I would like to contrast two novels I’ve recently read, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and Old Town by Lin Zhe. I think before I talk about what I take from the two novels and what I think it tells me about America and the world I should describe and review the two books.
A Visit from the Good Squad has won all sorts of awards and has received accolades from the critics. Being the old curmudgeon I am, I didn’t like it. Why? The book is mostly about characters associated with the music industry. It spans the years from the eighties to the present. One of my complaints is with the structure of the book. To say that it jumps around in telling the story of these people is to put it mildly. The action moves between the present and the past, morphs from one set of characters to another, and adds new characters at will. Characters who fit one mold in scene A may fit a completely different one in scene B. This makes it quite difficult to follow who’s who. In fact, toward the end of the book there’s a scene that hinges on a man who remembers going to a girl’s apartment years ago. I had trouble figuring out who he was talking about until I remembered a short scene early in the book that described the situation. By then the characters had changed so much it was difficult to place them in the earlier scene.
I know that in a novel the characters should change over time. But the reader should feel the change taking place through the span of the story. In the Goon Squad the changes take place abruptly. The pretty, wild girl on page X is an unhappy wreck on page Y. Wait a minute, how did that happen? I didn’t see it coming.
My other complaint with the novel is that none of the characters moved me. Again in a novel, or any story for that matter, you should have a reaction to the characters. If you like a particular character or hate him, feel pity or sympathy or rage, the author had accomplished his or her goal. Rhett Butler is a despicable character in many way, but you love him. Scarlett is even worse, but you have sympathy for her. I had none of those reactions in this book. I took what the author said about the many characters at face value and that was it, even though many of the characters were despicable in their own way.
The lives depicted in the book were dreadful for the most part. People use each other, take drugs, divorce, cheat, lie. No one seems to get along with or understand their children. When you have money you are successful, when the money goes you are a failure. Anything that gets money is legitimate, even supporting mass murderers. When things go bad turn to drugs. When things are good turn to drugs. Sex is some sort of a contest. Love had nothing to do with it.
Is America that depressing? Maybe it is in the circles she’s describing. Maybe it is, period.
Now, to be fair, the writing is very good. The story, if you can follow it, moves along at a nice clip. The style reminded me of what you see in Wired or Rolling Stone.
I have absolutely no idea where the title came from or what it has to do with the story.
Old Town is in many ways a very similar book. Since Old Town is about China in the last eighty years or so, the comparison may seem a stretch. The similarities are quite prevalent however. The books jumps between the past and the present, and from one period back to another in time. There are a large number of characters who have ups and downs of fortune. The book describes the periods before, during, and after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Within a few pages you might have a character described as a baby, and teenager, and an adult, not necessarily in that order. There are characters who turn to alcohol when things go well and also when things go poorly.
Unfortunately, the writing lacks the poetry that might have been present in the original version, because some of it is quite bad. The book was an enormous hit in China and was made into a TV series that has broken all records from what I hear.
I liked this book very much. Why? Well, for most of the reasons I did not like the Good Squad. I did engage with the characters. And I did seem them grow and change over time. And I saw the point of the book, which I didn’t do in the other book. Enormous change has taken place in China, and almost all of it for the better, however repressive the government. But in all that change something of China’s soul has been lost.
And this is where the comparison of the two books tells me something of what is going on in our country. In the Good Squad there is nothing lost, because there is nothing to loose. There are many unhappy people in Old Town, but the possibility of being happy still exists and the characters believe that. The Goons do not believe in the possibility of being happy, apart from the fact that more money might make you feel better. Love will not, children will not, work will not.
Maybe we have lost far more of our soul than China has.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The Kindle and self publishing
Some interesting information I’ve picked up from Amazon in the last few days…
Amazon now sells more Kindle books than hardcover and paperbacks combined. For every one hundred h/p they sell they sell one hundred and five Kindle copies. So much for the people who said eBooks would never catch on.
The other item from the big A is that they now have their first million seller self published author. John Locke, the novelist not the philosopher, has sold over a million of his books on Amazon. I’ve not read any of his books yet. I plan to. His Kindle versions sell for 99 cents each, which certainly is a good bargain. Most of his covers show very leggy girls from the waste down, which either indicates his books are filled with leggy girls or he's a leg man. I will try one and report back.
Speaking of bargains, I bought eight of the most famous Henry James novels in a single file for the Kindle for 99 cents. The file is very well done as far as the text goes. You certainly can't beat the price.
