one time, at band camp" and unless that's a memoir from Allison something (I remember her first name cos it's mine. Her last name isn't mine and thus I forget it. Hannigan? Something like that?) I got nothing else.

9. Name a book with an eponymous title: So, since I'm not supposed to internet things, I suppose this means I can't double check what eponymous means. Does it mean the title is a name? Like Hamlet?

10. Name a book turned into a movie: Thank you for the easy one cos I was struggling with the last few. The Shining by Stephen King because Halloween time.

PHEW OK, now that I've gone through and answered I NEED to check if I'm right on some of these.

2. Dragon book? Got them both right! WIN!

3. Did George go to the zoo? I found one book Curious George Visits the Zoo and thought I was screwed, but apparently the bugger has made several trips and another book is called Curious George Goes to the Zoo. Win again!

4. Is it Zadie Smith? It is! And she did write White Teeth!

6. Month book: I asked Tom if he had any ideas and he sounded really confident for like 1/2 a second before going "Oh wait. Ummm" and finally giving up. I Googled it and found a list of books I've never heard of plus The Hunt for Red October by...some guy. I literally looked that up 10 seconds ago and already forgot. Good job, me.

7. Is that a knife or sword? I'm looking at the cover I have and I'm honestly still not sure. BUT I found a different cover of Kitchen Confidential that most definitely features knives. So. I still win.

8. Does "everyone" really count? Yes, it does. Dammit. But in case it doesn't (in this quiz no one is scoring) I looked through my shelves till I found Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

9. Have I forgotten all my vocab lessons? Possibly. I looked up eponymous and I think I got it right.

Alright, now to go actually read Sarah's post, since I couldn't do that BEFORE answering, lest I influence my own responses.

Will you free us from the tyranny of William Shakespeare?

In my quest to expand my graphic novel/comic book knowledge*, I decided to give Kill Shakespeare Vol 1, written by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col, with art by Andy Belanger a try. Cos, you know, Shakespeare. Seems like a good bridge between things I like and things I want to like.

This is only the second graphic novel I've read that was more along the lines of, at least what I think of as, a traditional comic. I've read Maus I & II, Fun Home, and Hyperbole & A Half which are really their own thing. I also read The Watchmen back when the movie came out and I borrowed it from my brother and I thought it was...fine. Later I tried the first issue of The Walking Dead and gave up after about 10 pages when I realized I was barely skimming it. I've found the style difficult to get into. I fly through the panels with no speech, missing every detail and I have trouble slowing myself down. All of this is to say I went in with some trepidation but ultimately everything worked out.

Kill Shakespeare is a mash-up of all of the most well-known Shakespeare characters: Hamlet and Richard III and the Macbeths and Falstaff and Juliet and Othello and Iago AND MORE! The plot is its own thing. It opens with Hamlet waking up on an unknown shore. Hamlet got on that boat with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, but a vision by a specter calling him the Shadow King and a pirate attack changes the course of the original play a bit.

Richard III finds Hamlet and strikes up a deal with him. See Hamlet's arrival has apparently been predicted by the stars and he's fated to be this Shadow King. The Three Witches (from Macbeth) will bring Hamlet's father back to life if Hamlet will find the wizard Shakespeare and bring Richard his quill. Richard's teamed up with the Macbeths and Iago in the hopes of gaining power and in general being jerks. As they do.

During the journey to find this Shakespeare, Hamlet gets separated from Iago and winds up with Falstaff who introduces him to Juliet and Othello. The three of them are very much on the side of this wizard Shakespeare and just as Richard III said it was prophesied he would show up and help them kill Shakespeare (like the title!), Falstaff believes the prophesy means Hamlet is supposed to find Shakespeare and bring him back to defend his believers.

Who to trust? Well, I mean, we know but will Hamlet figure it out? What will happen if Richard III gets all the power he desires? Will Juliet be able to help the believers?

If comics aren't really your thing but Shakespeare is, I would give this a try. There are lots of references to the original plays thrown in here and there but overall you don't need to know the plays to enjoy this. Though I do think it'll help. Some of the layouts I really liked, especially those of Hamlet and Falstaff wandering through the forest. And others I was less into. Some of the battle scenes that I think were supposed to be really tense made me laugh. Female representation isn't bad. It isn't great. There are really only 2 main female characters (Lady Macbeth and Juliet) compared to 5 guys, but given the character pool we're working with, it's not super surprising. They also sort of fall into 2 typical "strong female character" tropes, but given most of the characters fall into some sort of stereotype, it's again not super surprising.

