Road Tripping: Or, Facing My Fear of the Freeway

One decision I made as my first marriage was ending was that when it was all over and our son was off to university, I was moving to Southern California. That decision led to a personal understanding: if I planned to live on the West Coast, on my own, I was going to have to conquer my fear of driving on limited-access highways. I hadn't done it for nearly a decade. It wasn't necessary in Memphis. In Los Angeles, it absolutely would be.

A highway in neither Memphis not Los Angeles: I-93, Boston, June 2013

I stopped driving on highways after a car accident in June, 1991. It happened on a Monday morning, as my family was driving back to Ithaca, New York after spending a few days in Florida for a friend’s wedding. My (first) husband (“1H” for the rest of this story) and I traded time behind the wheel, and I was taking the first shift that day. Not long after we entered I-95 near Brunswick, Georgia, I saw that a truck was about to merge onto the highway. As I adjusted to give it room, I felt a bump from behind...and I got completely spooked. I couldn’t seem to slow the car down, and I thought we were speeding directly into a rock face straight ahead. I wrenched the car into the median to avoid it and drove us back in the other direction, still unable to get my foot off the accelerator. When I finally brought us to a stop, the car had two blown tires and a bent frame, but no one was injured.

I think I bounced off a car that was in my blind spot when I tried to make space for the truck, but I’ve never been entirely clear on what happened--or forgotten the flood of adrenaline and terror that accompanied it. When we got back on the highway, 1H took the wheel, but told me that if we didn’t continue to trade off for the rest of the trip, he believed I would start developing a phobia, so he was not going to do all driving for the next two days. I figured he was right about that, and the rest of our shared drive was uneventful, if not entirely relaxed.

The phobia set in later. Ithaca has been called “centrally isolated,” and it’s nearly an hour’s drive from town to the nearest interstate on-ramp. I didn’t get exposed to the possibility of highway driving again until November, when we moved to Memphis for 1H’s new job. By then, neither of us felt comfortable with the idea of me driving long distances at highway speeds, so he did it for the entire trip--and for the rest of the 1990s.

Sharing your plans with someone else tends to make you feel accountable. That kind of accountability has both pros and cons, and when it comes to plans that really don’t affect anyone besides me, I tend to shirk it--no one else hears about those plans until I’ve acted on them. (That lets me avoid awkward questions about whether I have acted, or when I will.) By the middle of 2001, not long before 1H and I filed for divorce, I had a plan to take to the highway, and I didn’t mention it to anyone.

Memphis isn’t a bad place to live if you don’t like highway driving--it does make getting around town easier, but you can do without it just as easily. For those same reasons, it’s also not a bad place to teach yourself highway driving (again). I started with the automotive version of baby steps, on my own. During one long late-summer weekend when 1H was out of town, I drove from our house to nearby Highway 385, got on at the first entrance ramp I reached, and got right back off at the next exit, breathless and agitated for the entire stretch (which probably lasted about three minutes). Then I did it again, a few more times, traveling a little bit further between exits with each attempt. When I picked 1H up at the airport, I told him what I’d been doing, and he challenged me to make part of the drive home on Interstate 240. I did it.

I certainly wasn’t ready for rush hour yet, but within weeks I was occasionally forsaking my all-surface-street routes to use I-240 for my drive to and from work. I built up slowly, but with intent: I was leaving for California at the end of June, in my car. Although a co-driver was making the trip with me, I intended to do most of the driving for at least three solid days on highways. And I did--although, by mutual agreement, I didn’t drive the last leg, into and through Los Angeles itself. There would be plenty of opportunities to work my way up to that.

I rarely drive during road trips now, but it’s for different reasons. it’s partly because Tall Paul actually enjoys driving (and is a terrible passenger--the two things may or may not be related), and partly because an 80-plus-mile daily round-trip commute on four freeways makes me more than happy to let someone else drive when I can. I still tense up when I’m on an unfamiliar stretch of local highway, but I’m not sure that’s so bad; the list of places where driving is more “defensive” than it is in LA is probably not very long, so it’s important to stay on alert.

My freeway fear is mostly behind me now, although it's prudent not to let go of it completely, especially when it rains in Southern California. I still tend to seek out alternative, non-freeway routes when I can--I just like knowing my way around, and you get to know an area better when you come down from the highway--but I’m glad I don’t have to rely on them. I could get to and from work on nothing but surface streets if I had to--I know several routes across the Valley and down into Hollywood--but I wouldn’t really feel like working by the time I finally got there, and I wouldn’t have much time to work before I’d have to start the trip home. It's not hard to feel like you spend all day in your car when you're driving on the freeways of Los Angeles. But without those freeways, you could actually spend all day in your car, and I’m glad I'm not forced by my fears to do that.

