This week in writing… hissyfit edition

Oh the drama this week! First was the dustup over bad reviews on Goodreads, and then Wikipedia and Google went dark to protest SOPA, and as if that wasn’t enough, I went bawling all over the interwebs. TGIF, right?

So. The Goodreads thing. The Guardian does a good job of summing up the kerfuffle. I’m surprised this kind of thing is still happening. Did authors/editors/agents learn nothing from all the previous online bitch-fests over bad reviews? Alice Hoffman anyone?

On Wednesday, Wikipedia, Google, and others went dark in protest over SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act being debated in the House is backed by Hollywood, overwrought over people watching illegal movie copies. But the legislation could hold companies responsible for user uploads even if they don’t realize it’s pirated content. Here’s the lowdown. The protest worked. By afternoon, people were already beginning to buckle.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that ebooks experienced a major boom in 2011. Among the beneficiaries is Sourcebooks. Ebooks now represent 28% of their revenue. Their ebooks also increased by 795% last year. No, that’s not a typo.

From Jane Friedman, more ebook stats with a handy graph. Oooh, look at the pretty colors!

Ileene Smith moves to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Update the contact info on those writer’s market books you purchased for 2012.

Dav Pilkey promises elementary-school devotees another CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS book. Will I be able to keep my little guys away? I think not.

Back in April ’10 William Kamkwamba‘s THE BOY WHO HARNESSSED THE WIND was the first ebook I borrowed from the library. Now there’s a kid’s version. Yay!

Heard of WIMPY KID? Sure. But have you heard of ZOMBIE KID? Can you say lawsuit?

The Scott O’Dell Awards honors Jack Gantos’ DEAD END IN NORVELT. Some say it’s not historical fiction-y enough. I say, so what?

Not necessarily writing news, but we writers tend to be solitary types who understand there’s good in being alone.

And we soothe the drama with some apple pie… the company Apple… publishing’s pie. I’ve been saying for years that this is the next frontier in educational publishing, so I’m glad it’s here. More on the iBooks 2 app.

Finally… they all fall down…

The chicken and the reviewer

Since I decided to read and review 100 books this year (I am so NOT meeting that goal) I’ve worried a little about how the reviews would stack up. Already I’ve read one book that I did not like, and decided to go with the “sugar” rather than “vinegar” approach by sticking with the things I did like rather than harping on the stuff I didn’t. I was advised to be honest because it might have been helpful to the author, but ultimately I decided to… well… chicken out mainly because I hate to hurt anyone’s feelings and because I know how much work goes into writing a book. And while I regret not being more ballsy, I’m kind of glad I did because some authors are CRAZY. Like, straight-jacket-wearing, meds-swallowing, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy.

On his blog today, Nathan Bransford posted about the virtual witch hunt of author Jacqueline Howett after she went a little nutso on a reviewer, who actually didn’t give her such a bad review. Since her bad reaction to his post, she has been trashed online by a mob of readers who have posted negative, or mock reviews of her work on Amazon and B&N.

Bransford also linked to Emily St. John Mandel’s essay on bad reviews for The Millions, in which she expressed exasperation about her own  negative reviews, but in a thoughtful way. And of course, there’s the famous 2009 Twitter meltdown by Alice Hoffman which was just painful to watch.

So is it really chicken to stick with the good stuff in the books that I’ve read, or have I done the writers and the readers of my reviews a disservice by not being completely honest, even at the cost of an author’s feelings? I suspect I know what you will think, but I’m still asking…

Good books in a bad economy

OK, these aren’t books about what to do with your money. It’s just that books are really the cheapest form of entertainment right now, and these days, I’m all about the cheap and the good. So here’s what I’ve been reading.

“On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction” by Karl Iagnemma. This Physicist and novelist had his first publication at the age of 21 in Playboy magazine. I came across a story about him on NOVA and was intrigued. Being a Physicist and being a Novelist are both full-time careers and yet this guy seems to do both very well. In this book of short stories, all romantic situations are set in the academic world, all with vivid and often painful detail. These aren’t your normal protagonists, but they are identifiable all the same. I wasn’t able to get through the last story though. My patience for delving into the psyche of academics had worn thin by the end. But you might be able to, and I definitely recommend giving it a try, especially if you’re a guy.

“The Palace of Illusions” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I had already read and loved “Sister of My Heart” her 1999 novel, but this one has now taken it’s place as my favorite book of all time. That place was previously held by Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” so it’s high praise. This is the kind of book I would have liked to write. It also doesn’t hurt that it appeals to my Indian half. It follows a woman from birth to re-birth and deals with all the loves and the many, many mistakes she makes in-between. It was hard to get into the book for the first several pages, but was definitely worth the effort. I would happily read this many times over.

“The Third Angel” by Alice Hoffman. I loved “Aquamarine” and in fact, the novel that I’m working on now is inspired in part, by “Aquamarine” and its sequel, “Indigo.” (By the way, I didn’t care for the movie version of “Aquamarine.”) And I didn’t realize that Hoffman also wrote “Practical Magic” which is one of my favorite movies (Oh, shut it. Like you don’t like sappy girl movies?). But right now I’m in the middle of “The Third Angel” and I’m already sorry it’s going to end at some point. I can’t give it a full review, but it’s expertly written and the characters are so real, I can almost pick them out of a crowd.

Now get thee to a library and pick up some good entertainment, because who can afford anything else these days?