Our Blogs
The Reindeer People: A Dream’s Last Chance
Forthcoming Beaufort author Patricia Sexton is campaigning to raise funds for her documentary project, The Reindeer People: A Dream’s Last Chance.
The Reindeer People is the story of a mother, her daughter, and two very unusual dreams. A tale of love and loss, survival and death, a Mongolian mother and daughter face nearly insurmountable obstacles to pursue what’s most important to them. And in the end, what’s important to them just may save the fabric of an entire culture.
A few years ago, in the north of Mongolia, in one of the most remote inhabited regions on our planet, a Mongolian mother had to make a choice. She had to choose between letting her young daughter pursue her dream, or pursuing her own. As a parent, she knew what she had to do. So, along with her daughter and husband, they moved the family to the Mongolian capital. This would have devastating consequences: poverty, sickness, and even her husband’s murder (he’d left home only to earn enough money to buy his daughter an outfit and was robbed and murdered). Eventually, the daughter achieved her dream, and the mother had never been more proud. But it also got her to thinking – about that old dream she’d left behind all those years ago. Could she pursue it? Was she willing to return to her homeland and all that she’d left behind?
This summer, the mother will return to her home in the Taiga to pursue her old dream to teach Tuva, the native language there. Tuva is spoken by a very small community of Reindeer Herders, and without a teacher to support it, the language will fade away. Without language, the community itself is in danger of fading away too. It’s the mother’s dream to go home and fight this, to save the very fabric of her culture.
Won’t you help us tell her story?
Find out more about Patricia, her team, and how you can help on their indiegogo page here.
-Placebeau
PlaceBEAU: An Introduction
Hello all! I am Elizabeth, one of Beaufort’s spring interns, but I’ll be going by the name PlaceBEAU. I’ve been here since January, lurking in the background, but I’ve put off blogging because I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce myself. But I figured it’s always good to begin at the beginning, and at the beginning, for me, are books.
Like most people who go into publishing, I love books. Whether I’m diving into some else’s life in a biography or memoir, exploring a whole new perspective on a topic I thought I knew, or wading through a fictional world where characters battle overbearing mothers-in-law, evil wizards, conquering invaders, their own inner demons, or all of the above, for me reading is very much an escape and an adventure. But it’s not only the stories housed in paper and ink bindings, but the books themselves that I love.
I can remember at a very young age accompanying my grandmother to the Mount Vernon Public Library, a neoclassical revival behemoth, originally funded by Andrew Carnegie. The cool, dim lobby served as a portal between the loud, bright, and gritty world outside and the serene, hushed, and ethereal realm within.
I remember whispering quietly in the children’s section, mouthing the words carefully as I devoured book after book, piling them up neatly beside me before delivering them in a swaying stack to the stony-faced librarians to reshelve. I recall lugging huge encyclopedic tomes to battered library tables, where I composed my middle school research projects. My high school years were spent drifting in and out of bookstores, sneaking away from my latte-clutching friends perusing the magazines to take a quick peek at the sci-fi/fantasy section for new arrivals. In college, I practically lived in the library, myself now a latte-clutcher, camped out between some infrequently visited stacks. The highlight of my grad school experience was a visit to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where I was allowed to briefly handle a few medieval manuscripts. To this day, the smell of paper, dust and glue is both comforting and exciting all at once.
To that end, I thought the perfect introduction would be to share some of my absolute favorite libraries, both in the U.S. and abroad.
New York Public Library – New York, NY. The NYPL is the second largest public library in the U.S., second only to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The library originated in the 19th century, and its founding and roots are the amalgamation of grass-roots libraries, social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, and from philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age.
Library of Parliament (French: Bibliothèque du Parlement) – Ottawa, Canada. The Library of Parliament was designed as a chapter house, and was inspired by the British Museum Reading Room. Its collection comprises 600,000 items, covering hundreds of years of history, and employs a staff of 300. Unfortunately, access to the library is generally restricted to those on parliamentary business, and not everyone gets a chance to explore the stacks.
Trinity College Library – Dublin, Ireland. Trinity College is Ireland’s oldest university, and the Trinity College Library is Ireland’s largest research library. The oldest and rarest of the library’s collection is housed in the Long Room, the largest single-chamber library in the world, with over 200,000 volumes preserved inside. Supposedly, Trinity’s Long Room served as the “unofficial” inspiration for the Jedi Archives in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Library of Congress – Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world – it has over 151.8 million items and 838 miles of bookshelves. The smallest book in its collection is a tiny copy of Old King Cole – 1/25″ x 1/25″ – which is so tiny the pages can only be turned with the assistance of a needle. Though it’s open to the public, only library employees, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and other high-ranking government officials are allowed to check out books.
Stift Melk – Melk, Austria. Stift Melk, or Melk Abbey, is a Benedictine abbey in Austria, and is among the world’s most famous monastic sites. The Library is decorated in the Baroque style like the rest of the Abbey, with gilded everything and frescoes galore. While it’s not a lending library at all, and visitors are encouraged to not-touch-anything-please, its off-limits collection conjures images in my historian’s mind, of long-ago monks carefully paging through leather-bound tomes.
-Placebeau
National Grammar Day!
Some of you may know that yesterday, March 4th, was National Grammar Day — a day dedicated to speaking well, writing well, and being generally grammar conscience. For those of us in book publishing, National Grammar Day is everyday – no exceptions. Seriously, I find myself thinking about grammar so much throughout the course of the day that I often over-think even the most basic grammatical situations and end up confusing myself. However, it’s nice to know that there’s a day dedicated to making sure the rest of the world is taking grammar as seriously as we do. It’s a day to say to people, “You may think you know English but you don’t!” or, “You think you understand comma splices and hyphens? Well, guess what? You don’t!” Even if March 4th is just a day to remember not to say “aint,” it still begs us to take a minute to reflect on the complex system that is the English language and how we interpret it.
