Over at OF Blog of the Fallen Larry has an interesting post on the changing nature of reviewing and criticism. Basically it is a longer (and probably better argued) version of the point I have been making for some time, which is that these days many people don’t want to listen to an “expert” reviewer.
Note for anyone thinking of commentating. Saying “but I don’t think that way” does not invalidate Larry’s observations. Third Law of Fandom.
Via John Coulthart I discover that it is not only literary critics who think that blogging will cause the sky to fall. Though actually the article is a bit more thoughtful than the headline suggests, and nowhere near as bad as Agnew.
In today’s Guardian Book Blog John Sutherland bemoans the decline in space given to book reviews by major newspapers. He’s certainly right that it is happening, and there are related issues such as Publishers Weekly slashing the rates it pays reviewers. But the funny thing is that I’m actually reading more book reviews in British newspapers (or at least their web sites) than ever before, because they are finally starting to review the books I like to read.
Update: Via GalleyCat I discover that Mark Sarvas thinks that the way to save the book review is to go online. I am inclined to agree. After all, no one makes a living from book reviews, and online you don’t get constrained into one or two paragraphs per book. (Also score one for The Guardian getting such fulsome praise from far-off Los Angeles.)
Via Andrew McKie I discover that the London Review of Books has a long article about Philip K Dick, inspired by the Library of America editions of his work.
Busy day today. Not much time for bloggery. Not much time for reading either, but I did notice that a newspaper called Gay City News has a long piece on Laurie Marks. Nice job they did too (despite the headline).
Today’s Guardian Book Blog has a post by David Barnett complaining that “independent” writers don’t get the same respect that independents get in the music and movies business. He says:
The literary world only bestows acceptance, it seems, on those who are published through the traditional avenues. Independent and small presses get short shrift – national newspaper supplements seem loath to review indie books, the big high street sellers won’t stock them, unless the books are about the tough lives of mill girls or histories of public house names, which can be shoved on a shelf marked “local interest”.
This struck me as odd, because in the science fiction community small presses are thriving. They are winning awards all over the place, and you can find their books in major chains. I’m sure that if Michael Dirda or Mike Berry wanted to review a book from, say, Small Beer, Night Shade or Tachyon, then there would be no problem with their doing so. Then it hit me. Barnett is talking about mainstream literature in Britain. And like most mainstream literary people he assumes that his little part of the wider literary community is the entire literary world. Sad really.
At GalleyCat Ron Hogan asks whether the future of book reviewing might be on YouTube.
I must admit that the Times Literary Supplement isn’t the place I would normally look for an intelligent essay on genre fiction, which is why I had to be pointed to this piece by Locus Online. However, I’m very glad that Mark spotted it, because it is a very good read. After all, it has stuff like this:
Like Japanese soldiers fighting the Second World War long after it ended, some still draw a cordon sanitaire around “literature†to protect it from “genreâ€, regardless of how closely the two commingle.
Heck, it even has a link to Ansible’s web site. None of this will have gone down very well at Granta.
Despite the title of “The rise of fan fiction and comic book culture”, the article doesn’t really discuss fan fic at all. It is actually a review of two books: The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu, which is a history of anti-comics hysteria in 1950s America, and Maps and Legends, a collection of essays by Michael Chabon. Both books sound very interesting. If only I had time to read more…
In which Paul Witcover demonstrates the neglected art of writing a book review that will make Cheryl want to go out and buy the book straight away.
Just like everyone else, I have buttons, and if you press enough of them at once I react.
Over at Hay Marian Keyes is defending chick lit against accusations of being genre crap. For The Guardian Anita Sethi opens her report thus:
Marian Keyes never lets the darker side of her fiction take over. Doesn’t that make her chick-lit blockbusters just as realistic as literary fiction?
So let me see, that would mean that the very definition of “literary” is that it is “realistic”, right? And fiction that isn’t realistic cannot possibly be literary. Thank you for stating your prejudices so clearly.
Timmi Duchamp has posted her WisCon Guest of Honor speech online. As usual with Timmi, the piece in very thoughtful. It is mainly about “intelligibility”, which I think may be a word I will end up using a lot myself, because it is a good label of things I think about a lot.
Continue reading
Today’s Independent reviews a biography of Charles Fort.
Just about everyone I know who has seen Iron Man has loved the film. It certain seems to be a cinematic triumph, and possibly a hot contender for next year’s Hugo. But pretty pictures are not the be all and end all of a movie. Those of you who think that political analysis of books and movies is “reading in things that aren’t there” will not be happy with this review of the film (and those of you allergic to spoilers and who haven’t seen the film should avoid it too). For everyone else, it is a very interesting analysis.
