Sundiver (a book review post)

I had high hopes for this book. Okay, well, that's not exactly true; it's just that I haven't read a book I really loved in a while now, and I was just hoping to at least like this one. It's an award winning book, and my wife liked it and the other books in the series back when she read them, though that was a long time ago at this point. Needless to say, I was disappointed. In the book, not my wife.
I was disappointed a lot.
Not Snow Crash a lot, but a lot nevertheless.

But I think I get it, why sci-fi fans like this book and Snow Crash and other books like them: They're responding to the concepts, the ideas, rather than to the book itself and the actual writing. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good idea, but I think if you're going to make it into a book, you have to back it up with some writing that supports it, and this book didn't have that. Nor did Snow Crash.

So, yeah, yadda yadda, uplift, yadda yadda. The idea is that older alien races will find pre-sentient lifeforms and raise them to sentience and be their patrons. There's this whole galactic system for it. Yes, it's an interesting idea, but the book... Man, it was hard to read.

Mostly because the protagonist was his own deus ex machina. As it turns out, Jacob, the main character, had a split personality, and he somewhat inappropriately referred to his alter ego as Mr. Hyde. Basically, any time Jacob ran into a situation he couldn't handle he could whip out Hyde and Hyde could do it. Because Hyde could do everything. Need a lock picked? Hyde can do that. Need to pocket someone else's belongings without anyone else seeing? Hyde can do that. Need to shit flying monkeys out of your ass? Well, Hyde didn't do that, but it wouldn't have surprised me.
It's lazy writing, though, having a way for your protagonist to personally meet any and all challenges on his own with his own secret weapon. Actually, it reminds of a horrible 80s movie, The Dungeonmaster, in which the hero had a laser-firing, computer watch that would defeat all of the bad guys.

As a total aside, that is one of the strengths of the Harry Potter books: Harry can't do much of anything on his own. I mean, he needs help, a lot of it, and he gets it by having a support team around him. Secret Harry never pops out of his head with all of the correct spells to accomplish whatever he needs to do at any given time. It makes him believable as a character.

Having a split off personality hiding in your brain does not make for a believable character.

Not to mention the part where anytime the story would get stuck because the characters didn't have enough information to move forward (not to mention the audience), Hyde would pop up with an insight and move the plot forward. Not that it was an insight Hyde had any right to have, but, hey, when the author gets stuck with how to move the plot along... Yeah, just toss the new info in from, basically, nowhere.

As if that's not already asking a lot from the reader in terms of accepting things, we also have to believe that we've managed to make spaceships that can fly in the sun... using "refrigerator" lasers. And I'll buy that. I mean, I will if that's the thing the author is asking us to accept but, then, he has to throw in aliens that live floating around in the outer layer of the sun. And other stuff... All together, it was just too much to put up with at any given moment. Something was always coming across as dumb to me because there was just too much to buy into.

Mostly due to the issues with the protagonist. But when you have that going on, when I can't buy into the main fucking character, then I can't buy into the rest of the story.

And, as if that wasn't enough, the author kept adding things in that really should have been a part of the fabric of the book. It was as if, as he was writing, he'd have a brilliant idea about something that should be in there and, from that point onward, that thing would be in the book, but he never wove those things back into the story that he'd already written. And maybe that's just me, as a writer, who is seeing that, but I know how that kind of thing goes and, if you're unwilling to go back and work those things into the bit you've already written, then leave them out of the book.
Seriously.

So... I suppose the real question, now, is whether I'm going to go on to the next book in the series. Honestly, I don't know. I have the books here and had planned to read the series because I had thought I was going to enjoy it and all of that. And it's one of those things where I have this question poking at me now about what people have seen in these books. Maybe the next one's better? Book two does, actually, have higher ratings than this one. For the moment, though, I'm going to read something else. Once I finish that book, I'll see how I feel about giving Startide Rising a chance. I'd say it's not looking good but, then, I did read all of that Lovecraft shit and L'Engle's mess, too.

Shadow Over Innsmouth (a book review post)

As I've mentioned before, Lovecraft was not very successful in his day. In fact, he was decidedly unsuccessful. Fans of Lovecraft like to say that it's because he was before his time, but, no, really, it was because he was a bad writer. He had interesting ideas, but his writing was mostly shit. No one would know who he was if this other author hadn't come along after he died and had the thought, "Huh. I can do something with this Cthulhu stuff." There's a reason Shadow Over Innsmouth was Lovecraft's only published book.

Part of me wanted to like this one. Lovecraft spent some time and really built this one up. He made it seem as if it was going to be something. Go somewhere other than where Lovecraft usually goes. You've got this student interested in architecture travelling through New England in order to take in the sights and see the buildings. He doesn't have much money, so he's travelling as cheaply as possible and, thus, discovers Innsmouth as a cheap detour to get to where he really wants to go. But he's intrigued because the people of the neighboring towns don't like Innsmouth or the people who live there.

Of course, in true Lovecraft style, this is all flashback. The protagonist is telling a story from his youth that was so horrifying that he hasn't shared it with anyone since it happened... until now. And, this, actually, is what causes the story, ultimately, to fail.

Yes, there will be spoilers. You should be able to tell by this point that I didn't care for Innsmouth which may be all you need to know. If you don't plan to read it, though, you may as well read on.

Lovecraft has a severe issue with logical inconsistencies. I suppose this isn't an issue for people who don't think about what they're reading, but I do, so his inconsistencies tend to stack up for me as I read until his stories lose cohesion. I suppose that's what makes his shorter works somewhat easier to take: They're not long enough for him to contradict himself too much or stick in very much information that just plain doesn't make any sense.

