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thenowherejournal · 6 months

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A Chapter in Jelaine’s Life: Some things About being a Reader

An Interview Article by Francis and Nad (February 2024)

Readers have different approaches to picking up a novel and have varying tastes– and for a bookworm, you could imagine all the stories that had accumulated during their journey in the vast spaces of a library. Each shelf, rows and rows of stories that came from people all over history and realities. For this interview, we found someone who can share their experience with literature. Our resident bookworm for this article is Jelaine Dio.

BACKGROUND

The 25-year-old graduate of Bachelor of Science in Psychology found herself reading stories in her past time during 5th Grade. While the other kids in her class were playing outside during break time, she was exploring her English textbook for the short story collection; that is when the world opened up to her. Now, she reads novels from the likes of Sally Rooney, John Green, Jandy Nelson and Coco Mellors—some of her current favorite authors that she noted. Her current read is The Guest by Emma Cline, previously followed by Jenny Mustard’s Okay Days.

A lot of these books share a similar genre: Contemporary fiction. She stated that it was her favorite genre in fictional literature because she found herself easily visualizing the story if it is closer to real life or based on certain personality traits.

KEY EXPERIENCES

“Summer Time: A Book A Day”

Only after a few years of falling in love with the short stories, she managed to read over 7 books a week during her summer vacations. Although some readings are motivated by school credits, she still read an impressive amount during that time. She noted that she has read over 200 books since then. As life goes by, people get busy with their time. Even if life gets busy, she always tries to slip in a moment to read. She said “I read my book if I was waiting for something or if there’s a downtime—whether in public or at home. Because I do not have any cellular data on my phone when I leave the house, I always bring my book for times when I must wait.”

We asked her what was the first fiction she had read and she directed us back to her 3rd year of Junior High. She asked her classmate for a recommendation for a book to start reading fiction “She is also a bookwork and reads her book on an iPad. I asked her ‘What ‘s a good fiction to read first?’ and she let me borrow a copy of ‘The Little Prince’”. She noted that before that, she was not reading much then. After picking up the book, that is when she started being a book fanatic again.

On average, outside of summer time when she finishes a book a day, her average reading time then lasts for two to 3 days per novel. Now, she slowed down to finishing a book in a week but if she has work, then she finishes a book in a month. After she finishes a book, she takes a day to take a break and she picks up another book to start.

I’ll See It Through, Always

When she reads a book, she sees through it, even if it is average “It’s like in the movies, for example. I watch a movie and I find myself enjoying it but when I see some bad reviews, I don’t find it as a waste of time because I enjoyed the work”. She also added how she also thinks about the effort the author took to finish their story. That’s why sometimes when she finds a story in BookTok, a community in TikTok that shares content about literature, she reads it because of how it was marketed. Sometimes, she ends up reading erotic fiction without realizing it because of how the synopsis was advertised. During the interview, she laughingly said that she found that it was her guilty pleasure to read those types of stories

INSIGHTS

Eenie-Meenie-Miney Book!

When entering a bookstore, some people may feel overwhelmed when offered a lot of options. Jelaine is one of these individuals. Because of this, she has devised three ways to choose the next book she will indulge herself in. One is looking at its cover. As ironic as it is for a bibliophile, she does not really follow the famous saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover." When she sees that a book has an aesthetic and eye-catching cover, she will pick it up and read it. Though on some occasions, she will go through the book’s synopsis before buying it.

Another way is through recommendations in social media’s “BookTok". She follows countless book lovers on Instagram that post their recommendations in their feeds. When she sees these posts, she will buy two to three of those novels and put them on her shelf of books she will later read. Lastly, she picks up and buys the next novel that she will read by browsing the books of the same authors as the previously finished novel she enjoyed. With these three ways, she has fortunately bought novels that she considered a “good book".

"A Good Book"

It is fair to think that a bookworm that has read hundreds of novels would have a grasp of what makes a "good book". In Jelaine’s viewpoint, a novel that has a striking and grand plot is not important, but what is important is the story’s overall flow. She also added that “ A good book is something you can genuinely relate to the character even though that character has a different experience compared to you." Jelaine also mentioned that when she underlined and bookmarked a lot of lines and parts of a book that she is reading, then that novel is exceptional for her.

LESSONS TO SHARE

A Wider Vocabulary And Getting In Touch To One’s Feelings And Emotions

For almost half of her lifetime, Jelaine has been “sticking her nose" into numerous books in various genres and lengths. With all these consumed fictional works, she has gained extensive knowledge in vocabulary. She quoted, “Due to reading, my word bank is overflowing". As a result, she can understand words in novels that are unusual while also understanding each sentence that she reads quickly.

Reading has also helped her to become more empathetic, since she is able to know and feel what the characters are going through and understand them as the story goes on. Hence, when a person reads, they can be in touch with their emotions and process them in a healthy manner.

Something for Readers

Jelaine’s go-to book recommendation to whoever asks her is Celeste Ng’s first novel, "Everything I Never Told You". She deemed this as a good recommendation since it has themes that will make a person feel multiple emotions throughout its entirety. As she shares what the book is about, she mentions that it circles around the idea of family dynamics and how grief affects each member. She said, "This novel is heavy and heart-wrenching". Another book recommendation she mentioned was "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" written by Gail Honeyman, which is also a heavily emotional novel.

In addition, she mentioned a quote from one of the books that genuinely made an impact on her. The line was “They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time-angry, lonely, content--but he's never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid. But he is not alone.” This is from V. E. Schwab’s, "The Invisible Life Of Addie Larue. With these few pieces of line, she feels comforted and loved since it tells the reader that it is good to feel emotion and not to invalidate one’s feelings.

“When you read, it’s not just printed words on a paper, it is a mixture of the character’s experiences, feelings and views and in turn, you also experience what they have gone through and feel their emotions. With reading, you gain new experiences without physically experiencing them, but through words on a piece of paper." - Jelaine Dio

#booktok #bookworm #biblophile #literature #book recommendations #contemporary literatures #novels #fictional novels #cotemporary books

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momiji-bookhouse · 2 years

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Kazuha w/ Barista!Reader

pairing: Kaedehara Kazuha x gn!reader

genre: fluff, modern

words: 1.7k

a/n: I got the inspiration to finish this because I refuse to let Ayato or Venti sway me into pulling for their banners. Gotta stay strong for my man.

You work at the local cafe near your university, so it's not surprising that you often run into your classmates or see the faces that you occasionally pass through on campus.

Many have become your regulars. There's Jean, who rarely ever sits down in the cafe and instead always take her coffee to go. It even came to a point that you would prepare her order beforehand and have it ready for her when she comes at 7 am sharp.

There's Albedo, the Biochem genius who scared you the first time he ordered 8 extra shots of espresso in his black coffee. Sometimes he would sit and sketch or do his work, sometimes he would immediately rush off as soon as his order arrives. Other times his fellow TAs Sucrose and Timaeus would pick coffee up instead.

In the weekends, you often see Amber, Eula, Yanfei, Keqing, and Ayaka going to pick out their sweet treat for the week.

One day, a new face walks in, one that you're certain you've never seen on campus, for the streak of bright maple-red hair on his platinum blonde head would have definitely warrant a second look if you ever pass by him.

He walks up, and smiles in response to your welcoming one (yup, he's definitely super good-looking). He looks at the menu for a bit and then turns to you, and at this distance you can't help but notice the orange hue and golden flecks in his vermillion eyes.

You see his mouth moves, and you had to slap yourself internally just in time to catch his order. Thankfully your manager wasn't watching, or she would've scold you for being distracted by a pretty face.

You try to hide your flustered expression as you put his order in.

"Would you like me to bring sugar and milk for your tea?" "Just sugar please, thank you."

My word his voice sounds beautiful, so soothing and calming to the ears. (It's really not fair that someone that attractive can also have that good of a voice.)

You get started on his order, being able to bring it out to his table in no time. Although you go about your shift as per usual, you find your eyes going back to him once in a while.

From the books and the occasional scribbling into his notebook, you gather that he could be a humanities major of some sort. You can't help but notice the way he would bite his lips in thought, how he would twirl his pencil around, or how his forehead would crease or relax whenever he writes something down.

Seeing him bathed in the filtered sunlight of that hazy afternoon, turning his strands into silver threads, and the smile appearing on his serene face, you can't deny that you're half-hypnotized by the sight.

He joins the ranks of the cafe's regulars, coming into the store multiple times a week, always with an order of tea to sip with his books and countless notebooks. You're able to chat with him sometimes when he orders and there's nobody behind him.

You learn his name (Kazuha) and that he indeed goes to the same university as you (literature major with a minor in creative writing), and where he's from (Inazuma).

They're always too short for your liking, and it makes you wonder if it's possible to be so taken by someone you've only spoken to a few times. But there's just something captivating about him, something about the lightness and soft vibes you get from him that makes you want to get to know him more. Him and his myriad of notebooks and journals and ink-stained fingers and airy chuckle that echoes in your ears long after he has sat down.