My own reaction, having read the piece, is that had the film been more politically daring then fans would have lambasted it for not being true to the comic. Tony Stark, after all, is not exactly your typical social crusader. It is also possibly hoping for a bit much for such a high profile Hollywood film to do things that would infuriate your average Republican voter. Much of America is still in denial about military adventurism. But comics (and therefore hopefully films about comic characters) can tackle big issues. The success of Iron Man has pretty much guaranteed that there will be a sequel. Here’s hoping that the producers are a bit braver next time around.
Although I’m not writing reviews these days, I still take a professional interest in the blurbs that publishers put in books. One thing they often do is run a bunch of quotes from reviewers on the first few pages so that anyone opening the book in a store can get an eyeful of just how well loved the author is. There’s a page like that at the front of the Seam Williams book, Saturn Returns, that I have just started reading. Some of the quotes just have a byline of a newspaper, as the publishers assume that no one will know the names of newspaper staff reviewers. But others are from fellow fiction writers and are of the form “X author of Y”. I was much amused, therefore, to see at the top of the page, “Cheryl Morgan, author of Emerald City.” So, I iz author, as a LOLcat might say. Must put that on my resume.
At the Guardian Book Blog Sam Jordison continues his exploration of Hugo winners with a look at A Case of Conscience by James Blish. It sounds like Sam will enjoy Hyperion when he finally gets to it. And for his next column he promises us his take on Starship Troopers, teasing us with the statement that he thinks the book is “barking mad”. Brave boy. I shall be looking forward to that little slap fest.
Mike Glyer discovers that he is quoted as thinking a book is “brilliant”, despite never having heard of the book or the author before. Tsk, tsk. Do not make false claims on teh intrawebs, folks, for surely Google Alerts will find you out.
A few weeks back, before my life went crazy, I promised you (and particularly Larry) a review of a book about Gender Theory. I have finally written that review, and you can find it here.
No, not mine, theirs. Post-Weird Thoughts is a new blog from Jacques Barcia and Fábio Fernandes. It promises thoughts on weird fiction in English by Brazilians. As you know, I’m all in favor of building bridges to SF&F communities in other countries. I wish the new blog well, and I hope you will all enjoy reading now.
One of these days, I want to go to a convention in Brazil.
Cory Doctorow has an interesting new article up on the Locus web site (which I probably should have read on paper but didn’t get an interrupt on). I was pleased to see a new rationale for not publishing reviews long before a book is available in the shops, but the thing that jumped out at me was this:
After all, the majority of links between blogs have been made to or from blogs with four or fewer inbound links in total — that means that the Internet has figured out a cost-effective means of helping audiences of three people discover the writers they should be reading.
That’s what I call a long tail. And the converse is the spike. I’m assuming that Cory got that data from Technorati. Those blogs would all have an authority of 4 or less, and a ranking somewhere in the millions. This blog has an authority of 36 and a ranking of around 272,000. SFAW is up to 73 and 124,000, while the Hugo Awards site manages a ranking of just under 100,000 with just 15 points more authority. Cory’s blog, Boing! Boing!, is currently ranked 5, and has an authority of 16,730. See what I mean by a spike?
This is, of course, just an example of a more general phenomenon. Only a few people get to play Premier League soccer, or star in a Hollywood blockbuster, or get to govern their nation. The trick, I guess, is to find one small area of personal endeavour in which you are in the spike, not in the tail.
As regular readers will know, I have an interest in the sociology of the Internet. As someone who has been nominated for awards on the basis of her online writing, I should try to understand the medium in which I’m working. I was therefore fascinating to learn about a study which finds a strong correlation between watching reality TV and “promiscuous friending” on social network sites.
The idea here is that in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed society many people’s social networks contain a significant number of people that they have never met and who don’t know them, but rather are famous people who they have seen on TV, read about in celebrity magazines, and whose blogs they follow. This isn’t new. My grandmother got like this in her later years. She was prone to saying things like, “a friend of mine told me,” when a more accurate statement would have been, “a character on Coronation Street said.”
This also relates to something I’ve been saying for some time about reviewing. If you talk about book reviews online you’ll find a lot of people saying things like, “I don’t want to read reviews by some supposed expert I don’t know, I’d much rather get a recommendation from a friend.” But if people regard high-profile authors as their “friends”, then a recommendation from such a person will do a lot of good for a book. In terms of marketing, it will probably be far more valuable than anything someone like me might write.