Bookavore

Today, YA book group spoke with Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother. The conversation actually ended up being as much about politics as books, but if you’re read Little Brother, that probably won’t come as much of a surprise. Below, some selected quotes from the conversation (thanks to Cory for allowing me to re-print them; I have done minimal editing for the sake of comprehension and flow):

On reading and writing YA:
“My favorite author has always been Daniel Pinkwater, whose Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars may just be the perfect YA novel (though he also has a YA novel called Young Adult Novel that gives it a run for its money). However, I started writing YA after some of my writer pals got into it and showed me how much fun it could be — and how cool it was to have young readers, who engage with text in a way that adults rarely do, using it as both a guide to how the world works and something to argue with when it doesn’t match their views and experiences. The first one to help me see this was Kathe Koja, whom I got to know when she was writing “splatterpunk” graphic horror novels like THE CIPHER. She gave it up to write YA — actually let the horror books all go out of print, which I think is a real shame — and had nothing but good things to say about the experience (plus her fiction kicked 11 kinds of ass). Then my friends Justine Larbalastier and Scott Westerfeld (they’re married) started writing YA too, and they were clearly having a high old time at it — we stayed with them in Australia while I was passing through on a lecture tour on our way to Tokyo just as Justine was finishing up her second or third book, and we had all these great talks about what made YA fic work and how it was different from writing for adults.”

When we asked how writing YA is different than writing for adults, he linked to a recent essay he wrote for Locus Magazine (very good, definitely worth reading), and quoted from it:
“Writing for young people is really exciting. As one YA writer told me, “Adolescence is a series of brave, irreversible decisions.” One day, you’re someone who’s never told a lie of consequence; the next day you have, and you can never go back. One day, you’re someone who’s never done anything noble for a friend, the next day you have, and you can never go back. Is it any wonder that young people experience a camaraderie as intense as combat-buddies? Is it any wonder that the parts of our brain that govern risk-assessment don’t fully develop until adulthood? Who would take such brave chances, such existential risks, if she or he had a fully functional risk-assessment system? So young people live in a world characterized by intense drama, by choices wise and foolish and always brave. This is a book-plotter’s dream. Once you realize that your characters are living in this state of heightened consequence, every plot-point acquires moment and import that keeps the pages turning.

And also:
“Risk-taking behavior — including ill-advised social, sexual, and substance adventures — are characteristic of youth itself, so it’s natural that anything that co-occurs with youth, like SF or TV or video games, will carry the blame for them. However, the frightened and easily offended are doing a better job than they ever have of collapsing the horizons of young people, denying them the pleasures of gathering in public or online for fear of meteor-strike-rare lurid pedophile bogeymen, or on the pretense of fighting gangs or school shootings or some other tabloid horror. Literature may be the last escape available to young people today. It’s an honor to be writing for them.”

This is a long conversation, so I’ve posted the rest of it after the jump. Read on for his thoughts on Obama, American politics, and the three crucial things teens need to do if they still want to have rights when they become adults: Read more »

My mom just sent me the a link to this recent article in PW about book-related tattoos and told me to blog about it.  And I learned long ago to ALWAYS listen to my mom.  Sooooooooooo.

If you could see me in person, my position on book-related tattoos would be clear, as during the summer, when I wear short sleeves, 3 of them are visible at all times.  I love them!  I think they’re pretty and some have meaning to me (some I just got the idea in my head and went for it).  In chronological order: I started with the alphabet in my favorite font, Zapfino (a literary tramp stamp, if you will).  “words, words, words” in a loop around my left wrist; do you know which play this comes from?  “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” around my right bicep from “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.  “it’s pretty, but is it Art?” on my left rib cage from “The Conundrum of the Workshops” by Rudyard Kipling.  An Old English word that my mom and I got together.  And the latest, only a few months old: Jules Feiffer’s ink drawings of Rhyme and Reason on the outsides of my breasts, and on my right rib cage, Reason’s quote, “Whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.”  Coming up in the future: a half sleeve that has nothing to do with books, and I also plan to fill in my left leg from knee to ankle with my favorite children’s picture book characters (Eloise, Mr. & Mrs. Mallard followed by Jack Kack Lack Mack Nack Ouack Pack and Quack, Grumpy Bird, something from Tim Egan, &etc &etc).  I’m working on a tattoo related to Alan Moore’s Promethea.  And there’s a few more I think about from time to time.  The only thing that ever holds me back is funds.