Which brings me to pricing of Kindle books. There's a new trend from publishers where the books seem to be priced just a few dollars below the discounted price of a hardbound. For example, the novel Swamplandia by Karen Russell is bookstore priced at $24.95. Amazon discounts the hardbound to $13.72. The Kindle price is $12.99. To make it even more ridiculous the paperback price is $10.17. Will someone explain to me how the Kindle price can be higher than the paperback? On the Kindle there is no printing cost, no shipping cost, no warehouse cost, no return cost. Why do they think they should make more money on a Kindle than on any other distribution form? The truth can be found in only one of two explanations: The publishers are utterly stupid OR they are trying desperately to hang on to an outdated model.
Let me look a little more closely at the self published books. At least the price is right.
Amazon now sells more Kindle books than hardcover and paperbacks combined. For every one hundred h/p they sell they sell one hundred and five Kindle copies. So much for the people who said eBooks would never catch on.
The other item from the big A is that they now have their first million seller self published author. John Locke, the novelist not the philosopher, has sold over a million of his books on Amazon. I’ve not read any of his books yet. I plan to. His Kindle versions sell for 99 cents each, which certainly is a good bargain. Most of his covers show very leggy girls from the waste down, which either indicates his books are filled with leggy girls or he's a leg man. I will try one and report back.
Speaking of bargains, I bought eight of the most famous Henry James novels in a single file for the Kindle for 99 cents. The file is very well done as far as the text goes. You certainly can't beat the price.
Which brings me to pricing of Kindle books. There's a new trend from publishers where the books seem to be priced just a few dollars below the discounted price of a hardbound. For example, the novel Swamplandia by Karen Russell is bookstore priced at $24.95. Amazon discounts the hardbound to $13.72. The Kindle price is $12.99. To make it even more ridiculous the paperback price is $10.17. Will someone explain to me how the Kindle price can be higher than the paperback? On the Kindle there is no printing cost, no shipping cost, no warehouse cost, no return cost. Why do they think they should make more money on a Kindle than on any other distribution form? The truth can be found in only one of two explanations: The publishers are utterly stupid OR they are trying desperately to hang on to an outdated model.
Let me look a little more closely at the self published books. At least the price is right.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Introduction
This is the first post to my very first blog.
Why bother?
Well, I have been an avid reader my whole life and for a good part of my life I have had a desire to be a writer. I am now seventy years old and have managed to gather a few opinions on the world of books. I think I would like to share what I have learned over the years. This won't be a place where I rant about how things aren't the way they used to be, how the good old days are long past, and how young people just don't have the brains to know a good book when they see one the way WE did in my day. Rather this will be a call for change. I think the publishing industry has its head in the sand, or maybe in a darker place, and that everything we know about books is changing. This change is snowballing the publishing industry toward oblivion. And it's because if this, the web.
I am a die hard Kindle fan. I am now on my second Kindle, a DX, and never touch a traditionally bound book if I can help it. And I am now a huge proponent of the self published book. This blog will be part book review, part soap box, and part clarion call for change.
Some history is in order. When I was sixteen I wrote my first novel. In those days you typed out the book on a device called a typewriter (a now extinct machine - the last factory making them closed in India this year). When the book was typed you sent it off to a publisher and waited. Usually the book would return with a thump on your doorstep. Inside would be a terse note saying the work did not fit their plans. A line that indicated they actually read it was a jolt of encouragement. You then sent it to the next publisher and waited.
Oddly enough, my book was picked up by a publisher and set for publication. Thinking back on it, the book was dreadful and why it was picked up is beyond me, but that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to relate. Once it was accepted, an editor was assigned to you and the process of turning the book from a jumble of words to a real novel began. I'm sure every editor saw himself as Maxwell Perkins. I became very good friends with my editor. His suggestions were very helpful.
As it turned out my book was never published. I did get some money for it, but that's a different story. I'm talking here about the process.
Jump ahead fifty some odd years to a book my daughter recently wrote. She's a dance teacher and wrote a children's book for fourth graders. She had a captive focus group who read the work as it was being written, and she ended up with a book kids really liked. What was the process she had to follow to get it published? Well, publishers no longer read books. Now you have to have an agent. If an agent likes the work, they want you to hire an editor to read it. In Anne's case, the editor said the book was fine, which indicates he never read it because it had all sorts of spelling errors and duplicate words. Spell checkers work only up to a point. Anyway, it went back to the agent ready to go. And then nothing happened. Nothing.
