It’s Festival Of Books Week here on the blog, and that got me to thinking. I write often about books and fawn over them as if they are caramel-covered sex puppies on a perpetual Disney Vacation. To hear me tell it, there’s nothing more wonderful than a good book.
All truly great festivals have a bit of a dark edge to them, though. Sometimes it’s a tent with two-headed cats, sometimes it’s a puppet show getting top billing. So I figured this was as good a time as any to talk about the aspects of books I just really do not like at all.
5. Chunks of the sequel at the back
So there I am, motoring through a really decent read and enjoying the submersion in the Otherland of the author’s invention. Every so often I’ll check the remaining pages and derive a bit of comfort from seeing the ungrayed progress bar on my Kindle or the stack of papers folding over into my right hand. Pages that say “you have more!” And then…I don’t. I don’t have more. I have the first three chapters of a book that will be out in seven months. It’s sort of like that time my dog ate half my dinner when I went to answer the phone.
4. Characters with similar names
I don’t generally think of myself as a stupid person. But when I’m reading a book with a lot of characters we meet only briefly, I can get thrown pretty easily. This is especially bad in those Casts Of Hundreds mysteries where the detectives spend a page and a half on new people every whipstitch. It’s really easy to mix up Annie the nurse with Frannie the babysitter.
3. Dust Jackets
They’re like bras in the wrong size, like trying to cut with left-handed scissors. Just looking at them they’re fine and pretty and harmless. But once you pick up the book to read it the jacket makes crinkly paper noises, slides out of your grip and gets little ragged tears along the bottom edge. Nothing ruins the sensual pleasure of reading like a dust jacket.
2. Pretentious Authors
So you wrote a book. That’s an accomplishment and you should be proud. It is NOT, however, conquering Britain, inventing synthetic blood or curing hangnails. Stop expecting the world to treasure you as some rare butterfly of the arts.
1. Bookstores
I used to be crazy in love with bookstores. There’s nothing like browsing the stacks for new (and old) friends. My husband and I spent scores of Friday nights haunting various bookstores and kicking off the weekend with plastic bags hanging heavily to the floor with the paperbacked fruits of our carousing. It isn’t that way anymore. I suppose you could blame ebooks (most people do) but I still maintain they are the solution to a problem that was created by Big Box retailers a good decade before e-readers arrived on the scene in a prominent way. It didn’t seem like that big a deal when Davis-Kidd moved a couple of shelves out of the way for the big cart that had windchimes and scented candles. There was still plenty of store with plenty of books. And it didn’t seem too ominous when Waldenbooks stopped carrying the complete works of authors and instead stocked a dozen copies of writers’ latest books.
And now the bookstores we have left are more like tony jumble sales. You can buy board games, stuffed animals, chewing gum and the latest Steven King novel. So I stick with my Kindle. Granted, it’s not quite the same. And granted I have to make a special trip someplace else if I want toffee squares or lavender-scented beanbag neck pillows. But I sure enjoy being able to buy actual books to read.
Bonus Round: Out Of Print Books
How can you kill that which has no life? How can you hate something that doesn’t exist? I tell you this…when a book you love goes out of print it’s like you’re back in the old country and your neighbour has emigrated to the United States to be lost in the distance. Sure, you know the fellow is out there somewhere doing what he does. But you have no access to him other than the fond memories of the time you spent together, and those memories grow fainter by the day. I’ve spent the last 29 years looking for a copy of Heidi Grows Up. Until it came back in print last Halloween I spend a good decade trying to find a new copy of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula since I’d given away all the previous copies I’d bought over the years. There are others I’ve had to hunt down, and God Bless The Internet because it’s made the truffle hunt quite a bit less muddy. But it’s still sad when you realise just how impermanent any story can become.
I loved Heidi Grows Up! Haven’t thought of that book in years.
I am glad I’m not the only who hates dust jackets
.
And don’t get me started on the bookstores becoming mini-Walmarts. Sigh. I saw on a B&N email advertisement that you can now order kids’ bikes through them. REALLY?
I actually wonder…would more of them have stayed in business had they actually stuck to selling BOOKS?
Bikes? “hey, it has a b and a k! Close enough! Just remember you can also get backpacks and baklava from us!”
When you say you’ve spent 29 years looking for “Heidi Grows Up”, do you mean you haven’t found it yet? ‘Cuz Abebooks.com has tons of copies, starting at $1.
I should have written ages ago about wanting a copy, because today when I went to get a link for this post I found that Amazon has 14 copies. They’re all standard print-and-bound books, but I think they’re light enough that I could manage.
