It’s rare, but very occasionally, I read the first sentence of a book and know we’re going to be friends.

The sentence in question is: “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” –It’s from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

I’ve always been fascinated by mutes. Voluntary mutes (selective mutism) or people who simply cannot speak. I would be quite happy if I was never expected to speak. I want to be able to hear–just not be expected to communicate verbally. This is probably something to do with being schizoid and feeling like everything I say is either misunderstood or not worth giving voice to (small talk).

Anyway, the mutes in this book are interesting to me because of the way they choose to communicate. One speaks sign language and the other doesn’t bother. Other parts of the book I enjoy are the responses one of the mutes (Singer) evokes. “His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human.” “Singer looked as though he could not be surprised by anything.” Because he is silent he is seen as wise.

I would much prefer to be seen as wise than as a snob, which is what a good number of people think if you have nothing to say to them. Keeping one’s own counsel is akin to walking around with one’s nose in the air, which I find to be an unfair judgement.

Personally, I find people who feel compelled to rabbit their every fleeting thought to me to be the inconsiderate ones. But then again, I’m a massive snob, so what do I know?

[Repost from a now-defunct blog, Original post date: August 6, 2007]

As my regular readers know, Friday is book review day, but I’m currently wrestling with the side effects of some new medication-mainly the fact that my eyes want to be closed all the time-and launching a comic with my husband. Which is semi-autobiographical and very fun. Writing a comic is far more difficult than I would have ever thought.

Speaking of writing, I’m also starting to freelance. So if you have writing that needs doing and would like to give me filthy lucre for doing so, please see my author site for info or email me at my freelance email .

See how classy? Because I am classy & will write classy things for you. Or not. Your call.

For the above reasons, this week’s book review is notes from a previous blog that is no longer easy to find on the internet. The notes are still relevant, as books worth reading are still books worth reading. The original post date was September 27, 2006.

Here we go:

I’ve finished The Art of Murder , which held my interest, but felt a bit forced at the end. I’m a notorious end-niggler (it’s not as dirty as it sounds) so it’s probably just me. If you enjoyed Never Let Me Go I highly recommend this, which I’ve recently discovered is called speculative fiction. Making History by Stephen Fry is another (excellent) example of this type. If you have read any of these three you should try the others.

In classic fashion, I picked up a book fresh out of the Baker and Taylor box (rather than one of the, you know, thousand or so I have at home I haven’t read). It’s Al Franken’s The Truth (with Jokes) which is exactly what I thought it would be: amusing, infuriating and depressing. I usually don’t read current event/political books because politics annoy/bore me–it’s amazing how something can be simultaneously boring as hell and annoying as shit, no?–but I do enjoy Mr Franken’s dry wit. I figured something amusing would keep me reading.

And I’ve hit a wall. Every reader goes through it. Nothing compels you. It’s frustrating, I must say. Bizarrely, I’m just not in the mood for Victorian fiction so I’ve set aside The Meaning of Night because I’m tired of feeling guilty for not reading it. I’m no longer going to feel guilty, because it’s just not the right time for me. We’re in different places, you know? We should take some time off and maybe try again later… It really isn’t you, you’re like The Alienist , which I loved, you have all sorts of things I like about Victorian fiction, your pages even feel nice. For whatever reason, it simply isn’t happening for me right now. I’m truly sorry. Don’t give up on me.

End of post.

Clearly, I recovered from my reading slump, thank goodness, or this blog would have never been created. Next week, I promise a new book review if I have to sell my soul to the devil to make it happen.

I also dedicate all the work I’ve done today to Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans. I’ve accomplished quite a bit today and it’s about 35% love of writing and 65% these babies .

I spent my three-day weekend cleaning. [Labour Day weekend, which is sort of the unofficial end of summer and one of the few bank holidays in the States.] But now that my house is practically immaculate I can really get some reading and commonplacing done. Currently reading The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Dalhquist, which is a steampunky sort of Victorian tome. I’m not very far in, but I’m enjoying the various points of view–I do like it when novels are told by different characters. The novel is sprawling and intriguing and all those good things, but it could do with a little editing.