This “Thoughts From My Reading”  was inspired by Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave, by Patty Chang Anker. I just finished reading it and will have my thoughts on the book itself posted here in a few days; one of the chapters is about fear of driving, but I wrote this piece before I got to that.

Read More

Handling the (Reading) Truth: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Me (Part 2 of 2)

To pick up where we left off, I can tell you exactly when my reading preferences shifted from almost exclusively fiction to avoiding fiction as much as possible--it was late 1999, into early 2000 (I would say the "turn of the millennium," but it was actually a year earlier)--and I can tell you exactly why.

My husband (not the one I have now, in case that doesn't quickly become obvious) started a relationship with another woman that fall, and we separated shortly before Christmas. The separation lasted not quite six months, but I’m not sure you can say we truly “reconciled,” other than to the reality that our marriage was down for the count (although it would be nearly a year and a half later before we officially ended it). That full story is for another time and place--assuming I ever bring myself to tell it at all--but what’s relevant to this story is that, as you might imagine, I was in a place of major emotional pain, and I was there for quite a long time. And when that pain was strongest, I had to stop reading fiction. 

Considering that my preferred fiction is of the character-centric literary variety, it's not surprising that it became a problem for me to read it under those emotional conditions. As noted in this response to a recent study establishing a link between reading literary fiction and social and emotional intelligence,

"Reading sensitive and lengthy explorations of people’s lives, that kind of fiction is literally putting yourself into another person’s position — lives that could be more difficult, more complex, more than what you might be used to in popular fiction. It makes sense that they will find that, yeah, that can lead to more empathy and understanding of other lives.”

It was too much empathy for me to handle. Most of the conflict and drama in character-driven fiction comes through relationships, and until you have reason to notice it, you might not actually notice how much of that relationship drama is between spouses or romantic partners. I noticed. And I really didn’t need to spend time in the hearts and minds of characters in the midst of that drama--no matter their outcome, it rubbed salt into my own wounds.

Reading fiction had grown more uncomfortable than reading nonfiction, but not reading at all was absolutely not an option, and so I branched out. I'd always had some interest in history and biography, but I developed a sort of recency bias and wanted to read about people and events from the soon-to-end twentieth century more than those of earlier times. Although I found most “inspirational” books a bit off-putting (and still do), my own questioning about faith and religion led me to the “religious studies” shelves and to “faith” memoirs, which are more often about the writer’s own continuing questions rather than laying out answers. Those clicked. Thoughtful--and sometimes fun--books about popular culture clicked. I discovered topical narrative nonfiction, and learned that essays didn’t have to be dry and academic. Nonfiction could tell stories too, and sometimes they were even more fascinating and full of wonder than fictional ones--and it didn't feel so much like any particular trick or special skill was necessary to read and appreciate those stories. And when I wanted to get inside someone else’s head again, there was memoir. The genre was still emerging then, and when it explored relationships, they were more likely to be those of youth than of marriage--that wasn’t so hard to take, and as I started to understand how the form differed from autobiography, I finally started to get the point of it.

When I was able to bring fiction back into my reading rotation, it was different, and some of those changes have stuck for over a decade now. I’ve grown lukewarm about a lot of “women’s fiction,” and fiction where infidelity or marital struggle is a central theme can still be difficult for me; this has pushed me to broaden my fiction-reading horizons, so I can’t really see it as a bad thing. What does seem like a not-so-good thing is that there are times I feel out-and-out bored with fiction. Perhaps at least part of this comes from nearly five decades of reading it, but sometimes I feel like I’m just seeing tweaks to the same stories I’ve read so many times before. Maybe that’s because there really are only so many stories in the human experience, but there are times I catch myself thinking that I’ve read some of them enough already.

As my fiction fever cools, I’m discovering that more and more of the books that excite me and jump onto my wish list are nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction, topical nonfiction, and cultural histories tend to grab me quickly, and I remain interested in biography and memoir.  My reading tastes have shifted before, and they may again; it’s all part of a reader’s evolution, isn’t it?  I doubt I’d ever quit fiction entirely, but at this stage of my reading life, I’m happier mixing things up.

Read More

At the Un-Common Core: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Me (Part 1 of 2)

(Disclosure: I used Grammarly to check for plagiarism free because when I express myself, I want to be sure it’s really myself that I’m expressing--and if it's not, I want to give proper citation and credit where it's due. This post is sponsored by Grammarly, but the opinions expressed in it are all mine.)

