This has been a very enjoyable training exercise. I've enjoyed learning to blog and may continue that -- I have some ideas up my sleeve, not particularly library-related, but sort of (my last blog here, about the name of this blog, is a hint ...).
I always enjoyed the guidance we get with these training opportunities -- there are some very smart people running this affair -- and I appreciate that they will change deadlines and fine-tune assignments as needed.
I've learned how to find RA sites in unfamiliar genres; how to find and review book trailers (whether they're actually useful or draw in new readers is another question); and I've found through their blogs and Goodreads friendship that many of my coworkers have similar or interestingly contrasting taste in reading.
And it's becoming obvious who to ask for help in what genres!
So thank to everyone who initiated this training -- see you in cyberspace!
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Stoddard's Palm Garden
Some of my readers have been curious about where the title of this blog came from -- "Stoddard's Palm Garden"? What's that? They clamour for an answer, and so I will explain.
James W. Stoddard was a Catonsvillian of the turn of the last century, who ran the Terminal Hotel, located at 1600 Frederick Road, just next to the terminus of the streetcar line that ran from Towson through Baltimore and ended in Catonsville, from 1898 to November, 1963. From about 1898, when he took the venture over from Thomas Litchfield, until about 1925, he owned or managed the hotel, and established an outdoor palm garden in time for the Fourth of July celebration in 1900.
The building itself, with additions, survives as Matthew's 1600. According to info in online version of the Baltimore County Department of Assessments and Taxation, the primary structure was built in 1903 ... but the dates for buildings of this era can be off by years in either direction.
While under Stoddard's care, the Terminal Hotel and Stoddard's Palm Garden hosted jousting tournaments, with a 20-dollar prize for the jouster who lanced the most rings, with $15 for second, $10 for third and $5 for fourth.
Jousting for dangling rings is the Official Maryland State Sport, as you may know, and the ground it takes to run through the arches means the field must currently be over a hundred yards long, though of course jousters in 1904 were probably not adhering to the Official Rules that were laid down in 1950. More information may be had here, at the official site of the Maryland Jousting Tournament Association.
One envisions a jousting field set up on the grassy slope which is now Matthews' paved parking lot. There was certainly a large amount of land between the Hotel and the house next door, where Stoddard lived at the time of the 1920, 1930 and 1940 Federal Census. After the completion of the electric railway between Catonsville and Ellicott City in 1898, an auction of "THIRTY EIGHT HEAD OF FINE YOUNG MULES AND SIX GOOD HORSES" was held on the property on December 14, 1898. That's a lot of livestock!
Ralph Heidelbach's compendium of booklets, held in the Catonsville Room of the Baltimore County Public Library under the title Catonsville, contains a drawing he did in the mid-1980s of the Palm Garden as he remembered it from his youth. I include that drawing here, and will add a version based on a current photograph of the site. Guess I'd better draw that up -- for now, here's Heidelbach's version:
Transcriptions of various Terminal Hotel-related articles and ads in the Baltimore Sun:
A July 13, 1886 ad:
TERMINUS HOTEL, CATONSVILLE, MD., Is now refitted and ready for the reception of visitors. Catonsville is noted as a Summer Resort and its healthy location and beautiful shady walks. Every accommodation guaranteed. Wines, Liquors and Cigars of the best brands. Meals at all hours at moderate charges. THOS. LITCHFIELD, Proprietor.
August 20, 1889:
WANTED -- A Young Boy, about 16 years of age to HELP IN A BAR and make himself generally useful. THOMAS LITCHFIELD, Terminus Hotel, Catonsville, Md.
June 17, 1898:
Sudden Death of Mr. Thomas Litchfield, A Well-Known Catonsville Contractor
Mr. Thomas Litchfield, a well-known contractor of Catonsville, died suddenly of acute diarrhoea yesterday at "Castle Thunder," his home, on Frederick Avenue.
Mr. Litchfield was fifty-seven years of age and was the son of the late H. Litchfield, a well-known Englishman. He was born in England in 1840, came to this country in 1872 and settled in New York, where he was superintendent in the Page Rolling Mills. In 1877 he removed to Baltimore, where he conducted a restaurant. In 1885 he moved to Catonsville, where he opened the old Terminus Hotel, which he conducted until last November, when he engaged in general contracting work.
On July 16, 1872, while in England, he was married to Miss Martha Ann Jenkins, daughter of J. Jenkins, of England, who survives him, with two children, Harry Litchfield and Mrs. Harry Johnson.
In 1907 James Stoddard attending a hearing at the Towson District Court, regarding his "saloon," probably in the Terminus Hotel. My guess is this was a liquor board hearing, wherein Stoddard and about 20 others defended their claims for liquor licenses.
Things seemed to go well and smoothly for James Stoddard and his Hotel -- usually called the "Old Terminus Hotel" but sometimes "The Terminal Hotel" or "Stoddard's" -- until Prohibition took effect in January 1920.
In the December 2, 1922 Sun:
Catonsville Hotel Raided by Local Dry Agents
Terminal Hostelry Owner Summoned Before Commissioner Supplee
Raiding the Terminal Hotel and Garden, Frederick and Montrose avenues, Catonsville, yesterday afternoon, prohibition agents from the office of Edmund Budnitz, Maryland director, seized a large quantity of alleged illicit liquors, some of which was said to be of rare vintage.
Sidney J. Reinach, proprietor, and James Bropenberg, bartender, were summoned to appear today before J. Frank Supplee, Jr., United States Commissioner, to answer charges of violation of the dry law.
The seizures, consisting of 75 bottles of alleged rare wines and other liquors, and 1,000 bottles of what is supposed to be homebrew beer, were discovered secreted in trunks and cupboards scattered about the establishment, it was said by John M. Barton, who led the raid. With Barton were Agents R. E. Beall, E. Frank Ely, Jesse H. Bratten, Wilton L. Stevens and Robert Barnes.
More to come -- this post is a Work In Progress
James W. Stoddard was a Catonsvillian of the turn of the last century, who ran the Terminal Hotel, located at 1600 Frederick Road, just next to the terminus of the streetcar line that ran from Towson through Baltimore and ended in Catonsville, from 1898 to November, 1963. From about 1898, when he took the venture over from Thomas Litchfield, until about 1925, he owned or managed the hotel, and established an outdoor palm garden in time for the Fourth of July celebration in 1900.
The building itself, with additions, survives as Matthew's 1600. According to info in online version of the Baltimore County Department of Assessments and Taxation, the primary structure was built in 1903 ... but the dates for buildings of this era can be off by years in either direction.
While under Stoddard's care, the Terminal Hotel and Stoddard's Palm Garden hosted jousting tournaments, with a 20-dollar prize for the jouster who lanced the most rings, with $15 for second, $10 for third and $5 for fourth.
Jousting for dangling rings is the Official Maryland State Sport, as you may know, and the ground it takes to run through the arches means the field must currently be over a hundred yards long, though of course jousters in 1904 were probably not adhering to the Official Rules that were laid down in 1950. More information may be had here, at the official site of the Maryland Jousting Tournament Association.
One envisions a jousting field set up on the grassy slope which is now Matthews' paved parking lot. There was certainly a large amount of land between the Hotel and the house next door, where Stoddard lived at the time of the 1920, 1930 and 1940 Federal Census. After the completion of the electric railway between Catonsville and Ellicott City in 1898, an auction of "THIRTY EIGHT HEAD OF FINE YOUNG MULES AND SIX GOOD HORSES" was held on the property on December 14, 1898. That's a lot of livestock!
Ralph Heidelbach's compendium of booklets, held in the Catonsville Room of the Baltimore County Public Library under the title Catonsville, contains a drawing he did in the mid-1980s of the Palm Garden as he remembered it from his youth. I include that drawing here, and will add a version based on a current photograph of the site. Guess I'd better draw that up -- for now, here's Heidelbach's version:
 |
| H. Ralph Heidelbach's drawing, ca 1984 |
A July 13, 1886 ad:
TERMINUS HOTEL, CATONSVILLE, MD., Is now refitted and ready for the reception of visitors. Catonsville is noted as a Summer Resort and its healthy location and beautiful shady walks. Every accommodation guaranteed. Wines, Liquors and Cigars of the best brands. Meals at all hours at moderate charges. THOS. LITCHFIELD, Proprietor.
***
August 20, 1889:
WANTED -- A Young Boy, about 16 years of age to HELP IN A BAR and make himself generally useful. THOMAS LITCHFIELD, Terminus Hotel, Catonsville, Md.
***
June 17, 1898:
Sudden Death of Mr. Thomas Litchfield, A Well-Known Catonsville Contractor
Mr. Thomas Litchfield, a well-known contractor of Catonsville, died suddenly of acute diarrhoea yesterday at "Castle Thunder," his home, on Frederick Avenue.
Mr. Litchfield was fifty-seven years of age and was the son of the late H. Litchfield, a well-known Englishman. He was born in England in 1840, came to this country in 1872 and settled in New York, where he was superintendent in the Page Rolling Mills. In 1877 he removed to Baltimore, where he conducted a restaurant. In 1885 he moved to Catonsville, where he opened the old Terminus Hotel, which he conducted until last November, when he engaged in general contracting work.
