Reading Challenge 2013: Read A Book A Week

While this is a post about a reading challenge, it is also the start of a challenge to write one blog post–besides Capsule Review and Screen Burn announcement–a week. I got side tracked with all my work for both InveterateMediaJunkies.com and for school. Time to get back on track.

I am not a fast reader. I tend to analyze every element of a story as I read, which makes a book most people can read in hours or days take me at least a week. That coupled with a horrible book addiction and I don’t have a “To Be Read” pile, I have a “To Be Read” mountain. And my bookshelves haven’t seen empty spaces in a while. To combat this, I’m going to try to read a book a week. Below is the preliminary list for 2013.

• Hell House – Richard Matheson*
• The Shining – Stephen King*
• Ghost Story – Peter Straub*
• The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson*
• The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold*
• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens*
• Grave’s End – Elaine Mercado*
• The Amityville Horror – Jay Anson*
• Bad Monkeys – Matt Ruff
• Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States – Pete Jordan
• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
• Damned – Chuck Palahniuk
• Rant – same
• Haunted – same
• Lullaby – same
• Choke – same
• Invisible Monsters – same
• Dairy – same
• Downtown Owl – Chuck Klosterman
• The Resurrectionists – Jack O’Connelly
• Feed – Mira Grant
• John Dies At The End – David Wong
• Sandman Slim – Richard Kadrey
• Grailblazers – Tom Holt
• Strange Flesh – Michael Olson
• Leviathan Wakes – James S. A. Corey
• City of Bone – Cassandra Clarke
• Vox – Nicholson Baker
• American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
• The Garden of Beasts – Eric Larson
• A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
• Shotgun Sorceress – Lucy Snyder
• Switchblade Goddess - same
• Tempest Rising – Nicole Peeler
• Tracking the Tempest - same
• Sacré Bleu – Christopher Moore
• Lamb – same
• Practical Demon-Keeping – same
• Gil’s All Fright Diner – A. Lee Martinez
• Monster - same
• The Nymphos of Rocky Flats – Mario Acevedo
• The Atrocity Archives – Charles Stross
• Secret Talents – Olga Tegora
• The Rum Diaries – Hunter S. Thompson
• Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy – John le Carré
• Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D. H. Lawrence
• The Menstruating Mall – Carlton Mellick III
• Deity – Vic Mudd
• The Psycho Ex Game – Merrill Maroke and Andy Prieboy
• Fat White Vampire Blues – Andrew Fox

Some of this will change since I will have three classes in the fall and I don’t know what I’ll be reading. The ones for my upcoming Reading in Genres class–marked (*)–are the only permanent ones. I had planned to use this year to go through Chuck Palahniuk’s books, so those will be the last to get axed. But A Memory of Light is coming out on the 8th, so I may get the urge to try to re-read the whole Wheel of Time series. I’ve also been thinking about going through all my Ramsey Campbell books too. So, we will see how this list evolves over the years.

So what about you all? Do you have any reading challenges or certain books that you getting ready for in 2013?

Update: This isn’t the only thing I’m doing this year. Check out the other plans I have for 2013 on my Facebook Page.

Stars In Their Eyes

This post started out as a response of sorts from a Twitter reply I got from author Chris Bohjalian. Earlier that day I rated his newest novel, The Night Strangers, on Goodreads two stars. He was very polite and apologized for me not liking the book. As soon as I saw that, I had to reply back to say he had nothing to apologize for, because I knew many that enjoyed that book.

I mean, what kind of world do we live in when a writer feels he or she has to apologize to a reader that doesn’t completely enjoy a book and rates it on a murky spectrum of subjectivity and objectivity on a website?

Then, this morning, I read this article about a blow up turned flame war that engulfed writers, reviewers, agents, and worst, publishers and spread from Goodreads to Twitter and other social networks. It reminds me a lot about an incident I peripherally involved in a few years back involving the Twitter chat #Romfail and author Ray Garton, where I wrote a series of posts on the over all professionalism that such incidents lack.

If you wish to read them, they are the Calliope Wept: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

While the Goodreads blow up and Chris Bojalian’s response to my rating are very different, they both still stem from a problem with in writing: A unhealthy obession with ratings and reviews.

Yes, they are helpful–to an extent. Case in point: At Anthocon, during the MFA Programs panel, the topic of epublishing and “gatekeepers” came up, myself and Kevin Lucia agreed the lack of gatekeepers in the e-publishing world. At the end of the panel when we were open to questions, a man mentioned that the gatekeepers for epublished works were the customer ratings and reviews. The good books will get good ratings and the bad will get bad. And I called bullshit.

