Reading With JMS, Riggio Helps 100 College Students, Plot Twist Bookstore Closing, RIP Toni Morrison, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman, The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch and River of No Return by Annie Bellet

This is my first post of August, and it's a long one because of some fascinating bits of information on writers like JMS, who wrote one of my favorite science fiction TV series, Babylon 5, and the obituary of the great Toni Morrison, who died on Monday. Also, August 1 would have been my father's 87th birthday, and this will be the first time I haven't been able to call and wish him a happy birthday and see how he's doing. But I know that wherever his spirit is now, he's happy to not be stuck in a body that doesn't allow him to remember anyone, to eat or move or laugh or talk, all things he loved in his long and garrulous life. At any rate, on with the fun stuff, gleaned from Shelf Awareness.

Reading with... J. Michael Straczynski

J. Michael Straczynski http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41368857 has written hundreds of hours of television shows; comic books for Marvel and DC that have sold more than 13 million copies; and screenplays of movies that have grossed over a billion dollars. Becoming Superman is his first memoir (Harper Voyager, July 23, 2019).

On your nightstand now:

Rereading A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I believe that an appreciation of poetry is essential for any writer in any field. That economy of language reminds you of the importance of choosing exactly the right word, not the word next to the right one on the shelf. On a conceptual level, I admire Ferlinghetti's writing which comes at you from a right angle with a huge impact, so I reread his work every couple of years to keep my brain flexible.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Mad Scientists Club by Bertrand Brinley. I liked this series because it showed kids who got away with making trouble in a small town, one of the few to actually applaud mischief. But their hearts were in the right places, and they approached everything from a perspective of (well, close to) actual science in their methodology.

 

Your top five authors:

Norman Corwin was the country's premiere radio dramatists in the '40s and is still considered a writer's writer, inspiring such folks as Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, Walter Cronkite, Charles Kuralt and many more to become better writers. I briefly studied under him at SDSU and still can't figure out how he did some of what he did.

Harlan Ellison was an inspirational figure because like me, he came from the streets, he was a scrapper and a troublemaker and didn't have the best grades, but he kept honing his craft and succeeded. I'd been raised to think that writing was an ivory-tower profession, populated by writers from good New England families who wrote while wearing smoking jackets and reclining on macassar fainting couches. Knowing he could make it helped keep me going, and in time we became friends.

Richard Matheson was the quintessential fantasist: his stories and scripts were brilliant in their use of the tropes of fantasy but were also and always grounded in emotion. Whenever I think I'm getting too smart and facile for my own good, I reread his stuff to be reminded of the importance of just writing honestly and from the heart.

Rod Serling was the best of us (along with Paddy Chayefsky) and reading any of his scripts or watching any of his Twilight Zone episodes is like taking a master's class in writing. I have a tendency to over-write, and as much as Serling may be known for long monologues, the construction of those pieces is laser-sharp, not a single wasted word in there anywhere, the result of a clockwork mind clicking along at 10,000 revolutions per second.

Mark Twain was someone I discovered as a young writer, and though some contemporary readers may consider him old-hat, there's an energy and canny intelligence in his work that survives the ages. For construction of narrative, humor and most particularly a way of looking at action in a fresh or unusual way that enlivens the narrative, there's nobody better.

Book you've faked reading:

Ulysses by James Joyce. The first time I tried to read Ulysses was when a friend in college bet me 20 bucks I couldn't finish it. I lost that bet. I've probably tried half a dozen times over the long years to finish the triple-damned thing, but I just can't get there, so I lie. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Land of Laughs, Jonathan Carroll. That Carroll's name is not more widely known is unfortunate because he is a superb craftsman and a surrealist thinker and a damned fine writer. Land of Laughs was the first book of his I read and remains one of the best in his canon. It's creepy and smart and populated with rich, interesting characters and definitely needs to be more widely read.

Book that changed your life:

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (collection) Harlan Ellison. As someone who was largely self-educated as a kid, my sense of what constituted science fiction came from the ranks of classic SF: Ray Bradbury, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov--stories that wrote from the technology out to the characters. I Have No Mouth was one of the breakthrough books of the New Wave of SF and turned that motif absolutely upside down. It was like nothing I'd ever read before, and it spun my head around 180 degrees both as a writer and a fan of the genre.

Favorite line from a book:

"For the love of God, Montresor!" --from "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe. I can't even tell you why. It just so perfectly encapsulates the dilemma faced by the character, and embodies the story's theme of revenge that it sticks with me always.

