What Not to Give Your Mom on Mother's Day

ISBN-10: 147781647X ISBN-13: 9781477816479 Pages: 22 Language: English

I considered writing a post on possible Mother's Day gifts, but the internet has been inundated with enough of these lists recently that I thought I might take a cue from this delightful picture book and tell you what not to buy them. For one, the book makes a few crucial points: under no circumstances should you give her, say, a rotting log or a bunch of flies. I'm told human mothers find that strange.

On a more serious note, don't pigeonhole your mother. Not everything has to be Oprah-approved (though Elizabeth Strout might not be a bad pick). Family drama is a fine subject for a novel, but not every novel. She might appreciate a change of pace with a whip-smart thriller like Gone Girl or Turn of Mind. History and social science are not as dry as you might think: let her give Cleopatra: A Life or Quiet a try. Don't give her "guilty pleasure" books-- it's condescending to a woman who is almost certainly older than you and probably wiser! 

In the same vein, don't think you're so 'cool with the moms, dig,' as the young people say, that you can buy her erotica. In an article filled with some great recommendations, a writer on Bookriot suggests you do just that, to which I present my eloquent counterargument: Ew. Besides, since when does romance have to be cheap and tawdry? Where my Jane Austen fans at? How 'bout my Anna Kareninites? Just because they're classics doesn't mean your mom has gotten around to reading them. She's been busy birthing you and keeping you alive! Plus there are plenty of fancy-schmancy editions conducive to gift-giving.

If you want to be more conservative, that's fine. Just don't ever waste a chance to give someone something good to read. Even in the stereotypical mom wheelhouse of cross-generational drama there are plenty of very interesting writers out there putting out quality product. Whatever you give her, take the lessons of What Not to Give Your Mom on Mother's Day to heart: something that was recently alive is probably not a good present.

Sick Day Reading

Dear reader, I have been forced to stay home today by some unknown pathogen, probably passed on to me by one of our valued customers visiting the store, so I figure all of you collectively owe me one. I will accept remuneration in hard cash or in suggestions of good literature to read while sick. I'm currently midway through the excellent Wolf Hall, but I have found it difficult to follow the intricacies of the Tudor court while feeling gross. 

Normally, I would pick up my copy of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, but I seem to have hit a wall at around a dozen re-reads. I'm burning through an immense backlog of comics that includes spin-offs of television maestro Joss Whedon's greatest creation: Angel-- yeah, Buffy fans, I said it. Most of them are workmanlike, but I am finding John Byrne's collection quite enjoyable. Strangely enough, I also enjoy a good rant when sick and so find some solace in Christopher Hitchens' polemics or in the heated debate over foodie-ism prompted by some recent books that I might treat on in another blog post.

I started this post with the intention of figuring out what makes for a good sick day read, but looking back on my own, very strange, picks, I realize I have no idea. Hey, I'm sick, give me a break. If you have any suggestions or just want to let me know what idiosyncratic literature you reach for when you have the sniffles, write below in the comments.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover, And Other Original Things You've Heard a Million Times Before

It’s sort of astounding how, sometimes, those old adages prove true.  I don’t think there’s a phrase better than “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” as illustrative metaphors go, but still, I’m guilty of doing just that. I work in a bookstore, and still – still! – certain covers make me cringe. 

The trite is the most offensive category. Certain redundant images resurface like cat hair on your favorite sweater. Just when you thought you’d seen the last picture of a pair of hands cupping some seashells or sand, think again. That image of a woman looking over her shoulder, deep in thought, will reappear in countless incarnations. The image of a pensive eyeball surrounded by futuristic scrawl will probably continue to exist as long as books do, for better or for worse (probably for worse).

While it’s sometimes fun to play “spot the overused stock photo” (what can I say, booksellers are easily amused), there’s a deeper, sadder truth here, one that actually hurts a book’s chances at getting its due. If we’re assuming, for argument’s sake, that a book takes about a year to write, give or take a lot of wiggle room, the lines of ink on a given bookshelf represent hundreds or thousands of hours, not to mention a massive intellectual effort. There are exceptions, surely, in which some wunderkind or other writes the next great American novel in five or so days, but otherwise, an unappealing cover can correlate with time spent in vain. It can render all those hours at a computer almost useless, and it can reduce an intricate, multi-dimensional novel into the sort of one-off categories that make editors and many readers shudder: chick lit, beach reads, something with the insinuation of fluff or lack of artistry.

And of course, that’s not to say there aren’t some novels that deserve their design. Maybe they do, indeed, fall into an easy category. It should be obvious, but we all want different things: the backseat of my car holds a YA novel, some classic literature, and some sci-fi at any given moment. Books come in all shapes, sizes, and types, and that’s sort of the point; when there are so many eccentricities and tastes, why standardize covers? Why reuse images that evoke a connotation far more reductionist than what’s actually inside?

I could theorize until I ran out of free space on the internet, but the truth is, there’s a lesson to be learned here. I could be better, you could be better, we all could be better about dismissing a title because it’s got a holographic cover or a dragon on the front. Instead, why not make your trip to the bookstore more luxurious. Pick an unlikely title and settle into a chair, and then open it up. Spend some time between its pages, and discover for yourself the difference between visual perception and literary reality.