Until I was well into adulthood, my reading habits were pretty firmly entrenched in the “Fiction and Literature” section of the bookstore/library. But I’ve never been a particularly plot-driven reader, and so I’ve been most drawn to fiction that doesn’t strongly follow genre structure and conventions; characters are what get me. I’m more likely to read a novel because I want to know “what happens with the characters” as opposed to “what happens,” and to gain more insight and understanding about what makes people tick by taking the opportunity to spend time in the minds and hearts of those characters. Reading fiction opens that window like nothing else I know, and what it can teach is crucial to developing the empathy necessary to living in a civil society. Some new (non-fictional) research seems to back that up, showing that

"... after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence—skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking. The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity."

The new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) rolling out in schools across the US don’t seem to give these intangible lessons of fiction much importance, and place more value on nonfiction “informational” reading:

"In language arts, the emphasis will shift to far more informational text than literary. This is because once students reach college or the workplace, one reads predominately informational-based material. Reading will be evenly split between literary and informational in elementary school, will be 60 percent informational in middle school and 75 percent informational in high school."

Kristen had an eloquent response to this after attending her kids’ Back to School Night, making the case that fiction can be just as “real” and “true” as nonfiction. I think she’s absolutely right on these points:

“Fiction is not limited to actual events, so it can capture a universality of human nature or behavior beautifully”

and

“Fiction needs to be every bit as accurate as non-fiction in many ways. Good authors will have thoroughly researched all aspects of their plot, from character dialect to appropriate behavior to tiny details about place and more. If they don't, they will be certain to hear from a reader who knows better and who will call them on sloppiness. They tend to have a plethora of facts woven into the framework of their stories which readers may not even recognize they are learning.”

In case it’s not obvious, I’m not trying to argue against reading for information. I believe it uses and hones different skills than reading fiction does--analysis, evaluation, discernment--and developing those skills is also crucial to living in a civil society. I just don’t think that these qualities are necessarily more important that those we develop through reading fiction. I also have to question whether this approach is likely to foster the desire to read for the sheer enjoyment of it, which is pretty valuable in its own right.

To be fair, I’ve equated “enjoyment reading” with fiction for most of my reading life. Once my student life ended, I rarely picked up nonfiction unless it was 

• A Book Everyone Is Talking About,
• Highly and almost universally praised,
• Strongly urged on me by someone whose taste I respected,

or some combination of those factors. Even within those parameters, I rarely read in subject areas outside of history or biography. Although I wandered into memoir occasionally, I was somewhat suspicious of it and didn’t quite get what the point of it was, and if I happened to read “narrative nonfiction,” I’m pretty sure I didn’t know to call it that.

But as I said earlier, reading nonfiction uses different skills, and so it can feel different than reading fiction. If it wasn’t school-style textbook reading, I wasn’t sure I really had the right skills for it--and as someone with more than three decades as a reader under my belt at that point, that was a strange and uncomfortable feeling that I preferred to avoid.

I can tell you exactly when things shifted--late 1999, into early 2000--and I can tell you exactly why. I will do that in Part 2 of this post, tomorrow. I can tell you now that it was due to something much more uncomfortable than a reading nonfiction could ever possibly be. 

Read More

The Phantom TBR: Or, Me and an E-Book

I gave up using a dedicated e-reader well over a year ago. I was fond enough of my original Kindle, but when I “upgraded” to a Kindle Touch a couple of years later, I just couldn’t get comfortable with it. On the other hand, I was quickly coming to love using the iPad I bought for myself with some Christmas money (on December 26, 2011) for many things, including reading. It turned out that I wasn’t as attached to e-ink, or as bothered by a backlit screen, as I’d thought, but the bigger surprise was how much I appreciated not being committed to a single e-book supplier.

I have Kindle e-books, Nook books, and iBooks, and just a few Kobo books--I only added that app last week. Most of them are living “in the cloud,” but each app does have a few books downloaded and stored on it, ready to read when the mood hits. And for ultimate mood-driven e-reading there’s Oyster, the “Netflix-for-ebooks” subscription service where all of the books live in the cloud and are streamed to your device as you read them, and where I already have a growing queue. I’ve used the iBooks app most because I like the “feel” of the reading experience in it best, but as the design of other reading apps starts to resemble it more, it’s harder to play favorites.

Every time I read on the iPad, it strikes me how pleasant it is and how much I like it. So why don’t I do it more often? I’ve got a couple of theories.

