Behind the times

I am not a techie IT girl. I have a cell phone made before last month (collective gasp). Actually I bought it about 10 years ago. I does nothing but make and receive calls (more gasping). The lid is broken and can’t be flipped to make a call but gingerly opened, nurturing that last hinge. It’s a pay as you go. And I can’t take a picture with it. The cell phone before that was called a car phone and was the size of a loaf of bread.

I still read books that have a cover and can be used as a lamp stand afterwards. I’ve seen those computer books from a distance, and I wonder what it’s like to finish and not put it up on the book shelf like a trophy.

                           

My laptop is in worse health than my cell phone. To get it to work, you have to jimmy the cord until you get a connection then hold it there without moving or breathing until it feels a shift in the rotational orbit of the earth around the sun and then it dies right there. It must charge that way and then you have to unplug the cord and work on the dimly charged battery that lasts around 15 minutes.

I can’t afford a replacement and wouldn’t know how to buy a new one if I had the means. Technology moves too fast for me and laptops do things now that would require a PhD to master.

I write this from my desktop. A very old desktop.

It does things I know it to do. It also does things I don’t know it to do, which is more than I know, which is very little. So needless to say when I go on vacation these days, I am somewhat cut off from the world. No Blackberry, no lap top, nada, nothing, zilch.

I got back Tuesday evening and am still catching up.

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Ghostwriter

Ghostwriting is a thankless job, I’m sure. There’s a new movie out called Ghostwriter I’d like to see. I have no idea what it’s about or if it’s any good, but it’s got two of my favorite words in its title, so I’m in.

The whole ghostwriting thing has perked my interest lately. There’s readers out there who actually think the celebrity memoirs they are reading are written by the celebrity whose name is on the cover. The same celebrity who would surprise us all by writing a complete sentence, claims to, in fact, have written an entire book. But delve further and you’ll find not only did they not write it, they likely had not even read it—which explains some awkward moments on Oprah or author interviews when asked to expand on their feelings their very poignant chapter thirty-two or their feelings about a nude scene in chapter four. The celebrity is then leaving the question hanging while he or she thinks “Which nude scene?” “What chapter thirty-two? They told me they had written 320 pages at 10 pages each chapter. Who said anything about how many chapters?” Meanwhile, the network had gone to a commercial while said celebrity contemplates math and other oddities regarding their book.

When you read the acknowledgements there might be mention of some thanks to someone who may or may not have helped write their book. But before you condemn the celebrity for not owning up to their own fraud, think, it might be the ghostwriter who begged for anonymity.

It’s crazy when you think about it. If we found out Elvis had been lip-synching all this time, there’d be a riot, a shakedown, a toppling of Tower Records. What if record producers decided for us what a singer should look like, thereby selling us beauty with another’s voice? It wouldn’t fly—think Milli Vanilli—so why should it fly in the literary world?   

I can proudly say I’ve never read a celebrity memoir, but I have read celebrity biographies—authorized or not—and find some of them to be quite entertaining without buying into the whole unethical nasty business of trickery.

What are your thoughts? Should publishers hold authors by the same standards as the music industry? Have you read any good celebrity memoirs? Have you read any good celebrity memoirs written by the celebrity?

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Hooked. The saga continues

Last week, I chose 10 books at random from my bookshelves and wrote their first sentences. This week, I selected 10 books whose first sentences hooked me. Like I said last week, some I’d read, some not. Some I liked, some not.

 I’ll deconstruct the first sentences as to why they hooked me. My comments are in italics.

 Regarding the death of James Bradley Stomarti: what first catches my attention is his age.—Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen Now I need to know why the age is of importance.

 I’m in a car park in Leeds when I tell my husband I don’t want to be married to him anymore.—How to be Good by Nick Hornby It’s the passivity of the writing that hooked me, because it’s contrary to the scene.

 I’m thinking of asking the servants to wax my change before placing it in the Chinese tank I keep on my dresser.—Naked by David Sedaris When a humor author grabs you by the throat with humor in the very first sentence, you know it won’t disappoint.

 There was nobody there to meet him.—The Outcast by Sadie Jones Why not? I already care and it’s one sentence into the story

 When I was a little girl I used to dress Barbie up without underpants.—High Five by Janet Evanovich Same reason I gave for David Sedaris. Janet will make me laugh. She just promised in the first sentence.