So yeah, I think they’re fun!  Personally, I think the best reason to get a tattoo is because you think it would be pretty–”having meaning” is good too, I think, but it is ultimately an aesthetic decision.  I get a little fussy when people talk down on tattoos that aren’t deep somehow.  There is nothing deep about the alphabet on my back.  It’s just purty, in my favorite font.  The one that my mom and I share has meaning, so I’m not saying that’s a terrible idea, just that I dislike the sentiment I hear frequently that tattoos HAVE to mean something.  That’s one of the cool things about book tattoos, because they have meaning on some level, but they’re not JUST about meaning.  If that makes any sense.  I’m rambling!  Ignore this paragraph!

The most common question I get after “did that hurt?” (which: um…….yeah!  and here’s the answer to the follow-up question, “what does it feel like?”  It feels like exactly what it is, which is a very sharp needle going into your skin over and over very quickly) is, “Don’t you think you’ll regret that someday?”  Usually said with a certain degree of smugness, as though I will suddenly realize my mistake!  and be forever grateful that FINALLY somebody pointed it out to me!  And yeah, maybe I will–although I hope to be struck down by a falling shelf of books if I ever regret inking myself with Shakespeare.  But even if I do, I hope I can remain open-minded enough to remember that these were all important to me once, and on the strength of that alone, I won’t regret it.

Another thing I like about them in general is that they keep me off the straight and narrow.  When I got the second one done (around my wrist), I knew that it would automatically disqualify me for a number of jobs–all jobs I would be miserable doing, but that I could see myself taking out of fear, confusion or a desire to please someone (a bad habit of mine).  They’re a gift from my irresponsible self, keeping my responsible self from making my life miserable.  Which is, at least somewhat, why I am a bookseller and not a–well I don’t even know what, some sort of job where you wear suits and heels and carry a Blackberry everywhere.

I disappeared! I currently don’t have internet access at home, so I haven’t been able to update (I haven’t even been able to catch up on blogs!) But today, I brought my laptop into work so that I could update on my break, because I wanted post some links that have been sitting on my computer, and also to put up the pictures from Idlewild Books.

Okay, three quick links:

1. Another winner done on Jezebel’s Fine Lines feature: A Wrinkle in Time. Loved this, and was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the lines and scenes from the book that are burned into my brain were burned into many other brains.

2. A great article by Ma Jian on Chinese-American relations. Okay, maybe this is not immediately book-related, but I’m really looking forward to reading his new book, and it’s sort of about freedom of expression.

3. From Kash’s Book Corner, a brilliant article that starts: “Buying new books for the store, the crux of my job, can be an exercise in absurdity and futility. It’s an antiquated, inefficient system that hardly takes into account the invention of the personal computer and completely ignores the existence of the internet.” It only gets better from there. Great reading for fellow buyers and for folks who want to understand why the book business is the way it is (well, maybe not UNDERSTAND why, but at least understand the crazy).

Last Friday, I went on another Book Buddies expedition, this time to Idlewild Books. This issue of Shelf Awareness has an article about it. You might have seen an article about the store in PW, or on BoingBoing. After the cut, pictures of the store–they have great pictures on their website, as well, but I just had to take some of my own because I love the space. Also, a cat picture!

Read more »

I will be posting an update about Saturday when I get home and have a way to get pictures on here, and have access to the notes I took.  It was a crazy day!  Short story: went to the graphic novel breakfast, walked around the floor and went to many booths, had a lunch meeting in the middle of a short food service worker strike, more floor, signings, more floor, signings, more floor, more floor, super swank Workman party, super loud PGW party, BEDTIME.  Today was much more laidback, thankfully.  Look for an update tomorrow.  For now, I am vegging in front of the TV until I leave for the airport in an hour or so.  Hehehehe, that’s right, a book conference has driven me to television.

My god, my shoulders are literally numb from lugging around tote bags full of books all day. Which I suppose is actually a pretty good problem to have, all things considered. It was a short day, or at least it felt like it. I’m feeling a little whiplashed.

Okay, I’m trying to think about my day chronologically, and I’ve already forgotten what I did in the morning. I stopped by the Bookazine booth to say hi, wandered the floor a little bit, and then finally met up with my friend Jill from Square Books (Junior). We went over to the ABA Lounge, which was a blessed oasis amidst the BEA chaos, where I got a cool pin from the ABFFE and looked some more at the IndieBound stuff (have you checked out that website yet? You should!) Then we wandered the graphic novel section, where I was excited to see a definite increase in children’s comics that look awesome.

