Books – Page 2

Category: Books (page 2 of 3)

A very personal review of Alt-Hero #1: Crackdown

Okay: there are some things that you should know if you’re going to read one my review of a comic.

1. I’m a reluctant comics reader. I’m not even really a comics person at all, there just happen to be a few that I really like (like Watchmen, Hellboy, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, and Tintin).

2. Double that for superhero comics. I couldn’t even make it through the series that the first Thor movie was based on, even though I liked the movie and the writer that wrote both the movie and the comic. And that was when I was actively taking a class on comics because I want to understand.

Basically I’m a comics window-shopper.

So trust me when I tell you that I opened Alt-Hero #1: Crackdown and it’s so good that I read the whole thing in one sitting.

I was just going to open her up, look at a few pages of the art, and go to bed. But no: I got sucked into the story so thoroughly that I was sad and disappointed to reach the end so quickly. Completely forgot that I was reading the first issue of a comic and not a graphic novel.

If you are a superhero comics reader, the structure is very familiar. It’s a superhero origin story, opening into a Eurozone-flavored X-men setup. All the characters are slightly improbably and – well – very superheroesque in that way that the powers really don’t make any sense and it’s all very weird. (Sorry, I told you I could never get into superheroes!)

However, the characters are compelling. Even the ones who are introduced briefly and have few speaking lines – somehow, they are intriguing and I want to know more. I even want to get to know Captain Europa.

These well-drawn characters lead into quite a few laugh-out-loud moments. And I don’t say that lightly – this wasn’t sensible_chuckle.gif but a literal throw-my-head-back laugh. I appreciate that, especially in a comic that tackles dark political themes.

At this point it’s all positive: gripping story, characters that you can tell have deep backstories, and good jokes.

However (you knew this was coming), there are two things that I hope improve in future issues.

One is the placement of the speech bubbles. Sometimes it was a little difficult to determine the order in which they were to be read, and while I think I guessed right most of the time, sometimes it was a little daunting to look at a new panel and not really know where to start.

The other is that I don’t love the art. It’s not bad art, certainly, and it gets the point across, but it’s not art that I would want to look at for an extended period of time. Note that with the exception of Watchmen, my favorite comics all have highly stylized, refined artwork.

In terms of a story-focused approach to comics, which I think Arkhaven is using, I think this is a perfectly appropriate style – workmanlike, not overly realistic or overly stylized. It reminds me of the amount of work put into something like old-school Doctor Who episodes or a pulpy sci-fi novel — just enough work put in to build the world, but that needs the grace and imagination of the reader to fill in the rest of the blanks.

Basically the antithesis of Modern Literary Fiction™, which I would venture to guess that Arkhaven Comics stands resolutely against. All seems to be in order.

I should have probably said this at the beginning of the review, but I was a backer for this run of Alt-Hero and firmly believe in their mission of pushing back against the SJWs in comics.

That said, I still enjoyed the heck out of this comic and can’t wait for the next one to hit my inbox.

It’s available on Amazon for $2.99 if you’re interested.

A better strong female character

2018-05-06 / childlike empress / 2 Comments

I had forgotten how much I enjoy Agatha Christie’s writing, especially the way she draws her characters. Even the bit players are vivid and true to life, and the way that she describes people is so insightful into what makes them tick.

That’s why she was such a great (albeit somewhat infuriating) mystery writers.

I’ve been reading 4:50 from Paddington, and Lucy Eyelesbarrow has quickly rocketed to the top of my favorite Christie characters.

The name of Lucy Eyelesbarrow had already made itself felt in certain circles.

Lucy Eyelesbarrow was thirty-two. She had taken a First in Mathematics at Oxford, was acknowledged to have a brilliant mind and was confidently expected to take up a distinguished academic career.

But Lucy Eyelesbarrow, in addition to scholarly brilliance, had a core of good sound common sense. She could not fail to observe that a life of academic distinction was singularly ill rewarded. she had no desire whatever to teach and she took pleasure in contacts with minds much less brilliant than her own. In short, she had a taste for the people, all sorts of people–and not the same people the whole time. She also, quite frankly, liked money. To gain money one must exploit shortage.

Lucy Eyelesbarrow hit at once upon a very serious shortage–the shortage of any kind of skilled domestic labour. To the amazement of her friends and fellow-scholars, Lucy Eyelesbarrow entered the field of domestic labour.