Cutting Krypto

It may be self-indulgent for me to write more than one post about a biography of Superman, but I couldn't resist linking to this hysterical article by Glen Weldon presenting the "transcript" of an argument with his editor concerning the inclusion of thirteen pages on Krypto the Super-dog, Superman's Kryptonian pet. Any writer will sympathize with Weldon's desire to hang on to every bit of esoterica he spent hours writing and researching, while any editor will be reminded why writers are the worst.

Game of Thrones Withdrawal: Part the Third

ISBN-10: 0316001945
ISBN-13: 9780316001946
Published: Back Bay Books, 09/06/2011
Pages: 432
Language: English

Game of Thrones has often been praised (rightly) for its strong female characters, so I thought it would be appropriate to recommend an excellent myth-shredding biography by Stacy Schiff of a woman who could have out-schemed Cersei Lannister any day of the week: Cleopatra. Schiff paints a portrait of Cleopatra as the consummate survivor: a woman who survived a brutal civil war with her own brother, endless court machinations, massive riots, and the Roman Empire's descent into chaos. Yet today she is mostly remembered through the lens of Roman bad press. Even Shakespeare's (arguably) sympathetic depiction of Cleopatra is swamped in layers of Orientalism that have helped turn a brilliant strategist into an emblem of exotic femininity. It's unsurprising that Schiff's history has been portrayed as feminist, but it's really only feminist to the extent that reality is feminist-- there are no agendas here. In an era of books encouraging women to Lean In, I would suggest reading about a woman who did a little more than lean.

A Hugo-nominated Morsel

ISBN-10: 0316081051 ISBN-13: 9780316081054 Published: Orbit, 04/27/2010 Pages: 608 Language: English

Let's be honest, most zombie fiction deserves a bullet in the brain-pan, so it was with great trepidation that I started Mira Grant's Feed, the first entry in the pun-happy author's Newsflesh trilogy. Feed and its two sequels, Deadline and Blackout, were all nominated for Hugo Awards, arguably genre fiction's highest honor, and I thought it might be worth investigating the books behind this impressive streak. After reading the first entry, I can confidently say that fans of the walking dead or science fiction dystopias should give it a look.

At a fat 608 pages, Feed looks like a bit of a brick, but Grant's writing is breezy enough and her plotting is tight enough that it can be easily devoured in a few days. Grant may not be a prose stylist on the level of Colson Whitehead-- whose Zone One is and will remain the greatest zombie book of all time, forever and ever, amen-- but she does make her grim scenario compulsively readable. Oh, and what a scenario. Right out of the gate, Feed's premise is terrific: George Romero's vision has come true thanks to a deadly virus called Kellis-Amberlee, but instead of getting torn to pieces, humanity survived and adapted. 

One of the major changes Grant makes to the zombie mythos is that the virulence of the disease and the measures futuristic America will take to contain it are often more threatening than the zombies themselves. It's a neat trick that makes the appearance of actual shambling corpses more or less irrelevant, which is good because Grant avoids gore and action set-pieces in favor of muck-raking investigating journalism (yep, you read that right). Her story follows a couple of truth-obsessed bloggers uncovering a conspiracy that the Old Media can't be bothered to tackle. There's a great deal of sociopolitical commentary going on here, as is typical in ambitious zombie works,  along with a heaping dose of hard-boiled-reporter-worship that would make even Stieg Larsson say "that's a bit much, don't you think?" Still, the points she makes are valid and, above all, the book is just fun. If you like the idea of Night of the Living Dead mixed with All the President's Men, this one is a must-read.

Game of Thrones Withdrawal: Part the Second

ISBN-10: 0316193569
ISBN-13: 9780316193566
Published: Orbit, 10/01/2011
Pages: 576
Language: English

George R.R. Martin has long been credited with bringing gritty realism to the realm of fantasy, but he looks positively soft-hearted compared to the criminally overlooked Joe Abercrombie, who has been elevating cynicism to high art in his First Law Trilogy and stand-alone works Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and, most recently, Red Country. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to get to Red Country yet, so I thought I would focus this entry on my favorite Abercrombie book: The Heroes. The entirety of the novel focuses on an epic three-day battle between the rebellious Northern army and the imperialistic Union forces over a worthless hill. The strengths of the book lie in its characterizations-- Abercombie jumps between numerous fleshed-out characters on both sides of the conflict-- his thrilling but entirely un-romanticized fight scenes, and a vein of bitter, dark humor that takes unsettling aim at humanity's worst tendencies.

For a book with enough swordplay and gore to last several Game of Thrones novels, Abercrombie's book is thoroughly anti-war. The title is mostly a sarcastic joke, as even those characters that fight with true heroism often turn out to be psychologically damaged misfits, truly sad creatures that are discarded as soon as the warring ends. In Abercrombie's world, war is an inevitability brought about by human weakness and greed-- there are no good guys, no bad guys, and nobody really wins. In many ways, this is the fantasy novel that Kurt Vonnegut would write, and if that doesn't sell you on it, I don't know what will.