Down With Destiny!

Updated: September 30, 2010

No, this isn’t a rail against my personal fate or a fist shake at kitschy children’s books.

No. What I’m snarling about this time is the over use of destiny as a plot trope in the fantasy genre. (*Ggrrrr*)

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Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week is this week, September 25 to October 2.

It began in 1982 and is sponsored by the American Library Association as a tribute to free speech and open libraries. The mission of Banned Books Week is an awareness of book banning in this country.

Yes, that still goes on to this day and includes a wide range of books, from works like Harry Potter and In The Night Kitchen to I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

And before you get uppity and think to yourself, “Well, I’m glad I don’t live in one of those small minded states” check out this map of book censorship for the last three years. I was shocked to find there were 7 in the San Francisco Bay Area (none in The City herself, though) and four in Los Angelas county.

In fact, only FOUR states didn’t generate any reports of book bans or challenges in the last three years (2007-2010); Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. And maybe Alaska and Hawaii, which got left off the map like always; poor non-continental states.(the U.S. territory/protectorate of Puerto Rico wasn’t on the map either, but then they never are)

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Best. Book. Trailer. Ever.

You may recall my earlier post about great book trailers. Where I had combed the wilds of YouTube to present the 20 best book trailers as determined by a jury of three (Me, Myself, and I) one weekend.

Two nights ago my husband found this, the best of geeky book trailers. It’s for a zombie mashup novel called Night of the Living Trekkies:

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Words I Hate In Book Descriptions

We’ve all read those book descriptions on the paperbacks and on the inside flap of hardbacks. Those little excitable messages from the publisher’s marketing department assuring us the story’s wonderful and giving a hint of the plot and characters to make us drool and start turning pages. And, ultimately, take that novel home with us after a little exchange of legal tender.

About 90% of the time I’ve got no problem with the language in those book descriptions. The other 10% I’m gritting my teeth halfway through sentence one because the marketing department copy writer used one of those words or turns of phrases that make me grind my teeth and want to fling the book into the folds between space.

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Adults in (or, Rather, NOT in) YA Fiction

Why is it that in Young Adult (YA) fiction whenever the ghost hordes of doom show up all of the adults are down at the nudie bar?

I was at Mysterious Galaxy this past Thursday to hear YA author D.J. MacHale, writer of the Pendragon series, talk. And he mentioned how when he was writing for the Nickelodeon TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark that their constant task in putting together a story was to get rid of the parents. Basically, he said that as a writer for a kid audience he has to get rid of his characters’ adult support structure so that the kids are the ones that have to solve the problems.

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Twilight of Sexism?

I’ve noticed that, despite all our social progress, we humans of America still have some odd double standards. And I think the young adult vampire romance series, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer is prime proof of that. more »

Original Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Online

I’m just brimming over with Alice in Wonderland geek joy! You can now read, online, the original manuscript complete with Lewis Carol’s hand drawn illustrations. This isn’t the first published edition, this is Carol’s original hand written and illustrated book. You can also listen to it using the Audio option.

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Joy & Nostalgia in the Gold Room

Filigree detail on Seven-ringed collar
Source:Historiska Museet

How would you like to spend all day wandering through a room filled with treasures made of gold; rings, coins, cups, brooches, chains, collars, buckles, torques, etc?

Dude, is it ever cool.

Especially if the room in question is the Gold Room exhibit at the Historiska Museet (The Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, Sweden). I went here in ’96 when I was an impressionable teenager and did it ever make an impression on me. I would go back to Stockholm in a heartbeat just to visit the Historiska Museet and the Gold Room again.

Tiny gold figure plaques
Source:Historiska Museet

I was poking around the internet a few weeks ago, just casually looking for good Viking sites and old Norse recipes and was suddenly reminded of the hours I spent gazing at all that gold so long ago. Don’t ask how my brain made the leap from boiling apple leaves to a golden hoard. Maybe the thought of taking a gander at the Historika’s site was beginning to percolate just then.

What was so nifty about the Gold Room, I mean besides the cases filled with the good stuff, is that the room itself had this great, serene Asian-style setting. The room is round and the center, at that time, was sort of inset and had benches for sitting around a little fountain, while the exhibit itself formed a sort of raised ring around this indoor courtyard. I just really enjoyed the contrast of looking at all these bright treasures from more ancient days while strolling round a dark, modern room. It was so awesome.

My memory says there was a kind of soft Japanesy sort of music quietly playing near the ceiling to the lazy accompaniment of the little fountain.

I was a bit disappointed to see from their website that the Historiska’s changed the architecture of the Gold Room; it’s still round but it’s paved with yellow flagstone and brightly lit with the cases set into the walls instead of being freestanding so each side houses a different display. Just proves once again that you can never go home again.

My favorite case in the ever-so-cool Gold Room housed just one little artifact. It wasn’t an intricately filigreed collar. It wasn’t a reliquary cup. It wasn’t the typical delicately wrought work of goldsmithing mastery that the other cases contained. It was a bent, rectangle-ish loop of scrunched gold. What I loved wasn’t so much the object itself but it’s story. Because the beat up little bit of metal was a prehistoric gold neck ring. A farm family had found it in their field and it was doing service as their gate latch. Some historians came by asking for directions to some nearby site and there was this priceless golden treasure holding the gate closed. I found it hilarious, but then I’m a farmer’s granddaughter. (at least, that’s the version I remember)

Screen shot of the Gold Room video showing roman coins and Norse coinage rings

My second favorite display in the Gold Room was a case with treasures from the Viking Age. It was almost half-filled with old Roman silver and gold coins and little rings and armlets. The placard said, if I’m recalling it correctly, that the Vikings and Norse traders (yes, there IS a difference) liked to get paid in coin by the Romans because coins were easy to carry and sell back home.

They preferred to be paid in silver because it was actually more valuable in Sweden because it wasn’t as common. I found it really amusing that all of these coins were being used as smelting stock, essentially, instead of having any value as Roman money. I’m sure the Romans would have had a conniption if they realized.

You can see a good video about this exhibit and ogle some of it’s treasures here. Statistics about the treasures housed in the Gold Room and little segments highlighting a few of their number one artifacts (one of which turns out to be my favorite exhibit mentioned above).

The video has English subtitles, so no worries if you don’t speak Swedish.

Serieses? Seriei? Are You Serious?

So, the word ‘series’ is a plural; by definition it is multiple things that are part of an ordered grouping. Like how ‘media’ is actually a plural for ‘medium’ (when talking about art or communication).

If you want to talk about more than one series, how do you modify the word when it’s already a plural? more »

Evil Lurks in Glitter

“Look at all these books; what should I buy to read? Hm, ‘Higher Jinx’. Oooo, look at all that glitter on the cover. And such bright colors. What’s the back say? ‘Lady X has a new secondhand shop and a secondhand new man – he’s the ghost of the former owner and he wants Lady X & revenge’ well, this’ll be a cute, quick little light read. Right?”

Wrong!

Beware, oh book lovers, for one of the latest fads in cover design is giving boldly colored covers accented with glitter to grimmer paranormal fiction. Lure in the woo-woo crowd with a pretty circus poster and, before they know where they are, you’ve got them reading one of horror’s latest mild-mannered red-haired stepchildren.

Melodramatic? Where?

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