Her success was immediate and assured. By now, after a lapse of some years, she was known all over the British Isles. It was quite customary for wives to say joyfully to husbands, “It will be all right, I can go with you to the States. I’ve got Lucy Eyelesbarrow!” The point of Lucy Eyelesbarrow was that once she came into a house, all worry, anxiety and hard work went out of it. Lucy Eyelesbarrow did everything, saw to everything, arranged everything. She was unbelieveably competent in every conceivable sphere. She looked after elderly parents, accepted the care of young children, nursed the sickly, cooked divinely, got on well with any old crusted servants there might happen to be (there usually weren’t), was tactful with impossible people, soothed habitual drunkards, was wonderful with dogs. Best of all she never minded what she did. She crubbed the kitched floor, dug in the garden, cleaned up dog messes, and carried coals!

One of her rules was never to accept an engagement for any long length of time. A fortnight was her usual period–a month at most under exceptional circumstances. For that fortnight you had to pay the earth! But, during that fortnight, your life was heaven. You could relax completely, go abroad, stay at home, do as you pleased, secure that all was going well on the home front in Lucy Eyelesbarrow’s capable hands.

Naturally the demand for her services was enormous. She could have booked herself up if she chose for about three years ahead. She had been offered enormous sums to go as a permanency. But Lucy had no intention of being a permanency, nor would she book herself for more than six months ahead. And within that period, unknown to her clamouring clients, she always kept certain free periods which enabled her either to take a short luxurious holiday (since she spent nothing otherwise and was handsomely paid and kept) or to accept any position at short notice that happened to take her fancy, either by reason of its character, or because she “liked the people.” Since she was now at liberty to pick and choose amongst the vociferous claimants for her services, she went largely by personal liking. Mere riches would not buy you the services of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. She could pick and choose and she did pick and choose. She enjoyed her life very much and found in it a continual source of entertainment.

Now, leaving aside the fact that Lucy Eyelesbarrow is a very convenient character to have on hand for this book (I hope she will have a very integral role to play in solving the mystery, otherwise the Mary Sue-factor is too large to ignore), there are a few things that I quite like about her:

She’s not conceited. Yes, she’s smart, but she chose to do something that she genuinely enjoyed, that entertained her, and that made her money, instead of taking the expected career path.
She’s her own dog, which is something I’m working on. Her schedules are made on her terms, she took vacations whenever she wanted, and booked the clients that she liked.
Her business model. Find a shortage of something, and then be the best at it.
Competence competence competence
It’s rare to find a 30-something single lady in a book of a certain age without some reference to the fact that she’s single. I like that, since it’s pretty irrelevant to the plot, Christie left it out.

Basically she’s Mary Poppins but without the weird Mary Poppins contradictions and the timelord magic. She’s the type of lady (real or fictional) that I admire greatly, and I’ll be contemplating how I can apply these (fictional) ideas to my own business ideas.

Image of the Week: One meme, two books

2018-04-20 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

This week, I discovered that Rich Dad Poor Dad, a book about personal finance, is really a book on mindset (although I do feel like I have a better understanding of personal finance now that I’ve read it). And it’s the same dang book that I’ve read before.

In fact, I could make a map of the ideas in this book and how they directly correlate to other self improvement books. One of those is Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, which references the same cartoon as RDPD.

It’s an influential cartoon, clearly. The 98-lb-weakling meme is real.

I feel a little bit duped, to be honest. By myself. Like I pull the wool over my own eyes. I keep reading these types of books trying to find – what – the right idea that will get me on the right track. But I’ve known all along that my problem is not learning, but doing. So it doesn’t really matter how many of these types of books I read, if I don’t put any of it into practice.

Robert Kiyosaki says it himself: action always beats inaction.

He also finally namechecked Think and Grow Rich so I feel marginally less crazy now.

Feminists don’t talk about Christine de Pizan

2018-04-10 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

(But then again, neither does anybody else.)

Christine de Pizan was an Italian lady raised and educated in the courts of France who partied through 1399 and who supported herself by writing as a widow with three small children. She is one of my heroes.

Tonight I found my copy of The Book of the City of Ladies, which was written in 1405, first translated and published in English in 1521, and pretty much forgotten about until the 1980s.

The Book of the City of Ladies is a defense of women from unfair accusations, written from a well-read, temperate woman’s perspective. It is a delight to read. This is a passage from the introduction, where we find Christine trying to reconcile other (male) authors’ opinions of women with her own observations and experience.

