(0) Heading back to spend Christmas Eve at my brother’s. Thanks to Cat for doing some heavy lifting today providing items to suit the season!
(1) THE POINT. Charlie Jane Anders discusses paid sff book reviewing in “What Are Book Critics For?” at Happy Dancing.
…In any case, my sense is that a healthy book-review ecosystem would include both cheerleading and harsh criticism. Possibly from the same person in the same place, possibly in different places for different audiences. We need to bang a drum in support of the great books that are possibly slipping through the cracks — which is also an increasing problem, as I wrote about a while ago. But we also need to point out the ways in which authors and publishers are short-changing us by failing to deliver the best versions of their stories.
One bedrock principle that I think applies for both cheerleading and harsh criticism? You have to review the story someone wrote, not the book you wish they had written. If someone wrote a book about pirates, there’s no point in complaining that you wish they’d written a book about circus performers instead. You chose to pick up a book that wasn’t your cup of tea, and you could have known in advance that it was about pirates if you’d bother to read the back cover. Get over it! (Also, if you hate books with yellow covers, just don’t read books with yellow covers. It’s not that hard.)…
As a bonus, Anders circulated gift links to a pair of her recent columns for the Washington Post.
(2) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman is back talking about mid-‘70s Marvel again on episode 12 of the Why Not Say What Happened? podcast — “Uri Geller and the Marvel Comics Men’s Room Mishap”.
A stack of mid-’70s Marvel Comics memos reminds me which Golden Age greats Stan Lee didn’t want invited to the 1975 Mighty Marvel Con, my discomfort with what is probably a comic book editor’s most important role, the day I donned a Spider-Man suit and crawled around the Bullpen, how Uri Geller destroyed my key to the Marvel Comics men’s room, my snarky response when a publisher wanted me to find the smoking gun which would shut down our competition, why our softball team dubbed me the “Most Improved Player for a Boy,” and much more.
And here’s where to find multiple places to download.
(3) A CROW GIRLS CHRISTMAS. Cat Eldridge has a look at Charles de Lint’s Newford Stories: The Crow Girls where he says of the Crow Girls of ‘all the immortal shapeshifting being that inhabit the Newford stories, the most charming at least for me are Maida and Zia, the two crow girls, who look like pinkish teenagers all in black naturally. After you read that review, you can experience them firsthand in A Crow Girls Christmas written by Charles de Lint and charmingly illustrated by his late wife, MaryAnn Harris.
“We have jobs,” Maida told Jilly when she and Zia dropped by the professor’s house for a visit at the end of November.
Zia nodded happily. “Yes, we’ve become veryvery respectable.”
Jilly had to laugh. “I can’t imagine either of you ever being completely respectable.”…
(4) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Ellen Kushner’s The Golden Dreydl
Someday I’ll get blasé about the amazing things that show up unexpectedly in the post.
But that won’t happen for quite some time if exquisite things such as Ellen Kushner’s The Golden Dreydl (Charlesbridge, 2007) keep showing up here! This short novel holds wonders which will brighten up anyone who reads it. It’s that good.
A golden dreydl is, in case you haven’t encountered one, a toy, the name being Yiddish, dreydl for ‘to turn or twist’. It is a 4-sided toy marked with Hebrew letters and spun like a top in a game of chance. It’s common enough that many children not Hebrew have played with one in the days when such simple toys were all there were for entertainment. (I am not being nostalgic — just stating what was. Times change, toys change.) This dreydl, this golden dreydl, is not a simple toy but rather one capable of true magic. Indeed for one small girl, Sarah by name, on a winter’s night at her family’s Chanukah party, this toy will bring wonders.
But before this charming book, there was a wonderful CD and Judith Gennet who reviewed that recording for us back a few years ago tells what this story is about:
The plot to the story is as follows. One Chanukah night, a tradition-weary child named Sarah receives a magic golden dreydl (a clever cross between a top and a die) from her Aunt Miriam. While fighting with her brother, the dreydl is catapulted disastrously into the TV screen. Crack! Later, Sarah finds the dreydl laying on the floor in the form of a girl, and they then leap through the injured screen into the golden dreydl’s world, sort of like an Oz or Wonderland. (A TV screen? How symbolic!)
