RIASS stuff:
Book Review: A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd'Rating: 
Book Review: Alison Wonderland by Helen Smith'Rating:
Giveaway: The Glamour by Christopher Priest
Interview: Shirley Marr on being the 'David Bowie of YA'
Other bookish stuff:
Nine books not to read at the beach'On the Beach immediately came to mind, so Im glad to see it on this list!
The DOJ filing in the agency price fixing case'The free market for the win, apparently.
My quick thoughts and some quotable quotes:'Low'prices, fierce rivalries, and innovation are among the core ambitions of free markets. Contrary to'the apparent views of many commenters, the goal of antitrust law is to use rivalry to keep prices'low for consumers' benefitAs noted above, the antitrust laws are not intended, after all, to protect firms from the'rigours of a competitive market.
I also found the statements on page 29 about Amazons business position interesting. This section notes that its purely speculative to assume that Amazon is going to be in any sort of monopolistic position in the future, and notes that there has been steady competition from competitors such as B&N, Apple and Sony. The speculative nature of the future of publishing seems to be reiterated, and I wonder how different things might have been were we not facing the huge turmoil introduced by ebooks.
It also discusses the fact that Amazons deep discounting is different from unlawful predatory pricing, (the latter being where prices do not reflect actual cost at all, and are merely designed to shove others out of the running) with discounts and loss leading something that is to be celebrated; Amazons profit margins are used as evidence for this.
Romance agents on what they do and how to catch their eye'I think the agent/author relationship is critical; editors move'jobs'yet agents'should be'a constant in an authors life.
The New Yorker'interviews Zadie Smith about an excerpt from her forthcoming novel.'I used to have this envious feeling towards the type of writer who never gives a second thought to whether their readers might not all be white and middle class and highly educated. That's the whole world to them. All their characters sound like the author and like each other and like the reader.
My quick thoughts:'Having had one of my reviews terribly (and I think deliberately) misinterpreted recently, Im ever more conscious of the relationship between author and reader, and how any type of writing is necessarily a conversation between the two. I construct a particular argument, but then my reader reinterprets thatand each is influenced by things like background, class, gender, personal experience and so on. It is very easy to make assumptions about a reader, and its also very easy for a reader to make assumptions about an author or about the book thats being written.
For example, how often do you simply assume that a narrator is white unless otherwise? How often do you assume that any sort of narrative voice belongs to a male unless told otherwise? How often do you assume particular things about a writer based on their characters? All of these things require ongoing reconstruction of texts as we read and certain assumptions are done away with (hoping, of course, that they are done away with). Often, no matter how progressive or critical we think we are, its possible to be caught out by these massively socialised assumptionsIll never forget my reading of Adrienne Kresss'Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, which promptly dashed my own assertions that as a feminist I read critically for issues of gender. Apparently thats not the case, as much as Id like it to be.
A tribute to the wonderful Margaret Mahy
Writing is not about lightning strikes and full moons. It is about writing.
If I lived in the US I would totally go to Rare Book School.
Also, on a similar note, and I know that Im probably the last person in the world to learn this, but did you know that Googles Recaptcha not only fights spam, but helps decipher old books? The words that show up in Recaptcha are ones that computers are unable to read, and so by filling them in, readers are helping to transcribe old texts.
Adults and kids alike are falling hard for ebooks'The article notes that its interesting that kids ebooks arent discounted, something I realised the other day when I was browsing for some middle grade titles to add to my Kindle. The reasons for this, Id say are a) the people who buy titles for young readers arent actually young readerstheyre parents and b) the bulk of titles for young readers are bought through libraries, and print copies are still the thing du jour.
Nosy Crow is offering a free childrens book app
The questions you have about ebooks but feel too embarrassed to ask
Wrist cuffs made from book spines
Alan Garner and George R.R. Martin are to receive World Fantasy Awards for Lifetime Achievement
On pink books and fairy princesses
On the weekend I was doing some volunteering for a book-themed organisation here in Melbourne, and my job involved sorting and organising kids books to be sent out to various clients. I was astonished first by the number of movie tie-in books I found, and second by the hugely gendered approach of so many of these books.
