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Asterisks denote rereads
Favorites: *His Dark Materials, The Chaperone, The House of Spirits, Where the Crawdads Sing, Story of Your Life and Others, Becoming, *The Goldfinch, Educated, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Amity and Prosperity
Some Selected Reviews: 1) Beautiful Country Burn Again—Ben Fountain I didn’t love it. Not because it was bad, but because I was there. This is a rehash of the dumpster fire. If you want to go forward in time, ten years from now (if humanity makes it), this book can serve as a reminder on what went down. But if you are looking to learn something new, I’d say skip it. 2) Furiously Happy—Jenny Lawson With maybe the exception of Catcher in the Rye, I don’t like the stream-of-consciousness writing style. This is a preference thing. I can see where Lawson would be hilarious to other people. Her observations and interpretations of mental illness are funny. I just never laughed. But I would love recommendations for more humor authors. 3) We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled—Wendy Pearlman Overwhelming. It’s a series of short personal stories from Syria prior to and during the rebellion. It’s excellent in that it takes you out of the statistics and the news surrounding Syria and puts you on the ground with its people. 4) The Very Worst Missionary—Jamie Wright This is about a cynical Christian woman serving as Missionary in Costa Rica. I don’t read a lot of literature about religion, especially from the perspective of a devoutly religious person, so this was a fresh perspective. Furthermore it surprised me because, in spite of her faith, she calls out the crap in being Missionary. As non-religious person, I felt I wasn’t quite the target audience. She has long passages about her love for God that I just can’t identify with. But that’s personal bias and does not reflect the quality of the book. It was an interesting journey and I enjoyed it. 5) Simon vs the Homo Sapian Agenda—Becky Albertalli There is a place for high-school based dramas. I’m glad they exist, especially if they address an issue. This one is about a closeted teen grappling with everything that comes with being a closeted teen. It’s clever. It’s fun. It has heart. But YA just isn’t my genre…. except for some fantasy YA here and there. 6) Milk and Honey—Rupi Kaur My goodness. This was the first poetry collection I’d read since high school and I don’t think I could have picked up anything heavier. I recommend it as an awareness piece, but with great digression. It has graphic descriptions about assault, so if that’s a trigger for you, please skip it. I can’t say poetry is my genre, but I’m glad I read it. 7) Fear: Trump in the White House Keeping up with politics is becoming and act masochism. Like many of you I teeter between being shocked by the bullshit….and not being surprised at all. If you crave more examples of how corrupt, heartless, and downright stupid the president is….and I guess part of me does?.....this is your book. But holy crap it’s exhausting. 8) Where’d You Go, Bernadette—Maria Semple This book should be read because of its narrative structure alone. Much of it is told through emails, written records, etc. It’s done well and it’s a good story. 9) On the Come Up—Angie Thomas It’s hard to read this book without comparing it to The Hate U Give. It’s by the same author and addresses similar social issues. Both are great, but I liked On the Come Up just a teensy bit more. The Hate You Give uses tragedy to explore the Black Lives matter movement. On the Come Up uses an incident that was less violent but salient in explaining the everyday fears of impoverished black communities. Plus I like the lead protagonist. She makes mistakes, she’s impulsive. She’s rocketed into a problem she isn’t emotionally ready to tackle and is resistant to the advice of her elders. You know, a kid. 10) The Bookshop of Yesterdays—Amy Meyerson Do you like the “we have to save the small business just in time” trope? Do you like predictable love triangles? Do like brooding and mysterious sexy guys? I don’t. It has a decent twist and a scavenger hunt. I like scavenger hunts. But next. 11) Crazy Rich Asians—Kevin Kwan. A little formulaic. I walked into this knowing it was a romantic comedy, I just thought it would be a little more avant-garde. But it’s enjoyable. I plan to read the sequel. 12) The House of Spirits This is Ken Follett meets…… well, I’m not sure who it meets. It’s like Ken Follett but with a quirky twist. It has a smaller scope of characters with a spiritual bent. And the alternations between third person and first person with the villain is unlike anything I’ve read before. 5 stars. Read it. 13) Calypso—David Sedaris can’t write a bad book. He can’t do it. As always with Sedaris, if you can get it on audio, do. His delivery makes the stories better, 10-fold. 14) Where the Crawdads Sing—Delia Owens This book is getting a lot attention….. and………yeah! It’s a solid story, and about an amateur ecologist. *wave hands* 15) If Beale Street Could Talk—James Baldwin I’m not sure about this one. The author wasn’t clear about his attitude on abusive relationships. And this one had an intimate scene that got rapey. But it wasn’t framed as assault throughout the rest of the book. It was a little cringy. 16) The Tattooist of Auschwitz—Heather Morris World War II dramas, especially true personal account like this this one, are always worthy of our attention. 18) There, There—Tommy Orange It’s not a bad book but it has a thing in it (“thing” because I don’t want to get spoilery) that’s just hard to read. It succeeds in addressing multiple social issues, it’s just really brutal. 17) Circe--Madeline Miller I’m not a Greek mythology buff. My knowledge ends at Homer’s the Odyssey which I read in school like everybody else. I can’t comment on the book’s faithfulness to source material, but it was alright. 18) Educated—Tara Westover Excellent. This book will make you frustrated, almost unbearably, but without giving too much away, you will be satisfied by the end. Personally I just love accounts of people, especially impressionable young people, getting out of bad situations.