I've been on the lookout for Volume 2, though so far no luck. But I will keep my eye out for it cos I would like to see where this story goes. It's not my favorite graphic novel (when you're up against Maus it's really not fair), but I enjoyed. And I'll slowly make my way into more graphic novels.

Gif Rating

*If you want a great list of graphic novels to check out, but you're not really sure what to go for, take a look at Kayleigh's post Pages to Panels: A Bookish Guide to Getting Into Comics. It has given me a BUNCH to pick up. Cos my TBR wasn't long enough.

Title quote from some page but I dunno which one cos there are no page numbers. Early-ish

Belanger, Andy, Anthony Del Col, Conor McCreery. Kill Shakespeare: A Sea of Troubles (Volume 1). IDW Publishing, 2010.

Authors Behaving Badly or holy shit, stalking is never the answer

Remember awhile ago when a bunch of authors felt that GoodReads authors were bullying them so they set up a group called Stop The GoodReads Bullies and then bullied those GoodReads reviewers? Yeaaah.

Now, I'm not saying that book bloggers can't be jerks. They can. Cos they're people and people can be jerks. Sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes it's by accident. Whatever. For the most part though, fair or not, I feel like it's up to the author to be the mature one and not engage. If you get a negative review that you think is unfair, don't yell at the blogger, don't try to defend yourself. Just ignore. Because no matter how right you may be, you're going to seem like the crazy person. Even GoodReads believes this since they've made it so if you're registered as an author and you go to leave a comment GoodReads says "You really want to do this? Really? Cos you really really really shouldn't do it. Not even to say thank you. Just don't say anything."

So I hadn't heard a lot about authors behaving badly (or badly behaving authors, which I guess is the typical way it's written but I already wrote this and I like my way better) for awhile now. Not to say it's not happening, but I tend not to go looking for it and I tend not to read/follow a lot of self-published novelists (which it may be a stereotype but I assume most of the ABB fall into this category) so something had to be fairly big to fall on my radar.

I was scrolling through Tumblr when I saw this story posted by Jenny Trout  called "DON'T DO THIS EVER" about an author who became obsessed with a blogger who left a one-star review of her first book on GoodReads, enough to prompt the author to eventually show up at the bloggers house to confront her about the review. NOT ONLY, did the author go above-and-beyond the normal author behaving badly, but she seems sort of...proud of the behavior? She wrote about it for The Guardian without a lot of shame for what she did. She complained that people told her the reviews are for readers, not the author (which...yes? Was that confusing her?) and when she complained about people who leave negative reviews, she just means ones that are also writing their own books? I guess if you're writing your own thing you're not allowed to dislike any other book written. Ever.*

She also claims she was "Catfished" by this blogger, because the blogger didn't use her real name (probably because the blogger described herself as a teacher and I have friends who are teachers who are not writing reviews or anything like that, and don't use their real names or keep their profiles private just to keep their students from finding them) and also the author doesn't really understand what "catfish" means in the internet world. Which seems like a bad advertisement for someone who wants to make their living using words. But nonetheless the author contacts Nev from the MTV show Catfish and even this guy, who makes his living confronting people who lie online, thinks it's a bad idea for the author to just show up on the blogger's doorstep.

BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY DO NOT DO THAT, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM??

Do negative reviews suck? I assume so. Why would you want to be told that something you poured your heart and soul into was terrible. But stalking someone and randomly showing up at their house, tracking them down in real life? In WHAT WORLD is that the right reaction and not the actions of a crazy person?

The author got the blogger's address because of a giveaway. A book club wanted to do an interview with the author and asked the author to pick a blogger to do it. Somehow (she's not clear how) her nemesis blogger was connected with this book club and the author managed to get her address this way. As part of a giveaway.

I'm already sort of paranoid about giving my address or any personal information online, to an extent I think one should be. I've sort of relaxed on this over time. I'm not posting it publicly online, but I've been less worried about sending authors my address directly through email. Now though. I don't think my behavior will entirely change, but I will be more cautious. Maybe using a different address? Maybe ecopies only? I dunno, but something to think about.

*I know there are benefits to maybe not writing negative reviews of other authors if you yourself are pushing your own book. I don't necessarily agree, but I understand not wanting to badmouth what is in a way a co-worker. But that's a different topic and one I won't talk about cos I'm neither an author nor trying to be one so I really don't have much of a leg to stand on in that debate.