In Which I Write Book Reviews

 

“Faber sniffed the book. ‘Do you know that books smell like nutmeg

or some spice from a foreign land?’”

–Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

While I enjoy reading, I appreciate most stories only on an external level. If someone asks me how a book was, my typical response is usually, “It was interesting”, which wouldn’t be untrue. Even when I dislike a novel, I find intriguing aspects in the plot because every author has a different perspective. And I like that. But there are far fewer books I would actually claim to love, books I would read over and over, books I would take with me into exile.

The following three are examples of my select, but by no means tiny, list of top titles. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but be forewarned—some people have a more sensitive definition of spoilers than others. And I can’t be the best judge of that since I’m the type of person who often reads the ending ahead. (Don’t judge.)

The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

Several years ago when I initially began researching literary agents, mostly for the fun of it, I stumbled across Stefan Bachmann. At that time, The Peculiar wasn’t out yet, but I read the write-up and felt it didn’t really tickle my fancy. Still, I checked out his blog, thinking I might unearth some secret author code revealing whether he was satisfied with his agent or not. Right away I found his voice engaging and amusing. And you know when you follow someone’s blog and you start feeling like you’re best buds with them, even though you’ve never met them in person and you rarely comment on their posts? Then you start buying their books because you want to support this friend who wouldn’t even know you from a hole in the wall? So yeah, that might have happened with The Peculiar.

One of the cool bits about Bachmann is that he was around eighteen when his first novel came out. But that also meant I wasn’t too confident he’d be any good. Even more experienced authors than he frequently fail to pass the Liz Test (a very prestigious, nonexistent set of rules governing beautiful prose). In fact, I’m so persnickety about writing style, I sometimes find fault with Ray Bradbury (GASP!). Usually I don’t live up to my own standards, so that gives you an idea of what they’re like. But for the most part, Bachmann’s work pleased my rigid inner editor. Yay Stefan!

Since you can find a summary on Goodreads (just click the header over the photo), I won’t bore you with my own rendition of THE PECULIAR’s plot. But I will tell you what the summary doesn’t say, that while Bartholomew is not hugely likeable (he is somewhat irritable, somewhat selfish, and somewhat irresponsible), he is relatable and real. Though he is half faery, he is very human. And his rough edges are offset by the bumbling Mr. Jelliby, the most loveable character I’ve encountered in a long time. Not to mention, Bachmann proves himself a master of world building and tone. Even his prologue (and I’m not a fan of prologues) sets the perfect mood. On top of that, the novel is set in steampunk London—need I say more?

The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann

Another fact that I appreciated about Bachmann is that he only wrote one sequel to The Peculiar—namely, The Whatnot, which you should also read (you know, if you want). Isn’t two such a pretty number? Maybe I’m jaded, but I don’t really like trilogies because I feel that—more often than not—the first installment starts out strong, the second degenerates into a mush middle, and the third falls apart completely (I’m looking at you, Hunger Games). If I know a story is the first of three, I am much slower to invest time in reading it, even when I know the initial book is fabulous. (For instance, I generally pretend Inkheart doesn’t have any sequels.) So yeah, Bachmann is great.

 

 

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

 

 

 

While I’m a reasonably fast reader, I still prefer to take my sweet time on any given book. That way the story seeps into my everyday life and becomes a part of me. To balance this out, I generally have four to seventeen novels going at once. (When people ask me if this gets confusing, I ask them if it gets confusing to have more than one friend. That shuts them up.) But from the moment I started The Phantom of the Opera, I struggled to put it down just to do normal things like eating, and sleeping, and school. I even stayed up late flipping pages as quickly as I could, and I’m religious about getting to bed early. This level of absorption rarely occurs. When reviews tell me a novel will hold me hostage (or whatever terminology they like to use), I smile and snicker and prove them wrong. (I’ve been working at The Inheritance Cycle for years now, and I only picked up the pace a while ago because my sister threatened me.)

All through Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece, I suffered with the Phantom; I sympathized with him. (Of course, it helped that I had already fallen in love with the soundtrack.) Though Erik’s voice is far superior to any other’s, he can never be allowed on stage. Hideously marred (he has some sort of genetic leprosy, if I recall correctly), he hides beneath the Paris Opera House, bitter and lonely, shunned by a society that prizes outward loveliness above all else. Meanwhile he wreaks havoc, terrorizing those he deems responsible for his pain—hence the legend of the Opera Ghost. But when he teaches young Christine Daae to sing, the poor man falls jealously in love with her. From that moment, the story soars with rage and selfishness and beauty and sorrow and a dozen other emotions. Think deep and wide and epic. In my limited opinion, no novel puts other romances and tragedies to shame like The Phantom of the Opera.

 

 

The Peculiar, The Whatnot, and The Phantom of the Opera are by no means my only favorites—I have a couple dozen or so more—but I could go on for hours, and you probably have stuff you want to do. Before you return to your normal life, though, I’d love to know some of your top picks. (Also, thanks for dropping by!)