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We have a nice list. We have a naughty list. As for everything in between, I still give them a hardy nod.
Asterisks denote rereads
Best of the Best of the Best: Middlesex I enjoyed this one on audio and it’s especially good. I’d put it up there with My Antonia narrated by Patrick Lawlor for favorite listening. It’s a wonderful story spanning three generations culminating in one young man who was born female. I look forward to listening again one day. We Have Always Lived in the Castle—Shirley Jackson I love it. I love it. I love. If Tim Burton tried to write a Lemony Snicket book, this would be the result. Pretty Great: The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke—Suze Orman Almost everyone I know in my generation is struggling with student loans, car payments, saving for retirement, and kissing goodbye any hope of ever being a home-owner (myself included). This is not a book of miracles, but gives advice in plain language on how to overcome debt and make investments. I highly recommend it to anyone who falls into one or several of the above categories. How Democracies Die Overwhelming. Everyone should read this book, but I fear its readership will play choir to the authors' preacher. We have so much work to do as a nation, and yet the examples of our peers are so very bleak. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex—Mary Roach This book is for everyone. Who doesn’t want to read about historical and modern experiments in sexual behavior? It borders on cringy too bizarre, all of it engrossing. Archy’s Life of Mehitabel I doubt you’ve heard of this one, but for being about a cricket and a cat, it’s oddly profound (and hilarious). The Catcher in the Rye I’m not sure why I enjoyed this one so much. Stream-of-consciousness stories usually don’t appeal to me. Maybe I just love a good anti-hero. Other mentions include the Mistborn Trilogy, Silent Spring, Maus, The Disaster Artist, The Color Purple, and everything by David Sedaris. Skip Dragonflight—Anne McCaffrey Maybe it’s petty jealousy, but I have yet to fall in love with a dragon book. The late McCaffrey has oodles of fans. She doesn’t need me. But domestic abuse and bland protagonists aside, I thought it was boring. I’m sorry. Wind in the Willows—Kenneth Graham Again, maybe it’s petty jealousy at far more lucrative animal-authors. But it went on. And on. And on. And on…. in under 300 pages. If you want personified English wildlife, read Redwall. The Circle-- Dave Eggers Science fiction demands some degree of suspension of disbelief. But this takes place in the real world in the not-too-distant future, and yet our dumbass protagonist doesn’t question the total relinquishing of privacy. She just dances through the book happy to have a 24 hour twitter feed. The message is a good one, but the execution didn’t hit the mark. A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens I don’t like Charlies Dickens. There. I said it. Ready Player One Putting this on the skip list might be a little harsh. It’s not the worst thing ever. Some of it’s clever. But it gives into bad-teen-romance bull-crap you can smell from a mile away. 1) Girl says she is hideous and you can never look at her---you know it’s going to end up being some barely visible birthmark. Spoiler: it is. 2) Girl tells guy to leave her alone. A life-threatening situation compels him to send her another message. Unnecessarily tacks on “P.S. I saw a picture of you in RL and you’re super hot.” Bite me. What did you read? What did you love! Let me know!! Happy New Year, Kelly “Where is the audiobook?” is the second-most asked question I get from readers, right after, “who the heck are you?” I love audiobooks. They make up about thirty percent of my yearly reading list (I count them as reading… fight me). Thus, it made good sense for me to pitch Nyra snout-first into the MP3 world. A friend loaned me a Blue Yeti Microphone, I learned the basics of Audacity, and got to work.