One day, he looks to be in a rush more than usual, only being able to sit down for about an hour before his phone rings and his face changes. He gulps down the rest of his tea, hissing as his tongue gets burnt and gathers all of his belongings before sprinting out the door.

You go to take his cup, and only then did you notice the small piece of paper on the table, something that must've fallen from one of his notebooks. You pick it up, thinking it's trash, but then you see the loops and curves of his handwriting.

It looks to be a poem of some sorts, but the lines trail off and there's several words crossed out, as well as eraser marks that makes it hard for you to decipher. You have an inkling that maybe you shouldn't be reading his work, but at the same time it feels like an opportunity to glance at a sliver of his life.

Even with its incompleteness, you find his poem beautiful. The imagery he used and the simplicity that let his choice of words shine through evoking something inside of you.

You hold on to it, resolving to give it back to him the next chance you get.

But when that chance comes, you're unable to get a single word out when he orders due to the person behind him rushing you and being a b-

So you gave it to him when you bring his usual cup of tea to him.

"Here's your tea, Kazuha." "Thank you, (Y/N)." "And also, uh...here, I think you left this the last time you were here."

Kazuha's eyes widen when he receives the paper from you. "Oh, I didn't notice this fell out. Thank you."

"It's-it's very good!" "...sorry?" "The-the poem, I mean." You try to hide the lower part of your face behind the tray. "I think it's beautiful." "O-oh, thank you."

That should've been the end of that. You've done your part. And yet your heart can't help but sink for not being able to carry on the conversation more.

Thankfully, your work distracts you. But then you see Kazuha getting up to leave, and instead of walking out the door, he's walking towards you.

"You didn't have to bring your cup to me, I could've cleaned it up myself." "I insist, you already have too much on your hands."

And before you could protest any more, he had already given you his empty cup, along with a small note. You look at him questioningly, only to see him winking at you for a brief moment before gliding out the door.

You're left confused and a little more than curious as you set the cup down, the piece of paper feeling like it weighs more than it should in your hand. You gulp audibly and slowly open it, hands trembling a little and your heart pounding in your ears.

You blink a few times when you realize that it's a poem. But not only that, it's the completed version of the poem that you read yesterday. However, there's one line scribbled in the end that caught your eye the most...

"Thanks for giving me the inspiration to finish this. Kazuha."

That started a new routine between the two of you. He would write lines of poetry for you – sometimes whole haikus and stanzas, sometimes only bits and pieces of ideas that he wants your opinion on. You would write your response and at times even write down some poetry lines that you come across and find particularly enchanting (he has definitely made you more interested in the genre than any teacher you've ever had.)

There are times when the various torn-off pieces of paper and sticky notes that were exchanged don't have poetry on them. They could contain simple questions such as how each of their day was or things going on in their lives or anything that comes to mind.

One time you read his story about how Itto tried to organize a floor-wide sumo tournament in the dorm he's staying at and that somehow lead to the floor collapsing, and the giggles that came out of you was so loud that it garnered attention from your co-workers.

It's something that you look forward to every single time it's your shift, silently hoping that it's him that comes through the door, eyes brightening whenever he hands you the note for the day with that knowing spark in his maple eyes.

It makes you even more whipped for him.

And then on one particular occasion, he catches you on break and you raise your eyebrows when he didn't leave right after handing you the note as he usually does.

"Can you...read this right now? It's ah, it's something that needs an immediate response." He feigns nonchalance, but you can see the way his hands slightly fidget and how eyes are more restless, looking everywhere but you.

You open it, seeing a poem as you would expect. But this one is different. It's a love poem.

It's simple and elegant like him, but the way the best and most beautiful images of nature were used to describe the person, as well as the way you can feel the intensity and ardentness of his words has your breath hitching and cheeks flaming.

But then your stomach twists when you realize that this poem sounds too intimate and personal to not be a reflection of his own feelings. So this must mean he likes someone.

It may not be you. It can't be you.

Your heart drops to your stomach as you hand it back to him. "It's-it's breathtaking. You must've spent a lot of time on this."

His brows furrow for a second, an expression of what looks like panic pass by his face before realization dawns on him. "There's more on the back."

You flip it around, half wanting to know more, and half not wanting to torture yourself by reading more of his carefully-spun love declarations to whoever it is. But then your eyes almost pop out of their sockets when you read the whole thing.

"(Y/N), my light, my muse. All of these words I have written are dedicated to you. I stand before you as a cowardly man who does not know how to adequately express these feelings aside from the only way I know how. If you're willing, and if these feelings are reciprocated, will you go on a date with me?"

With your break fast approaching its end, you only have time to give him a simple answer, with your heart soaring and a melody singing in your ears.

"Yes, yes! Of course!"

The radiant smile that he gives you is one that you want to burn into your memories forever.

#kazuha x reader #kazuha #kaedehara kazuha #kazuha headcanons #kazuha imagines #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #momiji's collection

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rainpuddle13 · 3 years

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Okay, pet peeve time.

I really, really, really despise when books that are obviously part of a series are assigned different call numbers. IE:

Kramers Ergot 7 - PN 6727 .K666 2008

Kramers Ergot 9 - PN 6726 .K666 2016

As a librarian, this DRIVES ME UP THE FUCKING WALL. Kramers 9 is actually the correct call number per Library of Congress. Kramers 7 was cataloged by someone who is not familiar with comic serial anthologies. Generally PN 6727 is reserved for graphic novels (the real ones, not trade paperback collections of serials (which is PN 6728)) by author. Serial anthologies fall under PN 6726 unless there is some other factor like country of origin (then it is a PN 6790).

I am very particular about this stuff because the collection I oversee is ENORMOUS and VARIED and if I can't rely on the classification system for intellectual order then what is the damn point of the LOC call number schedule?

To be fair though, LOC really didn't think the whole popularity of comics through when they first started adding them to the collection because they were assigned PN 6700-6790 which is general literature. I mean, the first Elfquest graphic novels are cataloged as American literature (PS 3500) which I assure it is certainly NOT literature. And then early cartoons were assigned NC 1429 (caricature and line drawing) which certainly did not work for serial comics, although there is still an odd Superman over there. The PN 6700 classification is a catchall which was fine at the time, but then again no one could have anticipated the enduring popularity and breadth of the genre way back in the day.

The genre of comics actually needs an entire reclassification, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

#pet peeves #library work #library life #good god I am a nerd #also have some ocd tendencies if you cannot tell #i love comics

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junquisite · 4 years

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Literature Department 3

WORD COUNT : 1.4K

GENRE : Fluff

WARNING : There are handwritten Love letters involved - might give heartache

PARTS : 1 2 3 4

NOTE : I tried my best with the letters, i hope they have a slight old-ish vibe to them but please know they are set in the modern world so..

It took her three days to get to the next letter because of Junhee being sick. Moving to a big city, he had no one but her to look for him so she spent the past three days helping him recover. It was fun too since she had not much interest in her course but the guilt of missing the letters made her leave a sleeping Junhee at home the fourth day with a sticky note saying 'will be back in an hour.'

She rushed to the library and after the warning that it's closing soon, she almost ran to the regular book rack to find three letters waiting for her. And with a giddy feeling, she opened them.

Dear K.Y.,

First of, I apologize for what you had to go through Because of your parents indifference towards your interests (and talents if I may say so myself, these letters proving my point) but If I could, I won't change a thing because who knew if we could have ever found solace in each others presence had you been in the same department. Maybe it’s all for the best? At Least we found each other.

Secondly, I hope you don't develop a too big crush on Professor Han. It hurts me to see you talk about another man like that.

But not more than seeing you with another one.

I know I said romanticism would take a long fair time but my heart didn't pay it no head and all It wanted was to steal a glimpse.

And I'm a man, but weak in front of my heart and so I gave in.

i saw you today. I don't know if it was the way you described yourself that gave you away or the information you gave was the clue. Whatever it was, it wasn't hard finding about you while not being a student.

But it was certainly flattering to see you smiling and writing the response to my letter then being engrossed in a book.

Kim Yoona-ssi, since I already know you now and you were kind enough to tell me your age and description as I asked, I would answer anything you ask of me.

But something tells me you want to keep it a mystery, and if that's true, I shall respect your decision and thank you for it and hope it wasn't because of your disinterest in me.

But I promise I shall not make you wait for years and I don't know if my arms are competent enough to provide you peace but all I hope is that they'll make you feel safe.

And if I may be so bold so as to say, a kiss you shall receive if that's what my lady wants.

Yours,

K.S.

P.S. - I turned 25 this year.

Dear Kim Yoona-ssi,

I was surprised to not see a letter but then again I didn't see you today so that might explain it. I hope whatever kept you away today won't do so again and you can spare a few minutes for me.

I shall confess my heart has attached itself to you, unknowingly to me, and it craves any attention from you whether they be your letters or your leaving silhouette.

All I hope is that your heart may be so open to Atleast consider me as someone.

With that thought in mind, maybe I can be so bold as to ask whether you already have someone in your heart or can I try to woo you?

With this note and a hope that I'll find one from your tomorrow, I end this letter.

Yours,

K.S.