Also still reading and loving Great Expectations and My Wars Are Laid Away in Books , which is a biography of Emily Dickinson. I read Tom Bedlam by George Hagen last week and enjoyed it very much–it was quite Dickensian. It’s rather Victorian around my house these days–it’s interesting how you occasionally get into reading … not ‘rut’ really, just when you wind up unintentionally reading quite a few books in a similar vein. Or perhaps that only happens to me.

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 4 September 2007]

I’m hitting up my fav bookshop Saturday week and then I’m stopping by the used bookshop a couple blocks over. It has 35,000 books. I’m making a preparatory list. This is war, people. Because when I go into a bookshop I turn into a stereotypical man–I refuse to ask for directions. I can find my own goddamn books, thank you. My two X chromosomes give me the ability to find a book in a bookshop no matter the size. (I kid you not–I have never been in a book store where, after much searching and finally asking for assistance, has the desired book been located. If I can’t find it, it’s not there.) I will walk into that bookshop with my Miquelrius note-book and find something to bring home. Where I’ll put them is anyone’s guess. See next paragraph

Part of my massive cleaning effort this weekend involved getting rid of several books I’ll never read and rearranging some shelves, which means my bookcases are now tidier than they’ve been in ages. It also means my books fit their shelves perfectly and there’s no room for more. So I must obtain new books to make everything uneven again, of course. It’s as if I have some kind of constitutional aversion total order. I need just a little disorder.

mmmm disorder

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 9 September 2007]

From Cracked’s 23 Rejected Covers of Famous Books and XKCD

People like being bummed. It’s the only guess I have for why my really depressing posts get the most traffic. That can’t be right, though…

Anyway, I’ve been reading more of the Cerebus series by Dave Sim. I’ve done Church and State I & II , Melmoth , and Flights . I’ve also given myself something of a coronary in reading he’s diatribe about feminism, homosexuality and race tangents

Well, the first two parts of it. I had to take a break there. If you get through all of it, let me know what you think.

I’m enjoying Cerebus on the whole and I agree with Sim on some of his assertions about certain portions of feminism (I just wish he wouldn’t paint all women with the same brush). And I find that RS Stephen sums up how I feel much better than I do in her essay “Masculinity’s Last Hope, or, Creepily Paranoid Misogynist”. This bit in particular: “Despite the fact that you champion reason, your writing lacks the factual and intellectual rigor required by even an undergrad English essay, and your arguments aren’t all that logical.”

Melmoth is in interlude about Oscar Wilde, of all people, and is incredibly well-rendered.

As the storyline of Cerebus goes along it gets more complex and interesting, which is only to be expected, and even knowing that he and I wouldn’t be able to have an intellectual discussion over dinner doesn’t ruin that, though it does alter my reading of the text somewhat. It’s a train wreck situation. Where you wish you didn’t know it existed, but once you do, you just have to look. I simply had to know how he felt about women. So I read Tangents. And it altered the way I read his work.

This brings me to something else that’s in the literary news lately–J.K. Rowling commenting off-handedly that Dumbledore is gay. (If you don’t know who J.K. Rowling or Dumbledore are, please return to your rock for the rest of this post.)

Since she outed him there’s been several sides to the conversation. The two most predictable are: ‘What a big pedo! That’s why he liked Harry so much!’ and ‘She should have said it explicitly, Dumbledore was in the closet!!!’

Does knowing he was always gay change the way a person would read the books now? It shouldn’t, as it has no bearing on the majority of the books. But it will to some people. The people who only see the word ‘gay’, no matter if it’s in front of “the gay man who cured cancer”. In The Celluloid Closet Quentin Crisp said, “When you say heterosexual, people focus on the ‘hetero’ but when you say, ‘homosexual’, people focus on the sex.”