For instance, when the protagonist arrives in Innsmouth, already set against it due to the driver of the bus he arrived on and his reception at the hotel (or whatever it was), he seeks out some non-natives...

Wait a minute; this already doesn't make any sense. Everyone in the surrounding towns hates Innsmouth and there are no people from outside of it who live there. The town is dirt poor with no economy, so there's no plausible explanation for anyone to be commuting into Innsmouth for work... And, yet, there is a boy from one of the neighboring towns who works at a grocery store in Innsmouth. On the flimsiest of reasons. But Lovecraft needs this non-native boy as a plot device so inserts him and tries to brush it off with a lame excuse.

Basically, he needs the boy to up the creepy factor by offering an exposition on what life is like inside the town. Then he has the boy sketch out a very detailed map of the entire town, including all of the street names, in just a moment or two, a map which the protagonist refers back to throughout the story and that Lovecraft uses as a device to give the protagonist an almost clairvoyant knowledge of Innsmouth. You know, something like he would have had if he'd lived there all his life. I was annoyed every time he pulled out that map.

The thing that breaks the story, though, is Lovecraft's insistence on the twist ending. Where did that even come from? Was it Lovecraft? I don't know. I just can't think of anyone who wrote earlier than him that did that shit. Forcing in the twist endings doesn't work out in the long term, just ask Shyamalan.

Anyway, the twist ending in this one is so out-of-context from the events in the rest of the story that it broke the whole thing for me. It makes the rest of the story, basically, a lie -- not on the events themselves but in the frame of mind in the narration -- and made me feel like I'd wasted my time. Oh, wait, I wasted my time! Because I did.

Which is not to say that the whole Lovecraft experiment has been a waste of time, but the experiment itself has been valuable. More on that when I finish the last few stories I have to read. And, boy, am I ready to be through reading them! Like I said, Lovecraft is mostly a shit writer.

Issues in Story Telling: Unsympathetic Characters

This was supposed to be one of those great, underappreciated movies, right? Right? One of those movies that only the Academy can appreciate because all of the rest of us are ignorant, low class plebeians. Right?

Unfortunately, it's kind of true. Kind of. Because it is the kind of movie that only entitled white men can appreciate, and it's only because the Academy and other award agencies are mostly made up of entitled white men that this movie received any recognition.

This movie can be summed up in exactly one word: BAD.

The fact that it won the Oscar for best original screenplay is a travesty and can be summed up by the fact that it was written by a self-involved Boomer for other self-involved Boomers, i.e. entitled white men. I can't really argue Casey Affleck's best actor win because he was the only thing that made the movie at all watchable. I think it must take an amazing talent to bring such a lifeless, flat script to any kind of life at all. Or it could just be that the self-involved white male Boomers felt sympathy for the despicable character of Lee Chandler.

But Lee Chandler is an example of bad storytelling. The problem here is that we are, actually supposed to feel sympathy for Lee Chandler. Obviously, he has suffered some tragedy and doesn't know how to cope with it and it has driven him into isolation. On the surface, sure, he seems like a sympathetic character. But as the movie progresses and we find out what happened, we find that he's just an asshole full of self pity.

In a nutshell, it's like this:
Lee's brother dies and leaves his kid to Lee in his will. His teenage son. Yes, that's almost exactly how it happens, and I'm pretty sure you can't do that, but let's pretend there are no issues with that bit. Lee doesn't want the kid and is pretty much an asshole about the whole thing, including getting into bar fights with little to no provocation. Of course, the movie opens with Lee being an asshole before we find out about his brother, so the death of his brother has nothing to do with the asshole-ness.

Oh, wait, suffered a tragedy, right? Well, as the backstory gets filled in, we find that Lee was also a flaming asshole before that tragedy occurred and that the tragedy occurred because of his asshole-ness. Lee was the kind of guy who would come in while is wife was sick in bed with a fever and force himself on her after she'd said she didn't feel like having sex -- 104 degree fever, snot running out of her nose -- but Lee said he wasn't bothered by her being sick so it was okay and, so, she lets him do it.

I have a huge problem with that scene in the movie, but not because I disbelieve that she might have let him do it. It's the kind of thing where a woman might give in because it would take too much energy -- remember, she's sick! -- to say no, but they played it off as an "aw, shucks" moment. "Aw, you're just so cute when I tell you no and you won't listen. You know what, you go ahead and fuck me all you want, because me saying no really means yes." It's the kind of situation where an entitled white guy would totally expect to get his way for the sake of "white-guy-ness." It made me kind of sick, certainly disgusted. This is the guy you want me to have sympathy for?

But it gets better! Or, you know, worse, because they go on to show his asshole-ness in all its glory. Lee has a gathering of his white male friends over. They're in his... I don't know... his man cave? It's the basement room of his house and has a pool table and "man" stuff. There's probably like 10 of them, and they are all drunk and loud. Which is fine, I suppose, until we find out its 2:00am and they're keeping the whole house awake: his wife and his two young children. Lee and his buddies think it's funny when Lee's wife comes down and demands that they all leave. "She can't talk to us like that!" Even though they do. Eventually.

Lee is a self-involved, entitled white male asshole. He suffers a tragedy that he causes and, rather than use that situation for self-reflection or something beneficial, he continues to be a self-involved, entitled white male asshole. The death of his brother does nothing more than to give him greater opportunity to spread that asshole-ness around.