Even as a person whose brain-space is taken up with grammar for 90% of my day, I still make common grammar mistakes. For example, I still often have to think twice about ‘effect’ vs. ‘affect’ and I have a tendency to use the word ‘literally’ a tad liberally (although there’s a fun article about this on Galleycat today). Whether it’s further vs. farther, lay vs. lie, or drunk vs. drank, there are always those little grammar mistakes that I’m sure all of us are guilty of having made at one time or another – and let’s not even talk about punctuation. Are you aware that there are no less than three types of dashes and that each one has a unique purpose? Granted that unless you’re a writer, editor, or someone who prepares press material for a living there’s hardly ever any reason to dwell on these grammatical nuances in the day-to-day.
Luckily, if you’re the type of person who is concerned with this kind of thing, help is available and you can become the kind of person who uses correct grammar everyday, not just on March 4th. Consider a grammar book, like our very own Beaufort Book The Big Ten of Grammar by William B. Bradshaw, PhD which is subtitled Identifying and Fixing the Ten Most Frequent Grammatical Errors. In this book, Dr. Bradshaw discusses the ten most frequent grammatical errors and how we can learn to a) be conscious of them and b) correct them. It’s basically a condensed version of all the chapters in the Chicago Manual that I flip to at least once a day which is really handy because Dr. Bradshaw’s book is small and light enough to bring around with me or stash in my desk and the Table of Contents makes it really easy to find what I’m looking for quickly.
What are your favorite grammar/style books? I’d love to know about any other resources you guys use to keep your grammar in check. Do you find grammar important, and if so, to what degree? What about this debate over the Oxford comma? How could one little punctuation mark have caused so much controversy? Well, whether you’re the type of person who cares about this kind of thing or not, Happy National Grammar Day! Because everyone needs an excuse to celebrate a random day in March….
Madame Beauvary
Madame Beauvary on the Language of Love
There’s a scene in one of my favorite love stories, Anna Karenina, in which Kitty, the wealthy debutante, admits her love for Levin, the reclusive farmer who has been pining away for her even after suffering the shame of being once rejected by her. The two meet at a social event, Kitty having been recently thwarted by the dubious Vronksy, and Levin having resigned himself to a life dedicated to agricultural research, and all of their feelings towards each other come rising to the surface. They realize how much they love each other. Naturally, their passion must remain below the surface for the time being lest a scandal ensue, so they make their declaration to love each other in code: they write each other messages in chalk, on a napkin, using only the first initials of the words they want to say.
‘“Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like – should like very much!” She wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, w, h. This meant, “If you could forget and forgive what happened.”
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, “I have nothing to forget and forgive; I have never ceased to love you.”’
It may seem like a silly game for two adults to play. You may even find yourself asking, why don’t they just say what they want to say and stop all of this ‘will we, won’t we’ nonsense? And yet, there’s a certain charm to playing games, to being elusive, even talking in code. It’s something that courting lovers have playing at for ages and even though the art of courting is much different in today’s world, it wouldn’t be a stretch to admit that coded messages and secret signs are still a big part of flirtatious behavior – just in a different way.
Take for instance Gary Shteyngart’s epochal novel Super Sad True Love Story in which emails and text messages account for a large part of the dialogue between the two protagonists. The point is that so much communication is centered on unconventional language, language that leaves room for interpretation and draws the recipient into a volley of deciphering coded terms. Poetry especially is a good example of this and haven’t people been writing poetry for centuries upon centuries? What is more romantic way to court your love than to write her a poem? Even modern poetry, the words of e.e. cummings, for instance, requires deciphering. His love poems especially involve an amount of playfulness that works around language instead of through it to get the message across.
In the game of love, it would seem as though the challenge of working around language is maybe even more necessary than actually saying what you mean. It’s the intrigue, the desire to keep guessing, that keeps it interesting.
EBooks to the Rescue!
I’m sure many of you remember Ezra Jack Keats’ adored children’s book The Snowy Day. This book, which chronicles a day in the life of a boy on the first snow day of the season, is a classic. It is a favorite of adults and children alike in past generations and will be, undoubtedly, for generations to come.
Unfortunately, real snow days aren’t half as glamorous as the one depicted in The Snowy Day. In reality, especially for us city dwellers, snowy days often mean messy commutes, pools of black slush in the streets, and suspended subway service.
Luckily for us here in New York the blizzard that hit this past weekend, Nemo didn’t cause too much damage compared with other states further North. We got lucky considering the amount of snow that got dumped on New England and caused a considerable amount of damage to homes and businesses along the coast.
Longfellow Books inPortland, Maine is one of the businesses that got hit hard by Nemo and has had to close its doors while they get things back in order after experiencing severe water damage. Thankfully, the eBook is here to save the day! While Longfellow Books’ doors are closed, loyal patrons and new customers both can support the store’s recovery by purchasing eBooks through Kobo. Longfellow Books is just one of the many Indie bookstores that are offering their titles on eBook marketplaces such as Kobo.
It’s strange to think of our favorite brick and mortar shops existing in cyberspace, but the hardship experienced by Longfellow Books in this storm is testament to the fact that there is a time and a place for eBooks, even if you don’t consider yourself an eReader. We wish Longfellow Books all the best and hope they are able to open their doors soon because, after all, there’s nothing like your neighborhood bookstore.