And so I relied more on the judgement of others than on what I myself felt and knew. I was so transfixed in this line of thinking for such a long time that it seemed as if I were in a stupor. Like a gushing fountain, a series of authorities, whom I recalled one after another, came to mind, along with their opinions on this topic. And I finally decided that God formed a vile creature when He made a woman, and I wondered how such a worthy artisan could have deigned to make such an abominable work which, from what they say, is the vessel as well as the refuge and abode of every evil and vice. As I was thinking this, a great unhappiness and sadness welled up in my heart, for I detested myself and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature. And in my lament I spoke these words:

“Oh, God, how can this be? For unless I stray from my faith, I must never doubt that Your infinite wisdom and most perfect goodness ever created anything which was not good. Did You yourself not create woman in a very special way and since that time did You not give her all those inclinations which it pleased You for her to have? And how could it be that You could go wrong in anything? Yet look at all these accusations which have been judged, decided, and concluded against women. I do not know how to understand this repugnance. If it is so, fair Lord God, that in fact so many abominations abound in the female sex, for You Yourself say that the testimony of two or three witnesses lends credence, why shall I not doubt that this is true? Alas, God, why did You not let em be born in the world as a man, so that all my inclinations would be to serve You better, and so that I would not stray in anything and would be as perfect as a man is said to be? But since Your kindness has not been extended to me, then forgive my negligence in Your service, most fair Lord God, and may it not displease You, for the servant who receives fewer gifts from his lord is less obliged in his service.” I spoke these words to God in my lament and a great deal more for a very long time in sad reflection, and in my folly I considered myself most unfortunate because God had made me inhabit a female body in this world.

I love this passage because who among the thinking ladies hasn’t had these thoughts at one time or another? Sometimes men are so convinced that they themselves are so perfect and women are so evil and tempting that it really can make you doubt your Maker.

But Christine continues:

So occupied with these painful thoughts, my head bowed in shame, my eyes filled with tears, leaning on the pommel of my chair’s armrest, I suddenly saw a ray of light fall on my lap, as though it were the sun. I shuddered then, as if wakened from sleep, for I was sitting in a shadow where the sun could not have shone at that hour. And as I lifted my head to see where this light was coming from, I saw three crowned ladies standing before me, and the splendor of their bright faces shone on me and throughout the entire room. Now no one would ask whether I was surprised, for my doors were shut and they had still entered. Fearing that some phantom had come to tempt me and filled with great fright, I made the Sign of the Cross on my forehead.

Then she who was the first of the three smiled and began to speak, “Dear daughter, do not be afraid, for we have not come here to harm or trouble you but to console you, for we have taken pity on your distress, and we have come to bring you out of the ignorance which so blinds your own intellect that you shun what you know for a certainty and believe what you do not know or see or recognize except by virtue of many strange opinions. You resemble the fool in the prank who was dressed in women’s clothes while he slept; because those who were making fun of him repeatedly told him he was a woman, he believed their false testimony more readily than the certainty of his own identity. Fair daughter, have you lost all sense? Have you forgotten that when fine gold is tested in the furnace, it does not change or vary in strength but becomes purer the more it is hammered and handled in different ways? Do you not know that the best things are the most debated and the most discussed?

The ladies – Reason, Rectitude, and Justice – then go on to deliver to Christine arguments and examples of badass ladies through history, everyone from random unknown Saints to Minerva to Seneca’s wife Pompeia Paulina. All these ladies are, of course, citizens of the City.

I love how many medieval works of this period follow the “dream vision” format. I don’t believe that this work is one of them, because it’s more like a long-form conversation than a proper dream vision (like Piers Plowman, for example, where he literally falls asleep and dreams), but I love how non-modern writers were more imaginative with their writing.

The Book of the City of Ladies is a long-form conversation.

Backwards Book Review: A Wrinkle in Time Pt II

2018-04-02 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Backwards book reviews are when I revisit a book that I’ve already read. Before I read the book, I’ll write down everything I can remember about it. Afterward, I’ll write up my thoughts and see how well my memories stacked up.

If you’d like to read what I remembered of A Wrinkle in Time before I read it again, read Part I of this backwards book review. There will probably be spoilers.

Pt II: The Aftermath

What a charming book! I completely forgot that for this (intuitive) (intelligent) girl, how utterly captivating the world of A Wrinkle in Time is. It’s also funny to note what stuck with me and what did not. Memory can be a fickle creature (if you rely on it as a strictly historical record).