You’ve never heard so much swearing. Nyra doesn’t lend itself to out-loud reading, at least not for me and my self-ascribed dyslexia. They are my words, and yet I couldn’t read them. Every other sentence was a stumble. A single chapter took days to record, edit, and refine, and even so, the final product was subpar. I needed a professional, one who could machete through the mayhem. My fellow indies recommended the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) where I could find a reader for a split royalty. Harkening back to my first FAQ, my expectations were low. The Roy Dotrices (A Song of Ice and Fire) and Patrick Lawlors (My Antonia) of the universe had contracts with far more prestigious authors. At best, this would be a passion project between two amateurs doing their best with what they had. In a few days of auditioning, I found my Patrick Lawlor, or rather, he found me. Andrew Pond (yes, his name looks very good on a water-themed cover) crafted a soundbite that felt like a piece of theater. He did the accents, he did the voices, he had urgency, and he had patience. Whether his storytelling abilities came from his career as an actor/playwrite or an innate ear for narration, Mr. Pond did, what I'd deemed, the impossible. Collaborating with him was joyous and at a breakneck pace. He turned out top-notch chapters one after another, finishing MONTHS before the deadline. He incorporated my edits but brought his own flavor to the production, and by flavor, I mean entire recipes. There are over twenty speaking parts in Volume I. Mr. Pond came up with voices for ALL of them. Let me repeat that: ALL OF THEM, even characters with a couple of lines. Much like the D'ysquiths in ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’, he bounced seamlessly between many people (er, dragons). It’s transfixing to the point it makes me a little jealous. As I said, theater. If I’m ever in Chicago, I’ll be bee-lining to his theater company to catch a show. I won't go so far as to say my book is great, but I can assure you the audiobook is. Very great. D’ysquith great. All of that credit goes to Mr. Pond’s passion and perseverance. The release is tentative, but I expect it will be available in the next few weeks. You’ll find it on iTunes, Amazon, and Audible (for which your first download is free... and we still get paid). I can’t wait to share it with you. Please visit Andrew Pond at his website and twitter. Maple trees and lots of sap, Kelly Asterisks denote rereads
Best Reads: To Say Nothing of the Dog was my absolute favorite. It’s a witty time travel story where a single cat disrupts the space-time continuum. Suspense and hilarity ensue. Other favorites included: --The Last Policeman (an officer trying to do his job six months before an asteroid will destroy humanity) --Station Eleven (Alternating flashes before and after a pandemic) --The Hate U Give (Addressing the Black Lives Matter movement through a young woman) --A Man Called Ove (The first five minutes of Up, but funny too!) --Fun Home (Graphic novel chronicling the life and suicide of the author’s father) --The Handmaid’s Tale (American women lose all reproductive rights) --Turtles All the Way Down (A teenager’s struggle with OCD) --Big Little Lies (Kindergarten-mom wars turn into murder) --Little Fires Everyway (A struggling artist reveals a hidden past) --Mistborn (Basically metal-bending from Avatar The Last Airbender with a LOT more detail) --You Don’t Have to Say You Lovely (The absolutely true story of a Spokane Native American) Skip The following may have value to you. They didn’t do it for me: --The Silver Eyes (Poorly written cash-in on the Five Nights at Freddy’s game series) --The Bridges of Madison County (I couldn’t care less about the breeding pair in this story) --Fahrenheit 451 (Why do they so vehemently destroy books just because they’re obsolete? It’s like having a special CIA just to find and burn VCRs) --Dead Until Dark (Are there any vampire books out there that DON’T glorify sexual/domestic abuse? I’m swiftly losing faith in the whole mythology) --Wuthering Heights (Some extremely unpleasant people fall in love. The End) Recommendations for 2018 welcome!!! ~Kelly  Let me be clear: the title of this blog implies I am a good storyteller. This isn’t necessarily true (I have a chronic fear of overstating my abilities). The following story is not about how I became a great novelist but how I became a better novelist, the word 'better' being contingent on how much you may or may not like old-school animal fiction and long-winded nostalgia.
