I just finished Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and WOW it was fabulous. Really likable characters, beautifully done southern gothic setting, cool mythology that actually makes sense (that’s one issue I sometimes take with urban fantasy and paranormal, when it’s like… in what universe does this set of rules make even vague sense?), and a message about conformity and love that’s just awesome (without banging you over the head too much).

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!

… I haven’t heard of any of these. That’s the New York Times’ list of the best books of 2009. And to reiterate, I didn’t say I haven’t read them. I said I haven’t heard of them. Any of them. And I’m hoping to become a published writer one day. They haven’ t been on Amazon anywhere where I can find them (including the Kindle bestseller list that I regularly stalk) or the front page (which admittedly for me is a lot more likely to have the latest Kim Harrison or Jim Butcher), or even the New York Times book review email, which I read about half the time. Where do you find these books?

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?

Saw New Moon this weekend. Yes, I know. I’m 32, I shouldn’t be seeing a Twilight movie on opening weekend. I have seriously decided that magic must be real because as many complaints as I have about those books, I can’t put them down. I know Stephenie Meyers is Mormon, but somebody cast a spell on that manuscript. It’s like a crack pipe made of story.

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.

A lot of times when a new book in a series comes out, Amazon will “sell” Kindle versions of the first book in the series for free to get people involved. I am SO glad they did that for Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series. I just finished Darkfever this morning (started it last night – oh, and the link goes to the paperback copy ’cause the Kindle “cover” is stupid, but the Kindle book is, as of this morning, still free if you want to grab it).

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.

I always thought that Star Trek was fun, but kinda sterile as a series (hence my ultimate preference for Star Wars in the ST vs SW battle of the geeks), but J.J. Abrams take on it… MAN. It’s like Star Trek with a Star Wars sense of character drama.  Awesome!

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.