I’m a lesbian and a writer and I fully understand why Rowling handled the character as she did. A writer knows all sorts of things about her characters that she doesn’t tell the audience because it’s not pertinent to the story. It wouldn’t have made one bit of difference if Albus (I can call him that because we ride the same bus) had been explicitly gay or not. Who he loved didn’t matter much in terms of the story. And in a kids’ book, what is he supposed to say? If Rowling wanted to be sure everyone knew, at what point was Albus supposed to say he wanted to make the buttsecks with Grindelwald? You don’t address sex in kids’ books in that way. He said he loved Grindelwald. How much more do you want?

At the same time, she handled it beautifully. She said (when the revelation occurred in Carnagie Hall in New York) that if she’d known it would’ve made everyone so happy she would have told them sooner. The way to de-demonize homosexuality is to let people like the gay person first and then say, “Ta-da! I was a big ol’ queer the whole time!” It’s like Suzanne Westenhoefer, a marginally known but always out, lesbian comedienne and Ellen DeGeneres, a closeted until popular comedienne. Now she’s everywhere with her partner and people are cool with it. Sometimes you have to sneak under the radar before you can throw off the invisibility cloak.

[This post is from a previous blog. Original post date: 24 October 2007]

When I was twelve, we had to memorise a poem for English class and the teacher said if someone chose ‘The Raven’ they’d automatically get 100 percent. I was on it. It was a few months after I’d realised wearing all black meant never having to think about clothes reciting the entire poem-the class growing more incredulous with every stanza-solidified my status as creepy weirdo (now it’d be ‘goth’, I’m sure).

Aside from the grade (I got a 99 because I didn’t knock on the side of the podium when the titular bird did), I loved the atmosphere of the poem and carried around the book it was in [see the cover to the right] everywhere for at least a year like some sort of literary safety blanket. I may have been some sort of macabre freak who read too much, but Poe was on my side! My favourites were the gloomier stories (Usher, Red Death, and Silence: A Fable were my favourites). If it didn’t look like someone was going to go mad, die of some unnamed disease or just die horribly some other way I quickly lost interest.

I did reports on short stories in class the following two years (‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Masque of the Red Death’) and freaked my classmates right out. It was brilliant. The second year we had to do something creative based on the story, so I made up an advert where you could buy tickets to the masque. I was a fun teenager.

Flash forward many years, and other macabre authors, and I came across Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow , which hypothesizes about the events of Poe’s final days. [Incidentally, I picked it up because I’d loved Pearl’s The Dante Club . You should read it. It’s very good.] While writing this post, I came upon a page on Pearl’s website with bonus content for his novels. Now I want to re-read the book, and I may do once I’ve finished the two Poe bios I’m reading.

Reading Pearl’s book reminded me of the man who’d started me on my journey into the dark corners of literature and I picked up (read: got from Amazon for free) all five volumes of Poe’s fiction. I’ve now read all of them and my favourite quotes are here . I’m still adding some, but that’s a good portion.

Though I still prefer his horror stories, I can now appreciate his descriptions of nature in ‘The Landscape Garden’ and Arnheim, as well as find the humour in ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’ and ‘The Angel of the Odd’ amongst others.

Some of his short pieces were baffling, however, and I found this Wikipedia page with information on most of his short fiction to be very useful.

Once through the man’s work, I wanted more and began looking for novels and stories that featured Poe as a character. I’ll begin reviewing those next week.

I am a book snob. More so than other types of media, as reading a book is a commitment in time and requires more mental effort than listening to music or watching a film/TV. It’s possible to turn off the higher cognitive function of your brain and look at the pretty explosions on the screen for two hours, or ignore the insipid lyrics and dance to the beat for the length of a song.

But reading requires time, comprehension and, at its best, elevates your mind and makes you see the world in a new way.

So when I see someone reading effin Twilight or, God help me, Fifty Shades of Crap , it makes my blood boil.