Then there's the kid: Patrick. He seems to take after his uncle (Lee) rather than his father, because he, also, is a self-involved little asshole who seems to be more annoyed at the inconvenience of his father's death than anything else. "Seriously, Dad, I'm busy trying to fuck my multiple girlfriends and your death is really getting in my way." He's a shit of a kid, and there is plenty of evidence in the movie that he's just a shit of a kid and not being one because his dad died. Like, evidently, he likes to start fights with his hockey teammates and is in trouble for that frequently. And I mentioned the multiple girlfriends, right? That he keeps hidden from each other because none of the girls in question would be cool with the way Patrick spreads the "wealth" around.

Look, it's okay to fill your stories with despicable characters, just look at Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, but you need to know they're despicable. Trying to write a complete asshole as a sympathetic character only serves to display your own asshole-ness, rather like Trump (#fakepresident) and his constant "woe is me" diatribe about how he's the one being persecuted rather than the one doing the persecution. Having your asshole actions pointed out is not, contrary to the belief of assholes, persecution.

The most unforgivable part of the movie is the ending. Lee's ex-wife -- His ex-wife who is married, now, to another man and has just had a child with him (I think? I can't remember now if she'd given birth by the end of the movie or not.). -- comes to him to tell him how she forgives him for causing the death of their children (the unspeakable tragedy) and that she's still in love with him...
What the fuck?!?!
I'm sorry, but this is the exact the same situation as her being in bed sick and telling him that she doesn't want to have sex. "Look, I know you burned up our house and killed our kids because you were busy being a drunk asshole, but, really, you've punished yourself too much and too long, and you need to move on; after all, I forgive you. Oh, and yeah, I'm still in love with you and never stopped loving you. Even though you killed our kids." In other words, "Aw, shucks, you're just a lovable white guy who shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, so stop punishing yourself."

To put it mildly, there was nothing I found redeeming about this movie. That anyone found the character of Lee Chandler to be sympathetic boggles my mind but, then, the entitledness of the Baby Boomers often boggles my mind. And, yes, the writer of the screenplay is solidly a Boomer. And a white male.

So I'm just going to put it out there: The protagonist in your story generally ought to be sympathetic in some way to the audience. Or you need to have the awareness that your characters aren't sympathetic and be using them to some other purpose. You should not, however, try to pawn off your asshole characters as somehow being worth our sympathy. That's just gross.

At the Mountains of Madness (a book review post)

Yes, I'm still working my way through Lovecraft. No, I wouldn't recommend him to anyone else, not in general. There are a few, just a few, stories I'd suggest for anyone wanting to try him out. This is not one of them. Especially not at its length.

Funnily enough, when Lovecraft wrote this story, it was considered a novella but, by today's standards, it's novel length. It's more than 12,000 words longer than his next longest story and, I'm pretty sure, he could have cut all of them out. All of them. No, Lovecraft is not an author who gets better with length; he just gets more repetitive. I mean, it's possible that all 12,000 of those words are instances of "cyclopean" (one of Lovecraft's favorite words) and "decadent" (a new favorite for this story (seriously, if I ever again hear the term "decadent statue," it will be too soon (What even is a "decadent statue"? Lovecraft never says. He just tosses in the descriptor at some point to differentiate between the earlier statues))).

I did have hopes for this story when it started out. For one thing, it has a new setting. A new setting for Lovecraft, at any rate, though it's not really a common setting: the Antarctic. And it starts out well enough as Lovecraft goes into the scientific mission of the team and setting up the base camp and all of that but, of course, there's an unexpected discovery and everything goes horribly wrong.

Also, of course, the narrator isn't present for any of the action. That's how Lovecraft do. But what that does is forces the author to only tell you what happened, never to show it. It just gets boring after a while. Even when Lovecraft puts the narrator into the action, it ends up being passive. The narrator gets scared and runs away and never even sees what he's running from. His companion does, but that thing, whatever it was, is never revealed. You just have to trust that it's something really scary. So scary that the narrator's companion can't speak of it, another trick of Lovecraft's: the nameless terror.

It's so old, Man! Get a new trick.
Oh, no, wait, this is one of Lovecraft's last pieces, so it's not likely that he's going to find any new tricks.

The real problem with the story, though, is a thing a lot (maybe most?) of sci-fi authors have a problem with: I came up with a really cool idea and I want to tell you all about it even though it has nothing to do with the story and my character has no reason to know anything about it. Like a Joe Shmoe explaining how warp drive works or something. Of course, Lovecraft has to surpass everyone else and spend half of his book explaining something that his character shouldn't know, the back story of an alien race.

Sure, Lovecraft tries to make it plausible for his protagonist (I use that term loosely since the character does nothing more than walk around then run away) to know what he knows, but it's a ridiculous supposition, and you have to have severe cognitive dissonance to believe that his character could decipher and read the entire history of this race in the short amount of time allotted to him to do so by Lovecraft. It hurt my head, actually, trying to pretend that I could go along with the idea long enough to finish this "book."

Moonless (a book review post)

Generally speaking, I would say that the amount of description an author uses in a book is up to the author. Generally. It just depends upon how much detail the author wants the reader to have to supply and how important those details are to the story.

For instance, The House on the Corner has a lot of detail in the descriptions about the places, especially about the house, and time period because those things are important to the story. Shadow Spinner has less detail, almost none, about places, like Tib's house, and time period because I wanted the reader to be able to fill in those details based upon his/her personal knowledge so that Spinner would feel like it was happening anywhere and anywhen.

Which brings me to my point: There are some genres that require heavy description, and anything historical falls into that. It's the detailed description in historical fiction that allows the reader to enter into some other time period. Moonless fails in every way to provide any kind of description that allows the reader to enter... whatever time period it's supposed to be set in. "Jane Eyre" is not a time period but the closest the author gets us to establishing an era for us, and that's a phrase in the product description. All we get from the book itself is the vague sense of a big house and a horse and carriage.

