ALL I WANT...A HOLIDAY WISH LIST

Here's the post where I pimp the books of strangers and friends, plus a few non-bookish things I'd also like in case my husband reads this post ;)

These Mountain Hardwear incredibly fuzzy Pyxis fleece pants. Seriously. Beyond fuzzy! Size small, please!

These LL Bean suede driving moccasins. Yes, in RED (it's Christmas). Size 8, medium (and they're on sale)!

And a girl needs her jewels, right? (In support of public television, I'm opting for these glitzy Aurora Borealis earrings from the Signals catalog.

NOW FOR THE BOOKS...

The art of photography in a YA contemp

from Justina Chen. So...yes!

This just looks beautiful. Letters to lost artists--musicians and actors who died too young--are at the core of DellAira's glowingly reviewed debut.

The highly-lauded, less-read debut

by Gone Girl's Gillian Flynn.

How many people have to recommend a book

before you have to buy it? 

Hit it twice over for Marie Lu's latest!

The follow-up to Zadoff's 

first awesome Assassin novel,

which I could not put down!

The threat of love separated by college

geography? Been there with my sons--

plus it's a Perkins romance, right?

 Can't seem to get any more pix to upload for this post, but just two more titles: Jenna Fox author Mary E. Pearson's KISS OF DECEPTION and SCBWI-maven extraordinaire Laurie Thompson's great nonfiction contribution to teen libraries, BE A CHANGEMAKER.

HOPE YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING INCLUDES TONS OF BOOKS!

Y’know it’s hard out there for a pimp, er author…

First, let me be clear, I am NOT passing any kind of judgment. I very much enjoyed the Harry Potter series and have great admiration for J K Rowling as an independent woman, ambitious writer, person of integrity, and possible modern-day Horatio Alger story protagonist. And, with no need for the money, I truly believe she wrote as Robert Galbraith for the sheer low-pressure pleasure of being an unkown.

THAT SAID, as a writer struggling on the ground and in the cyberverse to continue to have opportunities to publish work… As someone who does not write fantasy/dystopian/zombie/psy-fi and who is not Stephenie Meyer, Veronica Roth, John Green, Cassandra Clare, Ms. Rowling herself, or an author of the Official SAT Study Guide (second edition)…

The following data points about THE CUCKOO’S CALLING (pseudonymously published but now revealed as a JK original) are a tough swallow.

“The novel had sold around 1,500 copies in hardback. However, in the hours after Rowling was named as its author, it shot up the bestseller charts. It was listed as the third biggest seller on Amazon.co.uk on Sunday, having entered the top 100 only the day before.” THE TORONTO SUN

“A few hours after the news broke, New Statesman reported that the book's Amazon sales have gone up more than 150,000%.” THE HUFFINGTON POST

“On Amazon.com, sales soared more than 507,000% after Rowling acknowledged being the author.” CNN.COM

"The upside of being rumbled is that I can publicly thank…all those people at Little, Brown who have been working so hard on The Cuckoo’s Calling without realising that I wrote it, and the writers and reviewers, both in the newspapers and online, who have been so generous to the novel.  And to those who have asked for a sequel, Robert fully intends to keep writing the series, although he will probably continue to turn down personal appearances."    JK herself

Here’s my translation:

• It appears that strong reviews, a great cover, and a terrific publisher still often yield tragically low hardback sales.
• Unknown writers stand little chance of getting books noticed.  Not no chance. Little chance. The odds kind of suck.
• Name recognition is priceless
• I haven’t got any much.

Sigh.

I think I should go pour me a glass of wine.

Also, I plan to contradict myself next week.

WROTE BUT NEVER POSTED, 1st EDITION

Batman, age 2.

In the midst of a few hours of desk- and online- cleaning, I discovered half a dozen reflections that never made it from draft to posting. Some were written before I sold my first novel. Before any of my kids had driver's licenses. Back when I was an in-the-trenches mom-with-a-dream, a true writer-on-the-side. Some are kind of cute and fun so, over the course of the summer, I'll share them with you. Here's the first...