First of all, I must rectify the misspellings in the Backwards part of this review. It’s Madeleine L’Engle and the Murry family. That’s what I get from doing this from memory.

What I got wrong

The snake. While the tree (it was really an apple orchard) and the stone fence did appear in the story, the snake did not. I think I was confusing Wrinkle with A Wind in the Door again.
“I think at certain points Charles Wallace bogs them down because he’s only like 6 years old or something”. Fact check: while it’s true that Charles Wallace is only like 6 years old, that wasn’t his age that was the issue. It’s only a major plot point!
This isn’t wrong, per se, but I completely missed the “growing up” themes of the book, that dovetail perfectly with the overt message about the importance of free will. Meg’s character development hinges on her moving from counting on someone else to save her, to reluctantly shouldering the burden that only she can bear. Interesting that I did not remember this part at all, but that it stuck out at me so obviously this time. Perhaps it’s because I’ve now gone through that transition that I can see it more clearly.

What I got right

2D planet. They did indeed go to a 2D planet, and I still love thinking about how it would work. I did, however, fail to remember the other interesting planets that they visited.
The theme of humanity vs tyranny, and the importance of making decisions for yourself.
The secondary and tertiary characters: Mrs Who, Mrs Which, and Mrs Whatsit, Meg’s mother and twin brothers.

Thoughts from the second round

This book is a simple fantasy-adventure story that dramatizes really important ideas. The edition I read has a little interview with MLE in the back, and she says that she wrote this book after reading the theory of general relativity–she wanted to explore some of the concepts in it. I quite like how she did that (caution: I haven’t read that yet) in a way that makes sense, but also in a way that incorporates it into the fabric of the greater universe. By that I mean, God is still sovereign, and there are many different variations of “creation” in that each planet has a unique sense of time and terrain that is reflected in its inhabitants.

It’s a fun adventure of ideas – the fantasy elements are firmly rooted in real life but explored to almost absurd extremes and baked into every element of the plot. This isn’t a veneer of fantasy, this is the real thing. Books like this are the kind that a father wouldn’t mind reading to his child at night.

Reading this book now, in the era of fake news, in the era where children are “elected” to go to college and come out just another rubberstamped BS or BA, in the era where CIA projects may well cause the end of the world, it feels so prescient. I feel like I can walk out of my house and feel the throbbing thrum of the mighty villainous brain at the center of the book. The themes, of choosing for yourself over letting someone choose for you, of choosing to make those difficult decisions that leave you with skin in the game (tbd), of realizing that you can’t rely on someone else to save you (or the day), these themes are essential to us if we endeavor to live for ourselves.

As far as mechanics go, the plot ends quite abruptly. As a reader, I was a little let down as there was very little resolution from all the family-level worries that undergird the story. I wanted some discussion from the Murry family about what went on and what it means. I wanted to know more about the happy reunion between Mr. Murry and his family. But as an aspiring writer, I appreciated the ending, however abrupt it may be. Everything was wrapped up, and out. There may be discussion, but it’ll be in the slow build of the next book. I suppose I recognize some of my own habits in the rhythm of the book: a long slow introduction and then a lot of activity before abruptly dropping to stillness again.

Overall

I loved this book when I was twelve and I enjoyed it as an adult as well. I won’t say that I “loved” it because it didn’t grab me as much as it did when I was the same age as the heroine. It was worth the read, both for the flights of fancy and the serious message.

Would read again.

Backwards Book Review: A Wrinkle in Time

2018-03-18 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

A Wrinkle in Time is one of those major books in my childhood. I was probably 11 or 12 when I first read it, and it absolutely captivated me with its rich storytelling, flights of fantasy, and yet its focus on intelligence and rationality. After Wrinkle, I read nearly every Madeline L’Engle book I could get my hands on (with the exception of A House Like a Lotus which I put down because it was too mature for me at the time) throughout middle school until I reached Walking on Water in high school. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art remains an influential book on me to this day. The sequel to Wrinkle, A Wind in the Door, is possibly more influential, but that’s another matter for another day.

Let’s see what I can remember about A Wrinkle in Time. And how much I can keep Wrinkle separate from Wind.

