Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Look "Scathing" up in your thesaurus.

Dearest Bloggerkins,

Today, I’m going to direct this post to certain writers. Lazy, uncreative hacks who pepper the pages of their novels with cocaine, so I have to keep reading them, even as I choke down their repetitive, poorly executed drivel.

Ooo, was that too harsh?

Stephen King wrote a really kick-ass book about writing, called unsurprisingly enough “On Writing.” The best book on writing, ever written! I mention this because I don’t intend for this blog post to be a rambling lecture on the proper way to write a novel. If you want that, see Mr. King, and while you’re there, get him to sign something for me.

The first reader to get a book signed by Stephen King and give it to me as a present, will be my number one fan!

Moving on. This is not a blog about good writing. It’s a post about bad writing, and more specifically, things that crappy writers do to piss me off.

First off, there are several words that when I come across them in a novel, I seriously want to 1. Stop reading, and 2. Lock that book in a treasure chest, time travel to the 1910s, buy a ticket for the Titanic, leave my luggage on board, watch the ship sink from a safe distance, travel back to the future, and then secretly sabotage any further diving expeditions to examine the wreckage.

For example, the word ‘padded,’ as in, ‘Theresa padded down with a machete in hand, hoping the crappy writer wouldn’t hear her coming.’

If you look it up in the dictionary, it means ‘to walk’ or ‘to walk as if with padded feet.’ Really? Just to walk? Walking isn’t good enough? You have to pad? At least use an interesting word, like ‘slink’ or ‘crept’ or ‘shuffle.’ All words that give more depth to the description, and don’t make you sound like a pretentious grad student, fresh off the GRE bandwagon.

Then there’s the overuse of pointing out people’s eye color, and giving said eyes worlds of emotion. Yes, they are the windows to our souls, but you know what? In real life, I don’t go around getting inappropriately close to others just so I can gaze deeply into their retinas, with the hopes of gauging some kind of emotional status. If I cared that much about how they’re doing, I’d check their facebook page.

Let’s get some real life examples in here to truly illustrate my point. If you’ve ever wandered through the young adult fiction section, you may have encountered a series starting with a book called “The Alchemyst” by Michael Scott. Ah, another pretentious trait! Adding y’s into the names of fantasy titles and characters to make them sound more ‘medieval’ or ‘magical.’ Sorry writers. Just makes you sound like an ydyot.

Here’s a few snippets from Scott’s latest book in the series, “The Necromancer.”
P. 76 “He watched what he recognized as fear flicker in the Alchemyst’s eyes.”

P. 77 “The slender, gray-eyed woman asked breathlessly,”

P. 78 “Enormous slit-pupiled golden eyes fixed on Scatach.”

Maybe I’m making something out of nothing, or being needlessly picky, but this is my blog, and I call that plain, old-fashioned lazy writing. This doesn’t mean you have to buy a thesaurus and find twenty million different ways to say the color blue. No. Just learn to describe a person other than by saying ‘the gray-eyed woman.’ This woman also happens to be a warrior, a vampire, a twin, an immortal and one sassy kung-fu master. All descriptions he could have used to keep my ire at bay.

Oh, and the fact that he used the word breathlessly twice within the same page also makes me want to shove a copy of ‘Anna Karenina’ down his throat. Seriously, dude. Did you even read your own novel? Did you at least spell check it before sending it off to the editor?

The ironic part in all of this is that I’ve actually read every book in this series so far. I think I keep at it for the same reason I watched the show ‘Lost’ for so long. I need to know what happens.

Let that be a lesson to you, aspiring writers. If you’re going to write a crappy book, at least let it end on a cliffhanger. Otherwise, you’re toast.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Read this on your Ikea futon.

God dag min raring Bloggypoo!

At last! Sweden has something to offer the world besides affordable, cheaply made furniture to fill our college apartments.

And that thing is books!!!

Yes, you heard me right! Swedish people write books! I expect this kind of behavior from Norway, what with all their epic sagas and fjords and what have you, but Sweden? Where did that come from?

Personally, I blame this Stieg Larsson fellow. You may know him as the Swedish journalist and author of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the first in a trilogy of crime novels. You may also know that he is a dead man. This chap’s life was so controversial and mysterious that despite not having read the book, I feel safe making the bold statement that his story sounds far more exciting and curious than whatever nonsense he wrote about.

Anyway, our good friend Stieg made it cool and popular to be both Swedish and a writer, and now they’re all doing it. I say more power to you, Swedes!

Especially after reading Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist’s amazingly dark and creepy novel “Let the Right One In.” Extra props to this gentleman for naming his book after a Morrissey song.

This book is the anti-Twilight vampire novel. For starters, this beautiful little vampire girl, Eli, is twelve, violent, and once was a castrated boy. The human in love with her/him is Oskar, a psycho kid who fantasizes about stabbing the boys who bully him. A match made in heaven!

This book is dark. Grown up, Stephen King-style dark. I could argue that the ending is happy, if you consider the hero running away to help his vampire girlfriend murder people for blood a happy ending. For most of the book though, the boy is miserable. The vampire girl is confused and desperate. Every peripheral character, Oskar’s vacant mother, his alcoholic father, the glue sniffing hooligan downstairs, the local drunks mourning their friend killed at the hands of the wee bloodsucking monstrosity, all of them move through life in a haze of emotional mediocrity. Not wanting to throw themselves off a bridge, but not exactly elated either.

