Shaken & Stirred

Tuesday Hangovers

• Temple complex in Turkey pre-dates pyramids, yielding amazing finds for archeologists. (Via Charlie.)
• Hardcore girl gamers clock more hours than similarly inclined guys. (Via Janni.)
• An interview with Jonathan Lethem, in which he has some interesting things to say about the term "magical realism": "Actually, not at all. I've always resisted the phrase, finding both terms - "magic" and "realist" - shaky at best, with unwelcome or unexamined assumptions camped out all around them. Some of this reaction is deeply rooted: as a child I hated the whole disingenuous kabuki of stage magicians. I identified with "Hot town, summer in the city" but not "Do You Believe In Magic?"."
• Lisa Shroeder provides an author's checklist/timeline for MG and YA book releases.
• I somehow missed Sarah Rees Brennan's post on book length (and other things). Contrary to the popular school of thought that holds teens have incredibly short attention spans, it does seem that many teen readers are more than happy--in fact, prefer--big, rich fantasies (or at the very least packaging that makes the books look big).
• Maud pointed to an old favorite of hers (and mine) the other day, Sean Carman's "Recently Channeled Dorothy Parker Poems." Maud also has a good post about the bias against southern writers and writing. I have much I could say on this topic, but no time to say it. But, yes, this seems to go hand in glove with larger perceptions about the south, some fair, many not. (An old, related post here: "Complicated Disappointments" and for kicks, another post that came up in the search about one of my favorite nonfiction books, Real Places by Grady Clay, on The Kudzu entry -- it doesn't get more southern than kudzu.)
• The Independent looks at the current wave of steampunk.
• Jackie's new cover is BEYOOTIFUL.
• And the Guardian has some fun rounding up writers rules for fiction. I think I find Anne Enright's the most useful as a whole, and especially like: "Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity." Will have to look up some of her work.
• Interesting long post about the wonder and curse of social media: "You Are Not a Bad Person And You're Not Doing It Wrong." (Via Molly O'Neill.)

Friday Hangovers

• Graham Joyce is blogging his process as he starts a new novel. (Via Mr. McLaren.)
• Elephants are geniuses. Basically.
• Tiffany on "plantsing"--the sweet spot between pantsing and outlining.
• Some good quotes about creating characters.
• Nora Jemisin blogs some examples of good methods of describing characters of color she's come across lately.
• Margot Adler does an NPR report about the current spate of moral vampires, and recommends a bunch of (mainly recentish) vampire books. I'd add Cyn Leitich Smith's fabulous Eternal to that list, one of the best examples of a vampire struggling with morality I've read.
• Gorgeous, gorgeous long exposure photos of ballerinas from the "Ghost Opera" series. (Via Juliet.)
• Laura Miller on plagiarism. Like Carolyn, I can't help thinking of Jonathan Lethem's brilliant Harper's essay "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism."
• Finally, really and truly exciting Nebula and Norton nominees this year. Congratulations to all y'all nominees. (I'm told that all the excellent Norton noms were from actual nominations and voting this year--good to see SFWA members embracing the new award!)

Wednesday Hangovers

• HILARIOUS subtitle screen caps from Cambodian Twilight (and Avatar bonus) DVDs, courtesy of Elizabeth Law's recent vacation.
• Things found in books, over at ABE.
• Deb Coates has a great rant about complaints that there are too many "ass-kicking women" in fiction these days.
• Andrea Seigel on The Bachelor. Someone give Andrea a TV column already. I don't even care about this show and still enjoyed her browbeating it.
• Marie Mockett has an excellent post about what she learned being a new author among a fall of Big Books in 2009. A must read for anyone who wants to think differently about promoting their books. Especially toward the end, when she discusses playing up different elements of the book (Japanese fairy tales!), I got more interested in reading it.
• PW looks at the children's category this week, and it's worth making your way through the whole issue. You can start with the excellent feature on the popularity of dystopias in YA.
• Finally, it's official: Marisa Meltzer's mom wins the cool mom sweepstakes. (Indie variety, of course.)

Dream Places

So, earlier today on twitter I posed the following query:

Dream question: Do you guys all have imaginary locations that recur in your dreams? What are they?