On July 16, 1872, while in England, he was married to Miss Martha Ann Jenkins, daughter of J. Jenkins, of England, who survives him, with two children, Harry Litchfield and Mrs. Harry Johnson.
***
Stoddard took over the Terminus/Terminal Hotel in 1898 and spent over $1,200 refurbishing it, for a reopening in 1899.
In 1907 James Stoddard attending a hearing at the Towson District Court, regarding his "saloon," probably in the Terminus Hotel. My guess is this was a liquor board hearing, wherein Stoddard and about 20 others defended their claims for liquor licenses.
***
Things seemed to go well and smoothly for James Stoddard and his Hotel -- usually called the "Old Terminus Hotel" but sometimes "The Terminal Hotel" or "Stoddard's" -- until Prohibition took effect in January 1920.
***
In the December 2, 1922 Sun:
Catonsville Hotel Raided by Local Dry Agents
Terminal Hostelry Owner Summoned Before Commissioner Supplee
Raiding the Terminal Hotel and Garden, Frederick and Montrose avenues, Catonsville, yesterday afternoon, prohibition agents from the office of Edmund Budnitz, Maryland director, seized a large quantity of alleged illicit liquors, some of which was said to be of rare vintage.
Sidney J. Reinach, proprietor, and James Bropenberg, bartender, were summoned to appear today before J. Frank Supplee, Jr., United States Commissioner, to answer charges of violation of the dry law.
The seizures, consisting of 75 bottles of alleged rare wines and other liquors, and 1,000 bottles of what is supposed to be homebrew beer, were discovered secreted in trunks and cupboards scattered about the establishment, it was said by John M. Barton, who led the raid. With Barton were Agents R. E. Beall, E. Frank Ely, Jesse H. Bratten, Wilton L. Stevens and Robert Barnes.
***
More to come -- this post is a Work In Progress
Monday, June 17, 2013
Week Nine, Assignments One and Two
Assignment One: Done. Interesting articles. Most of the trailers I've seen have been on TV, not on the Internet (I don't click ads as a rule, except by accident) and I usually don't watch ads on TV -- sometimes I don't find the remote in time to fast-forward past them.
The trailers I've seen weren't nearly so objectionable as the ones these writers are reacting against -- though the production values are usually pretty low, about what you expect from a high-budget local-TV commercial. There are exceptions, though, which I'll talk about a big, below.
Assignment Two: I watched the Official Trailer for Stephen King's latest, Joyland ... but sadly, it was in Polish. So apart from commenting on the production values (decent-budget TV-commercial-quality), I don't have much to go on there. Stock shots of an amusement park, with proper "fun/scary" sound effects, followed by Polish voice over probably saying "Joyland, the latest horror-thriller from the master of horror-thrillers, horror-thriller-master Stephen King. Available in WalMarts in Warsaw, Lodz, and Gdansk. For everywhere else, there's Amazon." It seemed like an adequate trailer. I give this one a five on a ten-point scale.
The trailer for James Patterson's Maximum Ride looked good, at least in the small window on a 13.2-inch monitor, lots of CGI of wing-sprouting angel-creatures soaring around a Gotham-like cityscape, but not movie-quality. The "acting" consisted of meaningful glances between angel-like things but they were mostly flying, not emoting. I give this one a six.
The last I watched was for John Green's hyper popular The Fault of Our Stars and it made so little an impression I don't remember a thing about it. Wait, I'm gonna go look again, brb.
Okay, teen-actors on a playground, "sensitive" music and quotes go by, and a heart monitor beeps. A tragic teen love story? Gee, there's never been anything like that, EVER!
I know, that's heretical, and I really will read it one day -- it can't be bad, if my daughter loves it so much, at least that's been my experience with most books she loves (except Twilight, and that was just a phase). The trailer was quick and evocative, though it didn't really make the book look too appealing to a Green-novice (I was just going to say "Greenovice" but didn't want to confuse anyone unnecessarily).
Whether book trailers are of any use is probably not debatable -- it's a "modern" form of advertising, and books have been advertised by their publishers since Daniel Defoe's time, if not before. How effective they are -- whether they're worth the expense to the publisher -- is between the publisher and his bottom line. My guess is that they MUST help fuel sales, or we wouldn't be seeing them, especially for books by new authors.
And not very useful for RA, I think.
The trailers I've seen weren't nearly so objectionable as the ones these writers are reacting against -- though the production values are usually pretty low, about what you expect from a high-budget local-TV commercial. There are exceptions, though, which I'll talk about a big, below.
Assignment Two: I watched the Official Trailer for Stephen King's latest, Joyland ... but sadly, it was in Polish. So apart from commenting on the production values (decent-budget TV-commercial-quality), I don't have much to go on there. Stock shots of an amusement park, with proper "fun/scary" sound effects, followed by Polish voice over probably saying "Joyland, the latest horror-thriller from the master of horror-thrillers, horror-thriller-master Stephen King. Available in WalMarts in Warsaw, Lodz, and Gdansk. For everywhere else, there's Amazon." It seemed like an adequate trailer. I give this one a five on a ten-point scale.
The trailer for James Patterson's Maximum Ride looked good, at least in the small window on a 13.2-inch monitor, lots of CGI of wing-sprouting angel-creatures soaring around a Gotham-like cityscape, but not movie-quality. The "acting" consisted of meaningful glances between angel-like things but they were mostly flying, not emoting. I give this one a six.
The last I watched was for John Green's hyper popular The Fault of Our Stars and it made so little an impression I don't remember a thing about it. Wait, I'm gonna go look again, brb.
***
Okay, teen-actors on a playground, "sensitive" music and quotes go by, and a heart monitor beeps. A tragic teen love story? Gee, there's never been anything like that, EVER!
I know, that's heretical, and I really will read it one day -- it can't be bad, if my daughter loves it so much, at least that's been my experience with most books she loves (except Twilight, and that was just a phase). The trailer was quick and evocative, though it didn't really make the book look too appealing to a Green-novice (I was just going to say "Greenovice" but didn't want to confuse anyone unnecessarily).
Whether book trailers are of any use is probably not debatable -- it's a "modern" form of advertising, and books have been advertised by their publishers since Daniel Defoe's time, if not before. How effective they are -- whether they're worth the expense to the publisher -- is between the publisher and his bottom line. My guess is that they MUST help fuel sales, or we wouldn't be seeing them, especially for books by new authors.
And not very useful for RA, I think.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Week Eight, Assignment Four: Two nonfiction booktalks
Eight Men Out, Eliot Asinof, 1963. That the 1919 World Series was thrown by the Chicago White Sox was not unique -- sports was rift with betting and criminal influence, both before and since. What made the "Black Sox Scandal" so noteworthy is the way the baseball club owners instituted a higher authority -- the National Baseball Commission -- and handled the problem from the inside out, and from the top down. Eight Chicago players were initially placed on a makeshift "ineligible" list (with the promise to be reinstated if found not guilty of their accusations), and eventually indicted on various conspiracy charges. All eight were acquitted. All eight were never allowed to play professional baseball again.
Appeal factors such as characterization, setting and detail are all pronounced in Asinof's book. The team roster comes to life and the motivations for the players to do what they were accused of doing (remember, they were acquitted so you can't legally say they did anything illegal!) are clear: they played baseball for a man (Charles Comiskey) who was so notoriously cheap that one story behind the name "The Black Sox" predates the gambling scandal and instead refers to Comiskey's making his underpaid players pay for their own uniform laundering -- and in protest, they played until the white-with-black-pinstripe uniforms were almost completely black with grime.
The best baseball club in the world worked for fame and fortune for a man who wouldn't share the fortune he was making off of them. Wouldn't that gambler's money be pretty durn tempting to men who'd been cheated out of promised bonuses and benefits?
Asinof, writing 40 years after the facts, and while some of the principals were still living (four of The Eight were still alive when the book was published), relied almost entirely on newspaper accounts and other researches -- his introduction says that he met with some of the 1919 team but no one would talk to him about the World Series. Why not? What would so stigmatize the players that they felt they couldn't speak to a reporter about the event that forever changed their lives?
This topic, and the history of Christianity, has long fascinated me, probably contributing to my heretical bend. Ehrman started his career as an Evangelical Christian, out to prove that the Bible was actually and literally written by "God" and therefore inviolate by us mere humans, but his open-eyed researches have lead him to other conclusions. I think this is what I like so much about his work: it's the former smoker who makes the most convincing anti-smoking crusader, after all. Plus his research seems (to a non-specialist) fair, balanced, and thorough.
This is not to say Ehrman is anti-Christian, at all. He's just become much more scholarly than he originally intended, and has some interesting and, to some, controversial conclusions about the earliest versions of Christianity -- which he calls proto-orthodox Christianity.
This book would be a natural to recommend to those who are intrigued by the religious aspects of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series -- but unlike Brown, Ehrman's books, shorter on story-line, are much longer on research and detail. (In fact, Ehrman wrote one of the [many] books that debunked some of Brown's conspiracy theories, namely Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, 2006.)
Week Eight, Assignment Three: Four nonfiction recommendations
"Choose any four of the 16 nonfiction genres ... list Dewey call numbers for those genres .... Choose and recommend a book for someone who normally doesn't read nonfiction."