You’re spending all of that time and energy on something that’s badly written. Reading poorly written prose makes can only damage your own command of the language. The importance of the ability to communicate effectively cannot be stressed enough. It’s the way we find others who share our philosophies and the way we avoid wars.

However, people tend to find faults in others that they possess themselves so when I find something unattractive about another person, I see if that criticism applies to myself.

In this case I must admit that I do things that consume massive quantities of time I’ll never recover, require very little cognitive effort and doesn’t offer improvement as a person. My things are apps on my mobile device. (Hello GetGlue and Curiosity ).

So, read your crap. I promise I won’t roll my eyes in your presence (too much). I even promise I won’t say, ‘Yeah, I waste lots of time doing pointless things, as well.’

And at least when they’re done with wasting their time they have toilet paper. I just have an awesome piece of technology I don’t use to its highest potential.

There is an implicit code that customers rely on. If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: Hello. I am an easy-to-read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity and/or murder. To readers who do not care for such things, this lettering tells them: Hello. I am Crap. Such books can use only glossy paper for the jacket; Serious Books can use glossy finish as well, but it is only Serious Books that are allowed to use matte finish.

Diminutively sized paperbacks, like serial romances or westerns or dieting and astrology guides, are aimed at the uneducated. But diminutively sized hardcover books are aimed at the educated—excepting those that are very diminutive, which are religious books aimed at the uneducated—and unless they are in a highly rectangular format, in which case they are point-of-purchase books aimed at the somewhat-but-not entirely educated. However, vertically rectangular diminutive softcover books, which tend to be pocket travel guides, are aimed at the educated. But horizontally rectangular diminutive softcover books—a genre pioneered by Garfield Gains Weight—are not.

Then there are the colours. Bright colours, and shiny colours, are necessary for the aforementioned books with raised lettering. Black will work too, but only if used to set off the bright and shiny colours. Because, remember, with the customer base in mind, the book will need to be a bright and shiny object. Conversely, a work of Serious Literature will have muted, tea-stained colours. Black is okay here too, but only if used to accentuate cool blues and greys and greens.

Woe and alas to any who transgress these laws. A number of reviewers railed against The Bridges of Madison County, because it used the diminutive hardcover size and muted colour scheme of, say, an Annie Dillard book—thus cruelly tricking readers of Serious Literature into buying crap. Not to be outdone, the Harvard University Press issued Walter Benjamin’s opus The Arcades Project with gigantic raised metallic lettering. One can only imagine the disgust of blowhard fiftysomethings in bomber jackets as they slowly realised that the Project they were reading about was a cultural analysis of 19th century Parisian bourgeoisie—and not, say, a tale involving renegade Russian scientists and a mad general aboard a nuclear submarine.

Finally, on Serious Books and Crap alike there will be a head-shot photo of The Author sitting while looking pensive or smiling faintly into the indeterminate distance—the one pose that has no existence in the author’s actual daily life. The size of this photo will be in inverse proportion to the quality of the book. If the photo is rendered in colour, it is not a Serious Book. If there is no author photo at all, then it is a Serious Book indeed—perhaps even a textbook.

If a colour photo of the author occupies the entire front cover, the book is unequivocal Crap.

(swiped without permission from Paul Collins’ excellent Sixpence House )

Check out this article in the NYT about the state of book selling in Germany

I found this bit particularly of interest: “Last year 94,716 new titles were published in German. In the United States, with a population nearly four times bigger, there were 172,000 titles published in 2005.”

Books can’t be discounted (it’s illegal) and their best-seller lists are filled with literary fiction instead of pop crap.

For the writers out there: they have 14,000 publishers.

How difficult is it to learn German?

[This post is from a previous blog. Original post date: 30 October 2007]

Nostalgia about nostalgia about nostalgia.

I was fiddling around on my computer and “We Didn’t Start the Fire” comes on my mp3 player and I’m instantly thirteen. Smell is supposed to be most closely linked to memory but when I hear certain songs I may as well jump in a time machine, so much do some songs put me right back in the frame of mind I was in when said song was ubiquitous.

