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Sam van Zweden

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Teaser Tuesday

I’ve come across this meme on a few different blogs, so I thought I’d put it up here and see how it goes…

It’s called Teaser Tuesday…

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“I was never convinced that the Whitlam ministers could manage so many spectacular blunders by themselves. They needed help.” (83)
                                                                             “Smoke and Mirrors“, Kel Robertson.

4

Dead Until Dark

I’ve just finished reading Charlaine Harris’ “Dead Until Dark” – the first novel in the series that the brilliant HBO series “TRUE BLOOD” is based on. Being such a fan of the show, I was excited to read the book… However, I came out a little traumatized, and very very confused.

“Dead Until Dark” introduces us to Sookie Stackhouse – a telepathic waitress living in a small town in Louisiana. Apart from being a bit of a loser because of what she calls “her disability”, life for Sookie is pretty normal. The world of the novel is one where vampires and humans live side-by-side. It’s not all peaceful; there’s a lot of prejudice and a fair bit of violence, but it’s like society’s relationship with any minority group.

Sookie gets involved with “Vampire Bill”, who is attempting to “mainstream” – to live among humans in peace, drinking synthetic blood to survive. As their romance gets more involved, Sookie being drawn further into the vampire community, the discord between people and vampire gets to boiling point. Local girls just like Sookie start being murdered, and a pattern starts to emerge… Sookie’s powers and her relationship with Bill come in handy in chasing down the murderer and restoring a little peace in the small town.

Now, there’s so much I can tell you that’s bad about this book… But at the end of the day, I quite enjoyed reading it.

Charlaine Harris seems to have some weird problem with tenses for the first half of the book. It’s narrated mainly in past tense, but then occasionally an “is” will slip in there… It’s so hard to pay attention to what’s happening in a novel when you keep getting snagged on something as dumb as a lack of “is/was” continuity.

The writer also seems to struggle with instilling a bit of character logic into her story. I can suspend my disbelief as far as the book asks me to – OK, there’s vampires. There’s shape-shifters. There’s telepaths… But on a number of occasions in the novel, people hear or see things which they respond to in a totally illogical way. Example: (spoiler here!) – Sookie’s boss Sam is a shapeshifter, which is something he’s been at pains to hide from her for the 5 years they’ve known each other. One day, Sam feels like Sookie’s in danger, so he turns into a dog and goes to her house to protect her, where he falls asleep on her bed. The next morning Sookie wakes up with Sam, naked, in bed next to her. Her reaction?
“Oh, Sam.”

WHAT!? That’s IT!? Just a very calm, “oh, Sam.”   As if.

Harris either has no confidence in her skill as a writer, or grossly underestimates the intelligence of her readers. She feels the need to reiterate simple points over and over…and over, to the point of redundancy. At least three times in the first two chapters, Sookie refers to the fact that her parents died – both of them, when she was seven, in a flash flood, leaving herself and her brother with her Gran. And each time she refers to it in this much detail… We get it, just tell us once…

I figure this must be a lack of confidence on Harris’ part, which wouldn’t be entirely unfounded… She seems to have a fondness for adverbs and a strange aversion to the word “said,” forcing her characters to “smile”, say “disgustedly” (what a horrible word!), “notice”, and “observe”. These are just a few of the many horrible modes of speaking that people in the world of Dead Until Dark use when conversing.

…But for all of these faults, Charlaine Harris has written an incredibly fast-paced, no-boredom novel. Right as I was getting pissed off with the B- or C-grade writing, there was SEX! and then BLOOD! and then a CRAZY NEW CHARACTER! Then more sex! More blood! Sexy blood, and bloody sex!

Hence the confusion.

For how terribly written the novel is, for how much it truly insults me as a reader, I enjoyed reading it. And, if someone were to give me the sequels, I’d probably read and enjoy them too.

8

Six Walks In the Fictional Woods

100+ Books Challenge, #3: “Six Walks in the Fictional Woods” by Umberto Eco.

If you’ve ever read any Umberto Eco, you’ll know that he writes in a way that is both accessible and amusing, and incredibly poignant.

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a reflection on the role of the reader, the role of the writer, and the relationship between the two. Eco uses the metaphor of “the woods” to represent exactly what it is that we get ourselves into when reading or writing a book.

As is always true in anything by Umberto Eco, “Six Walks…” is full of intersting little tidbits (the line that divides “blue” and “green” is very different in Latin/Greek cultures to our own), amusing ways of making a point (a particularly hilarious overinterpretation of The Three Musketeers), and some very worthwhile food for thought.

Definately worth a look-in for your next non-fiction craving!

0

“Everything I Know About Writing” Review

So, number 2 book in my 100+ Book Challenge for 2010 was John Marsden’s “Everything I Know About Writing”…

This is a guide to writing, written by a top-selling and much-loved (particularly by me!) Australian author.

The blurb claims that “Everything I Know About Writing” is “as readable as a novel”…and it really is.