In a surprise move, Bryce chooses the genres of Sports (790s, generally), Faith (200s) ... and then resorts to the old faithfuls of History (900s) and Biography/Memoirs (which SLRC's video divides into two separate genres -- I disagree. They live, in BCPL at least, in B or, in Dewey terms, the 920s, with some in other sections throughout the collection, depending on a myriad of reasons best understood by cataloguers -- as an example, if 51% of a biography is about the subjects fight against heroin addiction, you might find it in the "substance abuse" section, in the 616s).
In Sports -- and people who know me know I'm not a fan at all, really, but I do have an historical appreciation for Sports and can fake it when some jock wants to talk about how The Ravens, Orioles, Blackhawks, Lakers, or Pomona College Sagehens did last night -- I'd recommend Eliot Asinof's book on the Chicago "Black Sox" Scandal of 1919, Eight Men Out (796.357 A). A detailed "book talk" will follow.
In Faith -- and people who know me know I'm not a fan at all, really, but I do have an historical appreciation for Faith and can fake it when someone want to talk about the Torah, the Bible, the Lotus Sutra, or the Book of Mormon -- I'd recommend Bart D. Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (225 E).
History is my "thing," I enjoy it a lot, and despite its somewhat dry reputation, there has been a lot of good narrative nonfiction in the discipline ever since Tacitus' time. Fiction readers might be intrigued by Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World, about the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 (979.461 W), among literally thousands of others.
Memoirs and biographies are just "personal" histories, so semi-obviously a history nerd is going to enjoy them, too. Truman, by David McCullough, tells in vibrant terms the story of "Give 'Em Hell Harry," the President perhaps best known for nuking Japan and firing General MacArthur for insubordination (Biography [or 920] TRUMAN).
In a surprise move, Bryce chooses the genres of Sports (790s, generally), Faith (200s) ... and then resorts to the old faithfuls of History (900s) and Biography/Memoirs (which SLRC's video divides into two separate genres -- I disagree. They live, in BCPL at least, in B or, in Dewey terms, the 920s, with some in other sections throughout the collection, depending on a myriad of reasons best understood by cataloguers -- as an example, if 51% of a biography is about the subjects fight against heroin addiction, you might find it in the "substance abuse" section, in the 616s).
Monday, June 10, 2013
Week Eight, Assignment Two: View a SRLC video.
Done. Good job, State Library Resources Center! I sort of disagree that Biography and Memoir are two separate genres, though -- more like two sides of the same coin, one written in the third person, and presumably without an "agenda," the other usually in the first person, and generally with an "agenda" (those that say the loudest that they HAVE no agenda are those with the most profound ones).
Week Eight: Nonfiction
Or, as Cole Porter and Peter Bogdanovich might say, "At Long Last, Love."
I'm a big-time reader of non-fiction. Not that there's anything wrong with fiction, I enjoy it, too, but I read far more non-fiction, always have, always will.
For the first part of this assignment, we read articles by Jennifer Brannen, "Borderlands: Crossing between Fiction and Nonfiction in Readers' Advisory," and Catherine Sheldrick Ross, "Reading Nonfiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers?" Brannen's was a good opinion piece, based on experience and principle, but I found more value to Ross's article, if only because hers is based on interviews and her own personal research. (To be fair, the articles are two different approaches to the same general subject -- one is opinion-based, and the other research-based).
The assignment doesn't specify that we're to respond on our blog to the articles, but I wanted to. One of the quotes in Ross's article reminded me of a dialogue in the 2004 film, Sideways. The writer, played by Paul Giametti, has been asked by his best friend's father-in-law-to-be about his book:
Miles (Giametti): It's... it's a novel. Fiction. Yes. Although there is quite a bit from my own life... so I suppose that, technically some of it is nonfiction.
I'm a big-time reader of non-fiction. Not that there's anything wrong with fiction, I enjoy it, too, but I read far more non-fiction, always have, always will.
For the first part of this assignment, we read articles by Jennifer Brannen, "Borderlands: Crossing between Fiction and Nonfiction in Readers' Advisory," and Catherine Sheldrick Ross, "Reading Nonfiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers?" Brannen's was a good opinion piece, based on experience and principle, but I found more value to Ross's article, if only because hers is based on interviews and her own personal research. (To be fair, the articles are two different approaches to the same general subject -- one is opinion-based, and the other research-based).
The assignment doesn't specify that we're to respond on our blog to the articles, but I wanted to. One of the quotes in Ross's article reminded me of a dialogue in the 2004 film, Sideways. The writer, played by Paul Giametti, has been asked by his best friend's father-in-law-to-be about his book:
Miles (Giametti): It's... it's a novel. Fiction. Yes. Although there is quite a bit from my own life... so I suppose that, technically some of it is nonfiction.
Mike (played by Shaun Duke): Good, I like nonfiction. There is so much to know about this world. I think you read something somebody just invented, waste of time.
Miles: That's an interesting perspective.
Miles: That's an interesting perspective.
Week Seven, Assignment Four: Trends in YA (at least according to the publishers)
"Choose any two ... spend some time ... blog about trends."
I chose Harlequin Teens and Teens at Random, the former because I think Harlequin really is the Little Publisher That Almost Could, If Only They Paid Better, and the latter because the title is amusing.
Harlequin Teens seems to have its exploitative finger on the pulse of what adults who read the trade papers think teens will buy, with an overlay of the patented Harlequin romance. There's teen cyberpunk romance, teen steampunk romance, teen horror romance -- you name it, throw in a romantic subplot, and Harlequin will sell it to you! Good job of following the trends rather than establishing them, Harlequin! Can't really fault them for this, though -- it's a business plan that works. Just ask Hollywood.
Teens at Random looks pretty much like Random House's other themed pages, but with lighter, more teen-friendly typefaces. As one of the biggest publishers around, Random House doesn't seem to rest on their laurels but offers newer more innovative works than a second-tier publisher like Harlequin can. A well-done and inviting site, with book-trailers and everything -- as you'd expect from Random House.
Trendspotting? Harlequin is sure the kids will want what they've been buying, and Random is pushing Tess Gratton (The Lost Sun: two holds at this writing) and Tom McNeal's Far, Far Away, which has four holds.
I chose Harlequin Teens and Teens at Random, the former because I think Harlequin really is the Little Publisher That Almost Could, If Only They Paid Better, and the latter because the title is amusing.
Harlequin Teens seems to have its exploitative finger on the pulse of what adults who read the trade papers think teens will buy, with an overlay of the patented Harlequin romance. There's teen cyberpunk romance, teen steampunk romance, teen horror romance -- you name it, throw in a romantic subplot, and Harlequin will sell it to you! Good job of following the trends rather than establishing them, Harlequin! Can't really fault them for this, though -- it's a business plan that works. Just ask Hollywood.
Teens at Random looks pretty much like Random House's other themed pages, but with lighter, more teen-friendly typefaces. As one of the biggest publishers around, Random House doesn't seem to rest on their laurels but offers newer more innovative works than a second-tier publisher like Harlequin can. A well-done and inviting site, with book-trailers and everything -- as you'd expect from Random House.
Trendspotting? Harlequin is sure the kids will want what they've been buying, and Random is pushing Tess Gratton (The Lost Sun: two holds at this writing) and Tom McNeal's Far, Far Away, which has four holds.
Week Seven, Assignment Three: Comment on a pair o' Blogs
"Choose any two of the following blogs/websites. Follow them for a week and post comments."
I chose John Green's fansite/blog/vlog Books, and his Tumblr, and Shannon Hale's Squeetus Blog.
John Green, author of the hyper-popular The Fault of Our Stars, has a very entertaining vlog/blog in Books, with loads of updates on his fresh-born daughter Alice, born June 3. This is apparently put together by one Hank, who looks like the famous cowdog of the same moniker. (Hank actually looks more like Stephen Merchant but with a name like "Hank," you gotta throw in a cowdog reference.) There's some good content here, even some interviews with Green.
Of course anything remotely "official" to the current most-popular YA author will be successful -- that's kind of the nature of the beast -- but both these sites are, I think -- the second slightly less so, but that's probably a generational thing: I think Tumblr is silly.
Shannon Hale's blog is very entertaining. I especially enjoyed her self-deprecating responses to the successful author's never-ending question, "will there be a sequel to Princess Academy?" She facetiously responds that, beyond the "real" sequel, Palace of Stone, a whole cottage industry will be springing up, her "new" sequels illustrated with cover art for the first slew, which will include Vampires in Love, Laser Eyes, and Revenge of the Mountain Goat. I suppose these would be even funnier if I'd read Princess Academy.
I chose John Green's fansite/blog/vlog Books, and his Tumblr, and Shannon Hale's Squeetus Blog.
