The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

And I mean LOST. If you like urban fantasy or you’re willing to try fantasy but you’re not big on monsters or you just really want something to completely suck all of your time and existence for about a week, you really need to read Brent Weeks’ The Way of Shadows. It came out about a year and a half ago, and I just read it on the rec of one of my ex-students and wow. SO good. The only problem with it, is that it’s 688 pages.

And it’s the first book in a trilogy.

And you won’t want to stop after the first one.

So I’m almost done with book 2 Shadow’s Edge (which is also well over 600 pages and I started last night immediately after turning the last page of TWoS and will finish before I go to sleep tonight and, I’m sure, start book 3), and I’m shocked I got my nose out of the book long enough to write this. It has one of the COOLEST protagonists I’ve read in a looooong time. I am completely lusting over Kylar Stern, and this isn’t even vaguely a romance novel – it’s a fantasy about assassins in a fictional world called Midcyru and awar that is raged between a mafia run country and the invading barbarians from the north with their goddess of death. So wicked awesome (and does at times require a pretty strong stomach).

This book has also made me think about a lot of writing type things and what is Weeks doing so right.

This book is a great study in the power of secondary characters. If I had one issue with this book it’s that I wish I’d written down a list of characters as I encountered them because omg there’s like five million. And I should have crossed them off as they die (which would be most of the list, but you know, that’s apparently the way of fantasy now… Thank George!).

But from a writing perspective, he’s done a great job of giving them the work of making this gritty world real – so that even when our assassin hero does crappy things, he is still a hero compared to the rest of the world. And I can’t BELIEVE how much I let the main character get away with… and I still, as I’ve mentioned, love him. He’s a freaking assassin, for crying out loud. I have never in my life thought that was a profession I’d get behind, even fictionally.

But the secondary characters can do… anything. They can be depressingly hopeless… and teach the hero a lesson. They can make the completely wrong decision… and then when the hero goes with them out of love or loyalty, it’s no longer the protagonist’s fault for being too stupid to live, it’s his strength for being so connected. They are so useful to a writer. I need to think and concentrate on that. I guess in my writing world we’re so encouraged to have the hero and/or heroine on every page that it’s hard to give secondaries their glory.  But dang, Weeks does it. And I’m always excited to see the protagonist again… but I’m not sorry when I’m involved with somebody else, like I so often am in other books.

I’ve rarely read a book with so dern many well fleshed out, fascinating secondary characters. Like, I need a map with all of them sometimes, but once I remember which one this guy is again, it’s awesome.

So… if you have a reasonably strong stomach, read this book!

Jamie Oliver (the good) started a show called Food Revolution that’s on ABC Friday’s at 8:00 (or… Hulu for those busy on Friday night). It’s about changing the way people eat, particularly in school cafeterias (the bad). In a long ago blog that has since been deleted, I whined endlessly when the Texas government unveiled their new health food policy for schools. It meant I couldn’t offer my kids a peppermint before a test… but the cafeteria could still consider french fries a vegetable. Seriously. My 25 calorie good luck peppermint was doing soooooooo much more damage than the chili-cheese fries half the cafeteria ate for lunch.

Parents, watch this show. See what your kids are eating for lunch. What he’s showing is not exclusive to this one school in this one town. The government is feeding your kids crap based on an outdated food pyramid… and budgetary constraints, but really think about this. What’s more important, a computer or a long, healthy life? And if this is a tough debate in your mind, what is that saying about us as a society and the way we value human life? The way our children eat is a huge part of why our nation is so dangerously overweight. Heck, even if you’re NOT a parent, this is still a big concern because YOU WILL BE PAYING THE HOSPITAL BILLS for these people when they grow up and have diabetes at 25 and heart failure at 40.

