this writing life – Page 15

Miscellaneous Memoranda

– Random House has announced it will commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death by commissioning some “cover versions” of his plays, with Jeanette Winterson reinventing The Winter’s Tale, while Anne Tyler tackles The Taming of the Shrew. The publisher’s press release makes it all sound a bit gimmicky (does Shakespeare really need a project like this to bring him “alive for a contemporary readership”?), but I’d happily read an Anne Tyler version of anything, even the phone book, so I’ll await the results with interest.

– Of course, ‘Random House’ doesn’t actually exist any more. This week, it announced its merger with Penguin, to form ‘Penguin Random House’ (sadly, they ignored my suggested names of ‘Random Penguins’, ‘Penguin House’ and ‘Random Penguin’s House’). I know all about this merger because they decided to send me not one, but three letters about it, telling me how highly they value their authors. (I guess this means they’ll be paying me lots of money soon. Oh, good.)

– It has also been brought to my notice that top renowned best-selling author Dan Brown has a new book out. Okay, some critics say his writing is “clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive” and “full of unnecessary tautology”, but they’re just jealous because he sells millions of books and they don’t. Can those critics afford to buy “a specially commissioned landscape by acclaimed painter Vincent van Gogh and a signed first edition by revered scriptwriter William Shakespeare”? No, I didn’t think so! (For the record, I liked The Da Vinci Code. Come on, it was about the Holy Grail! It had ancient conspiracies and secret codes and high-speed chases through Europe! The only thing missing was Nazis. And homing pigeons. Wait, there may have been Nazis, it’s been a while since I read it.)

– If you’re a young writer and you think you’re as talented as Dan Brown (or possibly, more talented), then you might like to enter the Young Writers Prize (entries close 22nd July) or the John Marsden Prize for Young Australian Writers (entries close 19th August).

– I’ve also been perusing the blog of Stroppy Author, who has some useful advice for old writers (for example, Quit Whingeing And Write Something and Don’t Publish Crap). In addition, it was heartening (sort of) to see that even top renowned best-selling YA authors like Libba Bray get “Them Old, I-Can’t-Write-This-Novel Blues“. (Although I have news for Libba Bray – outlining does not help with this problem. I am a meticulous outliner, and I still spend more time stuck than writing. Coincidentally, I’ve just found out about the Snowflake Method, which I kind of worked out for myself during the process of writing my first couple of novels. If only I’d done a creative writing course and learned about all this stuff! I might have saved myself a lot of time, and maybe even become a top renowned best-selling author.)

– That’s enough about writing for the moment. Here, have a picture of a giant squid:

Giant squid that washed ashore at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland in 1877. Published in 'Canadian Illustrated News', October 27, 1877. — Giant squid that washed ashore at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland in 1877. Published in ‘Canadian Illustrated News’, October 27, 1877.

Looking For A Good, Clean Book

The first time I heard about this, I assumed it was a joke, but apparently this is an actual thing – librarians being asked by adult patrons to recommend ‘clean’ books. ‘Clean’ means different things to different readers, which must make it difficult for the librarians, but generally, these readers are looking for books untainted by ‘language’ (that is, swearing), sex and violence. Sometimes the readers are looking for a suitable book for their children, but often, they are adults looking for a book for themselves that, in the words of one Christian blogger, “won’t be a near occasion of sin”.

'Mary Magdalene Reading' by Ambrosius Benson Luckily, these readers don’t have to rely on librarians for recommendations, because there are a number of blogs and websites that review and recommend books based on such criteria. The most well-organised and thorough site seems to be Compass Book Ratings (formerly SqueakyCleanReads.com), which I came across because it rated one of my own novels. As Compass Book Ratings rightly points out, movies, TV shows and games are rated, so why not books? This website rates books for children, teenagers and adults, with books given a rating for literary quality (from one to five stars), three separate ratings for profanity/language, violence/gore and sex/nudity (from zero to ten) and a recommended age range (9+, 12+, 14+, 16+, 18+ and 21+). A handy search page means that a reader can search by genre, ratings and recommended age ranges to compile a ‘clean’ reading list, or alternatively, the reader can check the ratings of a particular book.