Over and Out,
Madame Beauvary
Madame BEAUvary: An Introduction
Hello there! My name is Claudia and I’m the newest intern here at Beaufort. I’m honored and excited to be here! I guess I’ll start by providing a few facts about myself to help you paint a more vivid picture of who I am and hopefully I won’t scare you away… Let’s see, I’m an avid reader, aspiring writer, and after a whirlwind post-graduate year abroad I’m more than ready to carve my niche in publishing and am psyched to make Beaufort my first stop.
My nom de plume — Madame BEAUvary — isn’t so much a testament to my character, but, rather, a tribute in memoriam of my beloved dwarf hamster who was named, lovingly, Gustave Flaubert. Am I seeming a little crazy? I kindly ask that you reserve judgment until you’ve seen a dwarf hamster. They’re adorable, in a “That’s a rodent, isn’t it?” sort of way…
Anyway, I’m greatly looking forward to sharing my words and thoughts with you lovely readers over the course of my stay here and hope that I can provide if nothing else just a little bit of entertainment to brighten up your day. I also hope to shed some light (my perspective, anyway) on some of the day-to-day news in the publishing business from time to time. I know how much I enjoy reading the blogs of my favorite publishers and fellow bookworms and am honored to be able to be a contributing voice to the wonderful one offered here at Beaufort. I will not take this opportunity lightly, I assure you! To provide evidence of my dedication to this cause, here’s something fun: a link to a very serious quiz(the result of which will astonish and amaze): http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=343
Unfortunately it’s too cold in New York City for me to think of anything more poignant or relevant to share with you today…
See you next time!
The Best Kind of Books To Buy Others for the Holidays
The holidays are upon us, so perhaps you’re out there rushing to get some last-minute gifts. Beyond Jefferson biographies and Mark Twain novels, the publishing world has a lot to offer in the way of physical books, books that will guarantee to satisfy a wide range of people including your father, your mom, your sister, brother, grandfather, grandmother, etc.. – there are plenty of books out there that can have a personal touch.
1) Gift Books – Books that are best to hold in your hand
Yes, what you see in this picture is an actual graphic novel, which only costs about $30!
Some Recommendations: Building Stories by Chris Ware
The Outdoor Museum by Margery Gray Harnick and Sheldon Harnick
Wreck This Journal (Duct Tape Edition) by Keri Smith
If you look at the picture to your left, you can see a copy of Building Stories by Chris Ware. Yes – your book can do that! Which is why this “book” provides a uniqueness to any gift-receiver. It actually tells a story too, a story that may be perfect for TwentySomethings or those finding themselves in the need of a companion.
Books like The Outdoor Museum and Wreck This Journal have their own qualities unique upon themselves. The Outdoor Museum (published by Beaufort!) comes with an audio CD and breathtaking pictures of the NYC life. Wreck This Journal is not only a gift book for writers but people who believe creativity can go a long way.
2) Cookbooks – For the inexperienced cooks, the newbie cooks, the professional cooks, the coffee drinkers, and more!
Some Recommendations: The Oxford Companion to Beer by Garrett Oliver and Tom Colicchio
Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust by Ina Garten
Michael Symon’s Carnivore: 120 Recipes for Meat Lovers by Michael Symon
In today’s world, at least in the Western World, food and what kind of food a person likes comes with their personality. There are vegans, carnivores, vegetarians, Sushi-eaters, Barbecue-eaters, etc. There are also coffee drinkers, beer drinkers, wine drinkers, soda drinkers, and the list goes forth.
That way, giving a coffee or drink book can be the most personalized gift, and obviously, different cookbooks suit different subsets of people. For example, The Oxford Companion to Beer can be a hearty gift for the college student and grandparent alike or Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof is a superb guide for the younger generation who are trying to get their foot in the door of properly planning meals or cooking in more efficient or cheaper ways.
3) Music Biographies/Memoirs – Memories and Music go hand-and-hand.
Some Recommendations: Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin,
Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir by Cyndi Lauper
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Who I Am: A Memoir by Peter Townshend
Typically, the case is that your father or mother, for example, have every single Bruce Springsteen record. But, do they have the latest book ABOUT Bruce, suitably called Bruce, written by Peter Ames Carlin?
Some of people’s fondest memories can be that concert they saw back in 1979 when Bruce didn’t have a receding hairline and was yet to be considered the greatest patriot of the land? Or, perhaps, you attended a The Who concert with your mom? All of these biographies and memoirs infuse the personal into gift-buying because, well, music is personal.
Have any other books that are great for gifts? Let us know in the comments!
Little Beau Peep: So What?
Conclusions have always been my least favorite part of writing an essay. In high school, my teachers would oversimplify the process, insisting that it was as easy as answering the question: “So what?” It was never that easy for me; I spent countless nights staring dumbly at almost-finished essays, my fingers poised hopefully on the keyboard, those words playing on repeat in my head until they didn’t really sound like words anymore.
Now that my internship at Beaufort Books is drawing to a close, I’m once again forced to form some sort of conclusion, to confront those two seemingly unavoidable words: so what?
So what that I will never again sit at this cluttered desk or hear the pitter-patter of Schlitz’s paws scurrying across the floor? So what that I will never again have a conversation with Megan and Cindy about how scary Shel Silverstein’s beard is? So what that my internship is over? I can hear all my past English teachers in my head, prompting me: so what does it mean?