The flip side of not using a dedicated e-reader is that there are so many other things I can do on an iPad. It’s my favorite device for reading blogs, following social media, playing games, and editing photos, and it’s often a more convenient spot for writing and blogging than my laptop. And when it’s plugged in to charge up after all those tasks, I can’t use it for anything unless I sit right near the power source...and that’s usually when I decide to leave it to itself and walk away from it for a while. In all honesty, sometimes I just plain forget about using it to read books at all!

That tendency to forget is a major reason I haven’t gone for e-galleys in a big way. I have enough trouble keeping on top of the paper ARCs and review copies I get in the mail, and I keep those in obvious places where I can see them! I like the concept of e-galleys very much--not least because they spare you the problem of how to discard them after you read them--but without a solid system (one that includes reminders!) to track them, I’m afraid they’d be doomed to go unread and un-reviewed for much, much too long. Then again, I suppose I could dedicate one of the apps, most likely the Kindle, to e-galleys only--but since I’ve still got e-books in that app that I bought three years ago and haven’t read yet, it’s either much too late or way too soon to get that change in place.

I don’t usually add e-books (or audiobooks) to my LibraryThing collection until I’ve started reading them, which means the population of TBR Purgatory is consistently understated. The true number of “books I possess but haven’t yet read” is scattered across seven apps. Granted, they’re not taking up physical space, but they do seem to suffer from “Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind Syndrome,” and that’s a whole ‘nother source of TBR guilt. I’ve joined the E-book Reading Challenge for a few years running with the fairly modest goal of six e-books for the year--it should be easily reached, and yet I struggle with it every time. I’m being haunted by my “phantom TBR,” and I’m curious--how do you manage your reading between print and e-books without losing track of your library?

Read More

Some Uncensored Thoughts on Censorship

I didn’t plan my September reading well enough to have a book lined up for Banned Books Week 2013, which begins on Monday, and I didn’t plan this week well enough to put together an original piece on censorship for Sheila’s annual Banned Books Week event. She’s holding it a week in advance due to a schedule conflict, and calling it “Reading to Beat the Banned.” But I’ve written about this before, and my feelings really haven’t changed much.

Here’s the official list of the 10 books most frequently challenged in school and public libraries in 2012:

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey. Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Reasons: Offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
3. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher. Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
5. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. Reasons: Homosexuality, unsuited for age group
6. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Reasons: Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
8. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz. Reasons: Unsuited for age group, violence
9. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
10. Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Reasons: Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence

(I’ll be honest; if we’re talking strictly about school libraries, I can’t really disagree that they’re no place for Fifty Shades of Grey.)

There aren't all that many commonalities among the books in this list, thematically. They vary in their objective literary merit, and if it weren't for the fact that they've been banned or challenged, there would probably be nothing especially memorable about some of them. However, they've all been challenged because they pose a challenge--to ideas about religion, politics, morality and ethics, and the structure and habits of society. But if a society--or an individual--means to grow, it's necessary to challenge established ideas, and to develop tools to consider them critically.

The American Library Association defines the purpose of Banned Books Week as:

“...(f)ocusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books (to draw) national attention to the harms of censorship. (T)he frequently challenged books section (of the ALA website) explore(s) the issues and controversies around book challenges and book banning. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read."

The ALA and its partners have been calling attention to the issue of censorship and “celebrating the freedom to read” during the last week of September every year since 1982. “Freedom to read” also includes the freedom not to read books that we might find objectionable, of course…but in a free society, the individual should be the one who exercises those freedoms and makes those choices, not some (self-appointed) educational or morality police.

It’s entirely reasonable for parents to be the ones to exercise those rights on behalf of their own young children regarding what they read in their own homes, of course. But as children get older, the parents’ role--as well as the schools’--appropriately shifts toward giving kids the tools to discern what’s worth reading for themselves. It’s harder to develop that discernment when options are deliberately limited and critical thinking is discouraged; and sometimes, what’s worth reading just might “convey shocking, controversial or unpopular ideas.”

I thoroughly support the freedom to read what one chooses to read--and in order to make those choices well, one needs access to the full range of choices. I also believe in the freedom to choose not to read something--as long as that choice is truly mine. I do not support censorship. I don't believe in delegating my right to decide what I can and can't read to anyone else. I have the tools to make those decisions for myself, and I believe we all have the right to those tools.

Having said that, I don’t often make a point of seeking out and reading banned or censored books just because they're challenged (although there have been cases where it’s the controversy that brings a book to my attention and piques my initial interest). That said, I also know there are themes and topics that just don't appeal to me, and quality of writing notwithstanding, if I choose not to read a particular book, that will be the reason why. But I deserve to be able to make that decision for myself. So do you. So does every reader.