In fact, there is so little description that when the gathering of people -- and we have no idea who's involved in this gathering, just the vague sense of a crowd -- gather for the evening's entertainment, it has the feel of a school assembly, including teenagers flicking spitballs at each other. I'm pretty sure this is not the atmosphere the author wanted to evoke.

Then, there's the issue of the girl, herself. All we get about her is that she's not pretty. There is some indication that she's awkward or ungainly or something, but all we know is that she considers herself ugly. Except, when she goes to her room for the night, she looks in the mirror and, suddenly, she's beautiful. Personally, if my appearance changed so drastically during a... whatever kind of performance it was... I would wonder what was going on, but the protagonist pretty much just takes it as, "Huh. I'm beautiful, now."

And, of course, there is insta-love, because what historical, paranormal romance and go without insta-love? Even when the protagonist believes the object of her affection is a murderer and, possibly, wants to murder her. Now, let me tell you, that is a recipe for attraction.

But, you know, even with all of that, I was willing to keep reading. Right up until the love interest/antagonist(?) showed up in her bedroom to watch her sleep.
Wait. What?
What book are we in?
Yeah, that's when I was done. Finished. Through. Whatever.
I didn't have time for Twilight, and I don't have time for some cheap Twilight knockoff, either.

So here's the part where I'm honest: I didn't finish reading this book. I gave it my best effort, but I couldn't do it. Maybe it gets better, but it would have to get a lot better, magnitudes better, to make it worth struggling through.

The Windup Girl (a book review post)

Imagine a world where genetic engineering is just getting started. Oh, like this one with our new glow-in-the-dark animals. (You have seen those, right?) Just a little farther ahead than we are now, though, and a brilliant scientist decides to make a Cheshire cat for his daughter for her birthday. It has complete camouflage abilities and can seemingly fade in and out of existence as it moves around. Sounds like a cute idea for a little girl who loves Alice in Wonderland, right?

Except... Except the Cheshire was just an augmented house cat, and it's new genetic abilities carried over in breeding almost 100% of the time. Within a few years, regular house cats had become extinct and replaced with a creature with uber stealth technology. The ultimate hunter. Birds, at least what we generally call song birds, had also become extinct.

They learned their lesson, though, and subsequent genetic creations were made to be sterile and given a hitch in their movements so that they looked like windup toys when they moved, hence The Windup Girl.

Paolo Bacigalupi has created a fascinating world with Windup Girl. It's detailed and textured in a way that few books are, and he does it without stopping to explain all of the science(fiction) to the reader. There's no break in the story where he stops and has someone explain how things work just so that he can show off how creative and cool he is for having ideas. The characters accept their world as real and, therefore, so do we.

The story is told in present tense, which is not something I generally enjoy (because, with many writers, it seems forced), but it works here. Mostly, I didn't notice it once I got going, and it provides a clean break for the very few flashback sequences which are, of course, told in past tense.

The characters are all very interesting but not all of them very likable. In fact, some of the protagonists actively work against each other, but there aren't really any "bad guys" in the story. Or rather, maybe all of them are bad guys. They all have their own motivations and agendas and there's no one thing that any of them are trying to defeat or overcome.

The book is a fascinating read with some very interesting ideas in it. It sucked me in pretty quickly. However, possibly because of the lack of a clear conflict, I wasn't satisfied with the ending. By the time I was about half way through, I began to worry about the ending, because I couldn't really see a path for him to bring  the characters through, and once I hit the three quarters mark, I was sure that I was right and that the ending would be the weakest section of the book for me, which it was. Well, except for the character who starts talking to a dead guy; that really came from out of nowhere, and I had a hard time with that character once that started happening.

Overall, I'd say it's a great read. It's good enough that I want to look into Bacigalupi's other books. Which I will.

Oh, also, the edition I read has two associated short stories at the end. I liked "The Calorie Man" quite a bit, but I didn't care for "Yellow Card Man." "Yellow Card Man" is centered on one of the characters from Windup, the character I liked the least (although I think he was supposed to be one of the more sympathetic characters), so I actually struggled to get through that one, even though it was just a short story.

"The Call of Cthulhu" (a book review post)

More than anything else, Lovecraft is known for Cthulhu. That, in and of itself, is extremely interesting because, other than a few other mentionings of the... creature, "The Call of Cthulhu" is the only story he ever wrote about the monstrous deity from the far reaches of space. I would say it's because of the 80s RPG except that that game only came about because "Cthulhu" was already a thing. Even TSR tried to use the character as a deity of some sort in one of their D&D publications.

In fact, I think all of the popular culture reference to Cthulhu have led to a misconception about who or what Cthulhu is or was. Not that I'm going to tell you, because you should read it. Just know that Cthulhu is not just some demon from Hell. It's more complicated than that. "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

The story itself seems to be typical of Lovecraft's style, meaning the action happens to characters other than the protagonist, who is only researching events that have already happened. Sometimes, as in the case of "The Call of Cthulhu," this raises the tension and suspense. Why? Because, as we find out early in the story, our protagonist is expecting to be murdered, and his research into his uncle's supposed accidental death tells us why.

So here's the thing: I don't quite get why "The Call of Cthulhu" has taken on such a mythic quality. It was good, but I wouldn't say it's great. It's certainly apparent that there is a huge tapestry of mythos that this one story was pulled from and, evidently, Lovecraft had some of that worked out. Of course, I'm not very far into my reading of Lovecraft, yet (I've only read about half a dozen stories, so far), so, maybe, it's the other mentions in other stories that really build up the "legend" of Cthulhu and have made so many other people want to build on it. That said, even Lovecraft said this particular story was only "middling."