For example, here is the Compass Book Ratings review of The FitzOsbornes in Exile (which is, I think, a fair and generally positive review). The book gets a four-star rating for literary quality and is recommended for readers aged sixteen and above. It receives a rating of two out of ten for profanity (“8 religious exclamations; 7 mild obscenities”), two out of ten for violence (with a list of all the violent incidents in the book, such as “a character is shot, but suffers no permanent injury”) and four out of ten for sex/nudity (again, with a list of incidents). There’s also a listing for “Mature Subject Matter” (“War, Homosexuality, Refugees, Persecution of ethnic groups”) and “Alcohol/Drug Use” (I was puzzled here by the claim that “a 14 year old smokes cigarettes”, until I realised it referred to a brief mention of Javier, the chain-smoking Basque refugee). This all seemed fairly accurate to me, although I must admit I’ve never counted the number of swear words, and I do think a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old could read this novel without incurring any permanent moral or psychological damage. And really, if a reader is going to be disturbed by “7 mild obscenities”, a “discussion about Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality” or a mention of “periods”, then I don’t want them to waste their time or money reading The FitzOsbornes in Exile.¹

Of course, ratings for a book aren’t very meaningful unless you can compare them to other familiar books, so I looked up the ratings for The Great Gatsby. Good news for me! It gets four stars, which means my book is of the same literary quality as the Great American Novel! The Great Gatsby is slightly more profane (a rating of three) and violent (a rating of five), but oddly, is reported to contain no sex or nudity at all. Really? The FitzOsbornes in Exile is more confronting than The Great Gatsby, regarding sexual morality?

Then I looked for books with higher (that is, less ‘clean’) ratings and found reviews of Jasper Jones (which gets a ten for profanity, nine for violence and eight for sex, and is described as “well-crafted” but “overwhelming”) and The Fault in Our Stars (which gets a more positive review, but a ten for profanity and a six for sex). What was more confusing to me were the recommended age ranges for books. Jasper Jones is recommended for eighteen years and over, but a book of quotations about Jane Austen (which has no profanity, sex or violence at all) is strictly for readers twenty-one and above. ‘Clean’ books on the topics of family life and motherhood are also recommended only for readers well into adulthood, so I assume the reviewers are making judgements here about reader interests, rather than the books’ potential to cause moral harm. But no, wait. The reviewer of Persepolis says that the “use and amount of profanity in this book would make it inappropriate for anyone under the ages of 21”, while To Say Nothing Of The Dog is twenty-one-plus because it has slow pacing. Okay . . .

Despite the website claiming to have a “formalized content review process” that produces “consistent results”², the ratings really depend on the individual reviewers, who vary in their qualifications and reviewing philosophies. The reviewers range from a thoughtful high school English teacher with experience on a library board, who wants to find books “that are both enjoyable and relevant to my students and acceptable to their parents as far as content is concerned” and who states “I do not believe in censorship, but I do believe there is an important place for content advisory”, to a student who proudly states she will “throw books across the room on occasion if the content is inappropriate or distasteful” and another young woman who is horrified by “seemingly great books that end up having WAY too much content”. Otherwise, the reviewers are not exactly representative of the general population. All the reviewers are white and, while it doesn’t explicitly state this anywhere on the website, I wondered if the site was affiliated, if only informally, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons³.

Apart from the variable quality of the reviews, I had Issues with Compass Book Ratings. (Yes, I know the site’s not for readers like me, who’ll read just about anything. I’m still allowed to have an opinion on it, especially if it rates my books.) I’m concerned that the site provides lists of ‘objectionable content’ without any context, which can then be used as ammunition by people who want to ban books that they haven’t bothered to read. And I have a problem with keeping teenagers away from ‘objectionable’ content in books, anyway. Surely it’s safer for them to read about these things before they encounter them in real life, so they’ve had a chance to think about them and discuss them? And if there are adult readers who’ll be psychologically damaged by accidentally picking up a book that contains any mention of sex, nudity, violence or swearing, then maybe they should consider abandoning reading altogether and taking up a safer hobby, like knitting. But mostly, I’m disappointed that Compass Book Ratings hasn’t reviewed the Bible. Violence and gore and sex and nudity? Surely they’d have to rate that book ten out of ten.