In these past few months, I’ve addressed more envelopes than I have in my entire life. But I’ve also read and reviewed submissions, researched countless marketing opportunities, and learned more about the publishing industry than I ever thought I would. And what that means to me is more than I can fit into the concluding paragraph of an essay or even a final blog post. I can’t find the words to express how much this experience has affected me; all I can tell you is that it has, and I’ve loved every little bit of it.
I’m so grateful to Beaufort for giving me this opportunity. I also want to thank all you lovely readers – if you actually exist, thank you for reading.
And to all future Beaufort interns who read this: good luck and have fun! (And try not to be too intimidated by the Midpoint office across the hallway…it’s really not as big and scary as it seems!)
Little Beau Peep
Heading into the Holiday Season: How much do Customer Reviews affect your book-buying choices?
In a way, judging a book by a cover is now judging a book by its customer reviews. Not entirely but close. I’m speaking from personal experience here – customer reviews, particularly Amazon reviews, strongly influence my decision when buying a book. That may be sad, but it’s a fact, and for all you haters, I don’t think I’m alone in this.
This is why corporations have been known to hire fake reviewers to sway potential buyers. In fact, a recent New York Times article, “The Best Reviews Money Can Buy,” revealed a man who coordinated this activity, by the name of Todd Rutherford. His website, GettingBookReviews.com, ended up commissioning over 4,000 reviews, all of them “fake.” That’s right. In other words, just like judging a book by its cover has always been a dangerous way to approach life, so too is judging a book by its customer reviews, leading to the risk of being deceived by superficialities. Todd Rutherford proves this idea.
The main question sites such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble need to ask: How much do customer reviews sway the potential buyer’s choice to read a book or not?
Take a book like Fifty Shades of Grey (wow, this is the second time I’ve mentioned Fifty Shades of Grey on this blog). Receiving 3 stars on Amazon is actually a bad thing. It’s like receiving a C in school nowadays – in other words, the new F is now a C and the new C is a B – that whole thing. And yet – sheer hype and word of mouth has carried the book far beyond its expectations, which begs the question further about how effective or ineffective are Amazon reviews.
The list of questions only grows exponentially from there. For example:
Is there a new way of how buyers rate products?
Are there ways to screen out fake reviewers?
What fair solutions can there be for books with under 100 reviews versus those with, say, 1000 reviews?
I can list about a thousand more questions about this issue.
Meanwhile, it is my opinion that if you are going to let yourself judge a book by the reviews (and I mean, honestly think about how much reviews affect your opinion…don’t be like, “Oh, I am not one of those people.” Introspect some and really think about it…really think). What is the best way for the consumer to voice their opinion right now?
Simple.
Write thoughtful reviews. Don’t leave reviews up to the naysayers or the fakers or any other label you want to insert into the blank. This is why I have constructed 3 brief examples of Amazon reviews that you should NOT write, taken from various Amazon customer reviews (for books) on the site. Some of the criteria may be VERY obvious to some people. For others, this list can serve as a gentle reminder. Without further ado, here they are:
1) Don’t Be Dramatic or Over-exaggerate.
This is the number one issue with customer reviews – people are emotional or angry about their purchase and then they say things that are just ridiculous or unfair. Take the review here: “Most horrible thing ever written.” Clearly, the author hasn’t really thought the review through. “Death is better” tops it off. Amazon reviews are neither the time nor place to use hyperbole.
2) Try to keep an open-mind when reviewing a book
Don’t let religious or personal viewpoints affect the experiences of others. Furthermore, try to approach the work with a fresh set of eyes. Comparing the work to the previous work of the same author is only human, but assure yourself that you aren’t over exaggerating because your expectations were too high. It’s not the author’s fault that you may have had unrealistic expectations.
3) Don’t Rate Amazon – Rate the Book!
A Simple Solution to this issue: Amazon needs to provide specific categories to rate (like Purchasing Process, Writing Style, etc.) much like Audible who –ironically– is owned by Amazon. For the time being, make sure you realize that Amazon or the purchase price is not being rated, the book is! Be fair to the author – they don’t have much say in this whole process.
Plain and simple: customer reviews can hold a lot of punch, so write a careful and thoughtful review. Moreover, think of the whole review process like when are you making any other judgment — You can’t just write a review when you are extremely happy or extremely mad or if you had a bad day. Make an effort to contribute when you feel indifferent or content or any other emotion that is more neutral. Well-balanced reviews seem to be missing in the book-buying world.
All in all, the whole process is broken. Hopefully, sites like Amazon will see this through and have a smart, innovative worker or team of workers who use imagination to spark a whole new way of looking at the e-book purchasing process. If anything, Goodreads.com might be a slightly healthier alternative.
Reading in the Dark: An Update from Lower Manhattan
Like many publishers in NYC, Beaufort Books is still without power and has not had any this entire week. Please bear with us as we work to get everything in order. Hurricane Sandy, the frankenstorm of “biblical proportions,” has left the northeast not only scrambling but also truly befuddled, considering the extent of the damage, especially in regards to subways for us New Yorkers. Beyond just subway cancellations, I hope everyone is safe and that no irreparable damage has occurred as a result of this storm.
Lower Manhattan in the dark
I was one of the lucky ones — having power at my apartment throughout this entire experience; however, for those of you who had to experience power outages, interesting things can happen when all the distractions, media, electricity, etc. vanishes and you are left to rely upon “archaic” activities. For some of us dorks in the publishing world, losing electricity can be a little exciting because now we don’t have distractions – reading is all we have left to do (Of course, excitement quickly dissipates after a day or so).