Before I drop in my tracks each night, I try to read a few pages of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. It is a diverting book, both wryly funny and insightful. A good bedtime read for a writer. The problem is that, as with all writing craft books, they are written by people who have, by definition, got book contracts. The result for me—journeywoman writer of marketing materials, jacket copy, and educational books—can be a subtle textual layer of smug, occasional name-dropping self-satisfaction that taints the works’ instructive qualities. Maybe I am simply revealing my exquisitely petty nature, but I am HUGELY JEALOUS that Stephen King plays in an amateur rock band with the likes of Amy Tan and it’s hard to get past this to see what he says about WRITING. All you housewives-and-writers out there will likely point to notable exceptions to the above observation. In particular I must point out Anne Lamott’s beautiful Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I keep this volume right next to Strunk & White’s Elements of Style and W. Somerset Maugham’s A Writer’s Notebook.

What do the how-to books on your shelves reveal about you, your dreams and the places you’ve been. Who are the heroes whose biographies you keep? What skill or talent do you want to develop? What cosmic notions are you struggling to understand? And how old do your kids have to be before you can tell them to clean their own bathroom? (That's an important question, too, you know!)
 

The Compass Controversy & Santa Claus

Yes, I took my children to see the movie version of Philip Pullman’s fantastic novel, The Golden Compass. No, I did not fear for their mortal souls. I did not fear the impact of an atheist author’s ideas upon my sons’ young minds. I was a little worried they might be bored as reviews of the film were middling.

The Compass controversy hit home last Sunday when a fellow parent at our church expressed astonishment at my plan to take my sons to the movie. Unsurprisingly, she had neither read the book nor clearly understood the dispute. I suspect the same is true for many who have decried the film and its author whose atheism, more than his fiction, may be at the heart of many objections. Still, the groups working to kill the movie, and the journalists fueling their fire, seem to be succeeding.

Is this more evidence of a frightening trend (akin to themes of the novel) toward quashing minority ideas? I wanted to ask this mother what she feared from a big, technology-laden, fantasy film. Did she so doubt the faith and intellect of her children that she felt they could be corrupted by a Hollywood-glossed implication of another way of thinking about the soul? Would she also prevent them from reading about Freud, Marx, and others whose ideologies differ from her own? Pretending the likes of Saddam Hussein do not exist does not make such people less real. Even if she were to group the delightful and, I put forth, benign Mr. Pullman in such a category, reading and watching only what one purports to believe results in ignorance and a high risk of repeating history’s great tragedies.

This leads to a deeper question of how we tell children what we believe is the truth in the first place. Take, for example, Santa Claus. Recently my first grader asked me to make sure we left enough room in the car so that the gifts he had requested from Santa (and which, presumably, we were not hauling surreptitiously with us) could comfortably return home from our holiday spot in the mountains. His belief…conviction…dare I say faith?...that Santa would bring one particular item confused me. I pointed out that we did not have such an item to bring. Even after realizing that he meant post-Christmas-booty-delivery, I saw a savvy look in his eye which suggested he was well aware that he was communicating directly with Santa Claus.

Had one of his big brothers told him the “truth”? A smile rose to my lips as I imagined the conversation: The younger child’s wondering comment and the older child’s solemn revelation, accompanied by a warning not to let on to Mom and Dad. If my intuition was correct, it seemed my little boy had survived the revelation unscathed. Perhaps this was because he had learned it as he should, through his own curiosity and experience.

Another son endured a much rockier transition to the Santa truth when I, assuming his knowledge from comments he had made, revealed my identity unceremoniously. Tears followed, then a less magical season. I still believe he knew the truth but he did not want to be told it, particularly not by me. In contrast, coming to the knowledge of Santa Claus on his own, my first grade son experienced an intellectual awakening, a growing maturity, and a sense of concern for the loving parents who wanted to gift him with this charming falsehood for as long as possible.

And so we return to The Golden Compass with its supposed dangerous message that perhaps organized religion has a few flaws. Who didn’t know this already? Has anyone been watching what’s happening in the Middle East? If we want our children to grow into thoughtful, educated, compassionate human beings, wouldn’t we do well to make an overt effort to expose them to a variety of ideas, both in nonfiction and fiction, art and literature? If a belief in Santa Claus or democracy or religion goes untested, can it be truly held by any child or adult?

Truth, like justice, is a dangerous word. Look at teen sex and drinking statistics to see the success rate of simply telling young people to avoid something you believe to be bad or untrue. Instead, we should model tolerance for the many ways people deal with the great mysteries of our existence on this planet. We should offer great books, and good ones, and watch, a proud smile on our lips, as our children make their own, independent discoveries.

Help a child grow this season. Take them to see The Golden Compass. If not because it’s a great movie (it isn’t, although there are some wonderful CGI characters and impressive voice work), then to protest against those who would keep us away from different, brave ideas in the name of “truth.”