Book Review: The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey.

When I originally picked up this book and started reading it, I knew very little about it.  Only that it was this new dystopian Young Adult novel.  If I had a nickel for every book that thought it could cash in on the Hunger Games phenomenon...but it wasn't entirely like The Hunger Games, although I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans.  First of all it's actually about alien invasion.  I can hear your collective groans.  I groaned too when I discovered this, but it is done in an interesting way and it's not like the aliens have lizard faces or anything (I'm looking at you V: The Miniseries and the trauma that ruined my childhood).

If I had to liken this to any book it would probably be Ender's Game, although the main protagonist is female.  There are kids, there a war games, and they are tasked with saving what remnants of humanity from the alien invaders.  It is told in first person point of view, although it is told from the perspectives several different characters to keep things interesting.  It's very well done, and the fast past action keeps you hooked.

Although it is long, this is a very quick read and once you think you have everything figured out, it changes and you don't.  There are at least two major plot twists.  Give it a read to see if you can figure them out yourself before they are revealed.

I would recommend this to young adults and adults as well.  There is a little language, and some pretty mature themes, but it's good for teens.

Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman is his latest adult novel and most recent since the release of Anansi Boys in 2005.  It is an absolute delight of a modern fantasy novel.  It is a quick read clocking at only 181 pages, but never seems too short covering exactly what the author wants you to know and still leaving a sense of mystery.  The story is told from the point of view of an adult male looking back on certain events of his childhood that are both supernatural and terrifying.

The three main female characters, Lettie Hempstock, her mother and her grandmother, are endearingly sketched and unforgettable.  The novel encompasses a time when the narrator lived in a house close to the Hempstocks.  It covers the horror when the boarder who live with the narrator's family, an opal miner, committed suicide, and the surrounding supernatural aftermath.  This part of the book was actually taken from Gaiman's own childhood, when his father's car was stolen and the thief was discovered to have committed suicide in the vehicle.  There is also a delightful photograph on the rear of the book of Gaiman himself as a child standing atop a drainage pipe.

Alas if you are interested in more of the plot, you will have to read the book yourself.  I found it wonderful, so you will not be wasting what little time it takes to finish.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane is another successful entry in Gaiman's pantheon of  modern day fairy tales, and certainly worth a read or two.

James Patterson Wants Us to Have A Conversation

This past weekend the prolific author James Patterson took out ads on the front page of Publisher's Weekly, The New York Times Book Review and Kirkus.  His advertisement poses the questions, "Who Will Save Our Books? Our Bookstores? Our Libraries?"  His goal here is to start a dialogue that the industry and society as a whole has been largely ignoring.  He argues that the government stepped in to save our banks and automobile industry but where is the government on bookstores, libraries and the importance of reading?  There is article after article about the collapse of the book business, but no one has proposed any suggestions for how to save it.  Patterson doesn't make any suggestions either, he's just trying to "stir the pot" as he says.  He's looking to start the conversation in a constructive manner instead of just ignoring it like we have thus far.

It is also interesting the adversarial relationship that has developed between publishers and librarians over ebooks.  When only physical books were available libraries and publishers worked together cordially.  With the rise of the ebook format publishers have suddenly seen libraries as enemies.  Libraries typically get physical books at a 40-42% discount off the publisher's list prices.  For ebooks they are expected to pay 10 times the retail price and sometimes more.  That's if the publisher decides that their ebooks should be available at all to libraries.  With ebooks for whatever reason, publishers feel that libraries having ebooks will undercut their sales of those books.  The lack of anything physical or tangible associated with these books means that there would be little point in wanting to keep them forever, unless you are the type to reread books.  Why not just borrow them from the library and return them when you are done?  Why bother amassing an ebook library when no one will be able to use it but you?

Which is one issue facing libraries.  The constant cuts to their meager budgets is another.  They can't really afford to pay $100 for an ebook when that would equate to 5 hardcover new releases.

The problem facing bookstores is the same one that has existed for years and years.  Bookstore sales have been falling for years (typically between .5-1% per year) not because people are buying fewer books, but because people are not choosing to buy their books from bookstores.  They are buying online from Amazon, or at Target or Walmart, but not from bookstores.  This may in part be a chicken and egg situation.  Are people choosing alternative ways to acquire books because their local bookstores have gone out of business or have their local bookstores gone out of business because people have chosen to buy their books elsewhere?  In reality it's probably a little of both.

Personally I have experienced nothing but growth since purchasing Broken In Books in 2010.  And we are doing fine, but every store that says they wouldn't rather be doing better is lying.  

Sales of ebooks are also included in these figures, as most bookstores now have the ability to sell them online, so for our purposes they are merely a format of the book, not a replacement for the book.

What do you think?  How do we get consumers to choose the physical bookstore over the myriad of other options available to them?  Should we try?