Wrinkle is the story of Meg Murray, her brother Charles Wallace, and I think her friend Calvin O’Keefe saving the world from what current me would identify as totalitarianism. On a stormy night, she is visited by an omen (Louise the snake) out by an old gnarled tree by a stone fence, and soon meets the three witches–Mrs Who, Which, and Whatsit–who teach the kids how to tesseract and take them on a goose chase through the universe. There is something wrong with the universe that they have to find and fix, but they don’t know what it is at first. (Honestly, that sounds to me like a heavily intuitive way to go about things, but I’ve been thinking a lot about intuition lately. It would not surprise me if MLE wrote highly intuitive books, considering her propensity to write about families of highly intelligent people.) I think the problem has something to do with their father? Maybe he’s kidnapped or something.

The witches try to take them to a 2D planet, where their 3D forms are squished and where they cannot survive. Eventually, they end up on what the current version of me would call Totalitarian Planet, where all the houses are the same and the yards are the same and the kids play the same games and even the balls bounce in unison. UGH. This is ground zero, where the wrongness is, and they find that the planet is ruled by what is basically a disembodied brain, demanding that everything on the planet bend to its rule, enforced dramatically by a rhythm. To avoid getting trapped by this, the kids sing songs and nursery rhymes in different time signatures. Somehow they save the day.

Then they end up at home, which is comforting and full of family, including their mother and the twin brothers Sandy and Dennys (I think–it was a strange name to me), with a little bit more affection for their prescient snake.

Thematically speaking, it was a story about not letting someone or something else rule your life, and I remember MLE talking in an interview about originally making the villain a disembodied heart, but that she ended up thinking that a disembodied brain would be basically more of a tyrant. I’m not sure if I agree with her, but it is true that strictness without the temperance of love or mercy is never the way to go.

The characters in the book are full of creativity and ingenuity, are committed to the truth, and are patient. I think at certain points Charles Wallace bogs them down because he’s only like 6 years old or something, but they manage to make it work without sacrificing him. The power of humanity over tyranny.

I always loved how MLE wove together an idealized New England academic family with a highly imaginative yet totally plausible fantasy elements. So many of the ideas that MLE explores seem to test the boundaries of reality, but I feel like the events in her novels–this series especially–were simply dramatized versions of what might actually be already happening in the world.

Like Jordan B Peterson takes everyday tasks and draws out their cosmic significance, MLE takes the world that we live in and heightens it to a point where you can see the spiritual battles taking place. I could tell you the battlefield for A Wind in the Door, but I’ll have to save that for my review on that book. Wrinkle escapes me, although I may have already hit on it: totalitarianism and the utter importance of free will.

Virginia Woolf ran a publishing house and it’s inspiring AF

2018-02-22 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

When Virginia Woolf was around my age, she convinced her husband to buy a dog, a house, and a printing press. (I have to find a husband before I can convince him of such things, but nobody said we had to do this in the same order.) What started out as a hobby, and a way to dodge harsh criticism from mainstream publishers but still put out books, ended up as a legit publishing house that ran for 30 years and published people like TS Eliot and Sigmund Freud. (And of course Virginia herself.)

Leonard Woolf said that one of the reasons for the success of the Hogarth Press was that they had no overheads. The printing was done in their home, they didn’t pay themselves for their time and any profit they made was always reinvested.

Sounds a lot like running a blog, actually.

I saw some of their early products today. They’re not fancy. The later books were, with dust jackets and cleanly-designed covers. But the early ones? They were simply bound with stitches, with covers printed on colored stock or fabric. Some were really tiny, pocket-book sized (pamphlets, really) while others were normal-book sized.

As their confidence grew, the Woolfs started to sell their books by subscription. They compiled two lists of subscribers, group A, those who would buy all the Hogarth Press publications, and group B, who could be notified of new publications and would then select the titles they wanted.

A subscription model you say? Like, I don’t know, an email list? Gee. I don’t have an email list yet, but perhaps it’s time to start.

Certainly I don’t agree with most of the politics of Virginia and Leonard–and I definitely will not pattern my death after her–but I am absolutely delighted to learn about their press and how they grew it from a tiny little baby into something that had legs and made money and published actual legit works.

Lessons we learn

You absolutely can be an author and publisher at the same time
It’s okay to start small selling to your friends
Don’t be afraid to scale up when the time comes
Always keep track of why you started doing it in the first place

Backwards book review: Amusing Ourselves to Death

2018-02-10 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is an interesting look at the way people engage and interact with the world.

I first read it six or seven years ago, before my eyeballs were fully opened to the magnitude of fake news and general non-truth-seekiness that pervades the world.