Oh, but not all is well in the world that the golden dreydl comes from, as here be dragons which are most unfriendly.
The Golden Dreydl was inspired by the music of the renowned band Shirim, who created a klezmer version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker Suite’ for Chanukah. (Really — it does work rather well!) Did I mention that what appears to be a toy is really a princess? Thought not. Suffice it to say that Sarah has a guide to this world — that princess. Is a good story. Indeed it is. As Judith said in her review of the recording, ‘be a fun album for kids, for those interested in Jewish heritage, and for adults who like fairy stories. The Golden Dreydl could easily evolve into a holiday tradition.’ I agree.
Like Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt, I adore this novel. Both the text by Ellen Kushner and the design of book itself are perfect. Each novel has illustrations that add to the enjoyment of the text; each is a short enough read (as is any great fairy tale) that it lends itself to repeated reading either for your own pleasure or loud to others. Though both are too recent to be classics yet in children’s literature, they should be within a few years.
Oh, do buy the recording as well. You’ll find it just as charming.
[Reprinted from Sleeping Hedgehog.]
(5) SPEAKING OF THAT RECORDING. Learn all about “Ellen’s Musical Picks for the Holidays” at (the modestly-named) Ellen Kushner’s Bad Advice newsletter. “…with an exceptional number of footnotes, even for me, including but not limited to a whole separate substack about the life and times of public radio in America, + some other stuff.”
…I love a live audience like a dog loves a bone. In fact, one of them, The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer Nutcracker for Chanukah, which I created and performed with Boston’s Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, has had more lives than an empty jam jar: first it was a holiday radio special, then an album, then a book, then a kids’ play in NYC. You can hear the album on streaming services like Spotify, with my narration….
Here’s one example: “Joseph Spence: ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’”.
For my money you cannot possible do better for Christmas Cheer than going to the Bahamas for the great singer/guitarist Joseph Spence’s attempt to remember the words to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and finally deciding no one really cares, and just doing it his way.
It will make you laugh. It has been test-driven in the Kushner/Sherman household is how I know.
(6) COMICS SECTION.
- Bizarro finds the Peter Principle applies at the North Pole.
- Bliss passes the blame.
- Dinosaur Comics makes computer security a virtue.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal shows prayer is always answered.
- Peanuts by Charles Schulz for March 24, 1958 looks up into the sky.
(7) HOLIDAY SHOPPING. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] It’s a decade old but worth linking to: “Small, Strange Businesses” at Kathleen, Kage and the Company.
Christmas was a great time for Kage [Baker]. Before we began working Dickens, she had me drive her to favourite malls or department stores, where she would spend a happy afternoon working her way through her Christmas list. It was always enormous – she was one of 6 true-born and a few foster siblings, most of whom had also promptly had offspring; she was a several-times-over honourary aunt, too. The pile under our Christmas tree was always huge – at least until we took most of it over to someone’s house on Christmas morning….
… She ranged from Halcyon to Cambria-By-The-Sea when we lived on the Central Coast, a 50 mile arc through vineyards and meadows full of white cattle and egrets and matillja poppies … from the post office across the street from the Temple of the People (you could buy essential oils and activated crystals in both places), via the lead soldier store by Moonstone Beach to Heart’s Ease Nursery: the small businesses Kage favoured outshone Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. And they were real….
(8) SERLING CENTURY. Mr. Sci-Fi – Marc Scott Zicree – marvels to see them “Celebrating Rod Serling’s 100th Birthday with Anne Serling on … Fox News?!” His video includes her interview.
(9) VIDEO OF THE DAY. From a vintage episode of The Muppets: “John Denver & The Muppets – 12 Days of Christmas”.