Dear Yoona-ssi,

I don't know till when shall I refer to you formally but my chivalry doesn't allow me to be informal to you yet.

Again I came here to find my own two letters but my companion told me not to lose hope, to wait a few more days considering you just might be busy.

So wait I shall.

For how long? Who knows. I waited 7 months before.

But for you I can even wait 7 years.

Yours,

K.S.

P.S. - is it too soon to want to meet you?

She felt her face was red when she was done reading the letters. There was so much she wanted to say and ask, staring from how he knew her? Who was he? But more importantly, ask herself, did she really want to know who he is?

"Oh? Kim Yoona-ssi?" She heard and turned around to see Professor Han.

"It's time to close." He said simply and she felt dread creeping up. She can't leave the stranger without any letter again!

"Professor can I just have 15 mins? Please?" She asked and he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Why?"

She debated whether to say the truth or not but decided to go with it.

"I sort of kind of have a pen pal thing going on and I wasn't here for three days and the other person is already worried about me! I swear I won't take more then 15 mins!"

He sighed and signalled her to go in and she thanked him again and quickly pulled out her pen and paper.

20 Minutes later Seungwoo came back to see her packing up and she thanked him again before rushing out. He ran a hand through his hair and wondered how would Seungsik react when he'll find out that the one day he chose not to come to the library could have been the day he might have managed to talk to her.

Seungwoo picked out the letter from between the books and kept it in his pocket. A while later when he opened the door to his room, he saw Seungsik reading a book who looked up at him to say, "You're late. What took you so long?"

He picked out the letter from his pocket and put it on the table in front of him.

"She was about to write this. She asked me for 15 Minutes. I let her because I have been on the receiving end of your constant worry and assumptions about her for the past 3 days. I was tired."

Seungsik had already tuned him out in between his lecture. He was upset that he missed a chance to see her but was equally eager to read the letter.

Dear K.S.,

This might be rushed since I just asked Professor Han for 15 Minutes and he actually agreed? I legit can't understand why students are scared of him. I'm pretty sure he's a soft puppy in real life. Don't tell him I said that since you're not a student and everything. You're not that old though so maybe a professor? Would this even work out?

Oh god sorry!

I got..nervous there for a second and assumed things.

Don't worry I don't have a crush on Professor Han. Or anyone at the moment. But it sounds like someone is possessive and possibly jealous over seeing me with someone. It was probably Junhee, he's my childhood friend.

He was really sick, that's why I wasn't able to come for the past three days. But your worry is very charming.

The way you make things sound so enticing makes my heart flutter, I won't lie. And your arms I shall demand when I see you, and so will a kiss be demanded too and that I shall receive.

I won't say I don't want to know you per se. But can I just say I am scared? Not of you but how you will feel once you meet me as a person and not someone fancying you through paper and ink, what if i’m not what you expected?

Yes, fancying.

Maybe I am.

And I am not disinterested. I am curious.

Are you a professor? What was your first novel you ever read? What made you choose literature? When was the last time you dated someone?

What did your heart say when you saw me?

Was I pretty?

My heart is too open to you that it might as well just beg you to claim me. And it doesn't even care now that I might be being too forward.

So please, I beg of you, woo me.

Informally I hope you'll call me from now on and especially when you'll meet me. As much as I love your chivalry, I would much prefer sweet nothings from you.

And I promise I won't make you wait for 7 years.

Yours,

Kim Yoona

P.S. - Even I want to meet. So shall we?

#victon #victonwriters #victon seungsik #seungsik fluff #victon fluff #seungsik #kang seungsik #victon scenario #victon scenarios #victon imagine #victon imagines

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thejonzone · 4 years

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Riverdale is the Best Show You’ve Written Off

About once a month, a tweet will go around, reading something like “I can’t believe Netflix cancelled [SHOW X], but Riverdale is still on?!? *eye roll emoji, angry cussing emoji*.” It can be difficult to read tweets like these, because I like Riverdale. But I understand why it has struggled to keep an audience-- there is a perception that the show has gone completely off the rails, a chaos of hot actors in their mid-20s playing glamorous high school sociopaths, with the show choosing excess over narrative cohesion. That perception is pretty accurate. It’s an easy show to write off and easy to make fun of, especially because, as a CW show, it’s ostensibly geared to teens. So it brings me no pleasure to say that Riverdale, currently in its 5th season, has reached a renaissance, and its episodes so far this season represent its high-water mark.

To appreciate how stunning and exciting Riverdale’s new direction is, it’s important to understand how we got here.

In the first season, a murder in the titular town revealed an underbelly of thugs, power brokers, and shady backroom rulers, all vying for control with gothic morbidity. What followed after that season though, was something else entirely.

Riverdale, ramping up during Seasons 2 through 4, became a beautiful mess. I think it’s important to state that no other show on television is even attempting to do what Riverdale did/is doing. The show is, at any one point, 5-7 wholly different shows. There is a season’s worth of plot per episode. It’s storytelling mania and in-real-time dementia. I don’t remember what happened at the end of last episode because SO much happened. And besides, coherence is overrated! Give me hot actors, give me drug-addicted mobsters, give me creepy principals! On Riverdale, the parents are both former teen heartthrobs and serial killers, children operate underground speakeasies, and for some reason not one therapist has realized they could make a fortune helping our cast work through the intense psychological terror and emotional abuse they receive every episode.

This show is beyond pastiche, hyper-loaded with reference. My roommate and I had a joke that the show’s third season could be mapped to a quadrant of influences: Twin Peaks, True Detective, The Sopranos, and Gossip Girl. At any point Riverdale was acknowledging and playing into the influence of one of these shows. Season Four doubled down on the show’s horror anthology tendency. No one wants you to miss the references being made. You know that menacing boarding school Jughead attends in Season Four? You’d be right If it reminded you of Donna Tartt’s A Secret History. After all, consider Jughead’s classmate, whose name is Donna Sweet. Maybe you picked up on the violence simmering underneath the surface of Jughead’s other classmate, Bret Easton-Elli-- I mean, Bret Weston-Wallis.

Every week, the show seems primed for failure, attempting to juggle more storylines than possible or even necessary. The show is like a house of cards that has already fallen, and yet the writers are somehow still haphazardly adding more cards to the top. “Be reasonable!” I would plead. To no avail. And that’s the thrill of it. The plotlines are secondary to the spectacle. The show is a celebration and parody of violent legacy dramas, camp, teen horror, canonical literature, and anything else it can stuff under the hood, as much an ode to other pieces of media as it is an original work itself.

But now, something completely different is happening. The beginning of Season Five brought an end to the seasons-long saga the show felt trapped in. Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead graduated high school, and the show flashed forward seven years. What might be considered a hokey technique was one of the best decisions the writers ever did. Because now we have a blank slate for our main cast. The writers effectively cut the fat from three seasons of violent, ridiculous maximalism. And it’s psychically refreshing.

At the heart of any good sitcom, we just want to see our main characters hanging out together. Change is part of life, but it shouldn’t be in television. Which is why this new season is so exciting-- Riverdale is now in the process of bringing its four main characters back from their adult lives and re-engaging them in the deadly politics of their hometown. Pop Tate, the owner-manager of Pop’s, Riverdale’s diner, is retiring, and Archie gets the gang back in town to celebrate the man who helped make the diner such a great hang-out spot. In the words of Jughead, “You gave us a home, Pop.” Like so mant other sitcoms before it, Riverdale used Pop’s to establish its characters and their relationships to each other.

I grew up on Seinfeld so I’ve always been attracted to the idea of the diner. The pandemic has made me yearn even harder for the sitcom diner, that idealistic place where all my friends are, where people enter with problems to be solved, drama to be explained, good news to be celebrated. Riverdale’s acknowledgment of Pop and his diner as the show’s connective tissue is a grounding and human choice. It works fantastically to set up this upcoming season, where our gang must confront the newest nefarious plot for control over the soul of Riverdale.

No doubt the show will continue its pattern of naming and spoofing genre. Veronica, in her adult life, had an Uncut Gems-style few scenes where she works as a charismatic (of course) diamond merchant. She married a possessive, boring guy who’s only characteristic seems to be that his voice is *exactly* like Veronica’s megalomaniac dad, Hiram. Something something Freud, something something daddy sexy. And credit where credit is due, Mark Consuelos is really hot.

Jughead is a writer now, in the most white guy college freshman fantasy of being a writer possible. He attended the Iowa Writers Workshop as an undergrad, something that is definitely not possible. He’s written a hit book but now suffers from *gasp* writer’s block?? He’s a cool guy writer who, in his opening montage, gets recognized by, hit on, and then has sex with a college-aged fan. Back in Riverdale, Jug writes a speech for Pop’s retirement and sends it to his agent. His agent is smitten with the work, calling it “tragic americana” and proclaiming that Jughead’s next book will be titled “Elegy for a Small Town”. This is almost certainly a reference to J.D. Vance’s bad book, and I’m sure the show will be bringing in more elements of “tragic” “americana” as the season unfolds.