Yes, they can be helpful, especially in tough economic times, to help choose what book to buy. But, even the less perceptive people in the world can see that many of those 1 and 5 star ratings are shames. As I told the man, “If see simply, ‘This book rocks!’ or ‘This book sucks!’ or similar one sentence reviews, they don’t count in my mind.” I will expand on that in saying that those kinds of reviews are typically written by 1.) Friends or family trying to help get a good word out about the book or assholes being asshole or 2.) People with no real practiced skill at reviewing that they are going on base Pleasure Principle reactions which are the most subjective, thus invalid, methods of of ranking objective quality of a thing. It is those reviews that are at least a paragraph long that you always look for, because you know there is a better chance that the person who wrote it took the time look at it in an objective way and will use that toolset give to us all in 4th grade: Compare and Contrast.

But somehow, anyone who just decides to write anything, from the insipid to the intellectual, are seen to be endowed with a world altering power to decide the fates of books. I’m calling bullshit, again. I know the only book I can influence is the one I write, promote, and sell. I can use tools like ratings and reviews to help speed things along, but if all book blogs and site shut down, I can still build an audience and a fan base.

I think we, as a society, like to rate things a in the extremes. We want black and white, because the shades of gray get depressing and boring after a while. I had a friend in college that would go on those “Hot or Not” sites and only rate 1 or 10. She said, “If you aren’t gorgeous and decide to put you pic on here, you better be ready for harsh critics.” It the same thing here. So I wanted to share how I rate things. It’s not perfect, and that’s because it is still subject to my personal tastes. But I try to be as objective as I can.

1 Star – This is the ones where I wonder how they even got published. It the home of the books I add to my First Chapter Fail Club. There are intrinsic problems in the book that are apparent from the beginning would be hard to rectify by the middle of the book.

2 Stars – This is low end of most books. Now, this is not to say it is a bad book. Just that within the story, there were recurring elements that I thought were either weak, unnecessary, or one of the few pet peeves of mine. And those elements were enough to throw me out of the story. Not bad books, just not up to par.

3 Stars – This is where every published book is that gets the job done. Have good characters, interesting story, keeps the action moving, with a satisfying ending. If you are published by any kind of press with an editor, you should be here at the very least.

4 Stars – This high end of most books. They do everything the 3 Stars due, but crank it up a notch. So by the time I finish reading I am glad I read it and I know I’ll go back to it again in my lifetime.

5 Stars – These are the elite of my books. Either from a objective point of view, like Ulysses, that is just a literary masterpiece; or a subjective one, like The Hellbound Heart, that affected me both as a writer and reader and resonated with me and my own writing.

See, even I can’t keep the 1 and 5 stars from being heavily influenced subjectively. And there, in a way, I think is the fault of any kind of rating system: It can never be objective if left to the whim of humanity.

Pulled in Different Directions

A great ability of my mind is to have many trains of thought going at once. It helps me solve problems faster and recall ideas easier. Of course I still suck at multi tasking, but multi-thinking I’m an ace. As much of strength it is, it’s a flaw at times too. Usually when each train of thought is a different story that I want to write. This is the usual “writer’s block” I hit. And I have hit it recently.

I was working on the origin story of Nostrildamus, I wrote a scene I had in my head. But it didn’t really lead anywhere. I tried to think up a prophecy to base a story around and all the ones I came up with were silly. Not silly goofy, but the kind that would resurrect Graham Chapman in his Colonel outfit and berate me.

As I was working on that, the plot line for the next origin story was brewing in my head. This is for my space opera idea. Ideas for new cultures and characters and the background has been forming as I try to write Nostrildamus. Two very different stories that really don’t help one another in the creation phase.

In the middle of all that, I heard about an upcoming call for a new anthology. The theme behind it fit with a story I started working on for a tentative chap book offer back in ’09. I wasn’t able to pounce that since it wasn’t long after that my health went down hill fast. I put the two origin stories on hold to try and get back to this, cause it was a Lucin City story and I wanted to get back to that setting, maybe get inspired to go back to my M.A. Thesis, clean it up, and send it out. I wrote three opening scenes till I felt like I got it right. The others just felt generic. But I have the problem of thinking that if I continue this story it’s just going to seem like a Clive Barker imitation. Granted, the idea I had for the chapbook was to write three stories inspired by the three horror writers I love most: Barker, Poe, and Lovecraft. So, now I’m wondering if that was step too far as I really haven’t established my style enough to be able to pull off that task.

Among all of that, I’m still working on Eldritch Thoughts and The Non-Horror Reader Survey. Both take up a good chunk of time during the week. I’m wondering if NHRS is to much to do by myself and if I need to try and find people to help me out with it or just scrap it entirely. I’m sticking with ET as it is doing better than I thought and it does have a growing audience.