Some stats quoted from his research (opens a pdf with the rest of his stats; this is just a sampling):

• Obesity accounts for nearly 10% of US healthcare spending. This amounts to $147 billion annually. Smoking, by comparison, costs only $96 billion.
• The federal school meals budget is $11.9 billion a year. By comparison, healthcare spending on obesity is already $147 billion.
• After smoking, obesity is America’s biggest cause of premature death .
• It is also a major contributor to the health problems which are the leading killer diseases: it’s linked to 70% of heart disease; after smoking, it’s the biggest cause of cancer; and over 80% of type 2 diabetes is related to being overweight.
• Type 2 diabetes… used to be an adult disease, appearing over age 40, but it is increasingly being found in teenagers, even children as young as eight.
• Nearly one in three (32%, 23 million) American children are obese or overweight.
• Today’s generation of children are predicted to be the first which will die at a younger age than their parents due to obesity-related bad health.

Jamie Oliver won the Ted Prize for his work. If you’ve got some time, check out the video of his speech. It’s thought provoking and something I really hope people listen to.

Convinced? Check out his site and sign the petition to provide healthier food for children in schools!

The Arrogant

On a completely different note…

I shouldn’t be snarky about an author. It’s unprofessional and bad form. So I… won’t. But if you want to see somebody ELSE be snarky, well check out this interview with Nicholas Sparks (who I agree with completely when he says he doesn’t write romance novels. In a romance novel, the main character never dies of a shipwreck or cancer for the deep literary purpose of inducing a hanky-grab. That being, as he says, his claim to literary fame as opposed to him being a common genre novelist, because you don’t know what’s going to happen in his books. Cancer or a shipwreck. Oh, no, wait, he’s genreless unless, like him, you consider Sophocles, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Hemingway to be a single genre that he’s a part of. Yes. He says that in the interview.) (Dang… was that snarky? Bad Garren… But it was pretty much all quotes from him.)

USA Today interviews Sparks and Cyrus regarding “Last Song”

Cracked, love that site, has it’s take on the interview.

It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.

I didn’t realize that I didn’t read anymore.  But now I’ve been reading about the iPad (and I’m really going to resist commenting on the name, other than this aside in which I remind everyone that the name is infinitely commentable) and the pricing wars between Amazon and Mcmillan, and have decided that the modern world of book publishing, particularly in regards to the e-book market, is all fascinating and somewhat confusing and frustrating.

I own a Kindle. I love it muchly; it’s easy to use, carries more books than even I can read on vacation, is lightweight and very portable, and I was shocked by how much I just didn’t miss trying to read paper books in which the type was so close to the spine I had to practically rebreak the cover every time I turned a page. If, on the Kindle, I could organize my books into digital bookshelves (like I do at home – I have my own whacked out system that they will not come up with on their own), loan the books to friends, flip to other pages easily, and see the covers (and no, Nook’s “if I squint I can almost tell what that is” inch tall cover display doesn’t count), it would be perfect. Oh, and if I didn’t have this sense of impending doom that eventually I won’t be using a Kindle anymore (either because of tech envy or Kindle just goes the way of the 8track) and I will have lost a few hundred books that can only be read on an obsolete device. But, in the meantime, my bookshelves are staying at a comfortably groaning stasis, which makes my marriage a far better place to be. So the Kindle will stay.

Who knew? Technology and literature together make a powder keg. Oh. Wait. They always have by themselves; why would conjoining them make a difference?

“He tore his eyes away from the tops of those remarkable breasts of hers and tried to think unpleasant thoughts of particularly horrible things, like overcooked vegetables and cut-rate wine.”

See? You can’t not laugh. Or, at least you can’t if you think Victorian England, gastronomy, dry humor, and urban fantasy are some of life’s greatest wonders… but didn’t think you’d ever get them in one book. And since those are four of my favorite things, it was like Ms Carriger wrote this book for me.

It’s fabulous! Go buy this book! You need it!

Read this book!

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything…

Before his sophomore year of high school, Ethan Wate thought life in Gatlin County was life on repeat: same people doing the same things, winning the same awards, making the same speeches about southern pride. Except this year he’s facing it without his parents; his mother’s death from a car accident last year sent his father into his office and his writing, never to emerge  for normal conversation again.

