I'm moving on from Blogger to Blog City. Take a look at the new Pop Tart.
Hope to see you there.
I worked in a shoe store for 4 1/2 years and I really enjoyed it, not least because of the great discount I got on shoes. Shoes, along with purses and bags, have always been amongst my favorite purchases. Even when I can't find the right pair, I don't get a complex about them not fitting or feel self-conscious trying them on - as opposed to clothes which can send me into a major meltdown. I love shoes. So how is it I've come to hate them in the pop culture world?
Because they're all over the place. Everytime I turn around, pick up a book, or watch a television shoe, there's the discussion. About the Manolo's the heroine just loves. Can I just state for the record, I have never seen a pair of Manolo Blahniks that I've considered even remotely attractive? And I'll argue to the death that this is not just because my personal taste isn't there. They're ugly shoes that couldn't flatter a pair of feet if they tried.
And yet every chick lit novel (and I use the term advisedly) has a heroine who'll just die if she can't get a pair or she'll die if anything happens to the ones she has or she'll just die because the woman who stole her boyfriend has three pairs. I'm sure that somewhere, somewhen there was the first chick lit novel to mention shoes and they were entirely germaine to the plot. But what they've become is some kind of lazy shorthand for the authors. Want to make her a hip, urban chick? She must crave Manolo's.
Don't get me wrong I'm not dissing the genre as in this piece but I am dissing the authors employing lazy shortcuts. Give me individuals. Maybe your heroine could love Birkenstocks or penny loafers? Perhaps she goes barefoot, okay, that would be difficult to pull off in an urban setting. But come up with something new to tell me who these women are. There aren't enough Manolo's in the world the shoe them all.
A friend who's taste in books is similar to mine has been suggesting I read a couple of books by Patricia Briggs for a while now and though I trust her, I resisted. Why? Because the the protagonist of the books is a guy. Confession time. I read some of just about everything including mysteries, romance, sf, fantasy, literary fiction, light fiction, even some nonfiction. So what's the reading confession? About 80% of my reading features females as the primary protagonists. If a book stars a man, I'm far less likely to pick it up and when I do pick it up, I take a while to read. Does that make me prejudiced? It's not that I don't like the guys when I do read them (as I'm about to prove), I just don't seek them out. Is that wrong? Weird? Unusual?
In this case, resistance was futile since H. lent me her very own well-read copies of the Hurog books by Briggs. First up was Dragon Bones and it set up one of the most original fantasy storylines I've read in a long while. Wardwick of Hurog is heir to Hurog Keep and when his father dies suddenly he expects to inherit. The only problem is the survival mechanism Ward has been using to survive his father. Since a young age Ward has pretended to be a simpleton. His act is so good that his uncle is named his guardian and the Tallvenish King of the Five Kingdoms has declared him unfit. To prove he deserves to inherit the home and land that he loves, Ward sets out to make himself a hero. After all, if he's a hero, no one will think to deny him his rightful place.
I loved Ward so much that I immediately dove into the sequel Dragon Blood and read that in record time. Patricia Briggs (who also wrote a new Urban Fantasy, Moon Called which I liked) is a genius when it comes to characterization. What really impressed me about these two books and the others I immediately went on to glom, was their relative shortness as fantasy novels. With a few sentences we know who Ward is and the same goes for every other character. People do bad things but aren't cartoon villains. Redemption is possible and honor is admirable. Every scene, perhaps every sentence, ties back into the storyline. Nothing is dropped or forgotten. That takes real skill.
So will this change my reading patterns when it comes to male protags? Probably not much, unless Patricia Briggs' name is on the cover of the book.
In my job as a librarian, I'm generally considered to be a member of the younger guard. I'm not, though I like to let them think I am and if you've read this blog for any amount of time you know I'm am in spirit if not numbers. Over the last couple of days I attended the WiLSWorld Conference here in Madison and the wow factor was that it made me feel both way old and just young enough to maybe keep up.
The keynote speaker was the very dynamic Stephen Abrams, a Canadian who's big in the library world and has done a little of everything. Yesterday he thrilled me and scared the crap out of me by showing all the things out there we can be doing and the things we're not. His focus was on how on we can meet the user where they're at, rather then waiting for them to come to us (and he thinks the millenial generation won't be coming to us). Many of the web places he mentioned as being key to this group are barely on most librarys' radars - including mine. We know they're there but haven't yet figured out how to make them work for us. Things like My Space, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, to name a few. And even those are probably going to be obsolete soon. Photobucket is making big inroads on Flickr as a photo site. Who knows what will be next?
I don't and though I'm excited to try and figure it out, man oh man am I feeling old. If you want to check out Stephen Abrams, take a look at his blog. And if that isn't enough, take a look at the other keynote speaker's blog, Lorcan Dempsey and see if you can't come up with a few more things we need to know about.