During an ill-timed bout of colitis (note: they’re all ill-timed), I punched out the final sentence of The Waters of Nyra on September 5th, 2011. This was it: the magnum opus. The next Redwall, the next Watership Down—you know, the best seller debut authors think they've write on the first try. I sought out test audiences online—my last chance to bask in anonymity before I skyrocketed into a gig with Penguin. This needs to be halved, said the first reviewer. As the first comment, I attributed it to be poor taste. Then came the second. Tell less. Show more. Okay, another person who doesn't appreciate talking animals. Then came a third reviewer, another, and another, each saying a version of the same thing, each a little punch to my formerly-recalcitrant ego. This isn't to say they clobbered Nyra. For each smart tap against the verbose prose, I got a compliment on the story or character development. Maybe my peers were being polite, but it was a saving grace. I was down, but they didn't kick. On the proverbial pavement, I took notes but remained in denial. I wouldn't swallow the bitter pills. Instead they lathered in my mouth, making me begrudge the taste rather than reap much benefit. Thus my rewrites were few. I believed the audience for Nyra was out there and I'd find it in due course. I searched. A lot. In my first attempts to find representation I was rejected in the ballpark of 200 emails. Still, I kept trying, waiting for the market to change, waiting for a publishing house or agency to realize my genius. It didn't come. Grad school did. Autumn of 2012 buried me in a new and far more promising career goal (although we can quibble about job security as a wildlife biologist in another blog). I had papers, projects, and a master's thesis to scribble out before I fell off my parents' health insurance. However, I didn't stop writing recreationally. Exhausted by my previous life of minimum wage and the ever-present dragon that went with it, I turned to a new idea: paranormal young adult fiction. It defied my self-ascribed dignity. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a fine genre. Reading is reading. Stories are stories. But at the time, my only exposure to paranormal YA was the glorified domestic abuse of Twilight. It left me disgruntled, yet I read it over and over. My interest in Stephenie Meyers’ sparkly vampires lingered entirely for the sake of satire. So, as a literary experiment, I would copy it with its most hackneyed tropes, including an underdeveloped romance, obvious villains, and magical abilities existing purely to move an already-feeble plot. Furthermore, I would defy Nyra and write as simplistically as possible. No flowery language. No lush descriptions. Dumb it down. Appeal to the popular market and clipped attention spans. That was surely the key to cracking through the wall of success. I tapped the manuscript out at 55,000 words, writing in the evenings and weekends when I had a low homework load. The finished product was rife with clichés, told through a protagonist as bland as Bella Swan: Grade-A satire. But after the first (and only) read through, I slammed on the breaks. It was a parody, but unfunny. It was simply a bad rip-off. It had no snark, no Douglass Adams or Terry Pratchett-style wit. I halfheartedly wrote a few representatives but quickly gave up. I didn’t’ care if this was marketable (and it likely wasn't). I didn’t want my name on it. I threw myself back into school, a bit older but far, far wiser. I might have puttered along forever had it not been for Nikki. Nikki was an old friend from high school. We hadn’t been in touch, existing to one another as occasional posts on news-feeds. But sometime in 2013, Nikki caught my eye again: she’d self-published a book. I’d never known an author before, not with which I’d had sleepovers and discussed guppy breeding techniques. Nikki had written an adult scifi novel and, unlike me, had successfully captured the wit and wonder of Monsieurs Adams and Pratchett. It might have been my first instinct to revisit the paranormal novel and “funny it up.” But for whatever reason, I didn’t. Instead, I went back to the dragon, dusted her off, and read her with clearer eyes. At long, long last, I saw her properly: a decent story told with several thousand words too many. I chopped. I cut. I pasted. I pared. Volume I (the first half) lost about 10,000 in mostly adjectives. Friends jumped in with their own scissors. In 2014 I went live, and though Nyra still has shortcomings, my few readers were kind and anxious for the sequel. So what changed between the pre and post Nikki eras? Several things, I suppose. For nearly eight years I’d been writing one novel or another (sans my penultimate semester of graduate school, which I dedicated to my research). The paranormal crap-manuscript made up one of those years, at the critical juncture between Nyra’s completion and her intensive editing process. Much as I despise the crap novel, dismissing it entirely was based on hot-tempered prejudice for its antecedents. Yet in creating it, I'd tightened my prose in a way I'd once thought excessive. In retrospect, though, I was slimming down to a new writing style, one much more amenable. Yes, it’s still a bad story. No, you can’t see it. But perhaps the very bland Josephine Jakes (the protagonist) gave voice to a dragon struggling to speak. Author Maurine Johnson once said you have to suck a LOT before you make anything worthwhile. New York Times bestselling authors are no exception. I am not a New York Times best selling author. I don’t expect to be one anymore. Even after editing, The Waters of Nyra is unrepresented, which is either my fault or that of the outside force known as ‘the market.’ Likely both. I haven’t bridged past the “suck point” yet (nearly 400 rejections for Nyra are telling). I may have given up on her. I have given up on full-time authoring. I have not given up on writing. I was once in a writer’s group where a veteran member pushed new members down, kicked them, kicked them again, then spat their ‘better’ writing down in their faces. Do not be this person. Pushing is okay. Pushes helped me. They still do. I was lucky to avoid kicks (well, most of them). Everyone is learning. Those who claim otherwise are missing the point of the art. But spare them your kicks too. We want them to keep writing. We want them to learn how to learn. They may just need more pushes. Cheers, Kelly Image credit: “Dragon Writer” by 25kartinok http://www.deviantart.com/art/Dragon-Writer-276492375 Excerpt from Satan’s Secretary (aka The Crap Manuscript): I became employed at the Sector, some hundred miles into the Earth’s mantle. Or so I assumed. No one ever told me, but I pictured the Sector deep beneath the mortal surface; a grotto for the grimly employed. After all, Grim itself hired me, to read, to analyze, but mostly to click. Click for Heaven, click for Hell, and give not input otherwise. Asterisks denote rereads
Great Reads O Pioneers, My Antonia, Harry Potter, and Where the Red Fern Grows remain favorites. Among books you won’t find in stores (yet) I recommend The Kill Seekers by Marc Hobbs (science fiction) and Angela’s Wife by Jonni Petit (the true story of a transgender woman and her family). Go Set a Watchman had extremely mixed reviews, but I thought it beautiful portrayed the fragility of our expectations. Lastly, everyone should read The Picture of Dorian Grey, which is both imaginative and frightening, as well as 1984 by George Orwell. While you’re at it, reread Animal Farm, which is still relevant decades later. Good Reads Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris had me in absolute tears from laughing (When You Are Engulfed in Flames was great too). I reread the Snicket books in preparation for the Netflix adaption. Although the author leaves some major questions unanswered, I’ll always love the dark humor. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is enjoyable, as was Storm of Swords and The Grapes of Wrath. Finally, The Fault in Our Stars remains John Green’s best with its atypical approach to teen romance. I don’t have any specific reading goals for 2017 other than my minimum thirty and adding more classics to my repertoire. Also, I hope 2017 will be the year I FINALLY start and finish Lord of the Rings. But, given the nature of the world today, I’m hoping to fall in love with some dystopia: new if it’s good, but preferably books that were before their time (i.e. I’ve had several recommendations for The Handmaid’s Tale). If you have something in mind, in this genre or anything else, I’m interested. Please let me know in the comments! ~Kelly If I inquired about your cultural heroes, smart money is you’d rattle off a list so long I’d regret asking in the first place. Don’t worry. I’d be guilty of the same charge. Then suppose I asked you to pare it down to five, or gave you a category, like scientist or filmmaker? Even then you’d have many. But who would win the most kudos for their craft? Today, the category is author, and the person is Richard Adams. I put him at the top not because of his recent passing or because he gets top billing as my favorite author. In fact, the latter isn’t necessarily true. Still, for me and most animal fiction authors, Adams was the totem pole base for creatives who wrote for adults, children, or no one in particular. He was not the first to personify animals, not by centuries. But he was the first to do so by preserving the integrity of animal nature. He did not seek allegory in the way George Orwell told Animal Farm (although this was brilliant in its own respect). Watership Down was perhaps equally political, but with the aim of surrounding us in a fresh universe, reading more like an epic than a fable. Adams would batter through rejection and incredulous publishers to lay a new foundation in literature, with other bricks following suit, including Shardik and The Plague Dogs. Some years back I wrote to Adams. He was elderly, retired, and off the grid for fan mail. After tracking down a few publishers I managed to find an in-the-care-of address. I’ll never know if it made it his way (despite promises from a very kind editor that my letter was in good hands). But as is the impulse of admirers, we want our heroes to know we love them. Love, of course, is a loose word. I knew Mr. Adams no further than his rabbits and a Wikipedia page. Yet in the sense that our creations are a piece of us—ones that we so tenderly share with the world—I do believe I loved Mr. Adams very much indeed. Frith’s Speed. ~Kelly “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”  |
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