Five books you'll never part with:

Mark Twain's Speeches because the man knew how to put together a talk that was entertaining and informative and challenging and boy howdy do I need that.

The Oxford English Dictionary (bookshelf edition) because it's endless fun browsing through not just the words themselves but the Indo-European word derivations provided for many of the definitions, tracing back the work through many iterations, each adding new and unexpected shadings of meaning.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, because she was one of the best of us, because her storytelling skills were impeccable and because there are some nights when apparently sleep just isn't a priority for me.

The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, William S. Baring-Gould. I'm a big Sherlock fan and love to reread this for the details behind the creation of those stories. I learn something new every time.

The Literature of England, edited by George K. Anderson and William E. Buckler, because I fell in love with classical English literature in college, and this was one of the best texts I ever came across for a generalist view of that period.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, just to experience that sense of wonder all over again.

Favorite poem:

Ulysses by Tennyson because of what it says about the raw, naked courage required to keep going under the worst of circumstances, and to then go one step forward to reinvent oneself, to push off into new possibilities; that there is hope, even at the end of all things.

I desperately wish that more extremely wealthy men, titans of industry and the internet included (I am looking at you, Jeff Bezos!) would do this, thus ensuring that a generation of young adults coming out of high school would be able to get a college education and join the workforce without hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt hanging over their heads. It only takes one measly million, which is pocket change to the very wealthy, to get 100 students through college with paid tuition (and one hopes paid textbooks as well, as they are expensive).

B&N's Riggio Donates $1 Million to 100 College Students

Len Riggio, executive chairman of Barnes & Noble, which will soon be sold to private equity company Elliott Management, recently showed a great deal of generosity to a group of students who are mostly from poor and working-class families: he has donated $1 million http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41422863 to the "100 Strong Scholarship Fund," which will provide full tuition for 100 recent high school graduates who are beginning studies this fall at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., according to the Brooklyn Paper. Riggio announced the donation after giving the keynote address at the college's commencement ceremony on June 13. Claudia V. Schader, president of Kingsborough Community College, the only community college in Brooklyn, said the scholarships would help students focus on education and not worry about finances. "Many of our students are the first in their families to go to college," she continued. "Many work full- and part-time jobs, and care for their children and parents. Mr. Riggio's very generous gift will allow these students the opportunity to focus on their academic success and lifelong learning, without concerns of how they will fund their education."

Though I am sorry to see them go after only a few years, I have already advised family and friends in Iowa to take part of my book list to The Plot Twist and see if they can score some books for 50 percent off! 

Iowa's Plot Twist Bookstore Closing

Plot Twist Bookstore http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41483817, Ankeny, Iowa, which opened in 2016 http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41483818, is closing at the end of August http://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41483819, the store announced.

"Thank you for your support of Plot Twist and please know I am so glad to have had the opportunity to serve you and share my love of reading," owner Mary Rork-Watson wrote. "I encourage you all to support our local businesses." The 1,400-square-foot store sold new books and gifts for all ages, and hosted community events.

  

I've not been a huge fan of Morrison's, but I am still cognizant of her contribution to the world of  words, books and wise speeches. She was an amazing woman. RIP.

Obituary Note: Toni Morrison

Celebrated author Toni Morrison, who became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, died August 5. She was 88. In a statement announcing her death "with profound sadness," the Morrison family said "our adored mother and grandmother... reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life."

Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved. Her many other honors include the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy recognizing her as an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality"; the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1996; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented to her in 2012 by President Barack Obama.

Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was released by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1970, and Knopf published her other novels, including Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992), A Mercy (2008) and God Help the Child (2015).

Morrison's nonfiction works include Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) and What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (2008, edited by Carolyn C. Denard). In October, the University of Virginia Press will release Morrison's Goodness and the Literary Imagination, featuring her celebrated 2012 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University. Morrison also wrote several children's books with her son Slade, including Please, Louise (2014), Peeny Butter Fudge (2009) and The Book of Mean People (2002).From 1967 to 1983, Morrison worked as an editor at Random House--the first female African-American editor in company history. "She was a great woman and a great writer, and I don't know which I will miss more," said Robert Gottlieb, her longtime editor.

The New York Times noted that Morrison "was one of the rare American authors http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz41506638 whose books were both critical and commercial successes. Her novels appeared regularly on the New York Times bestseller list, were featured multiple times on Oprah Winfrey's television book club and were the subject of myriad critical studies. A longtime faculty member at Princeton, Ms. Morrison lectured widely and was seen often on television."

In her 1993 Nobel lecture, Morrison said: "Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

"Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference--the way in which we are like no other life.