John Green, author of the hyper-popular The Fault of Our Stars, has a very entertaining vlog/blog in Books, with loads of updates on his fresh-born daughter Alice, born June 3. This is apparently put together by one Hank, who looks like the famous cowdog of the same moniker. (Hank actually looks more like Stephen Merchant but with a name like "Hank," you gotta throw in a cowdog reference.) There's some good content here, even some interviews with Green.
 |
| Hank the Cowdog |
 |
| Stephen Merchant, friend of Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington |
Shannon Hale's blog is very entertaining. I especially enjoyed her self-deprecating responses to the successful author's never-ending question, "will there be a sequel to Princess Academy?" She facetiously responds that, beyond the "real" sequel, Palace of Stone, a whole cottage industry will be springing up, her "new" sequels illustrated with cover art for the first slew, which will include Vampires in Love, Laser Eyes, and Revenge of the Mountain Goat. I suppose these would be even funnier if I'd read Princess Academy.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Week Seven: Not Just For Teens
Assignment One: Review a flowchart
Consider it reviewed. A little snarky, a little sarcastic, and librarians like that. Humorous, with good info: librarians like that, too!
Assignment Two: Read a couple of articles, comment on my blog, review and comment on two others' blogs about their comments on these articles.
I read "'New Adult': Needless Marketing-speak or Valued Subgenre?", from Publisher's Weekly, Dec 14, 2012. In answer to the title, I think "New Adult" is both. It defines a particular subgenre of Young Adult fiction -- that which depicts, models or contemplates the notion of "becoming an adult" -- whereas most YA fiction seems more concerned (at least according to the other article I read) with vampires, zombies, and dystopias.
Of course this is unfair to YA fiction: I enjoy it quite a lot and there's far more to it than just the "dark" themes the second article alludes to. That article is "YA Comes of Age," also from Publisher's Weekly, dated October 3, 2011. The article is a bit dated, having come out after the huge popularity of Twilight and just as The Hunger Games and its dystopian brethren were ruling the sales charts. YA is still in "dark and dystopian" mode, due to these and other influences, and probably will be for some time -- the kids just seem to love that stuff, it's a product of the Age we live in (and meshes nicely with the Goth, emo and other subcultures that parents wish would just go away ...).
YA is a broad and deep genre, more than just these facets, but these are still the seemingly most popular ones. I think it will be quite a while before we see anything analogous to Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and the Little House books (which were the YA lit of their generation, before YA existed).
I left comments on Doug B and Rebecca B's blogs.
Assignments Three and Four will take a little more time.
Consider it reviewed. A little snarky, a little sarcastic, and librarians like that. Humorous, with good info: librarians like that, too!
Assignment Two: Read a couple of articles, comment on my blog, review and comment on two others' blogs about their comments on these articles.
I read "'New Adult': Needless Marketing-speak or Valued Subgenre?", from Publisher's Weekly, Dec 14, 2012. In answer to the title, I think "New Adult" is both. It defines a particular subgenre of Young Adult fiction -- that which depicts, models or contemplates the notion of "becoming an adult" -- whereas most YA fiction seems more concerned (at least according to the other article I read) with vampires, zombies, and dystopias.
Of course this is unfair to YA fiction: I enjoy it quite a lot and there's far more to it than just the "dark" themes the second article alludes to. That article is "YA Comes of Age," also from Publisher's Weekly, dated October 3, 2011. The article is a bit dated, having come out after the huge popularity of Twilight and just as The Hunger Games and its dystopian brethren were ruling the sales charts. YA is still in "dark and dystopian" mode, due to these and other influences, and probably will be for some time -- the kids just seem to love that stuff, it's a product of the Age we live in (and meshes nicely with the Goth, emo and other subcultures that parents wish would just go away ...).
YA is a broad and deep genre, more than just these facets, but these are still the seemingly most popular ones. I think it will be quite a while before we see anything analogous to Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and the Little House books (which were the YA lit of their generation, before YA existed).
I left comments on Doug B and Rebecca B's blogs.
Assignments Three and Four will take a little more time.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Week Six, Assignment Three: Pick Three subgenres with which I am unfamiliar
My three subgenres are "Swords and sorcery," of the Fantasy genre; "Paranormal," part of Horror; and "Pioneer families," from Westerns. I read at least a little in each of these genres but nothing in any of the subgenres.
In attempting to find fan sites for each of these, I Googled "[subgenre] fan sites" or if I got too few hits, "[subgenre] fan". For "Sword and sorcery fan sites," I got way too many hints for usability. Changing "fan sites" into "fansites" helped a little.
I found a good fansite (or fan site) for the Red Sonja character (so memorably and miserably played by Brigitte Nielsen way back in '85), http://www.boomvavavoom.com/redsonja1.html, that goes into nearly all imaginable Red Sonja incarnations. (Pun intended).
Finding more general fan sites (or fansites) was more difficult. This particular subgenre is rift with fan-boys and cosplayers so those things need to be filtered out. I realized that to do this more efficiently, I needed to be in a reading site. Hmmm, if only there was a place where readers of all genres might share their reviews, one that was easily searched by subjects or "tags," if you will. If only someone would come up with something like that ....
So I went to the old reliable Goodreads.
Sadly (?), Goodreads doesn't use the phrase "Sword and sorcery." Instead thtere are slightly broader subgenres of fantasy such as High, Low, Dark and Epic. All of these contain some elements of what Herzberg called "Sword and sorcery," so I'm going with Epic, which seems closest (the only Fantasy I've read religiously is Tolkien, which also fits into several of these subgenres).
Also sadly, Goodreads method of using tags is voluntary to the point that many people may not use them at all (depending on how they use their Goodreads account). And there's just not anything there I can find that leads outside Goodreads itself into the wild and wooly world of Fan Sites.
Second attempt: Following a suggestion from a colleague, I'm going in by individual author's name. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, is probably the single biggest purveyor if Sword and Sorcerism, and Googling "Robert E. Howard fan site" gave me what seems to be the be-all and end-all, the Alpha and the Omega if you will, of Conan-related sites: The Newcomer's Guide to Robert E. Howard. But it's not really a fansite (it IS, but not in the way the assignment expects a fan site to be.)
Perhaps more what was in mind is REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. A warning: both the Newcomer's Guide and REHupa are like gateway drugs into the weird and semi-dark world of Robert E. Howard and The Hyborian Age. Another example: an ad-ridden Angelfire site (open at your own risk), by a certain Joe Marek.
I'm done with "Sword and Sorcery."
In attempting to find fan sites for each of these, I Googled "[subgenre] fan sites" or if I got too few hits, "[subgenre] fan". For "Sword and sorcery fan sites," I got way too many hints for usability. Changing "fan sites" into "fansites" helped a little.
I found a good fansite (or fan site) for the Red Sonja character (so memorably and miserably played by Brigitte Nielsen way back in '85), http://www.boomvavavoom.com/redsonja1.html, that goes into nearly all imaginable Red Sonja incarnations. (Pun intended).
Finding more general fan sites (or fansites) was more difficult. This particular subgenre is rift with fan-boys and cosplayers so those things need to be filtered out. I realized that to do this more efficiently, I needed to be in a reading site. Hmmm, if only there was a place where readers of all genres might share their reviews, one that was easily searched by subjects or "tags," if you will. If only someone would come up with something like that ....
So I went to the old reliable Goodreads.
Sadly (?), Goodreads doesn't use the phrase "Sword and sorcery." Instead thtere are slightly broader subgenres of fantasy such as High, Low, Dark and Epic. All of these contain some elements of what Herzberg called "Sword and sorcery," so I'm going with Epic, which seems closest (the only Fantasy I've read religiously is Tolkien, which also fits into several of these subgenres).
Also sadly, Goodreads method of using tags is voluntary to the point that many people may not use them at all (depending on how they use their Goodreads account). And there's just not anything there I can find that leads outside Goodreads itself into the wild and wooly world of Fan Sites.
Second attempt: Following a suggestion from a colleague, I'm going in by individual author's name. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, is probably the single biggest purveyor if Sword and Sorcerism, and Googling "Robert E. Howard fan site" gave me what seems to be the be-all and end-all, the Alpha and the Omega if you will, of Conan-related sites: The Newcomer's Guide to Robert E. Howard. But it's not really a fansite (it IS, but not in the way the assignment expects a fan site to be.)
 |
| I am no longer Conan. I am no longer The Terminator. |
Perhaps more what was in mind is REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association. A warning: both the Newcomer's Guide and REHupa are like gateway drugs into the weird and semi-dark world of Robert E. Howard and The Hyborian Age. Another example: an ad-ridden Angelfire site (open at your own risk), by a certain Joe Marek.
I'm done with "Sword and Sorcery."
*****
Paranormal Horror. This oughta be somewhat easier -- the subgenre itself seems more current and popular (though again, as a non-reader of any of these subgenres ... what do I know, apart from what I've learned professionally?). We'll see ....
***
[moments later ....]
Most of the subgenres I looked into are not widely used as such. On Goodreads, there's a genre of Horror, but no subgenre of Paranormal Horror, Under Paranormal, there's no Paranormal Horror. Grrrr .....
*****
Westerns -> Pioneer families? Should I even bother looking?
*****
Part Three, Subsection B
Three authors in each sub-genre (and a representative title or two)
The Godfather of Sword and Sorcery, as I stated above, is Robert E. Howard, who published the first Conan story, "People of the Dark" in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp magazine of the time, June 1932.
Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser was published in 1939 and seems to have begun the tradition of Making the Place Names All But Unpronounceable.
Charles Saunders published Imaro in 1981, which is noteworthy as the first S & S to feature a black protagonist.