It seems like, though, writers across all genres have utilized this theme or motif – that when electricity ceases to exist, certain fundamental things happen. One of my favorite short stories titled “A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri does this – a couple stricken by the tragedy of losing a baby only come to terms with the truth of their ruined marriage when the lights go down. Paradoxically, the lack of light illuminates the truth for this couple.
Into The Forest by Jean Hegland explores the tension between civilization and nature.
Likewise, the apocalyptic novels and stories come in-abundance such as The Stand by Stephen King in which a lack of electricity does not just equate to evil – it leads to the resilience of human beings and their need to survive. A lesser-known book, Into the Forest by Jean Hegland, depicts two sisters who must face adulthood as a result of losing electricity; with this particular novel, electricity/technology/industry actually becomes genderized, leading to bigger questions about the tension of electricity versus the forest.
There are dozens more books/novels/plays, etc. that explore this theme or central tension. That’s not to say that there is anything positive about losing electricity and the horrible atrocities connected with a superstorm like Hurricane Sandy, but it is to say that losing electricity can be a time that many people (or characters) begin to face deeper truths about themselves that, otherwise, electricity distracts them from.
-Breaking Beau
Little Beau Peep: Literary Halloween Costumes
Halloween’s almost here! If you’re like me and you haven’t figured out what to dress up as yet, here are some simple literary costume ideas (guaranteed to make you stand out and/or elicit teasing from your friends):
• Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby (see left)
What you’ll need: a white suit, slicked back hair, and a mysterious smile
Bonus: Get a female friend to dress up as Daisy Buchanan in a classic white dress
• Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter
What you’ll need: an old dress with an ‘A’ stitched into it and a baby doll
• Edward Cullen from Twilight
What you’ll need: pale foundation, red colored contacts, glitter, and a perpetually miserable facial expression
• Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games (see right)
What you’ll need: bright make-up, a curly wig, fake eyelashes, and an utterly ridiculous outfit
Suggested Effie quotes to randomly exclaim:
“May the odds be ever in your favor!”
“Manners!”
“That is mahogany!”
• The Giving Tree from The Giving Tree
What’ll you need: plain brown clothes, green body paint, fake leaves, and apples
Bonus: Give away all of your leaves and apples by the end of the night
Let us know what you’re dressing up as for Halloween!
Little Beau Peep
Breaking Beau: 3 Books To Read This Halloween Season (Not Written by Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King)
Halloween is fast-approaching. If you haven’t already, it’s time to get in the Halloween mood, which means watching a scary movie (like Nightmare on Elm Street), going to a haunted house, and in some cases, reading a “scary” book. I’m not one for reading to get in the Halloween mood. Whenever I do read a scary book, it’s very reluctantly. Let’s just say that I find no joy in getting goosebumps, especially from a book. Movies I can somewhat handle. Yes, they can stay in your head long after they’re finished, but –with books—there is a certain sense of deeper psychological investment. With reading a book, you spend much more than two hours as with a movie. Reading a book is a multi-hour investment, which can sometimes mean a book has a more long-lasting effect.
Yet, there are a few “scary” writers who many of us read, the most iconic being Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe (Some might think of R.L. Stine as well). Yes, both of these writers are just brimming with “Scary Classics,” such as It, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” The Shining, Carrie, the list goes on and on. So, for this blog post, I’ve decided to provide you with 3 books you could read for the Halloween season that you may not be familiar with (or maybe you are). These 3 books are creepy, disturbing, gross, and chilling in all of their own unique ways. Moreover, they are from 3 different centuries and provide 3 different flavors to make your Halloween complete.
1. The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
Best Word/Phrase to Describe novel: Mind-Bending
Excerpt from The House of Leaves – Notice how the text is not always linear.
If you are not familiar with The House of Leaves, there may be no possible way to capture the experience of this book in words (ironically). It’s just one of those things that you need to experience for yourself. Nevertheless, just to give you an idea of what to expect: take a look at the picture to your left. As you can see from this excerpt, The House of Leaves moves beyond the conventional creepy story line of a stormy night in a mildew-filled basement and gets under your skin in a deeper, more psychological way — through blank pages, words that ascend/descend, and other means of postmodern experimentation.
Beyond just its postmodern flavor, the story line of The House of Leaves left me truly creeped out. The book centers on a photojournalist’s encounter with a supernatural house, a house that, for example, has measurable differences in dimension when standing outside as opposed to inside. Such bizarre images and layered visuals make for a book that can be described simply as an exploitation of your mind.
2) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
Best Word/Phrase to Describe novel: A Ghost Story
Book Cover for The Turn of the Screw
A governess is hired to take care of two children in the mansion of their wealthy uncle. She begins to discover, though, that strange phenomenon haunt the house and have ultimately haunted the two small children.
From its basic summary, it doesn’t sound like much, but the way Henry James presents the story is sure to leave you feeling a little “weirded out,” mainly due to its ambiguous layers. If you are not a little disturbed by the end of the novel, you will at least be asking a million questions by the end of it.
This is why in the academia world, more scholars and professors have ardently debated this book, through written articles and books, than any other work in the history of literature (even more so than Hamlet). Why? Because The Turn of the Screw explores that fine line between psychological paranoia and supernatural ghosts, and in turn, delivers a story where the ghost story takes on a new form, one that leaves you with grotesque images and fallen-innocence.
3) The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)
Best Word/Phrase to Describe novel: Demonic
Book cover for The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Don’t let the title fool you. The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis is even disturbing for 2012, let alone 1796. Lewis wrote the title when he was only 20 years old in a 10 week period. Because of its “first-draft” status, we get somewhat of a book that is unorganized and frankly a little messy.