Betty is FBI in training, because as the show has loved to tell us, Betty has “the serial killer gene”, but is using it for good. For the record, her dad was a serial killer, and her brother was a serial killer. And it’s not like her mom or sister can cast the first stone. Betty’s endured enough trauma to fill 100 lives with unending pain and I’m sure the show will have no trouble heaping more on top. Already in the new season we’ve seen flashbacks to some point during the time jump when Betty was taken hostage, in what’s clearly a homage to The Silence of the Lambs.

And then there’s Archie. I don’t know if anyone knows what to do with the guy. Played by K.J. Apa, who is both really good-looking with his shirt off and a god-awful actor, Archie has been in the army. The show is using him to shill for the military-industrial complex.

I’ve long joked that the Riverdale writers have no idea what they’re doing. But through a global pandemic affecting TV production and *the* major narrative complication in any high school-set show (graduation), the Riverdale writers have seamlessly transitioned the show to a new stasis. Past seasons are informing this one, but we aren’t bogged down by the details in this new season. The bigger joke, of course, is that the writers have known exactly what they’ve been doing this whole time, and I’m just an idiot. Well I mean, of course I’m an idiot. I use television to regulate my emotions and simulate a static friend group that doesn’t leave or change. And Riverdale is perfect for that. If a renaissance is a rebirth, well then my friends, cut the umbilical cord and save the placenta to put in pills, because Riverdale is cranking out episodes that are better than ever.

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bobdylanrevisited · 3 years

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Love And Theft

Released: 11 September 2001

Rating: 10/10

If there’s one thing Bob Dylan knows, it’s how to follow up a masterpiece with an even better album. This is a phenomenal record, it combines all the things Bob does best: poetic lyrics, a range of musical genres, a growling voice, and an incredibly interesting atmosphere that lingers over the whole album. I adore this record, it deserves to be spoken of as highly as ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ or ‘Blood On The Tracks’, and again proves that Bob was as prolific and trailblazing in his 60s as he was in the 1960s. (As per my last post, I will not address the ‘plagiarism’ claims here, as I feel they are baseless and reductive)

1. Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee - This is a great introduction to Bob’s new sound, a mix of country, rockabilly, and nostalgia. Bob’s really come into his ‘old man voice’ and the band are completely in sync. The lyrics themselves are a bit forgettable, but this fast paced opener is just effortlessly performed.

2. Mississippi - Originally an outtake from ‘Time Out Of Mind’, this is a stunningly beautiful song. The melancholy seeps out out every word and note, with Bob again acting through his voice and delivery, to portray a defeated man reminiscing and analysing his life. The music itself is surprisingly uplifting and almost at odds with the subject of the song, but it completely works. This is one of many perfect tracks on the album, and Bob’s songwriting is still untouchable.

3. Summer Days - If you had to guess, you’d say this song is from the 1950s, not 2001. A brilliant throwback, with some fantastic guitar and a great performance by Bob channelling an old blues legend. It may not be the most memorable song on the album, but it’s never a chore to hear.

4. Bye And Bye - A much more relaxed song, with a lovely musical arrangement. The lyrics are filled with happiness, and there is a great bridge that adds an interesting edge to the track. Bob’s wistful singing fits nicely, and this is just an enjoyably cheerful song.

5. Lonesome Day Blues - Perhaps an antithesis to the previous track, this is a rugged and harsh song, from the guitar licks to Bob’s gruff delivery. The song is your classic blues affair, lyrics of being rejected and mourning, but the whole song still sounds fresh and Bob always has an interesting take on the classics.

6. Floater (Too Much To Ask) - Yet another perfect track, and everything here works flawlessly. The lyrics are poetic and tell a brilliant story, but the main focus here should be on the band. The whole arrangement fills me with joy, it sounds like they’ve been playing together for centuries, and every note and instrument compliments one another and the atmosphere of the track. I could go on, but just know that this is a genius composition and all involved are at the top of their game.

7. High Water (For Charley Patton) - Not only is this the highlight of the album, it’s one of the highlights of Bob’s entire career. His way with words, creating a mood and describing an America rooted in history and mythology, are completely unmatched in both music and literature. I cannot express how perfect this track is, from the opening ‘cowboy’ sounding guitar and banjo, to Bob’s moody and haunting delivery, this is a song from both a forgotten era and yet is also somehow ahead of its time. Just listen to it on repeat, it’s fucking unbelievable.

8. Moonlight - Another slower track, with some lovely guitar and bass, and a sweet and tender Bob, almost foreshadowing is crooner turn in the following years. A great love song that is infinitely calming and romantic.

9. Honest With Me - Once again, a slower track is followed by one that sounds like a thunderstorm of guitars rolling down Highway 61. This is another song that sounds like it’s challenging you to a fight. Bob is hard as nails, the lyrics are darker, and the whole arrangement is electrified. Like the rest of the album, it’s fantastic.

10. Po’ Boy - Slowing down again, I adore this song. The lyrics are poignant and also quite funny, and for me this is Bob’s best singing on the whole record. The finger picked guitar adds an interesting layer of intimacy to the song, and all this adds up to one of my most revisited tracks from the album, and some of Bob’s most enjoyable writing from this period.

11. Cry A While - Another throwback, which blends together a few different genres and tempos, creating an incredibly interesting and ever-changing song. The lyrics are, once again, a bit of a downer (not that that’s a bad thing) but the way the band seamlessly switch up their playing is both impressive and a testament to their unrivalled talent.

12. Sugar Baby - The closing track is maybe my least favourite song, which is no bad thing as I still really enjoy it. It returns to the melancholic mood of the earlier part of the album, and is a simple arrangement with Bob growling about the past and regret. It’s still a beautiful track, and perhaps I only regard it a bit lower than the rest of the record as I know it means I’ve reached the end of one of the best albums of the 21st Century.

Verdict: It’s fairly obvious that I completely adore this record and cannot recommend it highly enough. The album may have been somewhat overlooked due to its unfortunate release date, and Bob’s late career is often ignored due to the heights of his earlier work, but this is a perfect record that shows he hadn’t slowed down or lost his touch by any means. This album goes straight into his top 10, and a handful of tracks are among his greatest achievements in songwriting and musical composition. Following this, Bob waited another 5 years before releasing yet another masterpiece, and continuing his incredible critical and artistic resurgence.

#love and theft #bob dylan

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tanda-soal · 4 years

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10 Questions Tag

— Rules: answer 10 questions and ask 10 new ones. Thank you for tagging me @readingbooksinisrael 😊

1. What is your favorite subgenre (fairytale retellings, comedy of manners, alternative history, etc.)?

Oof I’m not good at identifying genres tbh. I guess I like realistic stories about people and their life’s struggles, especially against the backdrop of significant historical events, though I prefer 19th or 20th century history. Is that historical fiction...? I truly don’t know. Someone please tell me so I know what to tell people when they ask 😂

2. Do you prefer writing poetry or prose?

Prose. I've never actually written poetry before...

3. What’s your favorite book from where you live (interpret this as broadly or as small as you want to)?

Okay so I'm actually awful at reading Malaysian books and I haven't read that many (we’re working on it!!) But there's this book from Indonesia called Laskar Pelangi (“The Rainbow Troops”) by Andrea Hirata that I absolutely adore. It's about a group of very poor village children who fight for their little school so that it isn't torn down. The film adaptation’s OST has a song, also called Laskar Pelangi, that I love. Also the children in the book are Belintung Malays and I'm Malay...so it's close enough?

4. Do you watch any reality tv?

Nah not anymore...

5. Who is your favorite “sidekick” (from Robin to Ron and Hermione)?

Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto? I'm not sure he's a sidekick per say...the best friend turned antagonist turned absent sidekick..?? Idek but whatever I love him, the world did him dirty and he deserves better, no one can tell me otherwise

6. Do you prefer warm or cold colours?

Cold colours, usually blues and purples

7. What is your favorite type of art to do?

I like redrawing portraits with Adobe Illustrator! I’m not good at drawing from my own imagination (my proportions are always way off) so this kind of digital art works best for me

8. What was your favorite subject in school?

English, History and Economics :)

9. Do you like writing book reviews?

Tbh not really, I always feel unqualified to give a review because I feel like I don’t know as much about literature and writing as other people do. And I feel like how much someone likes a book is very subjective, so I don’t want to accidentally turn someone off from reading a book they would've actually enjoyed. That’s why I’ve started writing book reflections instead, to talk about my biggest takeaways from what I read. Then people can decide for themselves whether or not they want to read it

10. What’s a short story I should read?

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu!!! It’s about a Chinese-American boy who struggles with his identity growing up and his relationship with his mother as a result. I cried reading it the first time in 2013. And then in 2018 I did a whole 20-minute presentation about it for class. So yeah, I kinda love it

— Tagging @buecherworm @melody-of-moon @speculative-imaginaries @booksandtreesplease @probableereading if they’d like to do it and/or haven’t yet! Here are my 10 questions

Do you have a favourite book store? Describe it!

What does your ideal weekend look like?

What’s a book that you didn’t enjoy at first but then ended up loving?