But all summer, Ethan’s been having dreams about a girl, falling, love… and the inability to hold on to her long enough to prevent a disaster.

Now it’s on to my first Eloisa James novel. Been meaning to check her out for awhile now, and getting A Duke of Her Own at ARWA’s annual holiday white elephant book exchange gave me the kick in the pants (…or book that I needed…) to do just that!

Three of them at least look interesting to me and my tastes.

You know, I like artsy plays. I can go and two hours later come out, maybe a little more somber, but feeling enlightened. Laramie Project, Doubt, Wit… I LOVE these. But books are such an investment of my time… if I’m going to “educate” myself, I guess I’d rather read Edith Wharton or Charles Dickens or D. H. Lawrence, or, heck, finally finish Ulysses (I’m like 2 chapters from the end… gonna… make it… one day….).

At least from what I’ve read (and, granted, I need to read more modern literary novels, so I will admit that this is an uneducated standpoint given from a small sample), to be literary the writing can have very little joy (’cause quality can’t be tainted by happy?) and has to be very much what I would call “masculine”: spare, emotionally distanced, grisly details that you see as if watching on camera, with these characters who are so flawed and/or twisted that I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to root for them or condemn them. And frequently it feels to me like the story takes second place to the prose itself, and I don’t understand why. I mean, pretty writing is nice, but I think substance is every bit as important as shell.  I’d rather have friends who are caring and joyful who help me be a better me than friends who know how to dress and get their makeup right every time. (Not that there’s anything wrong with well dressed and getting your makeup right every time. My sister is an absolutely fabulous example of substance meets style – on a budget, even. She amazes and shames me.)

I have this feeling that if I tried hard enough, I would change and understand what the literati have been trying to tell me for years. I also have this feeling that if I read more modern literature it would probably help my writing. So I should read more literature. Maybe I should grab those three books that sounded interesting and give ‘em a go. Maybe I will.

But I have 84 books on my Kindle that I haven’t read yet, ranging from Sun Tzu to Nalini Singh, and I can’t quite figure out when I became uneducated because I’d rather finish my Jane Austen collection than read a book about a “turbulent life — marred by alcoholism, financial turmoil and family discord” or prose that has “quiet restraint and calm precision” (quotes from NYT reviews on the link above).

Am I doomed? Anybody got a painless way to break into the world of modern literature for someone who prefers F. Scott Fitzgerald to Hemingway and spends her time bouncing back and forth between Victorian literature and Kresley Cole?

So for good or ill, when my mother agreed to go with me, I snapped up that offer right away, and we were installed in the theater Friday (yes… don’t start with me…) for a pre-school-release feature (no screaming 13-year-olds this time, as I was subjected to on viewing Twilight; it was easier to hear, but less atmospheric). I think I like this one better than the book, although if I hadn’t read the book, I’m not sure I’d like the movie. If that makes any sense. As I mentioned in my original review of Twilight (the novel), I really don’t like the way genders are portrayed in the book. Bella is too dependent, too willing to let men tell her what to do, and too readily falls into gender roles and stereotypes. The movie, which lacks Bella’s narration proving she needs a swift kick into the post-feminist revolution era (although they did a clever bit with emails to Alice to give a little of it without having an actual narrator), she comes across as too angsty and man-dependent, but a lot of the stuff that really made me want to throw things wasn’t there.