Somebody on Twitter mentioned in this week, since it’s pretty relevant to what’s happening in our world these days–the degeneration of civil discourse, people who are unable to converse beyond sound bites, the dissipation of nuance.

It’s on the docket to read again, but I figured it might be fun to write about what I remember about the book before rereading it. That way, we can see what stuck from the first time around. Or we can laugh at what I completely misremembered.

It’ll be fun! Like turning a book review inside out.

Here’s what I remember about Amusing Ourselves to Death:

I think the main idea of the book was that because of television and other visual media, we are becoming a post-literate society. The primacy of the written word is giving way to the primacy of the image, which doesn’t allow for the precision and nuance that the written word does. (I’m reminded of emojis when I think of this.)
Postman points out that many people are afraid of falling into a 1984-style linguistic dictatorship, but Postman sees our society going more the way of A Brave New World. People abandon the pursuit of truth in pursuit of feelings (“the feelies”) of their own volition.
I remember Postman contrasting the ability of people in the past to hold long arguments in their memories with our short sound-bite attention spans now. I believe this was illustrated with the Lincoln-Douglass debates, and how both the debaters and the crowd needed to additional notes or written material to make their cases or keep up with the conversation.
I remember disagreeing with him about something. I can’t recall if it was something about his tone (dang kids get off my lawn) or if it was something related to visual communication (because sometimes a diagram is more efficient in conveying information than a paragraph).
But I do remember becoming very uncomfortable with the idea of seeking amusement or entertainment above all. So much is done now FOR THE LULZ, or in my case when I’m stuck at work, for the amusement-factor that I wonder if we’re losing an element of the serious and the sacred. Not totally sure it’s in the book, but definitely related.

I think that just about wraps it up.

Will report back in when I’ve reread the book.

New Adult and College Romance

2018-01-28 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Market research for one of my undisclosed new year’s goals.

RANK	TITLE	AUTHOR	PRICE	RATING	KU
1	Midnight Blue	LJ Shen	$2.99	5 (807)	KU
2	The Rebound	Winter Renshaw	$0.99	4.5 (364)	KU
3	Turn (Country Generations)	Cora Brent	$0.99	5 (183)	KU
4	Claiming His Mountain Bride	Madison Faye	$0.99	4.5 (196)	KU
5	The Dom’s Bride: A BDSM Romance	Penelope Bloom	$0.99	4.5 (150)	KU
6	Amber (Red Hot Love Series Book 1)	Elle Casey	$4.99	4 (38)	KU
7	Bastards & Whiskey (Top Shelf Book 1)	Alta Hensley	$0.99	4.5 (208)	KU
8	#Starstruck (A #Lovestruck Novel)	Sariah Wilson	$3.99	5 (201)	KU
9	A Discovery of Witches: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy, Book 1)	Deborah Harkness	$1.99	4.5 (5,452)
10	Delivering Her Secret: A Secret Baby Romance	Kira Blakely	$0.99	4.5 (294)	KU
11	Saving Mel: A Bad Boy Romance	Rye Hart	$0.99	5 (302)	KU
12	Big Man	Penny Wylder	$3.99	4.5 (206)	KU
13	Mountain Man’s Baby Plan	Nikki Chase	$0.99	4.5 (66)	KU
14	Ruthless	Kira Blakely	$0.99	4.5 (340)	KU
15	Dirty Obsession	Ella Miles	$0.99	4.5 (59)	KU
16	Inserparable	Siobhan Davis	$0.99	4.5 (183)	KU
17	The Better Brother: A Bad Boy Romance	Rye Hart	$0.99	4.5 (337)	KU
18	The Matchmaker’s Playbook [Kindle in Motion] (Wingmen Inc. 1)	Rachel Van Dyken	$4.99	4.5 (761)	KU
19	Surprise Daddy	Nicole Snow	$0.99	4.5 (257)	KU
20	Big Stranger’s Baby: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance	BB Hamel	$0.99	4.5 (195)	KU

Some observations:

Be on Kindle Unlimited. The only book that’s not on KU is a “legit” novel that’s been around for years.

Bad boys and alpha males sell. So do secrets. The “secret baby” theme is a little surprising to me.

Price at $0.99 unless you have really good reviews.

Don’t be afraid to be obvious.

Put a muscley shirtless man on the cover. Also cursive text.

Pen name should be short, punchy, memorable, and googlable (ie Sariah over Sarah).