Banned Books Week calls attention to the fact that the freedom to read gets challenged every day of the year, and that we all have the right, and the responsibility, to challenge that.

Read More

Notes on This Year's Reading (which is not finished yet!)

This isn’t an official “Year in Review” post, because I feel like it’s still a little early for me to go there, but it is a bit of a rehearsal for it. I haven’t done much in the way of taking stock this year, so I feel a need to get my bearings.

Part of that need comes from a sense that, particularly for the last few months, I haven’t done much bloggish, period. This was the year I discovered the fun of photo-editing apps, and playing with them has cut into the time I spend on both writing my own posts and reading other people’s. (Tradeoff: I am doing more photo-based blogging!)

And for several weeks now, I’ve been feeling much more drawn to reading books than blog posts. I still skim my feed-reader frequently (as in multiple times per day), and I do make an effort to share good links as often as I can even if I’m not commenting on them directly. But when that reader feels overly full, I’m not hesitant to activate the “mark all as read” function to make the backlog go away--and make myself feel better about it--for a little while. (It’s not all better. There’s still a little guilt. But can anyone keep up with it all these days?)

As far as books go, though, I’m on some sort of year-end reading tear. I am currently reading three books at once--one in print, one on my iPad, and one audiobook. Last month I successfully double-teamed a print book and an e-book. I’ve never been a proficient polygamous reader, but getting more into audiobooks may be shifting me in that direction.

This year I gave up on trying to maintain a book-review index here and decided to start using Goodreads as my review archive. I also joined their 2012 Reading Challenge with a goal of 52 books for the year. I won’t make it, but I don’t think I’ll miss it by much...and I’m pretty sure that tracking my books-read number via a blog widget is a factor in my recent binge reading.

I think I joined three reading challenges besides the Goodreads one, and other than labeling my Book Talk posts when they fit into one of them I haven’t given them much attention. I’m pretty sure I met my goal for the Memorable Memoirs Reading Challenge, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’ve already beaten my target for the Audiobook Challenge--I aimed for six and I’ve read ten so far, with one still in progress as I draft this post. I fell short on the E-book Reading Challenge, though. I’m no longer using a dedicated e-reader; I’ve found that regardless of whether it’s in the Kindle, Nook, or iBooks app, I’d rather read on my iPad. The drawback to that is that I’m too easily diverted by the other things there are to do my iPad. I’ve also concluded that although I like the idea of killing fewer trees, I still need to see print versions of ARCs and review books waiting around my house in order to remember my responsibilities toward them, so e-galleys are probably not for me at this stage.

I may not achieve my planned book-a-week average this year, but the quality measures are good. As I said, I’m using Goodreads much more now, but LibraryThing remains my first love for book cataloging, thanks to their tagging capabilities and their enabling of the more nuanced half-star in book ratings--I use tags to note my own quarter-star adjustments. The rating I gave most often was 3.75/5, but I gave three books a rating above 4 of 5 (and five-star ratings on Goodreads). Theoretically, that should make my “Books of the Year” choices pretty obvious, but I’m not sure it will.

That’s still a few weeks off yet, though--it may not be done till after January 1, 2013--and I want to get to Jamie’s End of Year Book Survey, too. But even if I’m not ready to bestow year-end honors, “Best of 2012” book lists are popping up in lots of places already! I’ve compiled some that you might not have seen yet into a Readlist, and if you’ve come across others you’d like to add, please use this edit link to share them!

Read More

Independent Thinking, Part 2: Indie Authors & the Indie Reviewer

My participation in Creative Alliance '12 prompted much consideration of my approach to my online life. As a book blogger, that life clearly includes books and authors...but it hasn’t included many from the swelling ranks of the “non-traditionally published.” This is the last of this month's posts on "indie authors." All opinions expressed here are my own, although some may be supported with links to related posts elsewhere.

Yesterday's thoughts pondered why more authors are publishing independently. Today's are about how that affects me as a reader and book blogger--a book blogger who has not eagerly embraced the self-published. I'd love to know your thoughts on both sides of the story.

My impression is that many book bloggers who avoid indie authors do so  ecause of negative experiences--sometimes their own, sometimes those they’ve heard about from others. They’ve been deluged with e-mails and press releases. They’ve been asked to review books that turn out to be poorly written, barely edited, and/or badly packaged. And in a few extreme cases, they’ve been publicly attacked for giving the honest opinions the authors requested.