_____

Honestly, I’d love it if all those readers would avoid my books entirely. Then they’d stop ranting on the internet about how disgusting my books are, and they wouldn’t feel any need to direct their homophobic readers to my own LGBTQ-themed blog posts, and we’d all be much happier. ↩
The website recently added some disclaimers on this page, which makes me wonder if they’ve had some complaints about inconsistent ratings. Those disclaimers weren’t there when I first encountered the site, and the site owners haven’t removed the ‘less consistent’ reviews. ↩
The site seems to be based in Utah, at least one reviewer graduated from Brigham Young University, and the site gives glowing reviews to a number of books written by and about Mormons. ↩

Montmaravian Miscellanea

Kate Forsyth very kindly invited me to write a guest post for her blog, so I wrote one about books similar to the Montmaray Journals. Even though I’ve mentioned many of those books before, that post is worth visiting for the fabulous book cover images Kate has found, especially that vintage edition of The Pursuit of Love, with its titillating tagline (“Now Linda’s respectable uncles were sure it was true . . . THEIR NIECE WAS A KEPT WOMAN!”).

There’s also an interview with me on Kate’s blog, plus she’s written a lovely review of the Montmaray books. As Kate explains, she was one of the first people to read the manuscript of A Brief History of Montmaray. This wasn’t because I knew her, but because my editor at Random House had worked with her and thought Kate might enjoy the story. Kate’s comments about the manuscript made me jump up and down with glee (KATE FORSYTH had read my book! And liked it!) and a quote from her subsequently appeared on the front cover of the first edition of the book:

'A Brief History of Montmaray', first Australian edition

Thank you, Kate.

By the way, that cover for A Brief History of Montmaray is one of my favourite Montmaray covers, partly because of the beautiful shades of blue and the tall purple grass, and partly because it’s the only one that shows all three Montmaravian princesses. (What do you mean, you can’t see Henry? There she is, standing on the castle wall!)

That’s How You Say It

Have you ever wondered how to pronounce the names of Paolo Bacigalupi or Jaclyn Moriarty or Maggie Stiefvater? Ever wondered if Elizabeth Wein’s last name is German, or if Jasper Fforde’s accent sounds as posh as his name? Well, wonder no more, because now you can listen to all these authors talk about their names at the Author Name Pronunciation Guide.

And yes, I’m there, too. You wouldn’t think anyone could mispronounce a name like ‘Michelle Cooper’, but you’d be surprised at how many of my teachers at school used to read out my name as ‘Michael Copper’. Anyway, I’m glad this resource exists, because if I ever meet Meg Cabot, I’ll now be able to say her name correctly. (All these years, I’ve been pronouncing her last name in my head as CaBOT, when it actually rhymes with ‘habit’).

It’s That Time of Year Again . . .

That is, the time of year when literary award shortlists are announced. Congratulations to all the writers whose work was recently recognised in the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the inaugural Stella Prize.

It’s also a time of literary festivals, including the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Young Adult literature events on the program include a panel discussing YA fantasy (Kate Forsyth, S.D. Gentill and K.B. Hoyle with Judith Ridge) and another featuring Libba Bray and Justine Larbalestier in conversation with literary agent Barry Goldblatt. For those who were Young Adults in the 1980s, Molly Ringwald will be there, too, talking about her new book. Yes, apparently she writes books these days, when she’s not busy being a “silk-voiced jazz chanteuse”. There are also several writing masterclasses for young writers, led by Jacqueline Harvey, Oliver Phommavanh and Sue Whiting, and lots of workshops for grown-up writers.

Of even greater interest to YA readers and writers is Reading Matters, in Melbourne. This year’s program includes Libba Bray, Gayle Forman, Garth Nix and Alison Croggon, and promises lots of interesting discussions.