Other thoughts…

• Big balls on the ending; I really like what they did.
• Nobody under the age of 18 should be allowed to go shirtless that often in a movie.
• Makeup department, read my plea. Pick. A. Skin. Color. Preferably not FRTE (see title).
• Especially not for Carlisle. Peter Facinelli is a cutie-pie, and I’m allowed to think that. Unlike with other actors in this movie, whose chest I never even glanced at once, despite its prominent placement throughout. In fact, can we come up with some way to get Carlisle’s shirt off in Eclipse or Breaking Dawn? Please?
• I liked Jasper much better in this one; gotta admit, I was totally wtf’d by everything about him in the first movie, from the makeup to the script to the acting. It was… bizarre. But this time? Pretty cool.
• Other parts of the movie made me feel like a dirty-old-hag who needs therapy because, officer, that beautiful, beautiful creature… that I never once looked at… really, I swear… didn’t look underage. Not after the haircut anyway.
• Special effects were much better, and there was a cool sequence at the end that combined several plotlines into one music-backed menagerie. Pretty cool.
• Pattinson needs somebody new in charge of Edward’s look. He is a good looking guy in a unique way, (which is one of the things I liked about him being cast as Edward, that handsome but not commonly so), but he looked like a heroin junkie in the Volturi sequences. I know the character’s not been eating and he’s miserable, but c’mon guys, this is a ROMANCE. The guys are supposed to be even better looking when they’re brooding… not bruised, emaciated, pallid and drugged.
• Which brings me to the same question that I had reading the books. Why does she choose Edward when Jacob is friendly, affirming, brave, supportive, and cute? No, wait, I get it now! ‘Cause Edward’s legal.

*sigh*…. when do Eclipse and Breaking Dawn come out? I need this series done and out of my system.

Basically, MacKinley Lane, a 22-year-old happy-go-luck bartender, has lived a sheltered life in  rural Georgia until her older sister, who’s working on her doctorate at Trinity College in Dublin, is murdered. Within two weeks of the funeral, ther family gets word from the Dublin police that with no leads, they’re effectively closing the case. Mac, who’d broken her phone the week before Alina’s death, gets it fixed and finds a panicked voice mail from her sister from the day she died, basically saying that her (Alina’s) boyfriend (whom she’d never mentioned, even though the sisters had kept in good touch and were really close) was not what he seemed, was one of “them”, there was so much the sisters needed to talk about, and Mac needs to find the “she-sa” before it’s too late. Then Alina says there’s somebody at her door, and the message cuts off. This leads Mac to Ireland and neck deep into a paranormal world that’s dangerous, fast paced, and awesome.

Other than a completely useless prologue (I think I’d like to have read the book not knowing that information, though it didn’t actually kill it, just… I don’t know, needlessly spoiled some of the mystery), this is one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time; I can’t wait to start book 2 in what I hear is going to be a 5 book series. Very exciting.

It got me thinking about science fiction in general. I’m looking at the Starship Federation and noticing that most of them are human. And, granted, this could just be budgetary constraints (alien actors being so much more expensive to hire ), but in sci-fi, humans are almost always weaker, slower, less agile, and not as educated/intelligent as other species. And yet we are always in charge.  I’m looking at this situation, and wondering… how do we get there if we’re weak and stupid compared to everybody else? And what does this say about what we value most in humanity, if we choose heroes who don’t succeed by strength or speed or intelligence? After I talked around the issue for awhile, Scott finally hit on the word.

Determination

Our heroes, in more than just sci-fi, get hit, shot, flung, mashed, diseased, and stabbed… and then they get back up. They still believe they will win when the chances of success are 725 to 1. They take off after the enemy, head on, full bore even when logic says regroup and reinforce before proceeding,  and, of course the audience knows what the character only guessed – that if the party had taken the time to regroup, it would’ve been too late.

Foolhardy? Well, yeah. But I find it interesting that as a species (or maybe this is an American thing?) we champion this trait that everybody can have. I mean, no matter how we train, most people are not physically capable of Olympic sprinting; no matter how we study, most people are not capable of Einstein genius. But when you give up is a choice. Granted, nobody can actually take the beating that a hero gets in a movie and still, well, LIVE, but the principles of “Never give up; never tell me the odds; charge in like a big damn hero even when it’s stupid” those are choices. Indiana Jones, Capt. Kirk, John McClane, Mal Reynolds… bleeding and bruised, these people crawl their way back to the badguy, and somehow through sheer willpower, beat ‘em anyway. And we LOVE them for it.