I appreciate a writer’s investment in his or her work, and realize that the indie author may be even further invested as the book’s editor, designer, publisher, marketer, and sales manager--investments of creativity, time, and money (it takes money to make money). I also understand that so much investment can make it harder to see possible weaknesses in the work, or to accept constructively-intended feedback. On the other hand, indie authors should understand that most indie book bloggers do this as a hobby. While we do our best not to behave “unprofessionally,” we’re not “professional” reviewers, and because this isn’t our job, there are certain obligations we don’t have. Tolerating personal attacks on our opinions is pretty high on that list.

I realize it’s not terribly fair to shut out a large and widely varied category of authors based on bad experiences with a small fraction of them, but I think that sometimes bloggers feel it’s the only way we can manage it. Another obligation we don’t have is sorting through what traditional publishers call the “slush pile”--and as hobbyists, we don’t have time for it either. One reason many book bloggers prefer traditionally-published books is that, to an extent, they’ve already been “vetted,” and most of the time, we can trust the product that comes through that vetting process. Approaching the self-published book can feel more inherently risky. In announcing their recent decision to stop accepting and reviewing indie books, the group blog Insatiable Booksluts addressed that risk::

"I really hope you guys don’t hate me for this, but um . . . I’ve decided that IB will no longer accept pitches for self-published work. I’m not making a judgment about all self-published work here; no, this is about the fact that, energy-wise, it’s really draining for me to sift through pitches because I don’t have a touchstone for self-published work (emphasis added). Is this or that book going to be good? I dunno. I have to put a lot of research into books to see if it’s worth it to try to read it, and most of them don’t make the cut, so that work is for naught. The energy sap makes me less good at blogging; in the mutually-beneficial blogger/book producer relationship, I want to be able to hold up my end for people that I choose to work with...Sorry, self-published authors. We might still review self-published work here, if we come across something we want to read, but please, do not send us any pitches."

I think that lack of a "touchstone" to evaluate a book's quality is a perfectly valid reason for not reviewing it, and applicable whether the book is in a genre the blogger doesn't read or from an author who's going DIY (and maybe doubly valid if it's both, which is why I'm highly unlikely to review self-published paranormal erotic thrillers).

Without touchstones or vetting systems, we look for other ways to sort through it all, and in the online word, personal connections are one of the most important. Book blogging can be an odd hybrid of critical consideration and personal recommendation. If I’m not personally familiar with a book or author, I’m more apt to take a chance if people whose opinions I know and trust can make reassurances, and that’s likely to matter even more with books that are non-traditionally published. That said, many of my most-trusted sources keep the same distance from indie authors that I have, so we really can’t give each other much reassurance.

And with that said, I’ve found that I’ll be more likely to take the chance with indie authors if I already know them, through personal or online interaction, before I encounter their work. (And “interaction” is key here--if we’re not, at the very least, reciprocal Twitter followers, there probably isn't interaction. There are authors following me on Twitter whom I don’t follow back and who write in genres I don’t enjoy reading; we don’t interact, and I don’t consider those to be “online relationships.”)  

In all honesty, I usually ignore the review pitch e-mail that’s the equivalent of a “cold call” (regardless of source), and if I have no acquaintance with the sender, that goes double. I expect that I will remain non-responsive to out-of-the-blue “please review my book” e-mails...and I’m trying to resist the impulse to apologize for that. But if I know you and/or your writing and you’re putting out a book, there’s a high probability I’ll want to support your efforts. I might not blog about your book the same way I would if it came through more traditional, detached channels, and I’d acknowledge our relationship in anything I posted about it. Self-publishing has lost many of its negative associations during the last decade, but I realize that I still retain some snobbery toward it. I suspect that seeing writers I have a personal connection with succeed at it--and maybe even contributing just a bit toward their success--could take a good chunk out of that attitude of mine.

Read More

Independent Thinking, Part 1: Changing Times for Authors, or "Why DIY?"

My participation in Creative Alliance '12 prompted much consideration of my approach to my online life. As a book blogger, that life clearly includes books and authors...but it hasn’t included many from the swelling ranks of the “non-traditionally published.” This is the third of this month's posts on "indie authors." All opinions expressed here are my own, although some may be supported with links to related posts elsewhere.

I don’t usually think of it in these terms, but it seems to me that if anyone could be described as a “self-published author,” it’s a blogger. The writer who stakes out his or her own plot for self-expression on the Internet is the very definition of “indie.” Some of us use our staked-out plots to write about what other people write. We’re “independent book bloggers.” If anyone understands the value of personal connections in discovering and promoting books, we do.