At any rate, it's certainly worth a read if, for nothing else, just to see where all the Cthulhu stuff came from. And, honestly, I think the whole cult of Cthulhu aspect is much more frightening than Cthulhu itself. Who, after all, is going to kill the protagonist? Assuming that happens, of course.

"The Nameless City" (a book review post)

[Note: I am working my way through a complete collection of H. P. Lovecraft's works. Although I will give my thoughts about Lovecraft in a more general sense when I've finished the collection, I think it's worthwhile to look at the individual stories (or at least some of them) as I'm going through.]

"The Nameless City" is a city so horrible and horrifying that it doesn't even have a name, hence the title. It's only spoken about in whispers and as threats to children and its facts have long been lost in antiquity. It's the murmurings that draw the unnamed protagonist to find it, but just its skeleton in the desert causes such fear in the man, he says that no other has even known fear like him.

So, of course, he goes in.

But he does wait till morning.

Lovecraft's writing is very atmospheric, and the city he describes is truly creepy. Not just because it's abandoned but because it's... alien. All of the proportions are wrong, not to mention the strange winds and noises.

And anything else I say about it would be getting into spoiler territory. I'll say this, though: I was not satisfied with the ending. Everything else was great. Lovecraft's language and imagery make it a story well worth reading despite the ending, and, I think, other people may not have the issue with the ending that I had. Which I can't talk about without giving it away. If you like stuff like this:

"...afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave."

then you will like "The Nameless City."

It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 3)

It has been my general policy since I started doing reviews and stuff to only review books that I've finished. Mostly, I made that decision based on the reading of one book many years ago. It was a horrible book (an author requested review), but the very end was just good enough to take it from a 1-star to a 2-star rating. Because of that, I figured I ought to see a book all the way through before reviewing it. So I've slogged through many terrible books, the L'Engle time quintet, for example.

However, for the most part, a book that is a struggle to read is not going to redeem itself at the end. I mean, a step up from a 1-star to a 2-star doesn't mean that I liked the book. It was still bad, and I would never recommend it to anyone. And, honestly, as a whole work, the book was probably still just a 1-star, but I was surprised enough that the author pulled his threads together at the end that I bumped the rating up to 2.

Anyway... All of that to say that I have read some bad books over the past several years. Really bad. When I start a book, almost always, I will finish it.

But there have been two books during this same time period that I have not finished. Yes, two books that weren't even as good as Many Waters, which stands out to me as the worst book I've read (all the way through) in years. Or maybe that was An Acceptable Time; they're both so bad it's hard to tell which is worse. At any rate, having made my way through both of those, I think it's significant when I say that there are books that I actually couldn't make myself read.

One of those, I will share with you.

Initially, I decided to pick up Where You Belong by Pat Dilloway because he said it was the very best of his books. He said he was inspired and that he would never write anything better than that novel. I think that's what he still says about it. I figured that sounded like a good place to start. I mean, if an author says about one of his books that it's the best thing he's capable of writing, you may as well start with that, right? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

It didn't take me very long to realize that if this was the best that Dilloway had to offer, then I wouldn't be reading any of his books.

First, it's written in first person. I'm sure you all know by now how I feel about first person. But it's worse, because it's written in first person omniscient and, well, that's just not a thing. I mean, unless your protagonist is God (or, maybe, Charles Xavier), omniscient and first person do not go together. That's the whole reason for writing in first person, to have a limited view of what's going on. A view limited to only what the protagonist knows and observes. That's why first person works so well in detective fiction, because the whole point of that is the protagonist trying to work out what he doesn't know from his rather limited perspective. This issue of allowing the first person protagonist to know too much is very pervasive in first person stories, but I'd never seen full-on first person omniscient before. Yes, it set me against the book right from the start, because, again, first person omniscient is not a thing.

[Note: Dilloway has spoken on his blog and various other places that the book was originally written in third person and that he later went back and converted it. I think he must have done this through a simple replacement of pronouns, because he didn't do anything to adjust the viewpoint. I'm saying this based on my experience with my middle schoolers. There have been many times when I have given writing assignments to write from a particular perspective. It is not infrequent that I will get stories that were originally written from a different perspective so the student just went in and changed the pronouns. That's not enough when making a perspective shift and, anytime I have asked, for instance, "Did you originally write this in first person," the answer has always been "yes."

So that would explain the omniscience problem. He originally wrote it in third person omniscient but didn't narrow the viewpoint to first person when he converted it to a first person story. I'm just going to call it what it is: a middle school mistake.]

The next issue with the book is that it shifts back and forth from past to present tense, but not in a way that makes sense. For instance, it would make sense if part of the story was being told "now" and part of the story was being told "then." However, what we have are clearly places that are "then" that are being told in past tense, followed by a section that is still "then" but now in present tense, followed by a section that is still "then" but back in past tense. These are chronological events, so the shift in tense didn't work for me.

[Note: This is a thing I am extremely sensitive to, because it's an issue my middle schoolers struggle with a lot. The most common reason I hand a story back to a student is because of an issue with tense shifts. My comment is generally, "Pick one, past or present, and stick to it."]

Then there's the issue of the voice, and this, also, is probably related to the shift the author made from third to first person. When you write in third person, the voice can be whatever you want it to be, because it's the narrator's voice, not the character's. When you write in first person, though, the voice needs to be the character's voice and, thus, reflective of the character. The protagonist starts out at age three or four, but the voice is definitely that of an adult. That would be okay if it was clear that it was an adult reflecting back on his childhood, but the feel of the story is that it's being told by the kid, especially since some of it is in present tense, but not in a kid's voice.  Now, I get that writing from a child's perspective can be difficult but, if you can't do it, don't choose to do it.