The answers have been really excellent and interesting, though I wasn't sure anyone would chime in and so didn't create a hash tag (I will try to capture them though--and you can find most of them here). But for the non-tweeting blog readers or people who just want more than 140 characters, what about you?

For the record, the two I mentioned on twitter are my surreal airport and first class section that's both spaceship-like and has polar bears, and a house I described as a "labyrinth house like a rundown Winchester Mystery House, which I dreamed again last night, prompting this question." But it's definitely not a mansion, way too ramshackle for that--and yet it always yields new rooms to accomodate dreamtime houseguests. It's also in major need of interior decoration and often feels as if someone else has been living there in the interim between times it shows up in my dreams. The imaginary house is apparently a common recurring dream locale, but it's been really interesting to see the variations in how that manifests for different people. Mine is in the middle of nowhere, in a giant field (although there is a strange subway station at the bottom of the hill you have to climb to get there), and frequently features not just houseguests but intruders and strange fauna. When I woke up this morning, I said to Christopher, "I really like our dream country house, but I do not approve of tiny alligator snakes infesting my clothes."

Monday Hangovers

• Dani Shapiro has a depressing but ultimately hopeful essay in the LA Times, "A Writing Career Becomes Harder to Scale": "Every single piece of writing I have ever completed -- whether a novel, a memoir, an essay, short story or review -- has begun as a wrestling match between hopelessness and something else, some other quality that all writers, if they are to keep going, must possess." Read the whole piece.
• The fabulous Jo Whittemore takes a look at the difference between outsider and insider approaches to writing fantasy (see comments also; I think I'm with the seeming consensus--I like a mix of the two).
• A NYT op-ed suggests that the Quileute tribe should be involved in the Twilight-related interest in and commerce related to their culture.
• Genevieve is cracking me up: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C. If only I'd had Exhibit C my love life would have been so improved in high school and college.
• Mark Sarvas reads for a debut fiction prize and has some observations on common missteps.
• A most excellent essay by A.S. King (and I recommend checking out the whole series it's a part of--The Writer's Middle Finger), "When You Lose Hope, or Hey--Don't Aim That Thing at Me!": "There are plenty of fine books that are never published. I can't tell you if yours is one of them, but it's a fact. Yours could be one of them. And I’m not talking first books here. I'm talking about this happening any time. There are people who’ve been on Oprah's book club who have had to put beautifully written books back into the drawer. It happens."
• Karen Healey recommends Cynthia Leitich Smith's Eternal (you can find my own recommendation over to the right, in the Read Read sidebar).
• Wnterguard is officially the coolest sport I'd never heard of. Watch the first video posted over at Jackson Pearce's site if you don't believe me. Fantasy fencing!
• Tansy being smart on "kickass" heroines and urban fantasy: "What I love about the urban fantasy genre is that it tells the story from the POV of the kickass female protagonist, instead of presenting her as someone hot to look at who acts conveniently exactly like all the guys in the same story. Where she is at her most effective, Ms Kickass has a network of supporting characters who show her as a complex, three dimensional character, more than just a montage of karate chops, cleavage-in-vinyl and hair-not-tied-back-while-kicking-arse-omg. Sadly she is still, very often, the only strong woman in a man’s world. I love it when she isn't." And, again, let me recommend Margaret Ronald's first Evie Scelan novel Spiral Hunt, if that sounds interesting to you. Bike courier heroine! Really great writing! (And her new one, Wild Hunt, is out or out soon, I believe, though I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.)

Blitz Tourism

By the way, I'd suggest there are far worse ways to spend your weekend than cuddled up with Connie Willis's spectacular new novel Blackout. Man, oh, man, did I adore this book. Yes, it ends on a cliffhanger, and I can't wait for All Clear to come out this fall, but the entire thing is so perfect that I don't see how you can possibly wait to go ahead and read this one now. Available at fine booksellers from Spectra as of earlier this week, or score one of the limited editions from the ever-fabulous Subterranean Press.

It has nail-biting tension, just the right touch of humor, excellent and memorable characters, pitch-perfect writing and just about everything else you could want in a novel. One of the things I love best about it is that it feels like a World War II story I haven't seen a million times already, like Willis is showing us the war from the fringes of the actual battlefields, or rather Britain as a battlefield everyday people inhabited--exploring what it was like for shopgirls and actors who weren't performing for long stretches (Sir Godfrey is my favorite! Well, except for Alf and Binnie!), British intelligence agents doing semi-goofy things, and for women driving ambulances or military leaders from place to place. There are more women featuring in principle roles in this novel, actually, than in any other novel set during the great wars that I can remember. Plus, this is time travel! And like Tansy, I simply can't wait to see where the second installment takes us.

