So it is Book Review Tuesday again (already – honestly, time really does fly!), and today’s topic is inspired a bit by last week’s comments about children’s book series and mostly by the books I saw sitting at the Franclehouse last night. I love the titles and cover art on children’s books. There are so many clever people developing reading materials for kids these days – actually, these past years. I don’t know if this trend is purely commercial – the desperate hope of publishers to glom on to the Harry Potter derivative market – or if there have always been such intriguing children’s titles, but regardless of why, I unabashedly love it.
Generally speaking, I think that it is harder to write for kids – the story cannot rely on standard plot contrivances like sex and violence and the audience cannot be counted on to automatically fill in gaps in logic, detail, or sequence. As a result, I find that the writing tends to be stronger and the stories more carefully crafted. As a writer myself, I enjoy reading not only the story for itself, but also the individual words comprising the story – for inspiration, insight, and ideas.
At the end of my last post, I mentioned “fluff” books – the trashy, non-literary, dirty-little-secret kind of mass market paperbacks found in grocery stores and airports that many (if not all) readers occasionally succumb to and most (if not all) of us enjoy (even if only secretly). I made a joke about not mentioning them because I wanted to sound impressive. Well, it was said dryly (wryly?) so that you, oh Clever Blog Reader, would read it and chortle to yourself at how witty I am, hahaha. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to realize that I need to come clean.
So it’s Book Review Tuesday, and I was trying to figure out what to write about. I didn’t really want to write about the book I finished today (Shadowfever, final book in the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning) because while it was a very cool series (not exactly high literature but fun and interesting premise and generally engaging to read) today’s book was not the series high point and I didn’t want to write about something I didn’t love. Then it hit me – I would write about series that either start out like a house afire and end with a trickle of water or that start with a whimper and end with a bang. In other words, series that I considered uneven stevens (what a clever wordsmithing shark I am – teehee). Continue reading Uneven Stevens
So I thought I’d use today’s post as an opportunity to mention the cool new stuff that is available through the website/blog. So, in no particular order, here’s what’s new:
My Annual Reading Lists – For a number of years now I have be compiling annual reading lists, including ratings of the books I read. For more information/insight into the lists, visit the “Reading Lists Explained” section which includes an explanation of what is there and how the ratings work;
Optimized-for-mobile viewing for the on-the-go, techno-savvy audience I am hoping to attract (actually, I’m hoping to attract ANY kind of audience – cool smart people would be gravy);
This is a segment of a short story I am currently working on (“currently” is herein defined as “in a state of ongoing activity”; “ongoing” is herein defined as “started but not yet finished - teehee”; “teehee” is herein defined as “the ultimate Jill-Elizabethism). As you may have noticed with the last post and now this one, I am trying to not only write blog posts about what I’m thinking/feeling/reading, but also to actually put some creative writing up as well, since the whole point of the blog is to stimulate and promote that kind of writing, not just to be an end in itself. This segment is the beginning of the backstory, currently positioned in the middle of the 6.5 pages (single-spaced, in a normal and normal-sized font, thank you very much) of the larger story. It is the first chunk of the setup for the bizarreness in the larger story (the current short story stuff in my head/making its way to paper all has some bizarreness to it – teehee, thus spake Jill Elizabeth, right?)
Uncle Albert was the coolest uncle ever to live. He was Beverly’s mother’s youngest brother, and he was only ten years older than Beverly. While trying to make scrambled eggs after a drunken orgy in college, he accidentally stumbled upon an unbelievably simple (yet unimaginably clever) invention to remove broken bits of eggshell from a bowl of cracked eggs (the Incredible Egg Magnet™). He promptly sold the patent rights to a Japanese company well known for manufacturing time- and labor-saving devices for bored and lazy American housewives, and had been living off of the proceeds ever since. Continue reading Pockets Part One: A Story (Sort Of)
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