So Anne had another idea. Why not try self publishing? I my day (i.e. fifty years ago) a self published book meant you were a looser. It meant you actually paid to have the book printed. And the price was not cheap. As I remember the minimum cost in 1956 was about three thousand dollars. Anne, on the other hand, went to CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company. The family got together to edit the book and get rid of the embarrassing misspellings, etc. and Anne put it up on the web for free. Free. It then went on Amazon as a printed book. For free. The book is TURTLE SOUP AND TIRAMISU by A.E. Ramsay and sells for $7.99. She's in the process of setting it up as an eBook which will go to both the Kindle and the Nook. If she wants copies for herself she can order them for $2.50 each. It's printed on demand, so there is no inventory. The book now can be found in a number of local book stores, where it has sold, and has been reviewed on Goodreads.
Let me think about this. Why would any author with a brain in his head not publish this way? The publishers have become surrogate printers and apparently add no value to the process beyond the fact that they can warehouse books, ship them to stores, and take them back when they don't sell.
In this blog I will discuss this whole process even further and try to review self published books (and others). I will also rant about eBooks, which I think are the real future of publishing.
Why bother?
Well, I have been an avid reader my whole life and for a good part of my life I have had a desire to be a writer. I am now seventy years old and have managed to gather a few opinions on the world of books. I think I would like to share what I have learned over the years. This won't be a place where I rant about how things aren't the way they used to be, how the good old days are long past, and how young people just don't have the brains to know a good book when they see one the way WE did in my day. Rather this will be a call for change. I think the publishing industry has its head in the sand, or maybe in a darker place, and that everything we know about books is changing. This change is snowballing the publishing industry toward oblivion. And it's because if this, the web.
I am a die hard Kindle fan. I am now on my second Kindle, a DX, and never touch a traditionally bound book if I can help it. And I am now a huge proponent of the self published book. This blog will be part book review, part soap box, and part clarion call for change.
Some history is in order. When I was sixteen I wrote my first novel. In those days you typed out the book on a device called a typewriter (a now extinct machine - the last factory making them closed in India this year). When the book was typed you sent it off to a publisher and waited. Usually the book would return with a thump on your doorstep. Inside would be a terse note saying the work did not fit their plans. A line that indicated they actually read it was a jolt of encouragement. You then sent it to the next publisher and waited.
Oddly enough, my book was picked up by a publisher and set for publication. Thinking back on it, the book was dreadful and why it was picked up is beyond me, but that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to relate. Once it was accepted, an editor was assigned to you and the process of turning the book from a jumble of words to a real novel began. I'm sure every editor saw himself as Maxwell Perkins. I became very good friends with my editor. His suggestions were very helpful.
As it turned out my book was never published. I did get some money for it, but that's a different story. I'm talking here about the process.
Jump ahead fifty some odd years to a book my daughter recently wrote. She's a dance teacher and wrote a children's book for fourth graders. She had a captive focus group who read the work as it was being written, and she ended up with a book kids really liked. What was the process she had to follow to get it published? Well, publishers no longer read books. Now you have to have an agent. If an agent likes the work, they want you to hire an editor to read it. In Anne's case, the editor said the book was fine, which indicates he never read it because it had all sorts of spelling errors and duplicate words. Spell checkers work only up to a point. Anyway, it went back to the agent ready to go. And then nothing happened. Nothing.
So Anne had another idea. Why not try self publishing? I my day (i.e. fifty years ago) a self published book meant you were a looser. It meant you actually paid to have the book printed. And the price was not cheap. As I remember the minimum cost in 1956 was about three thousand dollars. Anne, on the other hand, went to CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company. The family got together to edit the book and get rid of the embarrassing misspellings, etc. and Anne put it up on the web for free. Free. It then went on Amazon as a printed book. For free. The book is TURTLE SOUP AND TIRAMISU by A.E. Ramsay and sells for $7.99. She's in the process of setting it up as an eBook which will go to both the Kindle and the Nook. If she wants copies for herself she can order them for $2.50 each. It's printed on demand, so there is no inventory. The book now can be found in a number of local book stores, where it has sold, and has been reviewed on Goodreads.
Let me think about this. Why would any author with a brain in his head not publish this way? The publishers have become surrogate printers and apparently add no value to the process beyond the fact that they can warehouse books, ship them to stores, and take them back when they don't sell.
In this blog I will discuss this whole process even further and try to review self published books (and others). I will also rant about eBooks, which I think are the real future of publishing.
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