I’m even going to start going to only one post a week here just to give myself more time to write fiction. I can do two, but my fiction output lagged severely for the few months I did that.

I just have so many things to do, and I get pulled every which way, but for most of them it’s hard to see the inspiration to pick one over the other. I’ve been out of the publishing game for over a year and a half now, so I have nothing to promote myself with anymore. I’m just a normal, everyday blogger these days to anyone new that comes across the site. I’m just looking for that one thing that will just energize me and drive me to write and get myself back into a roll like I was before the transplant. It has be arduous trying to recover, writing-wise, from that.

Monthly Music: Nostrildamus

This is the first of a monthly series where I talk about the music that is inspiring what I’m writing. Stories have always be connected to music since the first bards, skalds, and scops ventured out telling the epic tales to song. It also has a deeper connection for me because of my equal love of music and from my majoring in it as well as writing. For me, when I start of writing a story, it will easily succeed or fail if I find the right music for the story. They become almost reference points for me when I feel myself going astray. So I thought I would give you the music I’m using for my current work in progress, Nostrildamus.

The first musical choice I make is atmosphere. So, if you were dropped into the world of the story you would be hearing these song in your head constantly. For Nostrildamus, I’m going with The Alan Parsons Project’s Definitive Collection. This came about serendipitously. Way back when did my post describing the various characters, “Eye In The Sky” popped up on my Last.FM when I was writing up Mimir’s description. I started listening to more and more APP and found theme songs for a few characters and the over all style just fit with story.

Can't find the version I have anywhere, sorry.

The next choice I make is to define the main character. Most people can instant tell you their top three artists or bands of all time, after that they can get wishy washy with there choices. So I do that with all my main characters. I put my iTunes on and see what speaks to the character and I’m developing him. The very first on that came up was Electric Light Orchestra. Now that came about before the pick of APP, but it seems fitting that these two are involved. Both British Prog Rock bands creating and performing around the same time. But where APP being very tied to concept albums and the interconnectivity of songs and a sort of meta-music, which perfect for atmosphere, ELO is just good-old, fun rock that you can see a person turn listening and having a good time. Plus, I watched the episode of Doctor Who called, “Love & Monsters” where the main character is not the Doctor, but bit of a dweeby guy that loved ELO. As Nostrildamus evolved in my mind I realized that there were traits they both shared, and for me were connected to that love of ELO.

The next character builder is The Cranberries, specifically Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We. I have Nostrildamus as a comic artist and cartoonist and this album, of their first three, is the one that seemed most fitting to be something that he would put on as he worked. His age isn’t that far off from mine, so his “music discovery” years would be heavily influenced by alternative music of the 90′s. Plus, I think he would have had a crush on Dolores O’Riordan.

Finally, we have the final piece, Wasting Light by the Foo Fighters. Partly I picked it because it is the most recent of the albums, but also, for me, it reminds me of the very first first album, only very matured and skilled. And the band also just fit with both the idea of Nostrildamus as a concept. The Foo Fighters always have songs with meaning behind them, with humorous videos that draw the audience in. That is the same thing that a humorous story does, like this one.

Scheduled Nosebleeds

It’s a busy time here. My niece and nephew are visiting for the week. In the small moments of quiet, I’ve been looking more at the iPad as a work platform then just a fun entertainment portal. In fact, this post is being written on it.

I’ve also been trying to get back into reading blogs of fellow writers. One I read was talking about trying to come up with a schedule for writing. Between that and also going through old Livejournal entries when I was working on my M.A. It reminded me at how productive I used to be that I just haven’ been able to get back to since the operation. Well that is all going to change…probably. I mean, that is a big prognostication right there and I nowhere in predictive ability as Harold Camping.

I’ll be setting a goal of at least 250 words a day, starting with Nostrildamus. If I keep up with minimum, the rough draft will be done by the end of September. I hope to have it done sooner than that so I can get to you all ASAP. After that I’ll start working on my sci-fi project. I’m also hoping that this will also lead to the reinvigoration of Scattered Tales: Characters and History of Lucin City.

Now I know some are thinking, “But, do you think LASER technology is the future of space fight?” that is a hard one and I would have to get back on you. The rest are wondering why I settled on 250 words. Well, writing is not the only thing. I’ve got Non-Horror Reader Survey and Eldritch Thoughts to work on. So, it’s a balancing act on all projects. I think I’ve come up with a good schedule and will put it to the test next week.

So let’s see if I can get this ball rolling again.