With that being said, once you read The Monk, you will always remember the book. The basic storyline: Ambrosio, a monk, slowly falls into the hands of evil when he is seduced by another monk who poses as a boy but is actually a girl. Ambrosio gets more than he bargains for when he ends up facing Lucifer himself and has to make the decision between selling his soul to the Devil or begging God for salvation. The sexual promiscuity and the demonic visions are not even the tip of the iceberg – this novel is just downright hellish.
The plot may sound a little off to you, but what you get is a scary book that will oftentimes leave your imagination running wild (believe it or not).
So, what about you? What “scary” books/novels have you read that may not be as well-known?
-Breaking Beau
Breaking Beau: The Meaning of Community in the Digital Age of Reading
The Frankfurt Book Fair has kicked off in Germany. For those not familiar, the Frankfurt Book Fair is a global event that brings together not only publishers but also jacket designers, digital programmers, readers, writers, and anyone (or anything) connected to the world of books. To jumpstart the event, discussions already arose about a fast-emerging digital application (for smartphones, tablets, and computers) known as Wattpad. Allen Lau, co-founder of Wattpad, before has discussed how Wattpad has been affecting people on a global scale. For example, he received a letter from a remote African village, and in the letter, the writer tells Allen that his village has no schools, libraries, and not even books, but it did have cell phones. Luckily, Wattpad existed for this individual and village’s reading capabilities.
The Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest, is underway in Frankfurt, Germany.
Such a story as this causes you to step back for a moment and to really examine the whole reading paradigm. Because, in all honesty, up until the last 50 years or so (in the Western World, that is), READING has equaled PRIVILEGE. Margaret Atwood, a major advocator of Wattpad, points out this accessibility advantage as a major strong suit to the site:
“Wattpad opens the doors and enlarges the view in places where the doors are closed and the view is restricted.”
By “restricted,” I think Atwood moves beyond just issues of class or socioeonomics and even beyond gender and race. The unrestricted is a space for those who are not subjected to the eyeing glare of the “Literary Judgers.” Yes, I refer to all those the-women-come-and-go-speaking-of-Michelangelo followers, the ones who measure their lives in coffee spoons and clasp onto hard copies of Hemingway (aka me.) However, Wattpad seems to be a communal space that does not necessarily offset this pretentious air, but it does not condone it. For many, as evidenced by Wattpad, there are those whose writing is a social and communal act – it’s an act of swapping stories, from one writer to the next, or for the reader, it’s about perusing something simple and relatable to their life. Essentially, you –the reader– have the ability to browse pieces of writing done by people just like you – that’s ultimately the idea behind Wattpad.
Wattpad describes itself as “the world’s largest community for discovering and sharing stories on the web and across every mobile device”
And Wattpad certainly is not the first. Since the advent of the Internet, Fan Fiction has been booming and booming. Think of E.L. James’ success with her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (who was indeed a fan-fiction writer herself). Altogether, Wattpad is a microcosm of the metaphorical walls of privilege collapsing. For those who find Fan Fiction a debased form of “literature,” it is a true symbol of decline; for the millions who participate though, it is a true sign of moving towards writing and reading as an ubiquitous and even quotidian action.
As Wattpad keeps reiterating, “they are the world’s largest community for discovering and sharing stories on the web and across every mobile device.” The word, community, gets thrown around now as about frequently as the word “digital.” Community surfaced in the academic discourse long ago, but since then has become synonymous with online social networking and in particular writing or reading groups (such as Stanley Fish’s theory behind “reading communities”). All-in-all, Wattpad has the “privilege” of opening the largest book fair in the world for many reasons but mainly due to this buzzword, especially the phrase ‘online communities.’ Book “Clubs” are out, communities are in. The sticker of Oprah on the book cover, the often feminized and stereotyped venture of housewives gathering together to read Jane Austen, is starting to change. Reading Groups, now Communities, are about a little give and take; I read your stuff; now, you read mine. Communities are with people who may not be so different from you who can emphasize or tell you to shut up better than, say, the few people you meet for weekly cocktails. This idea is just reflected in the many sites/apps/platforms that hope to foster a “community” for readers and writers alike. Wattpad, Scribd, Goodreads, Authonomy, and social networking sites like Meetup and Facebook (of course). Michael Larsen, a renowned literary agent, recently wrote a column in the Writer’s Digest, in which he said the key to a successful online bookselling venture lies in the community aspect. He envisions an online site, autonomous from Amazon and Barnes and Noble that appeals to readers as readers, as part of a community. He calls this hypothetical online community:
“Mosaic, because it would be a unified image yet each imprint would be distinct and enrich the whole. The slogan to improve on: ‘We care about books.’”
This is where the act of reading and writing has been heading: forming a bond over ideas or a character or a specific kind/genre of narrative. With technology services like Wattpad, featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the social transference that comes with reading becomes much more accessible, allowing you to potentially enter a safe-place where reading and writing are de-politicized, a.k.a boundaries disintegrate. For all the pessimists and naysayers, just think about that for a moment.
Breaking Beau: A Close to Banned Books Week 2012
Trading Card for Banned Books Week
Apparently, a library in Kansas has banned books trading cards for this year’s edition of Banned Books Week. I must say that this is a brilliant idea, and when I read that you could get a Slaughterhouse Five trading card, I was instantly transported back to the days of my youth, especially my days of being a middle school student. I attended a very public middle school in a very rural area of South Carolina, and the administrators would hold a student assembly at the start of each school year, telling students WHAT items were banned from the school for the year. For most of us, we nodded our heads in agreement. However, for the more rebellious teens, they smirked and knew they would have to resort to “external sources.” Although certainly not a rebel myself, there was one year I decided to “break the rules” for the first time.