Appeal factors for Sword and Sorcery include simple characters (usually savage and primitive and somewhat Rousseauan), exotic setting (otherworldly but not too alien), and action-packed plots. The plot and setting seem paramount.
Paranormal horror is typified by the vampire novel -- and as we all know, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) was both the first and (arguably) the best of the lot, combining a modern (at the time of publication!) setting, an ancient villain, and romantic, Byronic plotting. The most important single factor is probably the setting (as the characters, apart from the Count himself, are fairly one-dimensional, and the plot is pretty predictable).
Anne Rice worked major miracles with the classic vampire with her Vampire Chronicles, beginning with Interview With the Vampire (1976), adding strong characters and more complex plotting, along with wonderfully realized backstories and histories for all the major players, and the whole realm of the Undead.
Then along came Stephanie Meyer, who somehow caught the apparently vapid imagination of a generation with her retrograde Twilight series. Again, the drippy and dripping setting of Washington State's forested regions are a major attraction, along with a romantic plot, with a little sappy teen romance and terrible characterization.
The movies? Let's just say Kristen Stewart does a more than capable job playing the undead Bella. Oh, you say she's not undead? My mistake.
Of course the king of Paranormal horror is ... naw, that's a too-easy pun. It's Stephen King. His Carrie (1976) put him on the map and he had a good run through The Shining, The Dead Zone, and The Stand. Then, as each little piece of dreck with his name on it continued to earn major profits for his publishers, his writing went more and more astray until he has become a self-indulgent, self-important word-spewer. If an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters typed for an infinite number of years, eventually they'd come up with Shakespeare -- is that how it goes? If you took a hundred monkeys and set them typing for a week, you'd get a Stephen King novel, circa 1990. His short stores, generally better written (disclaimer: IMHO), might take a year each.
King's appeal factors include violent and bloody action and wonderfully creepy settings.
I do look forward to Doctor Sleep, as I said in a previous post, but I'm prepared to be disappointed.
The subgenre of Pioneer Families was pretty much begun by Bess Streeter Aldrich. Her A Lantern in Hand (1928) preceded Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods by three years, though Wilder's book is more firmly rooted in reality -- her family really were Minnesota (and elsewhere) pioneers, and Aldrich was at least one generation removed from "Pioneer Life." Setting in a foreign, "untamed" (meaning by European-based civilizations) land is the major appeal, along with the descriptions of pioneer privations and the resulting feeling in the reader of "well, my life is rough, but at least we've just about got this bed-bug-thing licked."
There's a whole sub-subgenre of Pioneer Families, Mormon Pioneer Families, typified by Gerald Lund's many books. Fire of the Covenant (1999) is one. These appeal to the reader for the same reasons as above, but with the added aegis of that sect's reputation for adherence to its rather strict rules of governance and, to a "Gentile," or outsider, its unusual belief system.
Part Three, Subsection C
Mashups
Some books may fit into one of more subgenres. Describe two titles, not identified by Herzberg, and rationalize your choices.
I read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith (2010 -- he also wrote what may the kick-off title of this sub-sub-subgenre of "literary zombie fiction," Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, usually credited to Jane Austen and Grahame-Smith, and catalogued in most public libraries under Austen) when it was first published, and enjoyed it immensely. Being a huge 16th-President fan, I could easily see where Lincoln's life story ended and the fantasy-horror elements began. It's a great story, fairly well-told and not badly written. It combines Lincoln's actual life with the zombie idea in a way that's both entertaining and satisfying. It's really a mashup of biography, pioneer history, horror, alternative history, and ... well, there must be at least one more thing there ... but I'll let you figure it out. It's much more fun than the movie adaptation.
Also in the vein of Presidential mockrography is The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: the Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President, by George Prendle (2007). This is pure nonsense, a highly fictionalised and humorified biography of one of our least remarkable presidents -- when this came out, there hadn't been a "real" biography of Filllmore in about fifty years -- since then, there's at least one legitimate one, which is not nearly as fun as this. Prendle takes the basic facts of Fillmore life and makes him into a Paul Bunyan/Davy Crockett-esque, larger-than-life figure, which is pretty much the opposite of what the real 13th President was like, apparently. Its subgenre must me something like "humorous biography/tall tale." I recommend it whenever I get the chance. But please, kids, do not cite it in a serious research paper.
Whew! On to Week Seven! Glory be.
*****
Part Three, Subsection B
Three authors in each sub-genre (and a representative title or two)
The Godfather of Sword and Sorcery, as I stated above, is Robert E. Howard, who published the first Conan story, "People of the Dark" in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp magazine of the time, June 1932.
Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser was published in 1939 and seems to have begun the tradition of Making the Place Names All But Unpronounceable.
Charles Saunders published Imaro in 1981, which is noteworthy as the first S & S to feature a black protagonist.
Appeal factors for Sword and Sorcery include simple characters (usually savage and primitive and somewhat Rousseauan), exotic setting (otherworldly but not too alien), and action-packed plots. The plot and setting seem paramount.
***
Paranormal horror is typified by the vampire novel -- and as we all know, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) was both the first and (arguably) the best of the lot, combining a modern (at the time of publication!) setting, an ancient villain, and romantic, Byronic plotting. The most important single factor is probably the setting (as the characters, apart from the Count himself, are fairly one-dimensional, and the plot is pretty predictable).
Anne Rice worked major miracles with the classic vampire with her Vampire Chronicles, beginning with Interview With the Vampire (1976), adding strong characters and more complex plotting, along with wonderfully realized backstories and histories for all the major players, and the whole realm of the Undead.
Then along came Stephanie Meyer, who somehow caught the apparently vapid imagination of a generation with her retrograde Twilight series. Again, the drippy and dripping setting of Washington State's forested regions are a major attraction, along with a romantic plot, with a little sappy teen romance and terrible characterization.
The movies? Let's just say Kristen Stewart does a more than capable job playing the undead Bella. Oh, you say she's not undead? My mistake.
 |
| Leave me alone, I'm trying to act! |
Of course the king of Paranormal horror is ... naw, that's a too-easy pun. It's Stephen King. His Carrie (1976) put him on the map and he had a good run through The Shining, The Dead Zone, and The Stand. Then, as each little piece of dreck with his name on it continued to earn major profits for his publishers, his writing went more and more astray until he has become a self-indulgent, self-important word-spewer. If an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters typed for an infinite number of years, eventually they'd come up with Shakespeare -- is that how it goes? If you took a hundred monkeys and set them typing for a week, you'd get a Stephen King novel, circa 1990. His short stores, generally better written (disclaimer: IMHO), might take a year each.
King's appeal factors include violent and bloody action and wonderfully creepy settings.
I do look forward to Doctor Sleep, as I said in a previous post, but I'm prepared to be disappointed.
***
The subgenre of Pioneer Families was pretty much begun by Bess Streeter Aldrich. Her A Lantern in Hand (1928) preceded Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods by three years, though Wilder's book is more firmly rooted in reality -- her family really were Minnesota (and elsewhere) pioneers, and Aldrich was at least one generation removed from "Pioneer Life." Setting in a foreign, "untamed" (meaning by European-based civilizations) land is the major appeal, along with the descriptions of pioneer privations and the resulting feeling in the reader of "well, my life is rough, but at least we've just about got this bed-bug-thing licked."
There's a whole sub-subgenre of Pioneer Families, Mormon Pioneer Families, typified by Gerald Lund's many books. Fire of the Covenant (1999) is one. These appeal to the reader for the same reasons as above, but with the added aegis of that sect's reputation for adherence to its rather strict rules of governance and, to a "Gentile," or outsider, its unusual belief system.
*****
Part Three, Subsection C
Mashups
Some books may fit into one of more subgenres. Describe two titles, not identified by Herzberg, and rationalize your choices.
I read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith (2010 -- he also wrote what may the kick-off title of this sub-sub-subgenre of "literary zombie fiction," Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, usually credited to Jane Austen and Grahame-Smith, and catalogued in most public libraries under Austen) when it was first published, and enjoyed it immensely. Being a huge 16th-President fan, I could easily see where Lincoln's life story ended and the fantasy-horror elements began. It's a great story, fairly well-told and not badly written. It combines Lincoln's actual life with the zombie idea in a way that's both entertaining and satisfying. It's really a mashup of biography, pioneer history, horror, alternative history, and ... well, there must be at least one more thing there ... but I'll let you figure it out. It's much more fun than the movie adaptation.
*****
Whew! On to Week Seven! Glory be.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Week Six, Assignment Two: Explore and comment on a Prezi link, by Alex Herzberg
Over all this is a good and well-thought-out flow chart of fiction genres and subgenres. My friend Monty has something erudite to say about the history and relationship between science fiction and fantasy -- which Herzberg makes a genre and subgenre, respectively -- which makes a lot of sense to me.
My biggest reservation about this chart is Herzberg's opinion that "culinary capers" and "pet investigators" are both subgenres of Mystery, equal to (in his hierarchy) "cozies," but I would argue that those two are sub-subgenres of "cozies." They are simply "cozies" with heightened emphasis on food and pets, rather than something new and different.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the Mystery genre is only really broken into four major subgenres: Detective fiction, Cozies, Hard-boiled, and Police procedurals. There's a lot of overlap between them -- Cozies may (and usually do) feature a detective, usually an amateur like a Miss Marple or a Nancy Drew, and usually employing the methods of induction and logic first presented by Poe with his detective stories featuring Auguste Dupin.