And yet, many of us independent self-publishers hesitate to discuss or promote books by independent, self-published authors; some bloggers decline to read and review books from “indie authors” at all. (On the other hand, many of us eagerly support “indie bookstores”...some of which won’t stock books by indie authors. That’s not today’s topic, however.) With very occasional exceptions, I’ve been one of those book bloggers, but I’ve recently been rethinking my stand...and please note that “rethinking” does not mean the same thing as “changing” (although sometimes it leads in that direction).

I’m opening up to taking indie-author risks less “occasionally” than I have,  and as the conditions that produce the books we love keep changing, I wonder if more indie book bloggers will come around to that as well. If writers are finding new ways to adapt to a shifting publishing industry, it makes some sense that readers would follow their lead.

As the barriers to entry for traditional publishing seem to rise ever higher, it feels like self-publishing products and services are a real growth industry--and public acceptance and respect are growing alongside. (Self-publishing can also yield better financial outcomes for an author than traditional publishing, but it may require some of the author’s financial input to get there...and, again, that’s not today’s topic.) With those conditions in place, there are certainly practical reasons for authors to publish independently, and some cases where it makes sense creatively as well:

• their book is quirky and doesn’t readily fit any particular genre
• their book fits very well into a particular and popular genre (romance, for example)
• their book is more likely to find its audience slowly and gradually 
• they have some name recognition, but in a field other than writing
• they have some name recognition for writing, but in a specialized niche and/or not for books

The answer to the question "Do book bloggers affect book sales?" still seems to depend on who you ask, but indie books may offer opportunities to assess it. Self-published authors may welcome blog reviews, but they realize that many of their potential readers may not read book blogs, so they especially appreciate seeing those reviews shared in social media, cross-posted to Goodreads, and submitted to the websites where they actually sell their books. (Yes, this means that if you review an indie-published book, the author may ask you to re-post it on Amazon.com.)

As DIY publishing opportunities expand, traditional publishing grows increasingly consolidated; the “Big 6” are on the verge of becoming the “Big 5” next year with the creation of Penguin Random House, and industry insiders expect more sales and mergers to follow. Like many large-scale businesses, Big Publishing relies on “name brands” for the bulk of its sales, and its interests may not always align with those of readers. As J.C. observes at The Biblio Blogazine:

“Later in the article we get to what I feel is the true reasoning behind why these giants of the trade fail:

'They had the responsibility to shape society by providing it with books worth reading, to create a cultural legacy for our generation and generations to come. And instead, what did they give us? Ann Coulter, Navy SEALs, and Fifty Shades of Grey.' 

I cannot disagree with this statement. I truly believe that the bottom line has become more important than providing a quality product that people want, even demand, and would be willing to pay for...The devil is in the details, or in this instance, the quality of the content. Concern about the bottom line carries little weight with a reader. If you want them to buy your product, produce one worth paying for.”

(Mobylives, the blog of independent publisher Melville House, produced a good roundup of reactions to the merger.) The emphasis on “big names”--names sometimes better known for activities unrelated to books--at the highest levels of the industry will likely make it even more difficult for new writers to break in--and for readers to find them--than it already is. While the changes at the big publishing houses could present new opportunities for smaller publishers, more authors may come to feel that the indie-publishing route is their best option to get their work to readers. And if those works are embraced by readers, a successful self-publishing track record has been known to “establish” some authors enough to get industry attention and the larger audience it affords (Fifty Shades of Grey is far from the first or only example of this happening).

Today's thoughts ponder why more authors are publishing independently. Tomorrow's will be about how that affects me as a reader and book blogger. I'd love to know your thoughts on both sides of the story.

Read More

Sunday Salon: Seriously, Comedy is Hard

Last week, I completed my duties as a first-round nonfiction judge for the Shirley You Jest! Humor Book Awards and forwarded one contender on to the final round. The winners and runners-up (one of each, for fiction and nonfiction) will be announced on November 1, National Authors’ Day.

After mulling it over with some degree of anxiety, I have decided that I won’t be posting reviews of any of the titles I considered. I know this is highly unusual for me, as my stated position is “I review everything I read.” That said, the decision significantly reduced my anxiety about the judging process--partly because of the time commitments, but also because these books would have been very hard to review. For the most part, they were collections of personal anecdotes and observations, not strongly linked by narrative and exaggerated for comic effect...to varying degrees of success.