Throughout, Marsden gives tips about what makes good and bad writing, using his deep and wide knowledge of literature and language. He doesn’t just list tips on what’s good or bad – he uses a range of really apt examples to drive these points home. While a lot of what is covered in this book is either common writing sense, or something I’ve learned before, Marsden still presents these points in entertaining and clear ways, and I appreciate having so many useful things written in one place as a handy future reference.

Although this book was first originally published in 1993, the examples used in it are so timeless and sound that the book has aged very little in 17 years. Using a mixture of timeless texts taught in most high schools, and great Australian writing, Marsden’s crossover between teaching and writing is obviously one he’s been making the most of for some time now.

As someone who mainly writes young adult fiction, Marsden’s writing guide is an insightful guide for teenagers, simply and clearly spoken – however, it still stands as a helpful and fun guide for writers of all ages. Even if you know most of the stuff that’s being covered, it’s presented in such an entertaining and simple way that it’s still interesting.

A wide range of conventions and problems are dealt with here – how it’s essential to deal with sex and death in writing, how psychology affects characters as much as writers, the rules of reality and how they must apply to writing… One particularly interesting chapter deals with “banality”, where Marsden challenges the connections we automatically make between certain words, particularly in similes and metaphors (eg, “feather” and “light”).

In the “new and revised edition” (which I believe happened around ’98), a new chapter has been included – “600 Writing Ideas”… these range from ideas for personal stories, starters for short stories, “quickies” (“What is your favorite kitchen appliance, and why?”)… These are perhaps one of the most helpful things about this book. If ever there’s a day where I have nowhere to start, these ideas give me a starting point, which then usually leads on to something else and turns into a story I love… or hate.

The most resounding advice Mr Marsden leaves us with is this; “You’re God when you’re writing: you can do anything. The only unforgivable sin is to be boring”…
“Everything I Know About Writing” is a clear and helpful bundle of tricks to stop your writing from becoming boring.

3

time away, time inside, time to think.

The reason I’ve been so quiet for the last week (plus…) is because I’ve been away.

For Christmas, Mum paid for my partner and I to go on a family trip with her and her fiancé… We went to see my brother and sister-in-law in Echuca, spent a few days there, then moved on to Daylesford where we stayed in a little cottage. Despite the usual tension that happens when you spend too much time with family, it was a good week.

Echuca had a great used book store, as did Daylesford.

I left with 3 books. I came back with 7… I exercised a great deal of self-restraint to only come home with four extra books.

The books I acquired:
1. Minimum of Two, by Tim Winton.
2. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
3. Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl.
4. Everything I Know About Writing, by John Marsden.

So this is added to my pile of Christmas books.

Other than the new additions to my bookshelf, the time away also gave me some time to read – I got a start on and am now quite a chunk through The Book Thief, and thoroughly enjoying it… Zusack has an amazing way with images.  (My favourite so far – “she had a breath that smelled like Heil Hitler”)… I also got up early and wrote as the sun came up over Echuca…

So what creative liberties has your holiday period given you? Have you acquired books? Pens? Notebooks? Time to yourself?

0

The Terror of Actually Writing

TheReaderCover-SmallToday’s post was prompted by John Pace’s article in The Reader (pictured left), titled “Re-Draft with Craft”. It got me thinking about drafting, something I truly struggle with (and I suspect a lot of people do… like Dan Brown, and Bryce Courtney’s more recent work?)

While Pace’s article is directed at screenwriters, I believe it applies to all forms of writing, or even all forms of anything that requires drafting.

Pace gives some fantastic advice about drafting (obvious, yet helpful – this is how most creative-type advice seems to be, especially the helpful stuff), such as cutting out unnecessary “hangover” words in order to write punchy, economic pieces. What stood out to me most about this article, though, is something that spoke to my constant fear of starting.

I have long embraced the term “vomit draft” to describe that first terrifying committment of word to page. I pussyfoot around a piece, thinking on it for too long, scrapping it before I even get it onto a page. Pace suggests the more apt rule, “be wrong as fast as you can”, coined by Andrew Stanton (screenwriter of Wall-E and Finding Nemo). “Just get it down,” says Pace. “Don’t worry about its merit”.

Yes, I needed to be told this. I’m not a brave writer.

Later in the reader, Simonne Michelle-Wells, (in “A Letter to my Younger Self (from the time machine)” ) sits her younger self down for a chat, saying:
“You didn’t draft enough. Drafting and editing are not the same things and you happily convinced yourself they are. Editing requires sweat. Drafting requires blood. Tossing out an errant comma and deleting reams of superfluous adjectives is a leisurely jog compared to the marathon of unpicking a rambling narrative arc or killing off characters in the name of expediency.”

For such a long time, I have convinced myself of the same thing. Pace talks about one screenwriter who sits down to re-draft in front of a blank page. No cut-copy-paste, this writer starts again from scratch, with faith that the ideas that count will resurface.

THAT is brave writing.

Monica Wood’s “Pocket Muse” tells writers, “you have to be willing to write badly“… and I think that’s the key here. Without a willingness to “be wrong, as fast as I can,” I can’t even start to get it wrong. I’m too safe, too much of the time.