I put the book down. At the time, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to wade through it when there was no indication that it would get any better. Sure, the kid grows up to fit the voice, so to speak, but it was already messed up for me by that point, and none of the other problems were going to work themselves out. And I haven't even talked about the editing issues (and being years ago that I read this, I don't specifically remember what they were; I just remember being bothered by things). [Note: It should tell you something that these other things stood out to me so much that I still remember them now. I did not go back and re-read this so that I could do this review.]

Basically, if I want to read stuff with these kinds of... issues, I get plenty from my students, and they don't cry and go on a rampage when I tell them they have things that need to be fixed. They take the manuscripts back and, mostly, do the best they can to fix the problems. And, honestly, some of the stuff I get from my middle school students is of a much higher quality than I see from a lot of adults. Not much of it, granted, but I have had a handful of very gifted writers over the last few years. The point, though, is that if you can't handle criticism of your manuscript with at least the grace of a middle schooler, you have no business putting your manuscripts out for public consumption. And I have never had any student, to be blunt, lose his/her shit over me handing back a story and saying, "It needs work." Sure, the middle schoolers I teach aren't trying to make a living at writing, but some of them are very invested in their stories, and middle schoolers are emotional volcanoes, and, yet, all of them have taken criticism better than Dilloway does.

Now, Dilloway will probably take this as a "revenge review" for what transpired in this post but, really, it's not (which is not to say that I won't take some amount of satisfaction in posting it; I am only human). This is an example of "my medicine," a review reflecting my experience of a product with the actual reasons for the response that I had. The reasons have nothing to do with how I feel about Dilloway nor did my dislike of the book. For instance, from what I know of Orson Scott Card, I would not like him as a person, but Ender's Game is, at the very least, a very good book. On the other side of that, I like the person of John Scalzi quite a bit. I like the things he has to say and I follow his blog; however, I did not enjoy either of the books I read by him despite the fact that I really wanted to like them. The product is not the person and should be evaluated separately from any feelings having to do with that person. At the time I tried to read Where You Belong, I had no particular feelings of antipathy toward Dilloway. I did know that he was petty and disliked my notion of honest reviews, but I didn't, yet, know he was one to go around down-rating books out of some erroneous stance of righting the wrongs done to him, real or perceived. [Because, as in the case of Alex Cavanaugh, there was no wrong done to him other than that Alex is more successful and more liked than Dilloway.] I just knew that I did not want to fight my way through Dilloway's book, so I made the decision to not finish it.

Now, it's not that I think it's only authors who have maturity issues, because, actually, I think people in general tend to have maturity issues. Or maybe it's just Americans. I can't really speak for the rest of the world. However, the writing profession does seem to have more than its share of people who can't maintain a professional detachment from their work. Rather than go into it again, though, I'll just refer you back to part one of this series. If you feel offended at any part of it, you probably need to grow up.

Empirical Evidence (a book review post)

I mention a lot about how I don't much care for first person, but that's actually not really the truth. It's not the first person that's the issue; it's the poor writing in most first person stories. And that's probably because so many authors start out in first person, these days, before they've really learned to write. There are too many shortcuts and traps for the beginning author in first person, and, if you start with that, it's easy to make those things into habit.

However, Meyers and Pedas do not have that problem. Having been following them for a while, I know that their first person stories have not gotten stuck using the same voice over and over again. They do not have their characters tell us what every other character is thinking and feeling. They do not tell us things that their characters wouldn't know. [Yeah, just to say it: Your first person POVs should never be omniscient. Unless it's God.]

I'm also not a fan of present tense, but that might just be because it is so often used clumsily and that it rarely adds anything to the story. Putting your stuff in present tense does not automatically give it an added boost of tension.

All of that said, first person present is quite enjoyable when written by someone(s) who knows how to do it. Meyers and Pedas are those people. In the case of "Empirical Evidence," the present tense is used to show us the protagonist unraveling the confusion of what he is discovering his life to be rather than the orderly routine that he thought it was.

"Empirical Evidence" is a great little story, basically, showing us a day in the life of the protagonist. The day his life comes undone. In fact, the worst thing you can say about the story is that it's short. There is so much room for more, here, but, then, that would ruin the one-day snapshot of the character. Okay, actually, it's two days, but you need the first day so that you understand what's happening on the second. It's a basis for comparison.

I do love the portrayal of the protagonist. His enthusiasm and blind loyalty. It's really great.

And that's about all I can say without sliding into spoiler territory. At least than $1.00, though, that should be all you need to convince you to go pick it up.
What are you waiting for?

Exploring Personality: Part Thirteen -- What It All Means

So let's talk analogy for a moment.
If you could have any car you wanted, any car at all, and you could afford to maintain and drive it, what kind of car would you have? That car, that bright and shiny car with the engine that purrs, that's your plot. But guess what; that car isn't going anywhere without a driver, the driver being your protagonist. And it doesn't matter how cool the car is if your protagonist is a total ass (ass... now that's a word I think I need to use more often; it's so versatile) or completely stupid (remember, stupid is not a personality type). Have you ever been in a car with a stupid driver (and I don't mean a bad driver, although a stupid driver is also a bad driver)? It's not something you ever want to do again.

See, it doesn't matter how good (or great) your plot is if you have a protagonist that doesn't work on some level; however, you can have even a junker if your protagonist is someone your readers want to hang out with. As long as the car isn't going to literally fall apart around your readers (or explode), you can get away with a lot if you have good, engaging characters. Which is not to say that I believe characters are more important than plot... except that they kind of are. People (readers) are going to talk about your characters way more (in a general sense) than they are ever going to talk about how cool your dashboard is. Or your steering wheel. Or the heated, leather seats. Okay, they might talk about that, especially if it's cold out. But, in the end, for most readers, it all boils down to the characters.