The unlikely influence of Earthsea

2018-01-23 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Ursula K LeGuin died recently. Her book A Wizard of Earthsea was one of my biggest influences growing up.

I’ve never read much else from her, although I should. The original Earthsea trilogy was good, but the 4th book veered into weird territory that didn’t make sense to me. I’m old-school and archetypal like that.

I’ve heard that she disliked her earlier writings (like my favorite) because they were too traditional and patriarchal, and felt like she “found her voice” when she started injecting feminism in her work. I read The Disposessed, which was interesting for a while but ended sour and preachy. I hate it when books do that.

I keep meaning to read The Left Hand of Darkness. Maybe now is a good time to do that.

When I lived in Portland, I met her once. She signed my copy of A Wizard of Earthsea and was very quiet and writerly. It turns out I lived in her neighborhood for a few years, but I never passed her on the sidewalks or in the park.

…

Here is my favorite passage from Earthsea. Our hero, Ged, has just escaped the embodiment of evil–the shadow–only to fall into temptation of unlimited power by Benderesk, Lord of the Terrenon, and the Lady Serret. “Only darkness can defeat the dark,” she says.

Ged’s eyes cleared, and his mind. He looked down at Serret. “It is light that defeats the dark,” he said stammering,–“light.”

As he spoke he saw, as plainly as if his own words were the light that showed him, how indeed he had been drawn here, lured here, how they had used his fear to lead him on, and how they would, once they had him, have kept him. They had saved him from the shadow, indeed, for they did not want him to be possessed by the shadow until he had become a slave of the Stone, then they would let the shadow into the walls, for a gebbeth was a better slave even than a man. If he had once touched the Stone, or spoken to it, he would have been utterly lost. Yet, even as the shadow had not quite been able to catch up with him and seize him, so the Stone had not been able to use him–not quite. He had almost yielded, but not quite. He had not consented. It is very hard for evil to take hold of an unconsenting soul.

I love A Wizard of Earthsea because it is a little book about fear–where it comes from, how it chases you, and how you and you alone must stare it in the face and defeat it. You might think that Dune is a book about fear. Dune does indeed have the great Litany Against Fear, but it is one player on a stage of many things. The hero’s journey in Earthsea revolves around fear. It is an intimate, terrifying portrait.

This passage reminds me how easily we–especially those of us who understand some of the unseen undergirdings of the universe–can be tempted by power that is much bigger than us, that reveals all that we want to know and be. Power that would ultimately enslave us, because it is false.

This passage reminds me to keep up the good fight, and not give in to temptation. And yet, it also gives me hope–for even though I will stumble, I do not consent.

That idea–that evil cannot take you without your consent–is I think what marks the heroic men and women who stare evil in the face to investigate or prosecute or report or even just bear witness and who do not give into it.

We are not perfect. We will tremble. But evil cannot touch us if we do not allow it.

There’s a reason we are given a shield of faith and a sword of the spirit.

One of my failings in life is that I have not faced my fear, my shadow self, in a manner that would be worthy of Ged. I have stared fear in the face, certainly, and lived my life, but there are still places where fear has its claws burrowed in.

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Now. Rewind to 2011, when I was first introduced to the band Gatsbys American Dream. I will have to write a whole post about them. Writing the paragraphs above made me tear up, but trying to put into words how I feel about Gatsbys makes me remember why I hate the world.

Their masterpiece is Volcano. Musically, it is pop-punk but asymmetrical and interesting. The songwriting is delicious. The album is cohesive, wrapping around to reference itself with music and lyrics. It is a beautiful package tied up with a little bow (my favorite).

And then. You barely hear it, a plaintive but insistent piano melody. It builds in intensity, and you finally catch ahold of some lyrics:

My pride ripped a hole in the world that set loose…a shadow….

I sail into jaws of the dragon: a beast before me, a shadow behind me….

“Is this…a song about Earthsea?” you think to yourself. “I thought I was the only person in the WORLD who cares about that little book.” You listen again. It still fits. You are excited, but realize that the likelihood of a lesser-known song of an indie band is highly unlikely to be based on your 12-year-old self’s favorite book. You decide that whatever you learn about the lyrics to that song, you’ll always pretend it’s about Earthsea even if it isn’t.

Lyrically, all of Volcano based on science fiction and fantasy. Books, video games, television. Ender’s Game makes an appearance, as does Interview with a Vampire.

Rest assured, friend, this really is a song about Sparrowhawk and his shadow.

Batfort

Style reveals substance