 

So Last Week Amazon Bought Goodreads

Last week Amazon bought Goodreads.  While I am excited for the monetary reward the creators of Goodreads received as a result of all of their hard work, I am also disappointed and angry.  I am angry because there is only one reason Amazon would have any interest in purchasing Goodreads, and that is data mining.  They want to know what we read.  They will use this information to market specifically to people so they can sell more stuff.  This tactic isn't really a problem.  That is what businesses do.  When I sign up for your site, I am giving you permission to use my data.  I fully expect you will do everything in your power to monetize my data, particularly by directly marketing products and services to me.  That is the way of the world.  However, knowing all of this, when you later tell me you are going to sell my data to a company that was heretofore not associated with your company, that is when I get a bit twitchy.

The same thing happened when Barnes & Noble purchased Borders Rewards information.  When you sign up for a rewards card, you can rest assured that the company is using that information to try to make more money.  If you would assume that your purchasing history would die with the company, you would clearly be wrong.  One of the assets Borders liquidated was my buying history.  They sold their rewards information to Barnes & Noble.  This includes purchasing history and God knows what else.  We were given the option to opt out of our histories being sold to Barnes & Noble, which I immediately did.  That is not what I signed up for.

Now the main issue I have with opting out of Goodreads is I really enjoy the site.  I love the shelf system, and to see what all of my friends are reading, and to be able to track and rate what I read in a year.  There are several other sites I have encountered as a result of my attempts to leave Goodreads, and take my data with me, thank you very much.  I think the one I enjoy the most in Booklikes.  It has most of the same functionality as Goodreads (although the inability to place the same book on multiple shelves is a bit of a downer) and also includes a blogging function which is nice.  If I can manage to get my entire Goodreads history to upload it's probably a no-brainer.  And magic of magics, it allows you to rate half stars.  I can rate something 3 and a half stars instead of having to decide between 3 and 4.  And they respond in live time to help requests.  That is amazing.  And there is the part where the site actually looks better than Goodreads.  It is more modern in appearance.

So Goodreads account deleted.  On to the next chapter.

Now to prevent Amazon from buying anything else I love.  There's the rub.

Do you have a Goodreads account?  Will Amazon's purchase of Goodreads make you delete it or otherwise change your social book tracking habits?

Electronic or Print?

Although it pains bookseller Luddites like myself to say it, it would seem that ebooks and ereaders are here to stay.  This is a reality most of us accepted years ago, and as such we have two lovely Kobo ereaders for sale at the store and and presently sell ebooks at our own store branded site.

Ebooks seem to be different from buying downloads of music online though, and people seem to be switching in part and not entirely.  I have also met some people who get really excited about their ereaders at first and then return to exclusively reading print books.  Then there are those who use their ereaders on vacation but typically prefer a print book for everyday reading.

I can honestly say that I use both an ereader and read print books.  I don't notice much of a difference until I switch back to a print book from the ereader.  You don't miss the bulk of the physical book, but you do miss the sensory experience.  The sensory experience of a physical book is just more full and rich than reading on an ereader.  I miss the way books smell.  The sterility of the ereader leaves me wanting more.

I have also recently realized that there are certain books that just work better as physical copies.  If I am using a book to work on a project for work, be it updating my business plan or writing a marketing plan, I just prefer a physical book.  It is much easier to flip back and forth, or highlight or underline, or put a post it note in a place I would like to refer back to.  I understand that these are all functionalities that ereaders have desperately tried to adopt, but something about them just falls short.  

There are also certain books, that having read them as physical copies, I cannot fathom trying to read as ebooks.  Books like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.  That book literally has footnotes with footnotes.  All that flipping back and forth in the text on an ereader would probably make me nauseous. 

Admittedly there are still some people who refuse to change to ereaders at all.  These are people who see the book more than just something to read.  It is something to be displayed proudly after completion.  I encounter these book objectifiers every day, and they run the gamut of ages and social classes.  And for those who want a library, I can't argue with you there.  Books are more than just stories, they are artwork, and I have seen some stunning examples of this.

What do you think?  How do you decide whether to read the physical or e-version of a book?  And do you prefer a tablet or ereader for your ebooks?  Or would you rather die than read an ebook?

A New Reason to be Afraid of the Dark

I love House of Leaves. It's a horror story with no vampires, no werewolves, no ghosts or demons, but still scary as any other book I've ever read. Even still, I am regretting my decision to pick this for my blog subject. It is one of my favorite books of all time (not to mention perfect for the Halloween season), but it is also one of the hardest to describe. It’s difficult for me to put into words an experience so psychologically horrifying or visually disturbing as reading this book. And now I have to convince you to read it without my usual crutch of being able to simply hand you the thing and watch you flip through the pages with your brow increasingly furrowing and your jaw lolling and drool running off your chin, when I exclaim with unbridled triumph and all-out-manic delight the word, “SEE?”