4

Hey Young World, the WORD is yours…

Marc-Bamuthi-Joseph_1web

I’ve been reading Jeff Chang’s Total Chaos: The art and aesthetics of hip-hop… Being a collection of essays, some things are great and others are total shit. That’s the way collections are.

Three essays in, I’m introduced to Marc Bamuthi Joseph… my heart sings, my creativity is tickled, and my head explodes just a little.

 Marc Bamuthi Joseph   is an NYC “arts activist”, whose work is pretty varied but mainly now focusses around hip-hop spoken word and dance. He mentors young kids through a program called Youth Speaks – I can’t even begin to express how happy this makes me. I’m right behind anyone who supports literacy and fosters kids’ creativity. Hell, fosters anyone’s creativity! (I am part of Golden Key International, whose Swinburne chapter supports Ian Thorpe’s Fountain for Youth , they do amazing work also around Indigenous Literacy… but I digress).

In his contribution to Total Chaos, MBJ’s piece (Yet Another) Letter To a Young Poet is a call out to the young writing world now.

“…I’m spending the day reading Rilke. He’s this early-twentieth-century European philosopher-king who writes of creating poetry from the depths of the soul out of an irrepressible, intrinsic need. … I can’t believe that I’m in Africa but my eyes are in the book of yet another dead white guy. And yeah, Young World, you should probably read this shit at some point, you know just ‘cuz, but ultimately it exists in his dead-white-guy vacuum that was never meant to include you.”

Bamuthi makes a clear and honest statement to the “young world” –

“Your elders in rhyme challenge you to find your own voice, to work hard to apply it, and to do so responsibly. If you’re not afraid of your own potential, we promise you that we won’t be. Hey Young World, the word is yours…”

Bless his heart, watching this man move  is a song that makes me want to write.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph inspires me to write, to take control of what I’m writing, to take the word and make it mine. Reading, watching, and listening to him makes me happy.

0

The Death of Nick Cave’s Narrative

the-death-of-bunny-munro1I have to say it – disappointment.
Nick Cave’s writing here falls way behind “The Ass Saw The Angel.”
This is the story of Bunny Munro, whose wife hangs herself, prompting Bunny to take to the road with his young son. He claims to be “teaching him the business” of peddling beauty products door-to-door, while in reality Bunny has no idea where he’s going as his life falls apart around him. He loses his wife, his charisma, his raging boner, and finally his life.
Cave writes supreme characters. Bunny and Bunny Junior give us internal dialogues which seem so real in their gory detail. Even minor characters who appear and disappear have convincing details that make them as real as someone you’d just seen on the street.
Cave also gives up a myriad of fantastic one-liners. Pretty things, hilarious things, things that are real.
The problem in this novel is that it goes nowhere for 90% of the narrative. Bunny and Bunny Junior seem to play out the same scene over and over, and then finally when they do something it’s entirely obscure and doesn’t fit with the rest of the novel.
While Cave’s characters are very much 3D, and his writing is quite lovely, I didn’t feel satisfied by this book at all, especially after reading some great work by Cave previously and being a big fan of his music.
Perhaps he’s losing his touch.

1

Favourite Books of Housewife-times

Today I recieved an email from Borders, which proudly announced to me that they had finally decided on this year’s “Favourite Books of All Time”.

These lists always excite me, beyond all reason. I love going through them and seeing how many I’ve read, printing them out and trying to tick off the whole list.

However, I found Borders’ list endlessly disappointing (though Dymocks didn’t fare much better this year). Favourite books of all time, you say?

I’m not sure how I feel about Jodi Picoult being a new addition to the canon, or Dan Brown for that matter. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a literature snob. I’m all for the idea of trashing the idea of “a canon of literature” all together and reclaiming the word for the people, because it’s all we’ve got. But if you’re going to publish something and claim that it represents all time, please, oh please, don’t include Bryce-I-got-famous-and-stopped-listening-to-editors-Courtney.

For the record, I have only read 27 of the books listed. Usually I hit about 50. This isn’t why I’m upset though – WHY is Confereracy of Dunces way down at #93?! American Psycho #86?! The Princess Bride at #99?!?!?!

What I’m upset about is that Jodi Picoult makes it to #4, while way down on the other end of the list withers HST, William Goldman, and John Kennedy Toole.

What this seems to be to me is a “Favourite Books of Housewife-Times”, listing those books stay-at-home-mum’s read in their spare ten minutes. And that’s not to berate stay-at-home-mum’s or writers like Stephanie Myer and Jodi Picoult. But, the majority of books on this list are books that I read and forget. Not that they aren’t enjoyable to read, or that they don’t take me somewhere quite lovely for a little while. But what I hope for in these lists is something that sticks with me for longer than a week, and has some potential to teach me something about the world.

Please, Borders, Dymocks, all major book-sellers. Don’t paint yourself as the place for cheap books for housewives. I lean on the side of indepentant book-sellers 99% of the time anyway, you’re not doing yourself any favours.

 

S

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