What’s your favourite dessert?

What’s your favourite book genre?

Do you have a creative hobby? What is it?

Who would you say is your role model?

Where’s your favourite reading spot?

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

What’s the biggest life lesson that a book has taught you?

#tag games #tandasoal replies #tandasoal

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fencesandfrogs · 4 years

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an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

#warrior cats #fandom #txt #mine #1st #February #2021 #February 1st 2021 #essay #personal #long #q

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angelpangan · 4 years

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Doodle Fiction, Manga and Graphic Novel

21st century literature

21st century literature per se, is anything that was written and published in the year 2000s. It is a bit too early to give a definite and elaborate description of the 21st century literature in the Philippines and the world.(Cruz 2020)

Trends, traditions and culture are some of the things that we can get a glimpse of when we read a piece of literature. The works in each literary timeline represents the things that people have gone through in each era. We can also see how humans have progressed with technology. Literary also became a form of expressing repressed thoughts of human minds. In addition, it allowed people to break free from the things around them and create their own world, which does not only help the author but also the reader. In this blog, I will tackle about three 21st century literary genres which gave entertainment to people by graphic images and these genres are doodle fiction, manga and graphic novel.

WHAT IS DOODLE FICTION?

Doodle fiction is a literary presentation where the author incorporates doodle writing, drawings and handwritten graphics in place of the traditional font. Drawing enhances the story, often adding humorous elements.

examples:

Timmy Failure: The Cat Stole My Pants

https://www.kobo.com/ie/en/ebook/timmy-failure-the-cat-stole-my-pants

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

http://michigalmom.blogspot.com/2012/11/diary-of-wimpy-kid-giveaway.html

WHAT IS GRAPHIC NOVEL?

Narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using a comic form. The term is employed in broadly manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres.

examples:

The Land of the Magic Flute

http://revista-comics.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-land-of-magic-flute-motion-graphic.html

The Guardian: Digital Deadly Sins

https://www.luerzersarchive.com/en/features/digital/digital:-seven-digital-deadly-sins-by-nfb-and-the-guardian-635.html

WHAT IS MANGA?

Manga loosely refers to a style of cartoons originating in Japan. They usually are published in installments, and depending on their form, can be up to several hundred pages long. Many different genres are available, so they are popular with people of all ages and backgrounds. Known for their in-depth plots and characters, these well-respected works have been drawn for hundreds of years, although the modern version developed starting in the mid-20th century.(Lorna W. 2020)

examples:

Slam Dunk

http://halcyonrealms.com/mangacomics/slam-dunk-manga-new-edition-cover-art-full-collection/

Fullmetal Alchemist

https://www.anime-planet.com/manga/fullmetal-alchemist

Similarities

From what I have read, I learned that all three of these genres possess the characteristic of having an illustration in the story. They all use visuals to enhance the way of telling how the storyline flows. They make use of drawings, sometimes with a narration, to depict what is happening in the scene of a tale.

Difference in elements

Based on what I have observed, the main difference in element between these three genres is their art style. Especially with manga because it came from Japan, which means it will display most of Japanese culture/traditions. Most mangas are originally created in Nihongo(Japanese Language) and only translated for foreign readers to understand. While with doodle fiction, from its name, it is like a “doodle” and even the text’s font is handwritten like which gives off hand drawn aesthetic . Graphic novels are just like manga but the noticeable difference is that graphic novels are colored while manga is mostly made with monochrome tones.

Differences in structure

I learned that most mangas are known for its structure to be read from right to left opposed to the way we normally read which is from left to right. I noticed also that both graphic novel and manga use panels to complete a scene or to give life to the story. Doodle fiction, however, is the most different one among the three genres. It uses a book like form to narrate a story with visual presentation of characters or scenes

REFERENCES:

Friesen C. 21st Century Literary Genres [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/darinjohn2/21st-century-literary-genres-by-calle-friesen

Cruz, K., 2020. Introduction To Philippine Literature. [online] 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World. Retrieved from: <https://21stcenturylitph.wordpress.com/introduction-to-philippine-literature/#:~:text=21st%20century%20literature%20per%20se%2C%20is%20anything%20that,century%20literature%20in%20the%20Philippines%20and%20the%20world.>

Lorna W. (October 7, 2020) What is Manga? Retrieved from: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-manga.htm#

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plagiatkontroll · 4 years

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Plagiatkontroll

Search engines love content. And it's the content through which one can get into the sector of competition in online marketing. But it's very difficult to develop a well composed article. Relevancy, good with spelling, grammar and punctuation are the striking features of quality content. Plagiatkontroll It should be so interesting that the publisher will long to publish and therefore the readers will just like to read it. But the most area of concern within the field of content writing for internet is plagiarism or copying another's content. Plagiarism is, basically, the act of taking the already written content by somebody else and publish it claiming to be own. Where as content are the simplest means of driving traffic to a site, plagiarism is one among the intellectual crimes that an author can commit. The acquisition of plagiarism can lead someone to professional challenges.

Basically, all folks want to read different articles and write-ups to become knowledgeable and keep ourselves updated with information. Even people that are making research also undergo the work of individuals who have done research thereon and carry their research further. Same is that the case with the creative writers. they are going through the writing sorts of people of literature and therefore the outcome is creating an upscale sort of their own.

There are few great writers who are blessed original ideas and literary genre combined with skill of using words to make a world of difference. Their works of art have an extended lasting effect within the mind of the readers. But when it come to providing information through articles and making content together of the medium of selling , originality altogether aspect is somewhat difficult. Of course, writers can ask other articles and posting to urge idea and provides information, but they have to say the source of data and put there own ideas into it.

As far as plagiarism cares , it's in rise lately within the online marketing. However, knowledgeable SEO content writer is conscious of the very fact that plagiarism may be a serious offence in content writing. They know what it costs when their content is detected as copied. If a contract writer or SEO copy writer is providing SEO copywriting services he got to make thorough research on web to urge information about the thing or topic or person he's writing. But in any case the thought and therefore the style must reflect his creativity. Most of the web marketers ignore the importance of considerable writing and choose cheap SEO copywriting services. These service providers use 'copy and paste' function and therefore the customers find yourself with a getting a replica content.

Basically, in content writing two sorts of plagiarism are taken into consideration. (i) Copying a bit of writing from other and publishing it with own name, (ii) taking the thought of others. In SEO content writing both are crimes for the author and will be avoided in any case. the web marketers, hiring content writer for his or her promotion and marketing got to take care about selecting their service provider.

e same from their friends and therefore the social networks play an enormous part in helping them to satisfy like-minded persons.

While content writing, per se, isn't such a troublesome task, there are some content providers who make life tough for the newcomers. The instructions are vague and confusing to even experienced writers. Using 7 paragraphs to compose a 290 words article isn't tough. the matter starts when one is requested to place in 6 different keywords in 6 paragraphs and 4 other keywords within the initial paragraphs. it's but obvious that the newcomer will get confused. To compound their woes, they need to finish 10 articles in 24 hours.

Not knowing what to try to to , these new content writers use search engines to seek out like-minded articles then copy and paste an equivalent . Then they put in paragraph breaks randomly and insert the keywords without even checking if they're maintaining the structure of the sentence. This leads to a plagiarized article. In about 90 minutes all the ten articles are composed and dispatched to the provider. there's little question that these articles are going to be sent to the ashcan faster than you'll wink an eye fixed .

If you've got got sufficient confidence in yourself, and have an honest grasp over English language, there should be no problems in writing a non-plagiarized article. Just have faith in yourself. look for articles on the online by all means. Read them and check out to understand their meaning. Now attempt to write the article using your own vocabulary. it'd be tough initially, but as you retain on progressing, it'll become simple. attempt to write a couple of articles and submit them for evaluation to sites like this one. they're going to assist you bent improve your writing skills.

There are some sites on the online , like Copyscape, that assist you to see out your articles for plagiarism. Just upload your article on a blogging site then paste the URL of the blog site in copyscape's page. it'll detect if your content is matching with the other content on the online and can show you the copied portions by highlighting an equivalent . Most authors don't mind up to 4-5% of matches. The algorithm of Copyscape triggers off if there are 3 simultaneous matching words. If you've got written `Latest Car Reviews' there'll be many websites that have similar content. this is often not plagiarism.

While most providers state explicitly that they expect the composed copy to be freed from grammatical mistakes and will be Copyscape free too, most of them haven't any idea about grammar themselves. attempt to keep your content original. only a few persons write perfect English if passive voice/verb were to be considered. As long as your composition is sensible and passes the Copyscape test, you'll avoid plagiarism and at an equivalent time, retain your provider too.

As our society is progressing, so is that the fall in ethics. People became desperately attached to win-at-any-cost ethos. Sports personalities, politicians, professionals - nobody is left untouched by this practice. The cheating in essay writing has made its way within the education system also . Gone are the times when essay writing was considered to be an art. Today, who likes to spend time in researching and presenting original ideas through essay writing when everyone knows the web can give them what they need at one fourth of the trouble .