Then it was time for lunch–ABA author luncheon! Lots of great BookSense pick authors from the last few years, as well as many of the nominees and winners of the BookSense Books of the Year. The author at my table was Lisa Tucker, of The Cure For Modern Life, a book that is in my TBR pile already. The speeches from the nominees and winners were great, but there were two definite highlights. First, Ray Bradbury was a guest of honor, and when he was introduced, he received an immediate and sustained standing ovation from everybody in the room. It was an honor just to be sitting two table away from him, seriously. And second, Khaled Hosseini, whose A Thousand Splendid Suns won BookSense Adult Fiction Book of the Year, gave a great little speech in which he said that he believes that there are many writers from Afghanistan who are better than he is, but who for various reasons have not had the opportunities he has, and until one of them wins this award, he will accept it for them as a proxy. (He also said he’d be especially pleased if the author was a woman.) Now, I have just totally mangled that, but rest assured, when he said it, it was lovely.

The afternoon was primarily devoted to waiting in lines for signed books, not the ABA membership meeting, I’m sorry to say–as I said to someone in the elevator, if I have to chose between a meeting and a signed book from Sherman Alexie, I’m going to pick Sherman Alexie every time. By the time I was done standing in line after line, I was drained, and we took the metro back to the hotel and here I sit.

But words are boring–don’t you want to see pictures of famous authors? Of course you do, especially because they are pretty much all very good-looking. Read more »

I only brought 2 books with me for the flight because it seemed foolish to overpack when en route to what is basically the biggest free-book-extravaganza of the year.  2 books was definitely not enough–should have been at least 3.  I have really been enjoying the view out my window, though.  As I type I am flying over mountains in Colorado.  They have snow on top.  This is a weird-looking country from the air.

55. Larry and the Meaning of Life by Janet Tashjian (Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt, September 2008).  YA fiction.  This is the third book in a series (the first two are The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry) about Josh Swensen, a 18-year-old boy who, by this third book, has already led an online revolution, faked his own death, and run for president.  When we meet him in this book, he’s become a couch potato, exhausted and jaded from all of his work.  He finds himself being pulled into orbit around a supposed guru who his ex-girlfriend is devoted to, and his summer goes from dull to over-exciting.  I liked this book a lot, even though the ending was pretty hard to swallow.  I like the use of footnotes 95% of the time, and Tashjian does a great job of fitting in references to Gandhi, Thoreau, and anti-materialism without coming off as preachy (it helps that she’s established Josh as narcissistic (though endearing). And I haven’t read the first two books, so this is a book that could appeal to readers who haven’t read a Larry book before—and will probably make them want to read the first two.

56. Goldengrove by Francine Prose (Harper, September 2008).  Fiction.  Picked this up because I really liked A Changed Man (which, curiously, I picked up the last time I went to BEA a few years ago).  I didn’t find many similarities between the two books, but I still liked this one.  [had to close my laptop before it died, here]

I wish I could think of more to say about Goldengrove, especially because there’s a bookstore in it (named Goldengrove) but I am now finishing this entry after an insanely-long ride to the hotel, which was just the capstone to a very long day.  I am out of words.  So I am going to go to bed, because I have a secret meeting to go to tomorrow, which is exciting, except for how it starts at 730am.  Yeah, it is definitely bedtime.

So I am waiting in the airport for a bus to take me to Newark, at which point I will get on a plane to Los Angeles, to go to Book Expo America!  Yay!  I am incredibly excited.  And I will be sharing my excitement–I will update here at least once a day while I’m there, and I will liveblog any panel that the panelists allow me to.

I meant to blog all the books I’ve read lately before I left–the pile is getting a bit intimidating, and there’s a lot of great stuff in there–but was too busy having food poisoning this morning to blog.  So instead, two links.  Here’s an article on BEA’s attempt to go green, and here’s one bashing a stupid article that posits that the best way to change publishing would be to let Amazon print and distribute every book, ever.   (Seriously.)  You know you want to read an article that starts: “In an industry besieged by variables, there is but one reliable constant in publishing — everyone thinks they know how to make the business better (more profitable, more reliable, more efficient, or “fairer”, whatever that means in their perspective), and they are all wrong.”

Watch this space–BEA updates start tonight!  Is there anything you really want to hear about?  Let me know in the comments.

For proof of this hypothesis I offer Exhibit One: Stimulating Reading.  She’s asking people to donate part or all of their economic stimulus check to the opening of her future bookstore.  Love it!  I already spent part of my stimulus money on summer clothing at this cool store, but I’m going to be sending some money her way as well.  You should do the same!