Which is why it's so important to understand how people are different from each other and, more importantly, how they are different from you, the author. It's a common thing to ask yourself, "What would I do in this situation?" but you're going to end up with only characters who act just like you if that's all you ever do. That's okay once, maybe twice, but, eventually, your readers will get tired of books filled with just one character: you. What you need is for Bob to act like Bob and Jane to act like Jane and Fred to act like Fred and Gortuka from planet Xenon to not act human at all.

I think the only real way to make characters distinct, to make them individuals as opposed to paper dolls, is to make those characterization decisions before you start writing. You ask yourself the question, "What kind of person is Bob? What kind of person is Jane?" And "What kind of... thing is Gortuka?" If you know that stuff before you go in, you can make informed decisions about how your characters act. That way, if you get to a point in your story where someone needs to push the red button, you can have Bob do it, because you know that Bob is the one that can't resist being told not to do something whereas Jane and Fred do what they're told and it would be breaking character for one them to say, "You know what, I'm going to push the red button even though my boss said not to."

I know I frequently come off as someone who gets nit-picky over the details (plot stuff) but, honestly, that stuff only grabs my attention when the characters aren't engaging. It's like being involved in a conversation with someone at a party. If the conversation is good, your attention will be focused on the character but, if the conversation is inane, your gaze starts to wander, and you start to pick up the details of the plot you're in. If that is also lacking (like all the plants are dead or there's a big crack in the ceiling or there are cockroaches crawling on the furniture), the whole thing falls apart, and you want to go home. Or quit reading. Whatever the case may be.

At any rate, for those of you out there who are authors, I hope this series has given some perspective on how to make characters more "real" and more complex and, yet, an insight into why not every character will make the same stupid mistake you might need to happen to move the plot along. For instance, an Eight (the Boss) is never going to act like a Four (the Individualist) and have that heart-to-heart talk about how special he really is if only you would see it. That's just never going to happen.

And, maybe, all of this will enable some of you to see more of whom you are, so you can separate out yourself from your characters. That, I think, is the biggest trap writers fall into. So don't ask, "What would I do if a ravenous slug were crawling up my leg?" Ask, "What would Bob do if a ravenous slug was crawling up his leg?" Answer: He would scream bloody murder and run to Jane to save him.

Ninja Mutants: An Extended Review -- Part Two: The Fantasy Paradigm (an IWM post)

Recently, I went to see the new Ninja Turtles movie with my kids (you can read my review of that here), and there are some things in it that go along with the fantasy "discussion" we're having right now. It's interesting enough that I think it deserves its own post, although I'm not including it in the actual exploring fantasy series. First, let's bring up our list of things that go along with fantasy stories:

1. The protagonist (I'm just going to say "hero" from here on out; it's shorter) is not an adult (and usually male).

2. The hero is an orphan (usually both parents are dead, although there is sometime one (usually the mother)).

3. The hero is "special" in some way.

4. There is a prophecy, generally related to the hero.

5. There is an old mentor of some sort, usually a male. (We recognize this character as "the wizard.")

6. There is a quest of some sort involved that only the hero can complete.

7. There is some kind of descent 

8. The hero has companions who help him on his journey.

9. There is some sort of "dark lord" who can only be defeated by the hero.

10. There's an absence of technology.

The thing of interest to me with this new movie is the protagonist...

And that's where I'll leave you. If you want to know the rest, you'll need to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly. If you've ever been a Turtles fan, even if only when you were a kid, you should hop over there right now! Oh, wait, Turtles to don't "hop." Um... Do a flying, ninja kick over there RIGHT NOW!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List (an IWM post)

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

* * *

And that elsewhere is Indie Writers Monthly. Sort of. I mean it will be where to look. Today, we're just talking about the elements of fantasy. And there's a list! Everyone loves lists, right? So hop right over and check it out!

No Respecter of (Third) Persons: Part Two -- The God Problem (an IWM post)

All right, so we were talking about third person and why it's preferable to first, especially when you use it. Again, I don't necessarily mean you you, but I do mean the general you that's out there, 95% of whom are all writing in first person. Seriously, there was a study. Okay, well, I bet there really was a study, but I'm not actually citing any study. I'm just saying... The actual study was actually with ewes, and that study found that all ewes, all ewes that write, that is, write in first person. As it turns out, ewes aren't very imaginative, and most of the stories they write, something like 99.8% of them, contain a wolf or a big bad wolf as the antagonist. The other .02% contain a bear. The most frequent line in manuscripts by ewes is "I was scared," followed closely by "I was afraid," and even more closely by "I was terrified." Some of them write in present tense, too, so it's "I am scared."

The literary history of sheep. It's a thing.

So anyway...

Why shouldn't you write in first person? You should definitely go back and read part one of this to find out the obvious reasons. The other reason is larger but more subtle. Not as noticeable in general but more pervasive. It's the thing I think that most often wrecks first person manuscripts. I call it the "God Complex."

* * *

And this is the part where you need to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out the rest. If it was me, I'd want to know. I mean, having a God Complex is a serious thing, and you have to diagnose it early if you want to do anything about it. God viruses are hard to beat. Go read!

The Sparrow (a book review post)

As I've mentioned before, I am not much of a re-reader. It doesn't matter how much I like a book, I'm very unlikely to go back to it. There are just too many books I've never read for me to spend time re-reading things I've already read. However, as soon as I finished reading The Sparrow, I knew that one day I would read it again. I actually kind of just wanted to re-read it right then. But there was a sequel, so I opted to go that route instead. That was many and several years ago, that first reading, and I have finally gotten around to that re-read. I'm happy to announce that it holds up, which is always the worry when re-reading a book, that it just won't hold up to a second reading.