Almost altogether the main British and American universities there has been a big growth within the plagiarised cases detection across all faculties. Over the last five years approximately , the changed outlook of scholars towards education generally and writing especially has seen a big tilt. Almost 90% students, though are honest in other dealings, are caught within the act of cheating annually.

The word plagiarism has its roots within the Latin plagiaries, pertaining to someone who has abducted a toddler , a kidnapper in other words. Today, within the world of essay writing the plagiarist is seen as someone who has snatched the work of somebody else and given it its own name. Students sometimes commit plagiarism in essay writing by using the tutorial thinking of somebody else without acknowledging. Other common methods include copying and downloading from net. there's also a trend of paying somebody else for own essay writing, which is justifiable as long because the other party doesn't copy it from another resource.

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bonjourmoncher · 5 years

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Nobody likes to spend money on a new book only to face that overwhelming feeling of disappointment when it doesn’t live up to your expectations. The solution is to check out a few book review sites before you hit the shops. The greater the diversity of opinions you can gather, the more confidence you can have that you’ll enjoy the title. Hamilton Lindley

Which book review and book rating sites are worth considering? Here are the best ones.

1. Goodreads goodreads book reviews

Goodreads is arguably the leading online community for book lovers. If you want some inspiration for which book to read next, this is the site to visit.

There’s an endless number of user-generated reading lists to explore, and Goodreads itself publishes dozens of “best of” lists across a number of categories. You can also join book discussions and reading groups with thousands of members.

You can participate in the community by adding your own rankings to books you’ve read and leaving reviews for other people to check out. Occasionally, there are even bonus events like question and answer session with authors.

2. LibraryThing librarything book review

LibraryThing is the self-proclaimed largest book club in the world. It has more than 2.3 million members and is part-cataloging site/part-social networking site.

With a free account, you can add up to 200 books to your library and share it with other users. But it’s in the other areas where LibraryThing can claim to be one of the best book review sites.

Naturally, there are ratings, user reviews, and tags. But be sure to click on the Zeitgeist tab at the top of the page. It contains masses of information, including the top books by rating, by the number of reviews, by authors, and loads more.

3. Book Riot bookriot book reviews homepage

Book Riot is a blog. It publishes listicles on dozens of different topics, many of which focus on the best books in a certain genre. To give you an idea, some recent articles include 16 Must-Read Space Books and 8 Horror Novels by Latino Authors.

Of course, there’s also plenty of non-reading list content. If you have a general affinity for literature, Book Riot is definitely worth adding to list of websites you browse every day.

4. Bookish bookish best books Hamilton Philip Lindley

Bookish is a site that all members of book clubs should know about. It helps you prep for your next meeting with discussion guides, book quizzes, and book games. There are even food and drink suggestions and playlists suggestions.

But the site is about more than book club meetings. It also offers lots of editorial content. That comes in the form of author interviews, opinion essays, book recommendations, reading challenges, and giveaways.

Be sure to look at the Must-Read Books section of the site regularly. Every two weeks, a new Staff Reads article goes live.

5. Booklist booklist book review

Booklist is a print magazine which also offers an online portal. Trusted experts from the American Library Association write all the reviews.

You can see snippets of reviews for different books. However, to read the full reviews, you will need to subscribe. An annual plan costs $295 per year.

6. Fantasy Book Review fantasy book review ratings

Fantasy Book Review should be high on the list for anyone who is a fan of fantasy works.

The site publishes reviews for both children’s books and adults’ books. It has a book of the month section, a rating system of 0-10 for books it’s reviewed, and a continually updated list of must-read books for each year.

You can search through the old must-read archives, going right back to 1980.

7. LoveReading lovereading best book reviews

LoveReading is one of the most popular book review sites in the UK, but American audiences will find it to be equally useful.

The site is divided into fiction and non-fiction works. In each area, it publishes weekly staff picks, books of the month, debuts of the month, ebooks of the month, audiobooks of the month, and the nationwide bestsellers. Each book on every list has a full review that you can read for free.

Make sure you also check out the LoveReading Loves section. You’ll find themed reading lists such as World War One Literature and Summer Reading 2019.

8. Kirkus kirkus book review

Kirkus has been involved in producing book reviews since the 1930s. The site critiques the week’s bestselling books, along with a simple Buy It, Borrow It, or Skip It rating.

As you’d expect, you’ll also find dozens of “best of” lists and individual books reviews across many categories and genres.

And while you’re on the site, make sure you click on the Kirkus Prize section. You can look at all the past winners and finalists, complete with the accompanying reviews of their books.

9. r/books reddit rbooks recommendations

As is so often the case, Reddit has a subreddit dedicated to book reviews and reading lists.

The subreddit has weekly scheduled threads about a particular topic or genre. Anyone can then chip in with their opinions about which books are recommendable.

Several new threads are published every day. Recent threads have included subjects such as Literature of the 1910s, Literature of Singapore, and Favorite Beach Reads.

You’ll also discover a weekly recommendation thread, a weekly What are you Reading? discussion, and frequent AMAs.

10. YouTube

YouTube is not the type of place that immediately springs to mind when you think of the best book review sites online.

Nonetheless, there are several engaging YouTube channels which frequently offer opinions on books they’ve read.

Some of the most notable book review YouTube channels include Better Than Food: Book Reviews, Little Book Owl, PolandBananasBooks, and Rincey Reads.

We’ve written about the best YouTube channels for book lovers if you would like to learn more.

The Top 10 YouTube Channels for Anyone Who Loves Books The Top 10 YouTube Channels for Anyone Who Loves Books While some YouTubers are busy writing books, there's a whole section of YouTube dedicated just to reading and discussing books. Say Hello to BookTube! READ MORE Don’t Forget Amazon! The 10 book review sites we’ve discussed will appeal to different types of readers. Some people will be more comfortable with the easy-to-interpret book rating systems; others will prefer extensive reviews written by experienced professionals.

And remember, if you don’t want to dig into endless book reviews, you can also use Amazon as a quick-and-dirty way to gauge people’s opinion on a title.

To learn more, make sure you read our article on the best books to read this year and the best books for geeks to read. Hamilton P Lindley

#hamiltonlindley

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jessica-marie-baumgartner · 5 years

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tagged by @chris-the-dragonslayer

Rules: Get tagged, answer 11 questions and 11 new questions for the people after you.

1) Do you have a favorite OC?

I’m quite attached to the children in my Embracing Entropy series. Probably because they are based on my kids. But the book is currently out of print and I have some editing to work on before finding a 2nd print run publisher for it since my previous editor dropped the ball.

2) Which WIP has changed the most? Why?

My current WIP is a monster that is weaving one hell of a spell. It’s a nonfiction spirituality book, so of course it should. It’s just a tall order and it’s drawing things out of me that I didn’t know existed.

3) Do you enjoy worldbuilding? Do you consider yourself good at it?

I love shaping worlds from nothing. It’s pulling me back and making it believable for readers that’s the problem. My fiction is all over the place, that’s why I balance it with my nonfiction.

4) Have you ever made a conlang/fictional language for a WIP

YES! The aliens in Embracing Entropy have their own language that took a lot of planning and linguistics research.

5) Do you like to keep faceclaims of your OCs? Do you find them online or draw them yourself?

No. Everything I write is kept in my brain.

6) Has anyone ever made any fanfic or fan art for you?

I had a talented instagram artist do a piece based on my short story, “Resurfacing.” He drew one of the seahorses from the scuba diving adventure and used a quote in the picture. I was so thrilled. I asked to buy it but it’s part of a sketchbook project so he was reluctant to sell haha

7) Who is your writing buddy/confidant you always come to about your work?

My husband Dash Crowley. he knows what I need to hear and how to get through to me when things get tough.

8) Big or small cast?

I read this as big or small cats haha

I let the story decide how many cast members come in. It often starts small and more characters just come in without asking. They can be very rude sometimes.

In regards to CATS, I love big and small ones. I used to work as a veterinarian for one of my area’s top zoologists so the big cats have their special place in my heart. Especially African servile, but I truly believe they should be left in the wild.

9) Were any of your characters inspired by others you saw or read about?

I don’t generally base my work on other characters. real people inspire me more.

10) Favorite trope(s)?

I used to be a sucker for tragedies, but the older I get, the more value I see in stories of redemption.

11) How do you waste time not writing?

I never waste time haha I hike, swim, dance, sing, play guitar, chase butterflies, climb trees, test out local restaurants and annoy my family. Wasting time is boring.

11 new questions:

1. Which is your current WIP?

It’s a giant book about the magick of instinct and how humans are less domesticated than we think we are.

2. How many WIP’s do you have?

I always have a few going at one time. I currently have 3 going. The rule of 3 usually works well here.

3. If you could live in any of them, which one would it be?

I AM currently living in my major WIP and I love it.

4. How do you come up with titles for them?

I suck at titles. I usually have to beg my husband for help. He is the title master haha

5. What’s your worst writing habit / habits?

Writing until my fingers throb.

6. What’s your favorite style of writing?

First person works that were written by hand.

7. How many books do you read per year? (You can always guess)

It depends on the year. Usually about a dozen.