There are so many things I loved about it that I'd rather just discuss it after others have read it. So drop in after you do and leave a comment, why don't you?

p.s. You'll note I've eschewed Amazon links, even though there are still some elsewhere on my site. I don't know what to do about that, because I'm a code klutz and typepad automatically directs to them. I will assure you any money I get from Amazon affilitiates is spent on cat food and Lush products, and never on books, though. And that as soon as there's an alternative I can manage, I will be. In the meantime, why not drop by your local bookshop and pick it up?

Friday Hangovers

• There's a new issue of Hunger Mountain full of great things, including a heartfelt tribute to Norma Fox Mazer. I'm looking forward to reading all of it.
• But in that issue, I especially want to call your attention to Kathi Appelt's wonderful essay "Blurring the Lines," touched off by anonymous comments calling her writing too self-conscious and suggesting her novel The Underneath is more for adults than kids. Seriously, you need to read this if you write for children and young adults, or even just enjoy a fine essay. A snippet I loved, but which is only a side point: "Remember this when you're writing: We carry these stories with us all of our lives. There is no delineation. We don't become fifteen and set aside the stories that we grew up with. We don't become forty-five and forget the rodeo."
• David Byrne wins some and loses some with his NYC bike racks.
• Maggie Stiefvater on the inherent problem with assuming "teen voice" comes standard issue. (Related to Kathi's main points, I think.)
• Three pubs are rejecting Amazon's ebook payment model in favor of the agency model so far. And a post about what ebooks could mean for bookstores (spoiler: the poster thinks The Worst), something we don't talk about much, and which I'd be curious about people's thoughts on. How do ebooks eventually get integrated into indie bookstores--or not?
• I want these shoes. Even though I know I'd get them dirty in two seconds.

Thursday Hangovers

• Cornelia Funke shows up in the comments over at Roger Sutton's to discuss the collaborative process for her new book.
• Tune in to the #genderinYA discussion going wildfire today over at twitter, kicked off by Maureen Johnson.
• Katherine Langrish has a dead interesting post about magical rooms in kids' and YA fiction: "A room of one's own. Many children do not have one. They share with brothers or sisters. They lead lives ruled by adults. A room of one's own, for a child, is a place where it can be in control. It's also a place to start out from: the firm base of safety from which a child can explore the world. Rooms in children's or young adult fiction, therefore, often reflect the desirable qualities of a perfect personal space."
• A YA best of 2009 list with some books I haven't seen discussed as much over at Flashlight Worthy. (I absolutely adored Eyes Like Stars.)
• Karen Healey on the pleasures of Bones. (Also: Hodgins and Angela belong together!)
• Dave Elzey is sharing his VCFA grad lecture on building better boy books in several sections. The first installment is up.
• One of my favorite people, the extravagantly wonderful Lauren Cerand, is answering questions about freelance publicity over at Justine's today. Go ask her stuff.

Tuesday Hangovers

• Up to third of children and young adults in the UK believe at least one of their teachers is inhabited by an alien. (Via Sarah)
• Betsy reviews Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer (so awesome!) and highly recommends it.
• And the Book Smugglers have a rave for N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
• Laura Miller weighs in on the e-book subject and the latest war with some intriguing thoughts about pricing, e-book readers and the like. Worth checking out. (By the way, as Scalzi points out, Macmillan authors' books are still being held hostage by Amazon, so offer them (and other authors!) your support by purchasing elsewhere.)
• Yet more fascinating research on team body and team brain.
• Colleen Lindsay hosts Rick Bowes' remembrance of the impact The Catcher in the Rye had on him, when a smart librarian let him check it out even though he was under the requisite 18 years of age. (This photo Ellen took of Rick and I apparently threatening to use our psychic powers on each other is my favorite from C and Andy's KGB reading.)
• Roger Ebert tells the story of "The Man Who Didn't Sleep."
• And another great piece over at the Quarterly Conversation about "Macedonio Fernandez: The Man Who Invented Borges."