Remember the teeth gnashing over the differences between'The Dangerous Book for Boys and'The Daring Book'for Girls? Where girls are instructed in how to play cats cradle and make friendship bracelets, while boys get to read about how to go fishing and learn how to find true North?
Yeah, well, thats the least of it. Were talking entire shelves of pink starkly divided from their army colour counterparts. More princesses than any sort of monarchy can surely support, and so many trucks and cars that its a wonder the many roads of literature arent perpetually jammed by traffic. Its teeth-grindingly overt, and its cheap, nasty marketing thats all about thumbing its nose at equality in the name of profits.
There were entire shelves filled with this stuff, and this makes me terribly sad for young readers, and for people like me who want their kids to be able to grow up with other options.
You know, its no wonder that parents think that this princess vs cars gender business is biological when it is utterly impossible for any young person to grow up without having these sorts of revoltingly outmoded gender messages rubbed into their faces in a glittery explosion of pink.
Its certainly not all publishers who are at faultcertain book packagers and some particular companies known for their princess-oriented approaches are by and large the ones who are represented here. But the scope of these companies mean that their books are cheaply produced on a mass scale, and thus are available cheaply and broadly in supermarkets and places like Target and Big W. Theyre courting the mass market, not the niche, and thats even more worrisome.
You shouldnt have to'search for books that arent painfully, embarrassingly gendered.
Perhaps what we need is some of this:
Im buying my 9 year old an ereader for Christmas, I imagine she will be happy to read both on that and continue reading print books
I hope the MG ebook market opens up a little moreits my favourite genre, but the books are so pricey in e-format that the stingy person in me does balk a little!
That Recaptcha thing is so cool! Ill be a little less annoyed next time I have to do it now.
I hate gendered everything for kids. Have you seen Total Girl TV and KZone TV on 7Two and 7mate in the mornings. It always astonishes me whats selected as girls shows and boys. It makes me mad. Cant kids just be kids? Cant people just be people?! I love pink sparkly things, but not because Im a girl a boy should have every right to like pink sparkly things too!
Also I want those Bronte dolls.
Thats exactly what I said, Belle! Its just the Recaptcha ones, though, not the annoying Captcha ones used on Blogger etc.
It sounds like Im not missing much by not having watched those shows, but I definitely see it when I go and visit my parents. I have a little brother and sister (both primary school age), and the division between girly entertainment and boy entertainment is appalling. Pink has just been completely coopted by all of this frivolous stuff, and its hard to legitimately like it as a colour now because of the princess associations. :(
I have an 18 month old daughter and have been thinking a lot about gender in childrens books lately. I never used to think about it at all, just accepted the norm. And now I see how problematic that is. So many of the problems related to sexism that exist are ingrained in our thinking from how the world was presented to us as children. I heard someone recently say that half of the books girls are exposed to will feature a male protagonist, while almost none of the books boys are exposed to will feature a female protagonist.
There are many books in which the character doesnt have a defined gender (Hooray for Fish is one that springs to mind) and with these books parents have the opportunity to characterise as they see fit.
Thanks for visiting, Mark. Its something that Ive become very aware of since my little brother and sister were born (both are only in primary school), and since getting married and thinking about having kids of my own. Of course, the problem is that no matter how hard you try to support gender neutral play, all the other kids are being roped into the pink princess/blue truck phenomenon, so your kids will be pressured to bow to those norms in order to fit in.
Ive noticed a lot more female protagonists in YA of late, but relatively few in middle years books. Im presently reading How to Train Your dragon, and at 110 pages in, I dont think Ive come across one female character at all.
I love the idea of gender-nonspecific characters and narrators. One thing that can be mind boggling is to read a text with the assumption that the narrator (assuming the narrator isnt the same voice as the protagonist) is a female, and not a male. This particularly applies to the classics, and can make for a very different interpretation. The same can be done with class or race as well