Detective stories may feature a "hard-boiled" detective like Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer, but may be equally at home with more sedate investigators like Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance.
There are also sub-subgenres like "whodunits," and in contrast there are some that may feature crime but no solution -- I'm thinking of Jim Thompson in particular. Thompson's books are very hard to categorize -- he was more a writer on criminal psychology than a conventional "mystery writer."
Maybe "hard-boiled" is more a style than a genre. Hemingway, Hammett, Chandler, Thompson and many others wrote in what we might call a "hard-boiled" style, but they don't really share much more than a clipped style, pithy sentences, a certain cynicism and/or "world weariness."
Herzberg's "Foreign intrigue" doesn't need to be separated out at all from his other subgenres. I can imagine a non-English-language librarian classing everyone from Rita Mae Brown to Agatha Christie to Charles Dickens under "Foreign intrigue" if its major identifying characteristic is just that it's set in a place that's "not here."
A nicely done flowchart but imperfect, as all human endeavors are.
My biggest reservation about this chart is Herzberg's opinion that "culinary capers" and "pet investigators" are both subgenres of Mystery, equal to (in his hierarchy) "cozies," but I would argue that those two are sub-subgenres of "cozies." They are simply "cozies" with heightened emphasis on food and pets, rather than something new and different.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the Mystery genre is only really broken into four major subgenres: Detective fiction, Cozies, Hard-boiled, and Police procedurals. There's a lot of overlap between them -- Cozies may (and usually do) feature a detective, usually an amateur like a Miss Marple or a Nancy Drew, and usually employing the methods of induction and logic first presented by Poe with his detective stories featuring Auguste Dupin.
Detective stories may feature a "hard-boiled" detective like Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer, but may be equally at home with more sedate investigators like Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance.
There are also sub-subgenres like "whodunits," and in contrast there are some that may feature crime but no solution -- I'm thinking of Jim Thompson in particular. Thompson's books are very hard to categorize -- he was more a writer on criminal psychology than a conventional "mystery writer."
Maybe "hard-boiled" is more a style than a genre. Hemingway, Hammett, Chandler, Thompson and many others wrote in what we might call a "hard-boiled" style, but they don't really share much more than a clipped style, pithy sentences, a certain cynicism and/or "world weariness."
Herzberg's "Foreign intrigue" doesn't need to be separated out at all from his other subgenres. I can imagine a non-English-language librarian classing everyone from Rita Mae Brown to Agatha Christie to Charles Dickens under "Foreign intrigue" if its major identifying characteristic is just that it's set in a place that's "not here."
A nicely done flowchart but imperfect, as all human endeavors are.
Week Six, Assignment One: Something I learned about my "genre link."
Street Fiction is owned (or at least heavily subsidized) by Amazon. But so is Goodreads and so, soon, will be Google! Or vice-versa, one of those.
That said, all the books that are being pushed on Street Fiction are (surprise!) available through Amazon. The "reviews" are your common garden-variety Amazon reader-reviews, but that's not a bad thing -- some of these reviews are well written and very useful, especially in genres we're not familiar with.
I clicked on the sub-link for "urban non-fiction" and found at least two books I want to read, one based on the reviews herein, the other based on them and the personal recommendation of a friend who happens to be reading that book at the moment. The first is an academic bibliobiography of Iceberg Slim, by Peter Muckley -- which also makes me want to read Slim's fiction. The second is the autobiography of the actress/semi-reformed-criminal Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, who played Snoop on HBO's The Wire, of which I'm a big fan.
Amazon reviews are hit and miss, as is much of the Internet -- and there's always the suspicion that at least some of the reviews in Amazon are written by paid shills rather than real readers.
That said, all the books that are being pushed on Street Fiction are (surprise!) available through Amazon. The "reviews" are your common garden-variety Amazon reader-reviews, but that's not a bad thing -- some of these reviews are well written and very useful, especially in genres we're not familiar with.
I clicked on the sub-link for "urban non-fiction" and found at least two books I want to read, one based on the reviews herein, the other based on them and the personal recommendation of a friend who happens to be reading that book at the moment. The first is an academic bibliobiography of Iceberg Slim, by Peter Muckley -- which also makes me want to read Slim's fiction. The second is the autobiography of the actress/semi-reformed-criminal Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, who played Snoop on HBO's The Wire, of which I'm a big fan.
Amazon reviews are hit and miss, as is much of the Internet -- and there's always the suspicion that at least some of the reviews in Amazon are written by paid shills rather than real readers.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Week Five: What have I learned so far?
What useful information have you learned from the resource that you have been monitoring since week one?
I chose Goodreads, which I've used for many years, and Street Fiction, which I've only begun to use. From the former, due in part to this training we're receiving, I've given and received far more recommendations than in the past, and I've reviewed more of the books I've read than I normally do. It's been fun and enjoyable!
Street Fiction I've not found as useful as I'd hoped -- it's more a list of books than a good review source, with links to Amazon sites, though I admit there's more I need to check out there. A page within the site called "Librarian Resources" offers several good lists, and articles such as Daniel Marcou's "History of Street Fiction and Why it Appeals to Readers," which traces the genre back to Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, in 1722!
RA-wise, Street Fiction is easier to use than Goodreads, if only because of the narrower focus, though even within "street fiction," there are many sub-genres -- you not want to mix up "urban Christian" and "urban fiction," for example.
Week 5: Assignment 2 -- What’s popular in your branch? ... Do your customers want to read the book before the movie comes out? ... Early Word. Take a look at the site and click around.... Post to your blog: What resources are new discoveries for you? What do you think that you will continue to use?
Zeke W helpfully printed out a list of the "Top 25 Titles for Catonsville Branch, April 2013" and the results were not too surprising to me, who works daily with the public and places a lot of hold requests for people. Of those top 25, five are by James Patterson. Actually, Patterson's five come in the top 15! He's prolific and popular both -- a modern day Dickens, maybe. Others in the top spots include Gillian Flynn, David Baldacci, J.K. Rowling, and Barbara Kingsolver -- the usual suspects. People who use the library know what they can find here, and make good use of the resources we offer.
Generally, I think people do prefer to read the book before they see the movie, though I haven't noticed a huge upswing in Great Gatsby checkouts. This is true for fiction -- I think for non-fiction topics, the opposite is probably true -- people may see a movie that spurs their interest in a topic, so they'll seek out the source material. I know I do that -- after I saw Les Miserables, I wanted to find out more about the June Rebellion of 1832 that forms the framework of the second half of the book/show/movie (if you do the same, here's a place to start, the Wikipedia article).
I found Early Word to be overly busy and dull looking -- this is how every data-rich website looked in 1994! The content is good but they could use a re-design. Some new-to-me resources there include the "Ideas to Steal" column and a good "Poetry" section. I will continue to use both, and the page in general, as needed, and will keep my fingers crossed for a beautifully redesigned site!
Week 5: Assignment 3 -- Pick a title from the highly anticipated titles of 2013, found under the right-hand “Coming Soon- Season Previews” sidebar on Early Word. Write a blog post using appeal factors or read alikes to describe the title. Why is this title expected to be popular and to whom would it appeal?
As a warning to you all, the USA Today "article," like that "newspaper" itself, is barely a level about the New York Times Best-Sellers list: it's pretty worthless in establishing appeal factors, though it does offer nice big jpgs of cover art. Better by far, I found, was the article from The Atlantic: the article itself is very brief, but there's a couple of telling paragraphs on each title.
Among upcoming titles are two from the factory we call Stephen King: Joyland, with a June publication date, and Doctor Sleep, scheduled for September. The former looks to be a return to the creepy stuff King started with -- the cover design looks like pure 1950s pulp. This book will no doubt appeal to horror fiction aficionados, amusement park romanticists, and the coulorophobics who weren't scared off by King's It. (It's hard to recommend by appeal factors when the book is unreviewed at this point: publishers don't give a lot away, especially for a guaranteed best seller like King.)
Doctor Sleep revisits little Danny Torrance, begun in The Shining (1977). Danny has grown up in these past years (though I bet he'll somehow be younger than the 45 or 50 he should be, from the original chronology), still flashing back to that Winter in Colorado, but now using his "shining" to comfort the afflicted. Then something happens, something (you can bet) awful. But neither King nor the publishers will say much more. That reticence won't stop sales.
Appeal factors? Revisiting favorite characters is a big one (Danny, if you haven't read it in a while, was a VERY appealing kid), and hopefully the setting (New Hampshire) will be as much a character as the Overlook Hotel was. If King can return to his slightly more controlled style of his early books (before his publishers told him, "Write as much as you want -- your 'editor' will just correct your spelling"), and if the book lives up to my personal expectations, the closest possible read-alike with be The Shining itself, my second favorite King novel (after The Stand).
Both of these books should appeal to King fans of every age -- I bet Doctor Sleep will bring a few back who left him circa Firestarter, like me, just because they want to see "whatever happened to that poor put-upon Danny Torrance?"