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Scott Edelman, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
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5)
It stills pops up nearly every year on one of the Doctor Demento Christmas shows. (www.drdemento.com)
(1) I asked her politely at Capclave last year, then tried sending an eARC to her, then via the WashPost, and never got a “received” response… Grr…
(3) Need to forward that to a daughter-in-law Goth.
And I’ve decided on the present I’d like: for Susan to visit 45/47. That’s Sir Pterry’s Susan…
(0) Enjoy!
Mark, I’m the reviews editor here. Any week we receive at least twenty emails from authors and publishers of books they say we should review. Some of them contain multiple books that they want us to review, sometime as many as a half dozen.
We don’t reply to almost all of them, just the ones that we are interested in.
Anders I’m wiling to say without fear of contradiction has far too many books coming in that want her attention and far too little time to deal with them. So even filtering through her email to see what is worth reviewing is going to consume more time than it’s worth. So I’m guessing she depends a lot on recommendations from friends she knows. Like all of us do.
So being annoyed that she didn’t reply to you? Get over it.
I love that this year I can literally say Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!
(And looking forward to lunar new year and Ramadan!)
I did some internet research and discovered Thomas Pynchon sort of obliquely referenced Hanukkhah in the script he wrote for his occassional voice acting on South Park. He apparently did all that to please his son who was a fan of the show.
“And those potato pancakes of hers! I ate 4 dozen once and was suddenly inspired by the Frying of Latke 49.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/04/thomas-pynchon-edited-homer-simpsons-episode
I seem to recall that line also being used in another episode as follows, “I’ll put it in the Gravity’s Rainbow Cookbook.” Dear Thomas Pynchon, I’m glad you are still with us, and Geez, you’re not THAT old, so give us one more damn book. Please. If it’s imperfect, the vast majority of us will forgive you. Of course, if our alien overlords have a whit of sense about them they’ll resurrect you and we’ll get an infitinite number of new Thomas Pynchon novels. But just for the moment, one will do nicely. Thank you.
Merry Christmas, or a lovely Wednesday, to all, depending on which you’ll be observing tomorrow.
Anyone reviewing for a major publication or website will get more “please review this book” requests than they can possibly respond to. This is a sad truth, and there’s no point in being annoyed at the reviewer who hardly dares open her email app.
I’m sitting here with Cider, who is recommending sleep. I may negotiate for a period of quiet reading.
The Pixels and my headache despite just getting Ajovy, my monthly injection for it, say sleep, so I shall do. (The Pixels share space in the left side of my brain. Really they do, I can occasionally see them there. As long as they don’t speak, we’re fine.)
CatE: going through the WaPo site, I was expecting at least an automated “we have received” – not that I expected more. I have a good idea of how many they get…
mark say going through the WaPo site, I was expecting at least an automated “we have received” – not that I expected more. I have a good idea of how many they get…
Does it say anywhere they have a policy each writer must acknowledge every email they receive? If not, a writer would not have an automated “we have received” response for various reasons.
mark, I’ve been doing this for over ten years with multiple books and…I simply don’t fret about lack of response from reviewers. It’s a happy surprise when a big name reviewer shows interest in my work, but if you want a big name review…then fork out the bucks for Kirkus or Publishers Weekly. Or get your publisher to do it.
If you really want reviews and attention, self publish and go through the Self Published Science Fiction Competition, then participate in the swaps etc. I don’t do the swaps because I have ethical issues with such things the way they’re coordinated, and I don’t write the stuff the competition reviewers like, but…that is one way.
Cat, when you say “here,” is that File 770 or Green Man Review? Not that I have any new releases (my latest was in August) but for future reference….
Joyce, both. And August publication for Fiker upisnt out of the question fir consideration.
Email me here.
I need to be fully awake from napping before posting. I really, really do.
(1) I didn’t know the Washington Post allowed gift links. I have a subscription but have never figured out how to do it.
@Lis Carey: yes, Christmas is on Woden’s Day this year. I’m imagining the old guy with a festive eye patch, and treats for the ravens.