Book to Finish--Vine Snakes, Rabid Bears, and Socially-Awkward Piranhas

Today has been one of those dreary days, played through a filter of sepia like an old-style photograph. Somehow autumn and summer seem to have become confused and mixed themselves with winter, and it’s the best sort of writing weather—all cozy and close. With the fire burning high and the sun burning low, my inner editor grows tired and sluggish, which means I can enjoy some peace and quiet. Lately, you’d think I’ve been preparing for a Broadway musical, the way that taskmaster screams at me to get everything just perfect:  “Not a syllable, not a vowel must be out of place!”

I gaze out the giant picture window overlooking the gas station across the road from my house. My own fishbowl view. Rain speckles the horizon and drizzles down the glass. I dreamed of floods last night. It must have been the rain whispering to me in my sleep. Now the whole world seems turbulent and wet. Just through the bare-boned, emaciated trees, I see the churning river heaving choppy white-caps up at the shale-colored sky. It’s a scene right out of a book. Poe could have captured it.

I’m getting antsy again—it’s cabin fever time, I suppose. Somehow all I want to do is get out and travel to a million different places at once. In fact, I don’t much care where. This is because I am editing, and I turn procrastination into an Olympic sport. It takes me a while to get into the swing of things. Like an old, run-down train, I’m practically at my destination by the time I start picking up speed.

But I find that list-making helps (or maybe that’s just what I tell myself). So let me give you an idea of what my life has been like over the past few months, starting with October.

 

·         I’m eagerly awaiting NaNoWriMo, pacing the floors and counting down the days on my fingers and toes until that fateful moment when it shall rain sunshine and roses and bolts of inspiration. With ducklings dancing round and muse-faeries raining sparkles on my prose, this will surely be a month of wonders.

 

·         November arrives with all its sarcastic glory and plunks me down at my seat with my fingers poised aching over laptop keys. I am beginning to realize, rather dimly at first, that the sunshine and roses have been canceled due to lack of funding. The baby ducks have all grown up into jaded adult ducks who don’t believe in miracles. And the muse-faeries were hired out by all the French novelists who got there first. Funny how I don’t remember this happening last year.

 

·         I ride the rollercoaster of 30,000 word days and 6,000 word days, greater days and lesser days, brilliant days and mediocre days. Sometimes I hold it in; other times I puke and scream like a baby. (Okay, not really. I just didn’t want to let the rollercoaster metaphor die before its time.) Somehow I survive, though how I manage that is up for debate.

 

·         Christmas season follows hot on the heels of November, and I buy presents and pretend I’m with it enough to know what day of the week it is. Soon my obituary begins showing up in the newspapers because my friends have not heard from me in approximately 7.2 eternities, at which point they have begun to assume the worst.

 

·         After Christmas comes the dreaded moment when I pick up my rough draft and begin the read through. To give you an idea of what this feels like, let me offer a practical example. Upon returning from a long and tumultuous vacation, you step into your room, remembering that you left it somewhat messy but expecting the damage to be both reasonable and manageable. In fact, it is neither. What you find, instead of a rumpled bed and a littered floor, is a giant sinkhole with rubble raining down from what was once the ceiling. Poison-green vines stretch across the walls, and some of them are acting like snakes. You also suspect there might be a bear living in your closet, but you hope it isn’t hungry enough to eat you…yet. Oh yeah, and you only have an hour to clean this place before guests arrive—namely, the queen of England and her entourage. Good luck.

 

·         In order to survive edits, I coerce my mother into buying two giant boxes of Earl Grey tea. My lovely sister, home from university for the month, proceeds to drink the entirety of said tea. (We send her back promptly.) This is not a very promising start. Plus, the grizzly in my closet is getting a tad restless. It also appears to be rabid.

 

·         After this preliminary read through, which feels like a form of torture probably outlawed by the Geneva Convention, I sit down to actually begin edits. Unfortunately, that is when the delicate structure of my brain chooses to collapse into a pile of marshmallow goop. Marshmallow goop is not known for its high IQ.

 

·         Summoning all my courage, I edit the first paragraph. I drink coffee. I move onto the next paragraph and drink more coffee. Already, I think you can see the pattern developing, and it’s only downhill from here. (After the start of the second page, I don’t really remember much of what happened. Either Louis Tomlinson proposed to me or I started hallucinating. The jury’s still out on that.)

 

·         I spend my time playing Temple Run and checking Facebook because they “help me think”. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I vow to rise at my typical 4:30 AM—even though it’s vacation—in order to get a proper head start on my editing. Instead, I decide to spend some quality time with my feather pillow, since the two of us haven’t seen much of each other lately. This might rule me out as a potential military candidate. But the rain is lovely and my dreams are pleasant, so I can’t complain.

 

As you can see, my novel is coming along swimmingly. Despite the discouragement that comes with facing the bugaboo of my rough draft, I know that I have done this before. I have braved the swamps of my consciousness in order to clean my room, and I have wrestled the rabid grizzly bear that is my inner editor. It stands to reason I should be able to do all that again. Of course, I may lose my sanity—as well as a few limbs—along the way. Still I think, in the end, it will be worth it. When this is all said and done, I will have over-listened to several dozen songs. I will have grown fat on the spoils of the land—namely coffee and brownie mounds. And I will have written a book that no one will appreciate as well as I will. (Which, come to think of it, is not helping my argument any.)