Justin was his name, and he was this “external source.” Justin was the school “bootlegger,” a tall, lanky kid who had shaggy hair and always wore massive work boots. However, the irony of it was that Justin did not bootleg cigarettes or alcohol but instead bootleg things that were totally legal in “normal” society but had been banned from the rest of the school. Among these bootlegged items were Pokemon trading cards, CDs with Parental Advisories, paper footballs (yes – paper footballs were banned, and for many students the paper footballs were too risky to make at school. Justin had the bright idea of making them at home and then selling them to students) and lastly, Justin had books – all kinds of books – books that I would never ask my parents to buy and certainly could not be found in the school library.
One of those “bootlegged” books, believe it or not, was The Naked Lunch by William S. Borroughs. Other bootlegged copies Justin carried included Lolita, Vonnegut books, and many Stephen King novels. There were several more, but considering it has been over 10 years since I’ve revisited this memory, the details are a little bit foggy. The Naked Lunch appealed to me the most, though, mainly because I had gotten a sneak peak of the movie from my cousin, and he told me I needed to be older before I could catch a peek. In other words, I wanted the forbidden fruit, and I guess having the word naked in the title made it that much more unruly, so that’s the title I ultimately chose.
I must say that it was strange meeting Justin, the bootlegger, in the corner of the library to exchange the “goods.” I gave him some lunch money, and he subsequently handed over the book.
“Seven day loan,” he said to me, looking me square in the eye.
“Okay.”
And that was that.
Ray Bradbury, the great writer of Fahrenheit 451
Like this memory, the whole mystery, the idea of a book being banned or banished or censored, becomes a part of the book’s aura or “experience.” As Hans-Robert Jauss theorized, the experience of a book is just as much about the reader, as the book itself. In other words, the reader and the expectations that they bring to a particular book (these expectations being influenced by their background, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.) creates the book. On the same note, the laws and rules that govern a particular geographical area also create a book. This is not only because the banishment yields hype but also for a teenager like myself, peeking into a banned book is a moment of supposed teenage rebellion, a moment that does not “cross the line” such as drugs or alcohol but merely gives me a glimpse into that dangerous world.
As I reflect on those days of youth and revisit the banned books I read when I was younger, the whole experience of reading a “banned” book as an adult, books like The Catcher in the Rye, reminds me of a scene in Ray Bradbury’s notorious novel, Fahrenheit 451. As Banned Books Week comes to a close, we must honor Bradbury (who died this past June) for capturing what it is truly like to inhabit the world of a place that attempts to squash books or –in other words—ideas themselves. In Bradbury’s dramatic rendering of a society that fears truth and honesty, we get a glimpse into how ideas can make groups of people be set in turmoil due solely to the expression of others. However, there is one pivotal quote in particular that I memorized from the novel; the words come from Faber, a previous English professor in hiding:
“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.”
For book-lovers, this quote is like a fist-shaking anthem. However, nerdiness aside, there is certainly a ring of truth to this quote: books were experienced at a specific time in the reader’s lives, much like a living person. Re-reading a banned book is like running into an old friend in the street – you can’t help and be surprised but when you talk to this old friend, a floodgate opens and you are suddenly transported to a time in your life, when you were younger and a little bit more curious. So, let’s raise our glasses to the writers who challenged the norm, had the courage to stand up, and gave us an experience that will, more than likely, last a lifetime.
Breaking Beau: How Will a Reader Judge a Book By Its Cover in the Future?
As Rachel mentioned in her previous post, bookstores are not just places to buy books. For lovers of books, they are havens, albeit sanctuaries. Whenever I enter a bookstore, browsing for a few minutes quickly turns into several hours. I usually need to physically pull out each individual book, look at the reviews (dismissing the notion that reviews are sometimes misleading) and then read the synopsis, just to see if I can relate to the plot in any particular way.
Cover #1 (for Ian McEwan’s upcoming novel, Sweet Tooth)
Yet, a very defining factor in my own buying process (besides what mood I’m in) is the book cover. So often, many of my decisions to buy books have come from the way the book has been marketed. In many instances, a book cover can spark my imagination in innumerable ways, and of course a major part of why I read fiction is because I love to have my imagination sparked.
Cover #2 (for Ian McEwan’s upcoming novel, Sweet Tooth)
For example, Ian McEwan’s newest novel, Sweet Tooth (to be released in October 2012), has two vastly different covers, which I’m guessing one is for the audio book and the other cover is the one that McEwan and his publishers ultimately decided for the hardcover book. Cover #1 is definitely creepier and uses color (or lack thereof) to its advantages, to perhaps accentuate certain aspects of the book, such as a psychological paranoia looming in the red-dressed woman’s psyche. However, Cover #2, which I like much better, seems to grab my attention more because instead of being the audience member watching the creepster loom in the hallway, Cover #2 tears down the third wall and forces us to become the voyeur. Because of this and due to the fact that the woman peers down the railroad track leaves more room for me to think about where the story may be headed or what kind of story McEwan may be shooting for – in other words, mystery or even enigma can often be a successful quality to a book cover.