8. What’s your all time favorite book?

That’s like asking which of my children I love most. I could divide it up by genre.

Children’s picture book=The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Patterson

Middle Grade=Matilda by Roald Dahl

Nonfiction=Born Free by Joy Adamson

Literary Fiction=Wild Ink by Richard Smyth

Classic Literature=Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Fantasy=The Dragon’s Milk series by Susan Fletcher

Sci-Fi=The martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Short Story=Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

9. How many paperback books do you have?

You’re seriously asking me to count? I have no idea. I have 4 massive floor to ceiling book cases in my house that are packed and overflowing.

10. E-Books or paperbacks - which one do you prefer?

Ebooks for a first time read, paperbacks for the books I truly love.

11. Did I make 11 good writeblr questions?

Sure haha

Tagging 11 of my followers at random: @bookeworm94 @monkishpoet @books-are-my-life20 @cozy-pumpkinn @fuckyeahreading @hide-in-imagination @justawritingaid @joannethewitch @listentothestories @nomorerealitys-blog @poeticallypoetic

#writing #writers #writing questions

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rafaelafranzen · 5 years

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In which I answer many questions about books

I came across this survey from @drawlight and I thought it’d be fun to fill! Fun fact: I’ve been an unabashed devotee of literature and stories all my life and am a stalwart champion of connecting people with stories – I’ve spent most of the last decade attending and volunteering at literature festivals and crossed fingers, am trying to get a job there. I don’t do the tagging thing, but if you’d like to fill this tag me back so I can discover your literary world!

I, like everyone else, am drowning in Good Omens right now, including the script book and original publication, so I’ll omit them from my responses for a bit of variety.

1. What book are you reading now?

Kraken – China Miéville. Yet another book about an impending apocalypse set in London, because I’m a sucker for undercurrents of fantasy in places I’ve walked in. This one’s a dark comedy about a squid-worshiping cult, where the initiating event for The End of the World is a forty-foot giant squid specimen being stolen from the Natural History Museum.

2. What are your favourite books?

I’m a bit of an odd duck in that my favourites change all the time at different points in my life. I hate to do the thing where you divide things up by genre because I think stories are valid in so many shapes and forms but it’s an easy shorthand – a few top favourites:

Literary Fiction: Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither – Sara Baume (a book about a misfit man who brings a misfit dog into his life. I’ll never get tired of recommending this. The poetic turn of prose in this book is astonishing, and I’m reminded of it every time I read something by Drawlight, actually).

SF/F: Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (again pushes all my right buttons with undercurrents of another world in places I’ve been) and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu – the titular story in this anthology made me cry on the train, in public – you can find it in full here. It’s a quick and heartbreaking read about the tenuous relationship one so often has with their parents.

Short Story: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble – Julian Gough (A economic satire and the first fiction piece ever published by the Financial Times, which was subsequently adapted to a Radio Play by the BBC which is also available in the link if you prefer listening. Will make you clutch your sides with laughter, teach you about securitizations, futures and hedge funds and global market forces without the need for you to get a degree in economics first, and ensure you never look at goats the same way again.)

3. How did you learn to read?

Other than the obvious – school, my mother used to take me to the library each weekend when I was a kid and let me borrow 4 books using my library card, and another 4 books with hers. I’d devour all 8 and rinse and repeat the next weekend.

4. What foreign languages do you read?

I studied Chinese as my second language for 12 years and subsequently lost pretty much all of it due to lack of usage after. I can still muddle my way through a menu but that’s about it.

5. What’s the funniest book you ever read?

The Teenage Textbook – Adrian Tan (I’m sure I’ve read plenty since that are better, but this is always the first one I think of. A bit of local nostalgia.)

6. What books have changed the way you look at the world or the way you live your life?

Without a doubt, This Is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo You Yenn. It is a non-fiction book told through the lens of people in poverty, and just as equally, from vantage point of the privileged, us folk who are more or less living in the median of society and the different frames of ‘common sense’ that need to be considered from these perspectives. It is a book about how acknowledging poverty and inequality leads to uncomfortable revelations about our society and ourselves. And it is about how once we see, we cannot, must not, unsee. It is a book that might sober you up for the rest of your life.

It was one of the books heavily drawn on to produce a play titled “Underclass” which I once described to a friend as “the wokest shit sandwich you’ll ever eat”, and I mean this in the best kind of way – it’s the most difficult pill I was ever made to swallow. It left me questioning every assumption I had about poverty, inequality and human dignity, left me squirming and uncomfortable in the way we gloss over the marginalized, and forced me to ask hard questions about the systems of society and who provides for those who fall through the cracks. I saw it a year ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it.

7. What books have affirmed what you believe about life or the way you look at things?

Not entirely sure how to answer this one, I take away bits from every book and media property I encounter. I suppose if I would recommend anything, especially from the perspective of a writer, that rejection is par for the course so long as you keep forging on, and keep at it, then Stephen King’s On Writing. And on the love for the parts of your life that are odd, glorious and to be cherished, Sue Perkins Spectacles. Her letter to her dog Pickles in the book, available here, is one of the greatest confessions of adoration I’ve ever read, and will speak to every love you’ve held close in your life)

8. What are some of the scariest books you ever read?

To be frank I don’t read much horror, though I used to as a kid. I don’t have enough memory of any specifics to give titles.

9. About how many books do you think you have read in your life?

I’ve not the slightest idea. Probably hundreds.

10. About how many books do you own?

Currently, probably between 50-100, only limited by my bookshelf and now much it can hold. Most of my major book-purchases come around during the Singapore Writers Festival, so annually I drop between $100-200 on new books signed by authors I’ve met in person. Every 2-3 years I cycle out books from my bookshelf I no longer care to go back to and donate it to the book exchange shelf in my local library to make room for new titles.

12. How much would you say you’ve paid in library fines in your life?

Probably less than $5. I’m pretty neurotic about returning things on time.

11. How many books per month do you usually borrow from the library?

Probably less than one to be honest, but when the Writers Festival swings around, loads, to get an advance look at the authors that are coming I may enjoy the work of. Nowadays I usually buy my books.

13. Do you read in bed?

A resounding yes. It’s how I screwed up my eyesight as a kid!

14. Do you ever read while walking or driving?

Sometimes when walking but often I’m just scrolling reddit or catching up on current affairs and UK politics (I don’t live there but I can’t help following it). I don’t drive but I do read books when I commute on public transport.

15. OK, let’s get real. Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever read a book?

What, pray, be a strange place to read a book?

16. Do you listen to audiobooks?

Not particularly, as I find I can absorb information much faster reading words on a page. I also find it hard to multitask when something’s being read out because I want to pay attention to the story. I do, however, listen to radio plays adapted from books!

17. Has anyone ever read aloud to you or you to them?

Plenty, being on the receiving end of readings from many authors from attending the Writers Festival and events at independent bookstores. For me reading: loads of times workshopping my own work while I was pursuing my creative writing minor in university.

18. What was the most difficult book to read?

I attempted Lolita by Nabokov when I was about 14 or 15 and don’t think I got past the first 50 pages.

19. What books do you intend to read but keep putting off?

Craptons. Including the aforementioned Good Omens which I’ve owned for 7 years but never finished. Others that have been sitting on my shelf for the longest time now include The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman (Lyra, my chosen name that I now use professionally, came from the protagonist of Pullman’s His Dark Materials). As you can see my stable of books mainly tend towards SF/F.

20. Do you buy new or used books, paperbacks or hardcovers, leather or collector’s?

Absolutely! I buy mostly new – see Writers Festival book acquisitions from the earlier question. Mostly paperbacks but occasionally hardcovers if the price difference isn’t too dear. Secondhand bookstores are a dying trade here so I don’t get much opportunity to shop for used. I’m also constantly wary about how much room I have on my shelves and pick my purchases carefully. I usually don’t buy collectors editions because I don’t like having to be precious with my books - they’re there to enjoy, to crack the spines in and get their corners banged up from being hastily stuffed into bags. With special editions I feel an odd obligation to keep them pristine.

21. How do you feel about writing in books?

Depends. If it’s a book I specifically want for reference, especially non-fiction I don’t mind marking them up. Otherwise I typically don’t.

22. Do you lend books?

I do! There have been books I’ve lent out for years and not sought back though. I do prefer to get them back eventually because books I do keep on my shelves usually hold the memory of the time I had with them, and are usually paperback editions whose covers I enjoyed and are no longer in print. It never feels quite the same to just get a new copy.

23. What were your favourite books as a child?

I read with such volume and variety when I was a child I actually hardly remember specific titles. I’m sure there was Dahl in there somewhere. An awful lot of Blyton and Nancy Drew/Famous Five which are now horrendously outdated but from which I still hold onto fond imagined memories of British summer days and mysterious nights, which are experiences I still sort of seek out when I go to the UK on rambles or hikes.