I have to say though, that’s what makes the book so interesting. Any avid reader knows that irritating feeling of figuring out how things will work out, or how the detective is going to solve the crime and catch the guy. It’s the same with watching movies and some people are better at figuring it out than others. A part regrettably comes when you guess the ending, and are just waiting for it all to work out, happily ever after.

Not in this book. The situations seem so dire, so melancholic, so horrific at times that the question stops being “How is this going to be resolved?” and switches over to “How could this possibly ever be resolved?” Sounds dismal, but at the same time, it makes for an extraordinary read. It is, after all, a horror novel, which is exactly the genre where vampires belong. Unless you’re talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In that case, vampires can be totally hilarious.

On top of being like NOTHING you’ve EVER read before, “Let the Right One In” is graphically descriptive. Sometimes to the point where you wish you weren’t eating a sandwich while reading. The language is both simple and piercing in its realness. The conversations dramatic and intense, not melodramatic and cheesy. This only serves to make the read more thrilling and unnerving. It isn’t some huge scale, supernatural face off. It’s the story of one little town, with a very small, and very dangerous predator walking the streets. What is it about a devil child that is so much more terrifying than the goriest monster? With the devil child, you don’t see it coming.

Do yourself a favor. When the movie adaptation comes out in the fall, ignore it. If you want to see an adaptation, watch the Swedish version, made my Swedes and made right. Otherwise, you’re in for just another Twilight clone with younger kids.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

You say Manolo, I say liver eater, Let's call the whole thing off

Star date: Blog bloggy blog blog blog!

I was all ready to post about the Sex and the City movie, wondering why so many ladies were up in fury over this second installment in the cash cow known as Carrie Bradshaw a.k.a. Ferris Bueller‘s wife. Personally, I rather enjoyed the movie. It made me laugh more than a few times, and though I’m no clothes horse, or even a clothes pony for that matter, I still like looking at all the weird, flashy outfits they force onto these four unsuspecting females in exchange for large sums of money.

So what’s the hoopla all about? Another case of movie expectations gone awry? (See my review of Robin Hood.) In my case, after reading the towering inferno of dreadful reviews, my expectations couldn’t have been much lower without replacing the lead actresses with the cast of one of those teen pseudo reality shows that take place in Southern California. I left entertained and in high spirits, and wondering if Chris Noth’s patent on playing the role of wealthy, quasi-sleazy but still handsome and charming men had made its way through the U.S. Copyright office yet.

Only later did it strike me what might have so many fans upset, besides the fact that Johnny Corporate Moneybags was just looking to squeeze a few more pennies out of the franchise. Not being the girliest of girlies, and lacking that magical device of the ages known as Cable Television, I jumped on the Sex and the City bandwagon a smidge later than some. While I enjoyed all that I saw, and later caught up on all those episodes I missed one sleepless summer night in undergrad, I would be a whore-faced liar if I said the show changed my life.

But you know what show did change my life? What got me through my awkward teenage years, what gave me the basis for manly perfection by which I judge all other men, the show that I nearly threatened to break up with my first college boyfriend over because he wanted to chat on the phone during the series finale?

I’m talking about The X-Files.

No, seriously. It was a really good show. A show about sea monsters, and aliens with tons of sardonic humor, not to mention the most beautiful man who ever lived. Sorry, SATC fans, but Chris Noth is a bridge troll compared to David Duchovny. Okay, to young David Duchovny.

My point in this random nerd tangent, is that at the end of the day, it’s much easier for me to brush off a bad Sex and the City movie, because it didn’t mean that much to me. I didn’t know these characters like some did. In 2000, when David Duchovny left the show due to contract disputes with show creator Chris Carter and Fox Studios, I was genuinely irate. Why don’t you just throw acid on the Mona Lisa, Hollywood, because that’s what they did in my opinion. And replacing Fox Mulder with some old dude that played the villain in Terminator 2/Johnny Cash’s dad in Walk The Line? Are you kidding me? David Duchovny was carved from Grecian marble. Grecian marble covered in puppies and sunshine. I imagine that fans of Sex and the City are disappointed for the same reasons I was when they meddled with my precious, precious show. The producers/filmmakers/tiny men in top hats holding sacks of money with dollar signs chose to keep the show going, long after fans had already made their peace with its end. Think of it like digging up a corpse after the funeral.

Still, I stand by my opinion. It was a fun movie! Come on, they rode camels!!! Honest to goodness camels! What’s not to like?

As a final parting gift, I offer a bit of salve for those suffering from the SATC 2 blues. Not having read this particular book, I can’t vouch for its possible awesome or lameness, but its existence at the least, should offer a bit of hope.

It’s called “The Carrie Diaries,” and is written by the lady who started it all, Candace Bushnell. Instead of her current life in NYC, it focuses on her senior year in high school and while it still may be a stretch from the world fans know and love, (and minus a bit of the sex. It’s pegged as a young adult novel) reviews say it possesses all the same drama, spark and personality.

Even if it doesn’t, all things considered, it can’t be much worse than the movie.