Still, it’s too late to turn back now. And if you’re in the same boat, welcome aboard and keep your fingers and toes inside. The piranhas are not as sociable as I am.  

The Inner Editor's Monologue

Dear Liz,

We need to talk. I don’t appreciate what you did to me this November, the way you locked me up in the basement of your mind and shoved socks in my mouth to stifle my criticisms. For thirty days, you spent your time lollygagging and procrastinating and pretending to write worthwhile stuff. On and on and on it went. But while you drank your coffee and ate your chocolate and thought your happy noveling thoughts, I lay there in that dark corner of your memory, brooding as the taste of footwear filled my mouth with the cottony reminder that we are very different, you and I. As you pounded away at the keys, writing painful prose, I rocked myself and recited Tennyson in hopes of sparing my sanity. Whether or not I succeeded is still a valid question. So thank you, for that.

All December you avoided your novel, letting it ruminate as you sang Christmas carols, wrapped Christmas presents, and baked Christmas pies. But while you were busy counting down the days, I was channeling Houdini. For a while, I may have been the Count of Monte Cristo, imprisoned for ages on an island, worn down to a mere shadow of myself. But I’m back now. Be afraid.

January 1^st was the key that finally opened the lock of my confinement. As you sat in the living room, eating cake and watching Doctor Who, I crept in and joined you on the couch, unnoticed. Perhaps you cherished notions of escaping your writerly fate, of penning a rough draft and then leaving it to rot while moving on with your life. I’m sorry to say, it will never be as easy as all that. I am your curse—I am your ghost. I will follow you to the ends of the earth, the voice of the many books you have abandoned. Unlike your conscience, I will never let up.

Let me tell you something vital. I bet you thought wandering into the badlands of your rough draft, if you ever did choose to return of your own accord, would be as delightful as strolling down the Yellow Brick Road en route to Oz. But honey, the only walk you’ll be taking is into Mordor, and it will be just you and me and the Precious (otherwise known as your manuscript). You may go crazy; in fact, I’m counting on it. Art, by necessity, mandates blood, sweat, and tears. So does perfection. And you are so very far from either right now.

Style, you argue. Style is a matter of taste and perspective. Everyone has their own style. George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare. I’m sorry you cherish these childish notions. It will only make this more difficult for you in the long run. From now on, MY style is law. Hemmingway might like that despairing passage over there, but I am not Hemmingway, so in the bin it goes. Poe might have been proud of that dramatic moment, but I feel very differently, and you’ll trash it if you know what’s good for you. Write with the rhythm of Ray Bradbury—then we can talk about style. I hope you see how this is going to work. If you’re having second thoughts, I’m sorry; it’s a little too late for those. The doubters warned you, didn’t they, before you started all this nonsense? Of course they did. It’s not my fault you ignored them.

You’re locked in forever, and you’ll do as I say. See, I let you have your fun, traipsing through November without a care in the world, heaping up work for me. Now it’s my turn. Now it’s my chanced to be unleashed, and unlike you, I am merciless. I do not spare sentences for their beauty or scenes for their potential. I do not see promise; I see words. And if I do not see good words, I hit delete. If your beautiful darling doesn’t add one jot to the plot, then the plot won’t miss your beautiful darling if I cut her lifeline and snip her string of words from the page. You’ll feel better, in time, I promise you. How can I say that? Because I know. This is the part you always forget, no matter how many forays you’ve made into the stormy waters of my territory, be it with essay, blog, or book in tow. But I always remember.

Once upon a time, we used to be friends. For a while there, not a day went by when we weren’t spending every spare moment you could dredge up counting rows of letters and marveling at how the pieces fell into place with gentle tweaking. We lay on the grassy lawn of your consciousness and studied the clouds and the stars, weaving stories out of thin air, delighting in the mayhem of the axe and the precision of the scalpel in refining words into wonder. We were more than a team; beyond the cliché, we truly were two halves of the same soul.

What happened? After all those late nights when I fed you ideas till your fingers caught fire trying to keep up, I expected to make an impression…somehow. When you vowed to live like this for the rest of your life, I assumed you meant to include me. But summer came and stole your novel from you and thrust you into work and reality. You came back slimmer and tanner and bouncier, but you were still you. As soon as you could, you rushed back to the computer screen, bursting with lively plans to finish the project we had started together, you and I. And we did. We finished.

Then I slipped from your mind altogether, like a Post-It® note without its stick. And I was crushed. What did I do to make you hate me?

When did I become your enemy?

Listen. I know relations between us have been strained. Maybe I brought that on myself. Maybe I was too harsh in my search for brilliance, and maybe I trampled you on the way to perfection. Honestly, I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know how to fix it. But can we call a truce, even if it lasts no longer than the Treaty of Versailles? Can we lay aside our differences and work together? At least once more, can we make it work?

Your hands are shaking—your trembling fingers flutter through the pages of a book—your book. Of course…you’ve been reading your rough draft on the sly, dragging yourself deeper and deeper into discouragement; you can’t face the jarring horrors without me. Please let me help you.  

Sincerely,

Your Inner Editor