“So, you wrote a book–now what?”

This is one of the best articles I ever read (thanks to Shelf Awareness for pointing it out this morning).  Written by David Unowsky, who has a similar position as I do at a bookstore in Minneapolis.  The timing is actually great for me, as I’m in the middle of setting up our Local Authors Day and so I’ve been thinking a lot about ways I could improve the store’s interaction with local authors.  (For me, this basically means any author whose book was not published by a publisher whose name I recognize, including small legitimate publishers as well as self-published books, books from vanity presses, and print-on-demand titles.  This is not because I take these books less seriously, but because it changes how I have to set up and publicize the event.)  I feel that there are a lot of misunderstandings about independent bookstores and their relationship to local authors, and this article goes a long way to clearing them up.  Sentiments with which I particularly agree:

“On average, I get about two calls or e-mails a week (100 per year) that start out like this: ‘Hi, I’m Joe/Mary Smith and I’ve just had my book published. I hope you’ll consider carrying it in your store and that you’ll also consider hosting a reading and signing for me.’”   This is almost an understatement, I think 100 a year is actually a little low.  This doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing–there are plenty of books and authors we love who we first met this way.  But it does mean that I have a set way I handle these requests, and I tend to get peeved when people try to push another way on me.

This was my head buyer’s favorite line: “The first thing to understand is this: bookstores are not public service organizations.”  Yes, yes, yes, a million times yes.  She and I both feel that part of our mission is to be a place to host work from the community.  But we can’t be that place if we’re not making money.

I really could just post the whole article in here with an empathetic yes.  It is well-written and no-nonsense and lovely.  His discussion of the economics of the whole thing is especially well done and crucial to understand if you are an author who wants your book in a bookstore.

But the conclusion is the best part, and simply must be quoted in full: “Once, I gave this advice when speaking to a group of self-published authors. One of the authors said she didn’t know any booksellers to talk to. ‘What should I do?’ she asked. I suggested that when she goes to a bookstore, she could strike up a conversation with one of the booksellers there and ask them for their opinion about her book idea. She then said that she never goes to a bookstore. ‘I do all my book shopping on Amazon.com,’ she replied. In that case, I suggested that she should place her book for sale with Amazon and have her reading there. ‘But how would a reading on Amazon work?’ she asked. ‘Doh!’ said I.”

This hit home especially for me, because I actually have the following policy: if an author tells me in their cover letter, on their website, etc, that I can buy their book on Amazon (or on B&N.com, or so on), I stop right there.  I don’t read any more of the letter, and I definitely don’t bring in the book.  In fact, many local authors tell me that Amazon is where they prefer that I get the book.   Which tells me something very important: they don’t care about independent bookstores enough to know that amazon.com is our most direct competitor, and I don’t have time in my events schedule or space on our shelves for authors who don’t care about independent bookstores.

Taking a cue from some non-book blogs I read, a post about lessons I’ve learned from my moms*–except I’m going to keep my lessons purely book and bookselling-oriented (otherwise we’d be here all day).

1. If you don’t like a book, don’t keep reading it, for heaven’s sake. Life is too short.

2. Read or die. (ganked directly from Mom’s FAQ, actually)

3. You might not judge a book by its cover, but plenty of people do, so keep that in mind when making a display.

4. Don’t allow a man (or a woman) to take you out unless he reads (and, for that matter, is a registered voter).

5. Book censorship is completely indefensible.

6. You sleep better if you read before bed.

7. There is no way of knowing for sure which books are going to be super-popular, so don’t beat yourself up when you get it wrong.

8. Enthusiasm sells books better than anything else.

9. If you don’t know how to do something, go find a book about it.

10. Kids like creepy, weird, strange books, because kids’ brains are creepy, weird, and strange.

ETA: 11. Loan out books indiscriminately.  Books are happiest when they’re being read, people are happier when they have good books, and friendships are  strengthened by conversation about good books (unless they’re not, in which case, good riddance).

It is my mom’s fault that I am a bookavore. When she was pregnant with my little sister and on bedrest most of the time, our life was getting grocery bags full of books from the library and lying in bed to read them all day. My earliest memories are of laying down surrounded by books. Is it any wonder that I feel at peace in a bookstore? (I also have early memories of everybody at the dinner table reading a different book rather than talking.)

*By moms, I include not only my actual mom, but also my step-mom (linked that instead of her home page so you can see how awesome she is), and countless maternal figures who have been in and out of my life, including the Head Buyer and Children’s Book Buyer at my current job.