Since there's not much on tv this summer I've been catching up on a couple of shows that I only saw hit-or-miss during the regular season. One makes me happy every time I watch it and one makes me sad. And I love them both.
The show that makes me happy is My Name is Earl. I just smile when I watch, and many times laugh out loud. Earl's view of the world is such a nice one. You know the story, he's a reformed petty con who won the lottery. Now he keeps a list of everyone he did wrong and in each episode sets about righting that wrong, often with unintended and hilarious results. A favorite so far? Earl realizes he didn't pay $500 dollars in taxes to the government and tries to repay it. He and his brother Randy end up hanging from ropes inside an abandoned water tower. You'll have to catch the repeat to figure out why.
I just love the tone of this show and Earl's ex-wife Joy and her new husband Crab Man make me laugh in just about every scene they're in. Want a look at the Earl's list? Makes me smile just thinking of the episodes to come.
Equally wonderful, but not nearly as happy is Earl's companion show on NBC, The Office. The theme of the show? "Inappropriate remarks? Petty behavior? Zero productivity? All in a day's work." And each episode lovingly captures how that happens in an office. This particular office is attached to a warehouse. The company is Dunder Mifflin and they ship office supplies. The people working in the office are the paper pushers and are led by the inept, but oh so egotistical, Michael.
The writers get the feeling of pointlessness workers experience just right. That's what makes each episode so good. It's also what makes me feel so melancholy after watching. I just want to find these people and give them all hugs (even Dwight). The creators also get the feeling of camaraderie right. These are people who might never be friends if they met anywhere else, but because they have common problems (work, Michael) they're able to bond and find some common ground.
I'm starting to sound a little corny (my own motto). But it's the people we work with who make our jobs bearable. My co-workers have made me laugh and kept me sane when I've had to deal with the Michael's of this world. And I thank them for it.
The Office gets the dynamics just right. I just wish these characters could have some of Earl's joy (not his wife). Of course, then The Office wouldn't be nearly as good.
I haven't posted much lately - partly because I've been busy with a new blog for work, and partly because I just haven't been inspired. Don't know what the doldrums have been about but I have found a couple of shows to be excited about, even though they won't be on tv until 2007 earliest.
The first is being filmed by Alan Ball (of Six Feet Under fame) and is based on the books by Charlaine Harris featuring psychic Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie works as a bar waitress in her small southern town and is thrilled to meet her first vampire when Bill walks into the bar. Sookie can read people's thoughts, which seems like a good thing. It's not. She's lonely and mistrusted by her neighbors. Vampire Bill's arrival sparks more then curiousity in Sookie. She's attracted to this powerful man who's mind is a complete blank. Alan Ball loves the books and is already at work on the series for HBO. I can't wait. If you'd like to explore the Sookie universe (where vampires and weres and shapeshifters abound) start with Dead Until Dark.
The second is a series based on the books by Jeff Lindsay. Jeff's character is Dexter who is a blood-spatter expert who works for the Miami police. Oh, yeah, he's also a serial killer. Lindsay introduced this intriguing character in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Though the book wasn't perfect I was intrigued by Dexter and can't wait to see what a television series would look like. Most of you are probably shaking your head skeptically at this point. Television ruins so many good things. But this series is being filmed for Showtime.
When these shows come out I'll probably be spending big bucks to get both cable stations. I'm hoping they'll live up to my expectations. Whether they do or not I'll continue to read the books and dream that these shows will do justice to the written word.
I'm going to enter Nonfiction Readers Anonymous territory and talk about a nonfiction book. In fact Nonanon is the one who recommended the book and she even lent me her hard won (through ILL) copy. The book is Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly, edited by Jane Espenson and I loved it.
Now as you know I don't read nonfiction all that much, but the combination of Nonanon's recommendation and the fact that the essays in this book were all about my favorite canceled show, Firefly, meant I was willing to dive in. And I'm so glad I did. I read most of the essays in a night and dreamed of Mal and the crew. Couldn't get better then that.
The essay writers are a mix of authors and other professionals (including one sex therapist). Like the editor I found only one essay, by John Wright, that I totally disagreed with, but even that one was thought provoking. Covering everything from gender roles to Chinese Words in the 'Verse, there's something for anyone who's a fan of the show, and I'd argue, for those who aren't as well. There's even a chapter by Jewel Staite who played Kaylee. Favorite chapter? I liked them all, but thought the one about the Reavers - The Heirs of Sawney Beane by Lawrence Watt-Evans - the most interesting.
Thank you Nonanon for the rec. and forgive me for thinking you were giving me a book on finding my inner serenity. Of course you know me better then that.