I chose Goodreads, which I've used for many years, and Street Fiction, which I've only begun to use. From the former, due in part to this training we're receiving, I've given and received far more recommendations than in the past, and I've reviewed more of the books I've read than I normally do. It's been fun and enjoyable!
Street Fiction I've not found as useful as I'd hoped -- it's more a list of books than a good review source, with links to Amazon sites, though I admit there's more I need to check out there. A page within the site called "Librarian Resources" offers several good lists, and articles such as Daniel Marcou's "History of Street Fiction and Why it Appeals to Readers," which traces the genre back to Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, in 1722!
RA-wise, Street Fiction is easier to use than Goodreads, if only because of the narrower focus, though even within "street fiction," there are many sub-genres -- you not want to mix up "urban Christian" and "urban fiction," for example.
Week 5: Assignment 2 -- What’s popular in your branch? ... Do your customers want to read the book before the movie comes out? ... Early Word. Take a look at the site and click around.... Post to your blog: What resources are new discoveries for you? What do you think that you will continue to use?
Zeke W helpfully printed out a list of the "Top 25 Titles for Catonsville Branch, April 2013" and the results were not too surprising to me, who works daily with the public and places a lot of hold requests for people. Of those top 25, five are by James Patterson. Actually, Patterson's five come in the top 15! He's prolific and popular both -- a modern day Dickens, maybe. Others in the top spots include Gillian Flynn, David Baldacci, J.K. Rowling, and Barbara Kingsolver -- the usual suspects. People who use the library know what they can find here, and make good use of the resources we offer.
Generally, I think people do prefer to read the book before they see the movie, though I haven't noticed a huge upswing in Great Gatsby checkouts. This is true for fiction -- I think for non-fiction topics, the opposite is probably true -- people may see a movie that spurs their interest in a topic, so they'll seek out the source material. I know I do that -- after I saw Les Miserables, I wanted to find out more about the June Rebellion of 1832 that forms the framework of the second half of the book/show/movie (if you do the same, here's a place to start, the Wikipedia article).
I found Early Word to be overly busy and dull looking -- this is how every data-rich website looked in 1994! The content is good but they could use a re-design. Some new-to-me resources there include the "Ideas to Steal" column and a good "Poetry" section. I will continue to use both, and the page in general, as needed, and will keep my fingers crossed for a beautifully redesigned site!
Week 5: Assignment 3 -- Pick a title from the highly anticipated titles of 2013, found under the right-hand “Coming Soon- Season Previews” sidebar on Early Word. Write a blog post using appeal factors or read alikes to describe the title. Why is this title expected to be popular and to whom would it appeal?
As a warning to you all, the USA Today "article," like that "newspaper" itself, is barely a level about the New York Times Best-Sellers list: it's pretty worthless in establishing appeal factors, though it does offer nice big jpgs of cover art. Better by far, I found, was the article from The Atlantic: the article itself is very brief, but there's a couple of telling paragraphs on each title.
Doctor Sleep revisits little Danny Torrance, begun in The Shining (1977). Danny has grown up in these past years (though I bet he'll somehow be younger than the 45 or 50 he should be, from the original chronology), still flashing back to that Winter in Colorado, but now using his "shining" to comfort the afflicted. Then something happens, something (you can bet) awful. But neither King nor the publishers will say much more. That reticence won't stop sales.
Appeal factors? Revisiting favorite characters is a big one (Danny, if you haven't read it in a while, was a VERY appealing kid), and hopefully the setting (New Hampshire) will be as much a character as the Overlook Hotel was. If King can return to his slightly more controlled style of his early books (before his publishers told him, "Write as much as you want -- your 'editor' will just correct your spelling"), and if the book lives up to my personal expectations, the closest possible read-alike with be The Shining itself, my second favorite King novel (after The Stand).
Both of these books should appeal to King fans of every age -- I bet Doctor Sleep will bring a few back who left him circa Firestarter, like me, just because they want to see "whatever happened to that poor put-upon Danny Torrance?"
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Week Four, Assignment One:
Goodreads
After establishing a Goodreads account and making friends with colleagues, "recommend a title to a colleague based on a title or titles that they have enjoyed using the comments field on Goodreads. Be sure to include appeal characteristics in your recommendation and note why it is similar to the title or titles they enjoyed."
Having been a Goodreads customer for nearly three years, and on LibraryThing before that, this assignment was a relative piece du gâteau. For me, the hardest part, like in a previous assignment, was determining who would be the Lucky Colleague who'd get to receive a recommendation.
Again, this proved harder than I thought.
At first I didn't want to chose anyone I knew too well already, thinking it would be more like a "real" RA experience with a random library customer. But then I found the colleagues I don't know well tend to have tastes that I don't really relate to. I probably should have stuck with this method, to flex my RA muscles (i.e., the muscle some refer to as a "brain"), but decided since time was valuable, I'd go down a path of less resistance.
So I narrowed my list to people I thought I knew.
Man, some of you people read weird stuff! Just kidding. But I also found, though surveying selectively, that many people either have so recently established their Goodreads accounts that they simply didn't have enough books listed that I had much to go on. Another cause seems to be the combined pressures of a full-time job, maybe school on the side, and children or other family obligations that take away from your Goodreads time.
After spending too much time selecting, I chose Marlene K. and sent her the following recommendation:
"Based on the many (who knew were that many?) books you've rated on art, art history, and art related crime (not to mention your apparent love of good narrative non-fiction), I can heartily recommend Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo's 2009 work, Provenance (it's also a mutual friend's favorite book). It tells the story of John Drewe, who commissioned an artist-acquaintance to paint 'in the style of' several modern painters, and sold them after intricately-fabricated provenances had been created and museum archives compromised. I can guarantee you will be delighted with this book."
The basic subject matter seems to be an interest of Marlene's, and it has a lot of the same appeal factors she mentions in reviews of not only art and art-crime books, but others as well, such as character and a facile writing style. Both the main "criminals" -- John Drewe, the mastermind/con-man, and John Myatt, his artist and conspirator, though he is as much a victim as anyone in the book -- and the police who (eventually) investigate and solve the crimes, are fully realized, as are the more minor characters. I really believe Marlene will love this book, and I hope she lets me know so!
Impressions of Goodreads: Despite having been a "member" of the Goodreads community for a decent amount of time, this was really my first time being more interactive with it. I was able to easily find Marlene's page, sort her 199 books by ratings (so that the ones she liked best came first) or by author (I wanted to make sure she hadn't read and rated what I was about the recommend). I could read her reviews, all grouped together, recommend a book to her and then go back and find my recommendation to copy-and-paste it here. The interface mostly works well, though there is so much opportunity to manipulate the info that some times the method of doing so can be cumbersome -- but mostly it's not.
I've long enjoyed adding my reads and reporting on them through Facebook, but now I see how easy it is to use as a Readers' Advisory tool.
Goodreads
After establishing a Goodreads account and making friends with colleagues, "recommend a title to a colleague based on a title or titles that they have enjoyed using the comments field on Goodreads. Be sure to include appeal characteristics in your recommendation and note why it is similar to the title or titles they enjoyed."
Having been a Goodreads customer for nearly three years, and on LibraryThing before that, this assignment was a relative piece du gâteau. For me, the hardest part, like in a previous assignment, was determining who would be the Lucky Colleague who'd get to receive a recommendation.
Again, this proved harder than I thought.
At first I didn't want to chose anyone I knew too well already, thinking it would be more like a "real" RA experience with a random library customer. But then I found the colleagues I don't know well tend to have tastes that I don't really relate to. I probably should have stuck with this method, to flex my RA muscles (i.e., the muscle some refer to as a "brain"), but decided since time was valuable, I'd go down a path of less resistance.
So I narrowed my list to people I thought I knew.
Man, some of you people read weird stuff! Just kidding. But I also found, though surveying selectively, that many people either have so recently established their Goodreads accounts that they simply didn't have enough books listed that I had much to go on. Another cause seems to be the combined pressures of a full-time job, maybe school on the side, and children or other family obligations that take away from your Goodreads time.
After spending too much time selecting, I chose Marlene K. and sent her the following recommendation:
"Based on the many (who knew were that many?) books you've rated on art, art history, and art related crime (not to mention your apparent love of good narrative non-fiction), I can heartily recommend Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo's 2009 work, Provenance (it's also a mutual friend's favorite book). It tells the story of John Drewe, who commissioned an artist-acquaintance to paint 'in the style of' several modern painters, and sold them after intricately-fabricated provenances had been created and museum archives compromised. I can guarantee you will be delighted with this book."
The basic subject matter seems to be an interest of Marlene's, and it has a lot of the same appeal factors she mentions in reviews of not only art and art-crime books, but others as well, such as character and a facile writing style. Both the main "criminals" -- John Drewe, the mastermind/con-man, and John Myatt, his artist and conspirator, though he is as much a victim as anyone in the book -- and the police who (eventually) investigate and solve the crimes, are fully realized, as are the more minor characters. I really believe Marlene will love this book, and I hope she lets me know so!