"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman wasn't what I was expecting, (from the title and blurb) but turned out to actually be something surprisingly refreshing and different. Nina is a somewhat stereotypical introverted bibliophile who works in a bookstore, has a disastrous history with dating and has a cat named Phil. Into her well-ordered OCD life comes news that she's the daughter of a wealthy lawyer who just died and left her "something" in his will, along with a family of siblings, nieces and nephews that she's never met (or even heard of). What follows is a funny and often poignant story of a woman learning to embrace life and all it's surprises. Here's the blurb: Meet Nina Hill: A young woman supremely confident in her own...shell.

The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book.
When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?

Nina considers her options.
1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)

It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.

Rarely have I read prose that is so fully described as effervescent, so light and bright and bubbly that it nearly tickles your nose. The plot is straightforward and easy, providing a nice framework for this delightful beach read. Though I am not an introvert, I could empathize with Nina's desire to escape the chaos of her newfound family, and I felt for her in her frustration with her Aussie mother's abandonment, leaving Nina to be raised by a housekeeper, who was, thank heaven, up for the task. I'd give this page-turning novel an A, and recommend it to anyone seeking a light and satisfying read.

The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch was recommended to me because I love Sherlock Holmes remakes and reboots, and I enjoy certain types of cozy mysteries as well. This is a prequel to the Charles Lenox series, and I was told it was a good place to start to see if I would enjoy delving more into this series of 19th century mysteries. Unfortunately, though well written, I found the novel too "talky," with lots of paragraphs that aren't really germane to the story blathering on about every feeling of uncertainty and emotion that young Lenox has while trying to solve the mystery of who murdered two young women and threw their bodies into the Thames. This clogged the plot and slowed the story to a crawl, which made it boring. Here's the blurb:

A chilling new mystery in the USA Today bestselling series by Charles Finch, The Woman in the Water takes readers back to Charles Lenox’s very first case and the ruthless serial killer who would set him on the course to become one of London’s most brilliant detectives.
London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective…without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime―and promising to kill again―Lenox is convinced that this is his chance to prove himself.
The writer’s first victim is a young woman whose body is found in a naval trunk, caught up in the rushes of a small islet in the middle of the Thames. With few clues to go on, Lenox endeavors to solve the crime before another innocent life is lost. When the killer’s sights are turned toward those whom Lenox holds most dear, the stakes are raised and Lenox is trapped in a desperate game of cat and mouse.
In the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, this newest mystery in the Charles Lenox series pits the young detective against a maniacal murderer who would give Professor Moriarty a run for his money.

The prose was crisp and British, similar in style and tone to that of  Conan Doyle, of course, but all the minutia created logjams in the plot, and put me off this series forever, I'm afraid. So though I didn't figure out who the murderer was until the last 1/3 of the book, I can't give it more than a C+, and recommend it to those who like fussy and stuffy mysteries with a somewhat boring plot and protagonist.

River of No Return by Annie Bellet is book 9 in her twenty-sided sorceress series, and this one's a real corker. Jade and Alek are once again called on to save their friends and shifters from a diabolical scheme to get ahold of the heart of an evil sorcerer that Jade keeps as a tiny jewel around her neck. At first it seems there are several bad guys going after the crew, but it turns out that there's really only one evil vampire behind it all. Bellet's prose is clean and clear as quicksliver and her plots faster than a bullet train. Here's the blurb: Supposedly, nature abhors a vacuum. I'm finding this is true in the worst way...  Defeating her evil ex-boyfriend hasn't exactly been the reprieve from trouble that Jade hoped for. When Alek's mentor shows up with an injured Justice and government agents start asking questions she doesn't want to answer, Jade's problems are just beginning. Enemies new and old make their moves as a war looms on the horizon in this exciting ninth book in the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series.

Bellet's Twenty Sided Sorceress books are always a treat because she never wastes a word, and most of her novels, like this one, are barely over 200 pages long, so you can finish them in an afternoon. Like Seanan McGuire, Jade always ends up bloody and near death, having to battle sorcerers, shifters, vampires and everything inbetween while her white tiger boyfriend Alek has to fight to stay alive as well. Usually at least one minor character dies, and Jade feels a crap ton of guilt over losing her friends and also over not telling them what is going on as a way to protect them from harm, which always backfires. Still, other than the cover illustration, which has beautiful Jade looking like a salt-sucking alien from Star Trek, or a neanderthal of some kind (why? What is wrong with the publisher that they'd let this ugly illustration go by?), I liked this book and would give it an A, and recommend it to anyone who has read any of the other books in this series.