1) I pretty much agree with Anders’ sentiments, particularly her practice of not reviewing a book that doesn’t wow her. And with the need for a “healthy book-review ecosystem [that] would include both cheerleading and harsh criticism.” I know where I locate myself in such a space–voting with my critical-explanatory feet. If you want to know what books or writers I don’t care for, you’ll have to guess, because while I only review books that I have managed to finish, there are literal stacks of titles that don’t get read because my time is finite and the necessary triage inevitably leaves behind books that I will only get to when I decide to retire from reviewing.
A reviewer can be seen as a scout, a gatekeeper, a consumer-advice columnist (thumbs-up/down or star ratings), a defender of standards–or as a conversationalist and commentator, passing on observations and analyses and notions about books and writers and literary-cultural in general. I place myself in that last category-set, since all I can report on honestly is how I respond to books that I enjoy enough to finish–and what satisfies me most is articulating where that enjoyment comes from, how it works, and how it might be connected to other things I’ve enjoyed. (Note that “enjoy” covers a considerable range of responses, not all of them simple or even comfortable.)
Old joke: “Will I like this book?” “Yes, if that’s the kind of book you like.” All I can do is try to account for a book–describe what I think is in front of me, put it in some kind of context (historical, genre-rhetorical, authorial-career, whatever), and signal what it was about it that drew me along, what kind of reactions it set off, what other books I think it is in conversation with. The value judgment begins with the fact that I read it and found it worth thinking about. And since not everyone will have the same reaction, I can’t universalize my judgment, and in fact feel uncomfortable predicting anyone else’s. So, if that’s the kind of book you like. . . .
Now it’s time to go back to work on my Locus year-in-review essay, which for more than 30 years has tended to open with a disclaimer along the lines of “All I can report on is what my year has been like.” There are, of course, commentators who have the confidence to try to characterize the State of the Field, but all I can see is the furrow I’ve plowed. And every individual review has a similar limitation.
(This has gotten long-winded, but that’s what you get from a writer reluctant to get back to actual work.)
Lis says cheerfully, “Christmas is on Woden’s Day this year. I’m imagining the old guy with a festive eye patch, and treats for the ravens.”
The eyepatch would be adorned with a neatly stitched Yggdrasil surrounded by stars. Meanwhile Fenrir is lying by the roaring fireplace happily gnawing on an immense leg bone of something best not named.
sigh Speaking as a computer professional, a company like the WaPo should have automated responses. And, for that matter, I do respond to emails (except, of course, for spam).
And a happy Winter Solstice to all (the actual reason for the season).
That isn’t the “actual” reason for the season at my house. Happy birthday, Jesus.
Mark, you don’t get it. These writers aren’t all on a giant Washington Post email server that would generate an auto response. They work from their homes, and they get heavy, way too much email a day, it’s very likely they don’t even open most of the emails they get of the sort you sent, I know that sometimes I don’t.
Yes, I’m suggesting your email never got opened, just went into the trash. It’s the fate of much of today’s publicity email from unrecognised sources. That’s why agents exist.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate either holiday!
Mike Glyer says rightly That isn’t the “actual” reason for the season at my house. Happy birthday, Jesus.
Nor for Jews as Hanukkah also began today. I had to ask a Muslim friend ifof mind if there were any holidays for them that happened now; there are not.
Okoko, my personal care assistant courtesy of MaineCare who’s from Burundi, did not attend the midnight mass at the Cathedral last night, but was planning on attending a mass today as the Church does them in French for the Central African community here.
Some years there are, as the Muslim calendar is pure lunar without a leap month; it gradually shifts with respect to the Gregorian calendar .
@Cat, alas I don’t seem able to send to that address–server’s missing. Darn. Oh well.
If you have the time, but don’t want to put it in the public, I’m at jreynoldsward at gmail dot com.
CatE – the WaPo has an address to submit stories to. That’s the server that I expect should have an autoanswer.
Mark, I deal with myriad publishers where I send in requests for material every year for various projects. None of them use auto-responders. Nor do individual publicists I deal with. It’s just not a common practice.
CatE: it certainly used to be. Note that it’s not something I would expect of an individual, but corporate, yes.