Impressions of Goodreads: Despite having been a "member" of the Goodreads community for a decent amount of time, this was really my first time being more interactive with it. I was able to easily find Marlene's page, sort her 199 books by ratings (so that the ones she liked best came first) or by author (I wanted to make sure she hadn't read and rated what I was about the recommend). I could read her reviews, all grouped together, recommend a book to her and then go back and find my recommendation to copy-and-paste it here. The interface mostly works well, though there is so much opportunity to manipulate the info that some times the method of doing so can be cumbersome -- but mostly it's not.
I've long enjoyed adding my reads and reporting on them through Facebook, but now I see how easy it is to use as a Readers' Advisory tool.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Week Three, Assignment Three: Three conversations, three recommendations
Conversation Two: This reader wants vampire stories "just like" Twilight, only totally different: she doesn't want the teen-love, angst-driven navel-contemplation but instead wants more blood and violence. For her I suggest some of the Japanese vampire manga -- some is very good and certainly fast-enough paced for anyone with a short attention span. Graphic novels aren't for everyone, of course, so I'd also recommend Seth Graham-Smith's 2010 Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which is both biographical (well ... sort of) and action-packed (and much better than the recent filmed version).
In the Young Adult class, there is a virtual plethora of titles, but one of the promising is Cheyenne McCray's Night Trackers series, about a group of dedicated (you guessed it) high school vampire slayers. And there's a passel of books based on Josh Whedon's Buffy TV series, any of which might work for this reader.
Other great true-adventures include Halsey's Typhoon, by Bob Drury (2006), about the World War II typhoon that nearly wiped out Task Force 38 of the US Navy (and features in both the movie and novel of The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk), Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose (1996), a biography of Merewether Lewis cloaked in a retelling of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06, fills all the reader's requirements. Others I think s/he'd enjoy include almost anything by Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea [2001], Mayflower [2006], and The Last Stand [2010], most notably).
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Week Two, Assignment Three: RA to a colleague
"Visit a colleague’s blog and suggest two titles which they might enjoy based on their postings. You may find these two titles via NoveList etc. but do not spend longer on these than you would with a customer."
Randalee's write-ups indicate characters and setting are particularly strong appeal factors for her, and I deduce that she enjoys the intellectual challenge of puzzle solving, as well. From these factors I think she might enjoy the original Sherlock Holmes stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which have good characters (who will surprise you some, if you only know them from the movies and various TV series), unique and evocative settings (the Dartmouth moors, and of course foggy London itself, among others), and are rift with conundrums, murders and threats of violence -- who WOULDN'T like them? Which makes recommending Sherlock Holmes almost a cheat.
From her enjoyment of the characters and medieval setting of Pillars of the Earth, Randalee might like Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles -- the trilogy about King Arthur. These are set much earlier in British history than Pillars, but with similar intent, namely, to tell modern readers what it Really Might Have Been Like to Live in Medieval Britain.
Okay. My semi-randomly chosen colleague -- who I have never met before tonight (in case there are grumblings of foreknowledge from the Groundlings) -- is Randalee G. -- though to be honest, I have met her. I probably spent more time selecting my "randomly chosen" colleague than I did making the recommendations -- Randalee actually mentioned two of her favorite books, which someone would do if you were trying to readerly advise them.
Randalee mentioned Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth and the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. I have read neither, which will make this RA even more entertaining to you, the viewer.
Randalee's write-ups indicate characters and setting are particularly strong appeal factors for her, and I deduce that she enjoys the intellectual challenge of puzzle solving, as well. From these factors I think she might enjoy the original Sherlock Holmes stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which have good characters (who will surprise you some, if you only know them from the movies and various TV series), unique and evocative settings (the Dartmouth moors, and of course foggy London itself, among others), and are rift with conundrums, murders and threats of violence -- who WOULDN'T like them? Which makes recommending Sherlock Holmes almost a cheat.From her enjoyment of the characters and medieval setting of Pillars of the Earth, Randalee might like Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles -- the trilogy about King Arthur. These are set much earlier in British history than Pillars, but with similar intent, namely, to tell modern readers what it Really Might Have Been Like to Live in Medieval Britain.
 |
| And now, for no reason whatsoever: Shetland ponies in sweaters. |
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Week Two, Assignment Two: Annotations for two recent reads
"Using mainly appeal factors rather than plot summary, write annotations on your blog for two books which you’ve read and enjoyed."
Guess my review of Growing Up Patton won't cut it, because that would be cheating. Hmmm ....
I read a heavily illustrated biography of Weird Al Yankovic the other day: Weird Al: The Book, by Nathan Rabin, which I could recommend to W. A.'s fans, and any who enjoy a good humorous biography, with lots of pictures and song lyrics. The book does give a good review of the subject's life to date, but is mostly entertaining in its use of
anecdotes and goofy pics that may be new to non-hardcore fans
(soft-core fans?).
Guess my review of Growing Up Patton won't cut it, because that would be cheating. Hmmm ....
I read a heavily illustrated biography of Weird Al Yankovic the other day: Weird Al: The Book, by Nathan Rabin, which I could recommend to W. A.'s fans, and any who enjoy a good humorous biography, with lots of pictures and song lyrics. The book does give a good review of the subject's life to date, but is mostly entertaining in its use of (soft-core fans?).
In a more serious vein, Laurent Binet's recent historical novel HHhH, on (SPOILER ALERT) the 1942 plot to assassinate SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, should appeal to readers of espionage and action thrillers, although the thoughtful and innovative style may not be what they're used to. The pay-off is huge, and the semi-meandering path getting there is strewn with ideas and reveries that you usually don't see in any but "literary" fiction -- but don't let that throw you, it's a well-told, fast-paced story.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Week One, Assignment One: Judging books by their covers
Adult list, got 19 of 24, though I protest that my answer of The Chronicles of Narnia should have counted for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (and not just because I never read the damned things). Shoulda got Bonus Points for spelling "Chronicles" correctly.
Children's list, 16 of 20.
Assignment Two: Nine of twelve, though I disagree that a woman's torso in front of a Stately Home is indicative of "historical" Realistic fiction -- she doesn't seem to be wearing clothes that fit with any but contemporary times.
Assignment Three: Good advice though when you've been doing this (and participating in BCPL's excellent [not kissing up, it really is] RA training) as long as I have, it's almost second nature -- except I still have a tendency to NOT "keep current" -- I prefer lots of the older stuff I should have read in a previous life.
Assignment Four: I will be checking in with Goodreads for general books recommendations (because I do it already and at this moment, don't have time to establish TWO new routines), and Street Fiction, because Urban Fiction is not something I'm into, and it could be fun. Have already found that link mentioned in the assignment is broken -- or more accurately, partially disabled. My link above goes to the intended place.
Assignment Five: The kindergartner's exactly right about Jane Eyre: it IS a book about a gold-mining girl. Or was that Great Expectations?
I had a friend when I worked in Fort Lauderdale. She and I would go to bookstores (this was back when they had bookstores) and literally judge books by their covers. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon!
Children's list, 16 of 20.
Assignment Two: Nine of twelve, though I disagree that a woman's torso in front of a Stately Home is indicative of "historical" Realistic fiction -- she doesn't seem to be wearing clothes that fit with any but contemporary times.
Assignment Three: Good advice though when you've been doing this (and participating in BCPL's excellent [not kissing up, it really is] RA training) as long as I have, it's almost second nature -- except I still have a tendency to NOT "keep current" -- I prefer lots of the older stuff I should have read in a previous life.
Assignment Four: I will be checking in with Goodreads for general books recommendations (because I do it already and at this moment, don't have time to establish TWO new routines), and Street Fiction, because Urban Fiction is not something I'm into, and it could be fun. Have already found that link mentioned in the assignment is broken -- or more accurately, partially disabled. My link above goes to the intended place.
Assignment Five: The kindergartner's exactly right about Jane Eyre: it IS a book about a gold-mining girl. Or was that Great Expectations?
I had a friend when I worked in Fort Lauderdale. She and I would go to bookstores (this was back when they had bookstores) and literally judge books by their covers. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon!
Monday, April 15, 2013
Protoassignment
Anyone who knows me (and I realize I haven't introduced myself; that'll happen soon enough) knows I have a lifelong fascination with General George S. Patton Jr. (or "GSP"), the tactical genius of the US Army in World War II. I have read almost everything published on the man and am now expanding that interest into his family. This book is written by GSP's grandson, Benjamin, who in turn is the son of Major General George S. Patton IV, GSP's son (the numbering is a bit confusing and confused but I'll gladly explain it to you ... some other time).
This gives great depth to the family saga some of us are familiar with. George Patton the son gets the lion's share of coverage -- he was, after all, the author's father. Benjamin never knew GSP, who died 20 years before his birth.
Well written by Patton and Jennifer Scruby, this is much more than a family memoir. Lovingly interspersed with anecdotes and short biographical sketches of various friends of his mother and father, there is fatherly advice enough here for a dozen Poloniuses. (Polonii?) George Patton IV deserves his own biography one day -- while not as outrageous and publicly loved/hated as his father, the latest General Patton was well-liked and respected by his soldiers and his superiors, and probably actually had more time in combat than his father did, even including his World War I service.
Recommended for fans of military biography, or for anyone curious about "that Vietnam-era Patton." Anyone interested in family dynamics would also be a potential reader, but the "military thing" admittedly puts some people off from the start.
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