As Steve Martin once said, “Comedy is not pretty,” and it’s not easy either--as the saying goes, “dying is easy--comedy is hard.” I think that it’s particularly difficult to do humor well in print, where it’s just between writer and reader--there are no visual or audio cues beyond the words on the page, let alone the responsive laughter of an audience (which is its own sort of cue). This experience reinforced my appreciation for those who can pull it off, especially if they’re writing outside the “comic novel” genre (fiction permits certain latitudes). People like David Sedaris and Tina Fey and Jenny Lawson (and Steve Martin, for that matter) don’t come along every day, and the authors who entered their work in the nonfiction category of the SYJ! Awards had their work cut out for them.

The SYJ! Awards were open to “indie” authors whose books were published by small, independent publishers, including themselves, and that’s another factor in my decision not to post reviews. For the most part, I’ve shied away from reviewing self-published books here, and nothing I read during my judging stint inspired me to change that policy.

The best self-published works I’ve read are those that I didn’t find until after they were picked up and reissued by traditional publishers, based on word-of-mouth success. And honestly, my appreciation for one more thing was reinforced by my time on this project: the work that’s done on traditionally-published books by the people who aren’t the writer--editors (content and copy), designers, and other members of the team (whose jobs I can’t name because I don’t work in publishing).

Comedy is hard, humor can be very subjective, and judging comedic nonfiction turned out to be less than a barrel of laughs--a supposedly fun thing I’ll (probably) never do again (although I just might read that collection of David Foster Wallace’s “essays and arguments” one of these days--it’s as close to Infinite Jest as I intend to get, frankly).

What makes humor work for you in books? Is it different from what you like in other media?

Read More

Sunday Salon: Books--they're good for what ails ya!

I suspect that the idea that books can help us through challenging times in our lives is not exactly a revelation to most avid readers. We’re conditioned to turn to books in times of crisis--for the solace of familiar “comfort reads,” for information, for ideas that may shift (or strengthen) our perspectives. We’ve probably been practicing self-administered “bibliotherapy” for much of our lives, and we know it works:

"As generations of book lovers will tell you, literature transforms us. If pressed to say exactly how, most of us will mutter something about perspective or the experience of entering another person’s consciousness. But all would agree that our best-loved books have in some significant way changed us for the better.”

Nina Sankovitch’s Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, a memoir of the year she spent reading a book a day after the death of her sister, is essentially a record of her own personal course of bibliotherapy. Thinking about it a little more broadly, it seems to me that many memoirs of a “life in books” probably also chronicle some element of the reader/author’s turning to books in a difficult time, although it’s not necessarily as deliberate as Sankovitch’s.

But for those who may be less self-directed about seeking a reading cure, bibliotherapy has been codified:

“(T)he London-based School of Life (has) taken this intuition a step further. Their 'bibliotherapy' program matches individuals struggling in any aspect of their lives with a list of books hand-selected to help them through tough times. You get your reading list after an initial consultation with a bibliotherapist in which you discuss your life, your reading history, and your problems... 

“…(T)here’s no objective measure of the results – all the (abundant) evidence of bibliotherapy’s efficacy is anecdotal. (Bibliotherapy offers) distance from and perspective on your troubles as you view them through the lens of other people’s lives. The people are mostly fictional (though some non-fiction is also prescribed) but they’re dealing with issues just like yours and almost certainly approaching them differently.”

The School of Life offers bibliotherapy for individuals, couples, and kids, and if you’re not in London, they offer remote sessions via Skype. In any case, the approach is the same: the client completes a pre-session questionnaire, and after discussing their reading history and current issues with a bibliotherapist, receives a personalized reading list designed to address their problems. The bibliotherapists have no special training; they are an author, an artist, and a bookstore owner, all avid lifelong readers, and their mission is to create the perfect “reading prescription” for each client.

The prescription reading lists don’t take the obvious route of self-help books; the bibliotherapists specialize in fiction, but may also recommend poetry, philosophy, and other creative nonfiction.

One of the things I love most about being a reader is that sometimes the best way to sort through what’s inside your own head is to be given a free pass into someone else’s, and I believe that nothing does that like reading fiction. That said, I’m not sure what’s being offered at the School of Life is particularly “biblio-therapeutic;” what it sounds like to me is a very personally curated, specifically targeted (and rather pricey) personal-shopper service for books (although it isn’t clear to me whether clients actually receive the books themselves, or just the recommendations).

During my own time of need for bibliotherapy a decade ago, my preferred treatments were memoir, history, and biography rather than fiction; I still wanted stories, but I wanted those stories to be real. And I still read those forms of nonfiction, but now it’s because I’ve discovered that I like them. Yes, books can transform us.

What are your favorite forms of bibliotherapy?

Read More