 I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.—A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving  I love this opening. He’s so casual about mentioning his mother’s death and the boy who caused it, yet it’s huge. In fact, this book is so good, I’ve read it twice—I never do that.

 In the hospital of the orphanage—the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s, Maine—two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.—Cider House Rules by John Irving  Action and setting: all there in one sentence.

 In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game.—Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult This is a nice set up. You know something else—not so innocent—will be happening in the span of nineteen minutes.

 The last two below were in last week’s random picks post. I happened to like these two openings so they get another mention.

 They were both working their final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that.—The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb I love the foreshadowing

  I am a cheerful man, even in the dark, and it’s all thanks to a good Lutheran mother.—      Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor Again, that thing about humor. This says I’m in for a good time. It’s my favorite opening of all that I have on my bookshelves. It shows you I’m partial to humor.

 

Do you have any favorites you’d like to share? What of these?

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Hide chappin’ anger

What turns you off when reading a novel? For me, it’s stories within stories. Not subplots, mind you, I love those. Many stories have a lot going on and in multiple points of view. What I’m talking about is like a back story, only it has nothing to do with the scene or the story as a whole. A good back-story catches the reader up on what happened before said event/scene took place. It can be as small as an interjection or as large a chapter.

The Hour I First Believed is an example of long passages of history that I found irrelevant to the story I first became interested in. I would skip entire chapters of his family history. I’m sure the author would rush to his defense and give me sound reason for this style. I wouldn’t blame him. But it is an example of what turns me off; it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

I read another author recently who had a different take on throwing me off track in a book. This guy had at least a quarter of his book interrupted with his protagonist’s little sister’s personal writing. There would be pages and pages of her fictional story inside his completely unrelated story, a different genre entirely: western. I don’t read or watch westerns, so I felt jipped that I got duped into buying one. It seemed as if the author really wanted to write a western but his agent said, “There’s no market for that, son.” So he sneaked it in anyhow. After tricked into reading a couple of these short stories inside a novel, I skipped over them, and the book became instantly better.

At this present moment, I am encountering another such style of writing that really chaps my hide. I’m reading along, the author has successfully hooked me with an idea of a plot, and even more so with my love of the members of a family. Then something happens to the seventeen-year-old daughter. Something bad. Do I get to find out what? Hell if I know. I’m having to wade through a family history, how the parents met, how the mother came to know Christ, the back story of a boy from school they just introduced, and the weather patterns of the area. I’m flipping, not reading, just to get to what happened to the girl. The girl is the best character and if she dies, I’ll throw the book in the trash and never buy another from this author again. But I may just do that anyway because I’ve flipped through entire chapters, scanning for any hints that we’ll be getting back to the story anytime soon. I’m at about 200 pages into the book and technically I have only read 100. I said above that stories inside stories aren’t wrong, just not my cup of tea, but with this book IT IS WRONG!

This isn’t personal taste here. THIS IS WRONG WRONG WRONG. No opinion. FACT!

Okay (out of breath, wheezing), I let my emotions run away with me, again. If you’re a regular of my blog, I’m sure you’ve adapted to my emotional spin cycle. But come on. What was she (this author) thinking? My first two examples above at least didn’t leave a cliffhanger before embarking on 100 pages of uninteresting stories, which, as I said before, really chaps my hide.

You’re talking to someone on the phone and they say “Psst, did you hear what happened to Mary? Well, she was walking home from school and she heard a noise and—Timmy shut up, I’m on the phone. Hang on I got to get Timmy a cracker. I’m back, Timmy’s teacher said he’s such a blessing in her classroom. He painted a picture of his grandpa. Did I ever tell you about my dad? He owned a gas station down on Fullerton—”

“You were talking about Mary,” you say to her.

“Yes, Mary. So anyway, she was walking home from school and she heard a noise and—Danny’s home. Hi, love. How was your day at the gas station? Sorry, I’m bak. Danny took over the station after my dad retired. blablabla. Danny and I are going on a cruise for our sixteenth anniversary. Did I ever tell you how we met?”

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY?

You’d hang up on the scatterbrain if you weren’t so curious about Mary. But this is the only person privy to the Mary info so you stick it out, watch TV while she rambles, and you keep one ear open for the word Mary. 

What chaps your hide in books?

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