So, I use these two book covers, just to demonstrate how my mind, as an avid reader, works when I would peruse bookstores. Sure, judging a book by its cover is not any breaking news – I’m not imparting any profound wisdom here. Most people, especially those who frequently buy books, understand the vitality of the book cover. Also, they understand how the book cover is undergoing vast changes. The advent of the e-book (much like with music) has slightly devalued the cover and instead has placed responsibility in the hands of the reviewers, which may or may not be a good thing.
For example, Knopf Books for Young Readers will release an enhanced e-book version of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance, the fourth and final installment in his Inheritance Cycle, on October 23, 2012. As Publisher’s Weekly points out, Paolini’s enhanced e-book “includes 7 videos of Paolini’s behind-the-scenes commentary embedded throughout the text, plus the author’s never-before-seen artwork, a letter to fans, and a new scene within the text.” Although the book is aimed for younger audiences, it is obviously chalked full of very interactive features, which leads me to wonder how such an interactive experience may affect the future of book covers.
Interestingly, Betsy Morais from The Atlantic wrote an article earlier this year titled “Has Kindle Killed the Book Cover?” in which she pulled quotes from some of the industry leaders in publishing. Their opinions varied, from negative to positive to indifferent. However, a major point she brings up is that awareness of the e-book’s future has finally arisen; as Morais points out, “Digital reading is already happening, but electronic books have only barely begun to adapt to current habits and devices.”
Certainly, within the publishing industry, that is the crossroads many of us are standing at. This crossroads is not only comprised of the e-book but all the small components, the finer details, that will ultimately affect how a book is marketed. Think of an enhanced e-book cover of Lolita, for example, or The Great Gatsby. Will enhanced e-book covers supersede frozen images and start to “come to life” such as that infamous green light that Nick stares at longingly begins to actually blink at the reader?
Or, maybe, it’s not up to the publishers, but the retailers like Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Will they “shelf” the e-book versions of book covers in more sophisticated or predominant ways? As e-readers and smartphones and tablets develop, will book covers become flashier or even transform into animation, much like Paolini’s book will be using? Maybe books will just turn into apps, and the term “e-book” will be as old-fashioned as a fax machine.
Time will tell. The questions and the uncertainties keep growing exponentially, day by day. Nevertheless, for us book lovers, we need a new way of “judging a book by its cover” when it comes to e-book shopping – it’s an impulse that needs to find a cathartic release. And, in my opinion, the current set-up is just not cutting it.
Breaking Beau: Reading on the Subway
Hi, my name is Ryan, and –with Rachel- I’m a new intern at Beaufort Books. I just moved here from a tiny rural town in South Carolina, so I guess you could say I’m “transitioning” at the current moment. However, coming from rural South Carolina and moving to the Big Apple, in addition to joining the Beaufort team, has me definitely excited for what the next few months will hold.
By “transitioning”, what I mean is that I feel like a bit of an outsider here in NYC (as happens when moving to any new place). Whether you’re in the Big Apple or not, at some point in your life, you have felt this sensation – this outsiderly feeling of being a person out of place with your environment. When I first came to NYC about a month ago, everything was new to me. For example, riding on the subway during rush hour was like being on a Disney ride – All the people grasping onto the metal rides over their heads and nonchalantly holding on while I worked as hard as possible to plant my knees firmly and dig my feet into the subway floor, to ensure I didn’t get flung into another person at the next platform stop.
Yet, with riding the subway – there was something about the whole experience that really stuck with me more than anything else, beyond just the whole phenomenon of being blasted through underground tunnels, and that was the deathly quietness of the people riding the subway.
I don’t know – call me what you will, but I for some reason had it in my head that the subways would be bustling with noise, like mini over-packed sports bars. People engaged in constant conversation: “How about the elections?” “What did you think of Breaking Bad last night?” I foresaw exotic street performers spinning on their heads while the Q train came to a halt at the Union Square stop. This is what you think of when you have lived in a rural town down South your entire life. I mean, NEW YORK IS CRAZY – LIKE…..IT’S THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS!
Instead, there I was in the subway, finding myself trying to “fit in with the crowd” as much as possible and I found myself, doing what?
Reading a book?
Yes, reading. Everyone seems to be reading – everyone might be an exaggeration, but a lot more people than I was expecting had their little e-readers or newspapers or cell phones, reading away.
And I was taken aback a little bit – to be completely honest. Okay…sure, the silence of the subway happens mainly because not a single person knows another person (Another image I had in my head before I came to the city was that people…friends and family…travel together. I don’t know why I had this image, but I did).
There was a Clint Eastwood-looking man, with unkempt hair and an unshaven face holding a warped copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame…and a younger lady with bright red hair, leaning against the subway doors, devouring a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. And there I was: reading a book and fitting right into this whole reading frenzy – like a mobile coffee shop, sans the pleasant aromas.
And that doesn’t include the people I’ve seen reading while walking down the streets, crossing the streets…crossing the streets when the big red hand says STAY WHERE YOU ARE and a herd of a yellow taxis are zooming towards the reader like a swarm of angry yellow jackets…there they are, calmly, leafing through a fashion magazine or a copy of Steve Jobs…it’s like watching a man try to balance plates on his head. I just turn my head away, afraid to look.
All is fine, though. It’s New York City. It’s the rhythm of the city, the way it moves, and breathes, and let me just say: I’m happy about that. I’m happy that I can be standing in a moving metal object with a whole lot of people and just read. Yes, all of us subway-riders are very different in who we are, where we came from, how we perceive the future, etcetera. But, at the same time, a lot of us in New York are joined by the act of reading, and for someone like myself – someone who sold everything to move to NYC with the bright-eyed dream of joining publishing- that’s what makes an intern like myself see the glimmer of the future publishing industry.