24. What children’s books do you enjoy as an adult or young adult?

If we’re talking specifically Children’s books and not YA, almost anything written by Kes Gray (Oi Frog!/The Trouble with Daisy series) and Julian Gough (Rabbit and Bear series, whose first book is a great introduction to the concept of gravity, hibernation, and the nutrition of rabbit poo). I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Terry Pratchett’s Discword series, which includes several YA titles but even the main books in the series are fantastic reading for kids I think.

25. Do you ever read the ending first?

Oh gosh, why would anyone do that to themselves?

26. grab the book nearest to you (I picked something non-GO related), go to page 29 and type line 17 (if there isnt a line 17 type line 3)

“You always tell me that when someone is special, then the system has to make an exception." Connect (Julian Gough) – a cheeky one-of a kind signed edition I got from Julian’s apartment in Berlin when I visited him a couple months ago, combining the UK book jacket with US deckled-edge hardback. He started out as a writer I admired, then a mentor, and is now a fond friend.

#personal #wew long post is long #it was fun to look back and think about the books that were notable to me though!

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hub-pub-bub · 5 years

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Whether you’re currently writing a book, querying agents or on submission to publishers, allow me to share this small-but-important truth: There’s an editor out there right now—sorting stacks of pitch letters, book proposals and manuscripts, thumbing through literary agent submissions, reading selections of the manuscripts she requested from authors directly—who is seeking to buy a book similar to yours.

So, in a sense, your future editor is out there thinking about you.

Picture this person for a moment: Perhaps she’s an associate editor for a mid-level imprint, working her way up at a growing publishing company. She majored in creative writing or English literature or journalism in college, where she developed a passion for Jane Austen or Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion or Anne Lamott. Whoever her muse, she knows good writing when she sees it. She wrote articles for the school newspaper or poems for the literary journal, nabbed a good internship after college and she’s worked hard ever since to finally land her dream job—acquiring and editing books full time and getting paid for it!

The 7 Deadly Sins of Novelists (According to Editors)

Now she fills the role of champion for her authors and books. She pitches the books she discovers to her own internal publishing team, during which she makes a case for both the editorial and business side for acquiring said manuscripts.

Her boss expects her to acquire a handful of new books every year, and though she’s still learning and growing into the job, in part, her performance is tied to the performance of her selections. If she acquires and takes a huge financial risk on a book and it bombs a year later, it reflects on her directly. Of course, like anyone in a new position, she needs time to grow and, sure, she might have more seasoned editors guiding her through this journey. But eventually, given a couple of years, her acquisitions become hers to own.

Does all of this create a little pressure on our friendly associate editor? You bet.

Every editor’s list of acquisitions is viewed (especially by management) as their own personal business within the greater publishing company, complete with its own profit and loss statement (P and L). As a result, each individual book might get more or less scrutiny depending on how it fits into the greater scheme. The worse the editor’s books perform, the harder time she’ll have convincing her team to take risks on her projects in the future.

When you’re writing a book, preparing a proposal or query (for publishers or literary agents, because agents make decisions based on whether they think a publisher will be interested), it’s important to think about your future editor. He is a human being, just like you, and every day he is facing the very real difficulties of the changing market, the shifting retail landscape and his own internal company pressures. He, like many editors in this business, hopes to come across something special—a work of unique power or appeal or finesse or authority—that makes him feel like he did in college when he read Jack Kerouac.

As someone who once sat in the editor’s chair at publishers large and small, I know those simultaneous pressures and hopes firsthand. My first publishing job was as a junior editor acquiring and editing 10–12 books a year for a small, family-owned press. To be honest, for a long time I had no idea what I was doing—but I worked hard and soaked up every lesson I could. Despite my inexperience, over the course of several fairly successful years, I found myself the publisher of that small imprint: hustling to make budgets; publishing competitive, influential books; learning the fast-changing worlds of marketing and publicity; and managing a team that shared my goals.

1. Do Your Homework

Every category and genre of publishing is governed by unspoken rules. In the world of traditional trade book publishing, fiction and nonfiction aren’t the same. For instance, most editors sign nonfiction book deals based on one to two chapters. But for fiction, and especially with first-time novelists, editors typically need to read the full manuscript before a deal is done.

If you’re submitting the next high-concept business book to an experienced agent, or an editor at a business imprint, make sure you’ve done your research. Do you know what other books the literary agent has represented, or the editor has acquired in the recent past? Has that press recently published a book like yours?

Immerse yourself in books similar to your own. Read in the category, but also study the jacket, the acknowledgements page, the author’s blog and their previous books. Conduct industry research on publishing houses, editors and literary agents through sites like Publishers Weekly. Attend a conference, watch lectures on YouTube. Read relevant articles, essays and blog posts.

To know a category is to know the world in which your future editor lives every day.

2. Use Concise Communication

The volume of reading material that accrues on the desks of editors and literary agents is immense. These folks read mountains of content every day, sifting through stacks of submissions for eye-catching queries.

Which is why yours should get right to the point—in such a way that compels them to read more. Don’t belabor your initial synopsis or write a three-page email. If in doubt, the fewer words the better. Share a little about yourself, but only the most relevant points.

Most important: Any sample writing you include should read fast and clean. Editors aren’t looking for reasons to reject, per se, but when inundated, it’s far too easy to dismiss a submission for little things like spelling errors, awkward phrasing or poor formatting.

3. Sign With an Agent

Inking a contract with a good literary agent can help avoid some of the above issues. When on submission to publishers, agents almost always get a faster read than unsolicited queries—especially in certain categories. There are several reasons why this is the case. First, most literary agents take the time to build relationships (and a level of trust) with acquisition editors in the genres they work within. Second, because publishing professionals have such limited time, agents effectively serve as a filter, siphoning in projects with higher-caliber content. Plus, most have also taken the time to work with their authors to develop and shape their book concepts, which adds additional value for the publisher.

I’ve also had countless conversations with authors who published their books agentless, and suddenly found themselves in a strange new world with no idea how to navigate it. Their books released to the world and their lofty publishing dreams slowly wilted as they made mistakes, agreed to bad contractual terms, blindly trusted editors, or neglected their marketing and publicity campaigns. The best literary agents act as a trusted guide, thinking through these details long before a deal ever comes to fruition.

4. Grow Your Platform

Here’s a fact of life in modern publishing: Attracting (and holding) attention is difficult in any medium, especially in a world of social media, streaming television and unlimited self-publishing. As a result, presses look for projects with a built-in audience. It’s thus through a platform that authors can do just that.

I define platform as any outward-facing method a writer uses to attract a readership prior to publishing—which will, in theory, translate to that readership purchasing the writer’s book. It can manifest as anything from a YouTube channel, podcast, blog or Twitter following to an email newsletter or college classroom.

Think of your writing as a business, and take the initiative to build your influence via a robust platform, which will only increase your chances of publishing.

5. Forge a Relationship

Once you sign a book deal, you’ll be assigned a “champion.” More often than not, that person is an acquisitions editor or developmental editor, but it may also be the marketing manager or the publisher herself. While every press is different, often that person is your point of contact throughout the publishing process—from beginning to end.

Whoever your point person, be intentional in building that relationship. If possible, meet your champion face-to-face, or at least set up regular phone calls. Get to know her. This small investment of time and effort on your part can pay off big in the long run.

I’ve seen authors send a nice handwritten note after a meeting or a phone call, thanking the participants for their time. And sometimes I’ve seen those simple thank yous tacked to the wall of an editor’s office years later. A small, kind act goes a long way, and when you need a favor down the road, your champion will remember you.

Guide to Literary Agents 2019

6. Remember to Engage

Shift your thinking about the publishing process: Turning in your manuscript is not the end, but the beginning. The more engaged you are at each subsequent stage, the better chance your book has of making an impact in the market. Writing a terrific manuscript is step one, but you must also help to market, publicize and sell.

Seek to be included in the key publishing decisions along the way, including the final title, cover design, marketing and publicity strategy and so on. Believe it or not, each of these things is regularly decided without the author’s input—but by becoming a part of these decisions, you can bring your vision to the table.

7. Be Your Book’s CMO

Remember: You are your book’s Chief Marketing Officer. You are its first and last advocate. Be clear that this book is still your baby, while remaining cordial and professional.

Consider setting aside some of your advance (if you received one) to help market your book when the time comes. Thinking that far ahead is tough, but every bit of marketing is important: strong Book 1 sales pave the way for Book 2.

If you know your publisher’s marketing strategy (presuming you’ve stayed engaged in the process), then you can supplement it. For example, if the publisher focuses on store placement, ads in industry magazines, focused banner ads and a book tour, then perhaps you invest in hiring a freelance publicist to line up TV, radio or print interviews.

Once you’ve garnered a book deal, it’s easy to sit back and let the professionals handle everything for you. But resist, for your own sake (and the sake of your book). Your book is your baby. When it gets out into the world, you’re the best one to teach it how to walk.

You’ve devoted hours, days, months—even years— to writing and editing your novel or nonfiction book. With all that time invested, it’s natural to want recognition for your hard work and dedication. Take your writing one step further and tackle the publishing process. When you enroll in this online course, you’ll learn the details of the query letter format and how to write a query letter that catches the attention of agents and publishers. Learn more and register.

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