It’s fitting that the song that set me off this time was Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, a list song he wrote about the key world events occurring in his lifetime. I was born nearly thirty years after Mr Joel (him = May 09, 1949 me = June 09 1978) but his song about his childhood defines my childhood. I ‘came of age’ when his song of coming of age was popular. I know every word of the song even though the vast majority of the events happened before I was born.

I’ve always prided myself on differing from my peers by not caring about age difference but recently it has occurred to me just how important certain events can be to people. One day I will meet a person who wasn’t born when 9/11 happened and I will be baffled; just as people who were alive when JFK was assassinated feel when they talk to people my age. When that happens I’ll feel as I do now about JFK people: that it’s such a defining moment I can’t believe I don’t have a memory of it. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t a sentient being then–I should remember something like that. I’ll feel that way about future pro-9/11 kids. Nostalgia is like a supremely bizarre LSD trip.

This whole thing has been exacerbated by a project I was working on for one of my bosses where I needed to find sites with lists of things people in their sixties had seen invented as well as things people in their 20s had never lived without. I discovered The People History which lists useful info for each year in U.S. history, as well as Wikipedia’s Years in Literature which has lists of popular books for any given year. They also have music. It’s fascinating, addictive stuff. And normally I believe in connection across generational differences. but after poking around on some of these sites I can see how some people would only want to be with those they could identify with chronologically. In twenty years I don’t know if I could be interested (emotionally/intimately) in a person who had no concept of 9/11, even though I’m no patriot. The whole project has made me think, which I appreciate.

I’ve only just discovered StoryBundle and simply had to share, because this round ends in a little over a day.

StoryBundle is a site that offers packs of DRM-free e-books by indie authors. This round (the one that ends in 30 hours) is horror and dark fantasy. You can pay whatever you’d like, but if you pay at least $9 USD you get two extra books for free.

Another thing that’s wonderful, is that you can choose what percentage of your donation goes to the author and what percentage goes to StoryBundle. AND there’s an option to donate to a charity that helps kids become better writers, or a charity that plants trees.

Go! Donate! Get books! Support indie authors!

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) French poet most well-known for Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) and the first person to translate Edgar Allan Poe’s work into French.

An aesthete and dandy, he believed (and practised) in the pleasures of the senses. This led him to possibly contract syphilis and gonorrhea. Oh well.

Like Virginia Woolf, he believed art should capture the small, ephemeral moments of life. Unlike Woolf, he was of an impressively cynical mindset and loved him some irony. Though a cynic, he also believed people were fundamentally good. (A view he and I share. They may seem to be diametrically opposed, but, though the world seems harsh and awful, we also believe that it can be better-that man has the capacity to improve and to rise above.)

Similarly to holding seemingly contradictory worldviews, The Flowers of Evil is both grotesque and beautiful with several poems focusing on the putrefaction of the physical body after death whilst carrying on to wax lyrical on the beauty of life. This could be stomach-churning to the faint of disposition, but makes sense in that one can’t fully appreciate life if one isn’t intensely aware of death.

The juxtaposition of death and living life vigorously-and lending a poetic beauty to both-is echoed in Nine Inch Nails lyrics. Reznor’s words can be nauseating but simultaneously truthful and evocative and can express both disgust and a deep affection for a woman, much like Baudelaire. Both have also been reviled by the masses as being immoral and disgusting, but celebrated by those aware of the true nature of existence.

When initially published, Les Fleurs du Mal was receiving well amongst the literary set though several poems were removed prior to publication being deemed obscene (including one about lesbianism). However, most of his work was published after his death.

My favourite thing about Baudelaire is that, when acquainted with Poe’s stories, he felt Poe was expressing thoughts in his own mind that had not fully formed. That feeling of intellectual companionship is something readers most look for, I think. We read to find people of our own views and whims, but who more beautifully articulate those views and whims. We read to find friends without regard to nationality or age. And I’m glad to have found a friend in good old Baudey.