I swear this blog is like Book Name It And Claim It sometimes.
I’m with you on bookstores. There are so few left you would think they wouldn’t shoot themselves in the feet. But every time I go in, I spend an hour and no one can find the book I want.
Bookstore Employee: It’s on the shelf
Me: I just looked there.
BE: Let me check my computer. This says it’s on the shelf. Let’s check the front of the store. [10min and 1mile pass] Let me check the back of the store while you wait to purchase a book we have fifteen copies of.
Me [grabs nearest trendy metal desk thingy they want me to buy and tries to puncture artery]
BE: You put blood on our trendy metal desk thingy. You need to buy it. Oh, I can’t find your book yet. Wait here.
I swear, they have one job: Sell books. I haven’t had any luck in the last two years in any big bookstore. I hate them.
A.J. Scudiere
Author of “Phoenix” <– just saying. Not being pretentious or anything. : )
Are we shopping at the same bookstore? Because I swear, it’s like you were there!
I’m just really happy my brother got the puppet show reference.
The local Books-A-Million is horrible about selling random stuff. They sell As Seen on TV things like the Magic Jack. Infomercial crap. Pretty much if you can get a large margin on it, they’ll try and sell it.
I guess my biggest hate is series books. It’s the worst in the manga section, to the point where they are starting to sell them in three book omnibus editions just to be able to stock them. Series like Bleach or Naruto have a staggering FIFTY volumes. But even in the SF section it’s a problem, where they have to carry series by Sookie Stackhouse or Robert Jordan that take up large amounts of shelf space. Or bookstores who think “classic SF author section” means “Phillip K. Dick only section”
Is this where I sign up to get the caramel-covered sex puppies? Cause I’m ready for mine, thank you very much! I’ll just wait here. Doo de doo de doo…
Yes, the chunks of sequel bug me. I still read them, but they bug the heck out of me.
Also have much random hate for illustrations that DON’T match the story (more of a problem with kids’ books, but it can happen with cover art on paperbacks, too)–the author spent all those words telling you something, and what you drew isn’t anything remotely like that! Why? Why? There are colored illustrations in the By the Shores of Silver Lake that C and I are nearly done with, and the colorist apparently has no clue that Mary is a blonde. Mary may be blind, but not brunette. Grrrrrr!
Someone more familiar with the publishing industry than me may say I’m completely wrong, but I have heard that many times the artists who create the novel covers are given little more than a brief synopsis of the story or just a description of what the cover should look like. Not a copy of the book itself.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. But every publishing house I’ve ever worked for–so, one
– let the authors have approval over the cover art.
Still and all, I’m with you. I just read a Miles Vorkosigan book. Miles is stunted and deformed from a gas attack when he was in utero. That’s the main fact about him that you know from the getgo. Yet the cover of the book featuring his big romance shows a strapping 6-footer. I was peeved.
I am familiar with some writers of fiction set in the middle ages who claim that they are not allowed to object to cover art over minor details like anachronistic clothing or architecture. I have read that in the old days, writers of SF/F works didn’t even get to see the cover art, let alone veto it; this may have changed, but probably not (based on what you say about the minor detail of the size and shape of Miles Vorkosigan).
In a thread on her site awhile back, LMB said that her book didn’t sell well in the UK because of “the Pillsbury Nazgul” the publisher used on the cover art over her objection. So I think you’re correct about the SF business. Thomas Nelson cover art is a little different. I don’t know that there are writers who will say “make the sunrise behind the Cross a little brighter”.
Pillsbury Nazgul cover here:
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0007138490.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
I work with my cover artist. He talks on the phone with me for several hours for each book. For example, he even made the firefighter on the cover of ‘Phoenix’ wear gear from the ’80s, because that’s part of the story. Daniel Ruke–the artist–likes to be sure he keeps true to the book.
But I have fought people who want to put a romance cover on God’s Eye. Yes, there’s some romance, but it’s not THAT.
I think it all depends on the publisher. I met another writer who’s horror novel got a bodice ripper cover and went nowhere because all the readers expected a romance. And I have seen so many covers that I look at after finishing the book and I think, “who are these people? they aren’t in the story at all.”
A.J. Scudiere
not pretentious author of “Phoenix”
Is your not pretentiously written book on Kindle?
Do NOT ask me why I didn’t just pick up the Kindle lying facedown on my chest and look in the Kindle store. My brain is mush right now.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
As of last Tuesday, I have four not-pretentiously-written books on Kindle. All Suspense/Thrillers. They are Resonance, Vengeance, God’s Eye and the newest is Phoenix.
A.J.