Anyway, that’s how it normally happens. I suppose I’ll just have to give this way a shot.

For my sake, let’s start off with the easy stuff:

1.       House of Leaves is a horror novel by Mark Danielewski.

2.       The novel is written as a documentary

3.       The documentary is based around a series of video records that may or may not exist

4.       These videos chronicle explorations of dark and physically impossible chambers that grow and move within the House

5.       The study of these videos was written by a blind man, who is now dead

6.       A young man named Johnny Truant finds this manuscript among the dead man’s things.

7.       Johnny Truant frequently interrupts the narrative with his own observations

8.       Johnny may or may not be a pathological liar and, in addition to that, he’s losing his mind.

In summary, it’s a novel written as a documentary which is written by a blind man about videos of a shape-changing House that he obviously couldn’t see, which could also have been completely fabricated to make a great premise for the blind man’s opus, which we’ll never know because he’s deceased and so  we can’t ask him, which is then edited by a complete stranger to the blind man and the project who becomes fanatically obsessed with learning the truth of the matter, but also professes in his increasingly schizophrenic tirades that he tends to lie a lot.

With me so far?

Come along, then. We’ll pick up the stragglers later.

The house of title fame belongs to a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist named Will Navidson who resides in this quaint countryside abode with his wife and two children. Everything seems just fine and dandy until  the hallway appears.

This hallway doesn’t connect two rooms. Rather, it branches off a living room wall and extends into total darkness. It is dark, featureless, and eerily cold. The general consensus is that it’s giving everyone the heebie-jeebies. So of course, Navidson busts out the camera and goes exploring. The walk from the living room entryway to the wall inside takes him five and a half minutes to complete. Sufficiently creeped-out, the family did the only sensible thing they could do: they boarded up the hole and stuck a door on it. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t help. Unable to contain his curiosity, Navidson opens the door for a peek only to find that the hallway has stretched out even farther.

Soon, they discover an entire catacomb of corridors and chambers has manifested behind the living room wall. Navidson hires a team of explorers to investigate the area. When they don’t return, he and his own team move in to rescue them. What they step into is a dark and foreboding place whose architectural make-up alters and moves while they’re inside. Where the darkness had once been utterly silent, now an otherworldly growl begins to draw nearer.

But what Navidson and his team find in the darkness isn’t a growling monster, it’s more terrifying than that. What they find in the darkness is what slowly drives poor Johnny Truant insane, it’s what we can assume made the blind man so obsessed with Navidson’s story, and what probably drove him a bit crazy, too. The madness they uncover  starts being mimicked by the book itself, with strange cross-outs, entire missing sections, incessant and disrupting footnotes, backwards print, and formatting that makes the writing near impossible to read.

Even though you’re positive you’re reading a novel and it’s fiction and you know in your noggin that the Navidson Record doesn’t exist, even though the characters in the book are themselves doubtful anything occurring is real at all, even though it makes no sense that a blind man would review a video documentary, even though there’s that ever-present Johnny Truant who has a penchant for fabricating wild, elaborate stories, what they find there in the darkness will make you keep the night light on. Even more frighteningly, you probably won’t be sure why.

And if that hasn’t convinced you, pick up the book and flip to the middle. Trust me on this one. 

A Scary Book For The Season

Because Halloween is approaching, we though you may be interested in a few scary reads suggestions.  I'm not entirely sure what fascinates humans so much with frightening themselves, but I would be willing to bet whatever it is is unique to our species.  I just can't see a dog deliberately trying to scare itself.

I have a long fascination with things that are scary and an even longer fascination with Stephen King.  He was the first author that really made me want to read, and I spent a long time devouring most of what he wrote.  For some reason though, most of what he has written lately hasn't quite lived up to his older stuff.  There is just something about the older stuff that is superior.  So my first scary recommendation for Halloween is It.  It is easily one of the scariest books I have ever read.  The sort of, this book is not sleeping in the same bed with me, so it has to sleep under the bed, oh God it's under the bed, sort of scary book.

It also has a great group of characters that complement each other well.  You'll really pull for these kids, and their adult counterparts.  It was also made into a mini-series that I really enjoyed at the time, with Tim Curry doing a great job as Pennywise the clown.  Keep in mind that you are not allowed to watch it until you have read the book.

The book starts out with kidnappings of local children.  It is not long before you realize whatever is taking these kids is decidedly not human.  King has a way of taking the things that instill all people with primal fear, like losing a child, and making them into a supernatural, larger than life fear.  His evil is fear personified.  If you're looking to scare yourself this Halloween, you won't do better than It.  We have several copies, if you dare.