I’m currently doing research for the novel I’m working on, the main theme is what all sorts of violence does to the people who try to prevent it by using it i.e. fighting for peace, beating the violent at their own game. So I’m reading books about how to manipulate people (manipulation is a type of violence, after all). The first step is letting go of any delightful morals tying you to not acting like a complete jerk. It’s clear sailing after that, my friends.

I’m having to look at these books as snapshots of the way the human psyche works because every few pages I find myself cursing out loud at the levels to which some people won’t sink to get what they want. A couple of the books I’m reading are by Robert Greene, who studied classical literature and it shows. He uses examples throughout philosophy, history and literature to show how a variety of tactics work to get whatever you want from anyone. It’s a review of the most conniving, scheming asshats in all history and how you, too, can be an asshat. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, if I’m reading one of these books in public I feel compelled to explain to anyone who notices that I’m doing research. I’m not in training for the Machiavelli Olympics, although I am reading The Prince, as well…

[This is from a previous blog. Original post date: 3 December 2007]

I’ve only been reading The Empire of Death by Paul Koudounaris a few days and I’m already in love with everything about it. Aside from the well-researched information and beautiful photography, the texture of the pages is pleasing to the touch and it smells like catalogues from when I was small. There’s also a sewn-in burgundy silk bookmark.

Some notes:

From the Introduction

001 p11 We tend to think of death as representing an unequivocal, non-negotiable and irreducible status, its definition and interpretation are matters of context. In the modern Western world, we have come to consider death as a boundary. In many other cultures it is not—it is conceived simply as a tradition, and a dialogue between the living and the dead forms a meaningful part of social discourse.

002 p11 The most dramatic contemporary example is undoubtedly the Famidihana (Turning of the Bones) of the Malagasy people of Madagascar. This ritual involves removing the body of an ancestor from its crypt, wrapping it in a new shroud, and dancing with the corpse to live music. There may even be a family meal at which the deceased is given a place at the table. The ritual serves to unite families by reestablishing their bonds with ancestors, and introducing younger members to family history.

003 p11 Although the Famidihana is not a Christian ritual, Christianity itself does not preclude a dialogue with the dead., and similar practices survive in some pockets of the modern Christian world. On November 2 in Pomuch, Mexico, family members return to the local cemetery to remove the bones of their relatives from their tombs and clean them. In this ritual, the Dia de los Muertos manages to rise above its modern-day kitsch and become a real and intimate interaction between the living and their departed ancestors.

004 p11 Elsewhere in Latin America, the Fiesta de las Natitas on November 8 in La Paz, Bolivia, brings in thousands of people carrying human skulls to the city’s Cemetery General. The skull, of natitas (little pug-nosed ones), reside in the homes of the living so that the souls of the deceased can act as guardians and helpers. The Fiesta is an opportunity to thank and honour the dead.

005 p12 The Fontanelle Cemetery, a large ossuary created in the cave system in Naples during the seventeenth century, is one of the sites where the interaction between the [living and the dead] was at its most pronounced. For over 200 years, the living would come to solicit air from the remains of the deceased, asking for advice on various domestic and personal problems, and expressing gratitude by providing the dead with shrines, prayers and various forms of offerings.

006 p13 In Western Culture, the line separating the living and the dead underwent a fundamental shift during the Enlightenment. The triumph of modern concepts of individualism and the exaltation of private ownership over older concepts of corporateness and community further changed our attitudes toward death. As Baudrillard explained, we have undergone an evolution in which, ‘little by little, the dead cease to exist.’

007 p13 The living would visit mummified or skeletal remains and lovingly robe them, as a means of perpetuating their relationship with their ancestors and loved ones. By contrast, Baudrillard accused contemporary society of being ‘incapable of confronting death without wan humour or perverse fascination.’