I think the first thing to point out about The Sparrow is that, for a science fiction book, you probably won't find it in the science fiction section of any bookstore. Generally, The Sparrow is found in the literature section (or whatever they call it now), which is--I want to say impressive, but that gives the wrong impression--abnormal for a book with aliens and interstellar travel. I'm going to say that this is because the book is not about the science fiction; the science fiction is just the stage for the true story, the story of a man and his faith.

So, while there is a voyage through space, the real voyage is spiritual. And I've probably given the wrong impression about what this book is about at this point, because it's not some book of Christian ideology. It's a book that asks questions, hard questions, and doesn't really know what to do with them or how to answer them. It never falls back on "God works in mysterious ways." I really appreciate the book for that. And it's not going to give you a bunch of "answers" at the end, either. There's no "trust God and it will all work out" pat on the back, and I appreciate it for that, too. To put it another way, this not a book preaching a bunch of Christian dogma.

It's not a "Christian" book at all, in fact, not from that perspective, anyway. It's not telling you the answers to all the questions of the universe. It's more asking those questions for you. Or, maybe, asking the questions you thought you weren't allowed to ask. Then it leaves you to figure out what you think about them, which can be a lot more uncomfortable than you might think.

This is one of those books that really speaks to me. It doesn't shy away from all of the crap that life can give you, and it certainly doesn't say, "Well, if bad stuff is happening to you, God must be punishing you." And I really want to talk about the specifics, but I'm not going to, because I think you should go read the book. This is one of the few (three, in fact) books that I think everyone should read. Everyone should have the opportunity to confront the questions The Sparrow asks and figure out if they're going to try to figure them out for themselves or shy away from them or pretend they don't exist.

The structure of the story only adds to everything else that's going on with the book. You follow the main character, Emilio Sandoz, through two different time lines: the trip to Rakhat in the past and the investigation into the trip in the present. It generates one of those situations where you know, ultimately, what happened, but you are rooting for the characters, anyway. You want to know "what" and you want to know "why." It's much more gripping than if the story had been typically linear.

That said, this is no lightweight book. It has humor, but it also has pain. It has enlightenment, but it also has darkness. It has great joy, but it has greater suffering. This is not a Harry Potter "This is great!" recommendation. It's not an amusement park; it's a mountain. But the journey, and the requirement of the climb, is worth it in the end. If you can make the climb. And I do get that not everyone can and not everyone wants to (it's hard work) but, probably, you will not regret it.

There's a good chance that in another five or seven years I will read it again.

The Hobbit: A Review (Part 2)

Disclaimer: The fact that I'm reviewing this right now has nothing to do with the release of the movie.

Note: Those of you who have read my "Of Significance..." page may remember that The Hobbit is listed there, so this is (by far) not my first reading of the book.

Part 1 of this review is here.

It is of great interest to me that Tolkien is considered the "father of modern fantasy" when so much of modern fantasy has nothing to do with what or the way Tolkien wrote. While it's true that The Hobbit is a classic fantasy story, it is not classic in the sense that it uses all the normal conventions of fantasy. In fact, despite that many (most?) people would say that modern fantasy is largely based on Tolkien, you will find few to none of what we consider basic fantasy tropes in The Hobbit (or The Lord of the Rings).

One of the most common bits of fantasy literature is the young, male protagonist. Young often means teenager. Most often, probably. The last couple of decades have finally brought us a bevy of female protagonists, but, still, youth is the most common theme. Bilbo, however, is not young. He's not even what we would consider middle-aged. He's not quite "old," but he's definitely on his way. Definitely "established" and definitely set in his ways. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other piece of fantasy literature that's like that except The Lord of the Rings, because Frodo (and the other hobbits), also, is not young (something Peter Jackson conveniently forgot). [And it's not one of these things where hobbits are old but still young like elves can be, because hobbits are Tolkien's stand-ins for humans and age about the same way (when Bilbo is turning 111 in LotR, he is old, as in really old, as in ancient).] The closest other thing I can think of is Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, who is not old but is definitely not young.

The next piece is that this young protagonist is frequently (almost always) an orphan of some kind. Maybe, s/he has one of his/her parents, but the protagonist generally has lost at least one of them and almost always to some kind of violent circumstance. Maybe this is why the orphan princess is so common in Disney? Bilbo is definitely not an orphan. Which is not to say that his parents are alive, because they're  not, but, then, he's 50, and there is no indication that they died of anything other than old age. Or, maybe, boredom.

Then there is the requisite prophecy about the protagonist. The list of fantasy literature which feature a prophecy would probably exceed my usual word count, so I'll just remind everyone of Harry Potter and how he fits all three of these so far. Even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has a prophecy. The Hobbit contains no prophecy (neither does LotR). There is nothing "special" about Bilbo in that sense. He has not been chosen by fate to do what he does. This is a story about a hobbit that rises to the occasion. It's more like your boss at work needing a job done, choosing the person the boss thinks is most qualified, and that person choosing to do it.

And there is no "party" of adventurers. No, the dwarves don't count, because they're all interchangeable on the whole. And Gandalf abandons them half way through. So there's no wizard, no fighter, no ranger, no healer, none of that stuff we expect to find among the heroes band of followers. Just the burglar, and that's Bilbo.

Possibly the biggest break from convention is that Bilbo is not the valiant warrior that "saves the day" in the end. He does not slay the dragon, and he does not defeat the goblin army. He's not even conscious for most of that. Bilbo is a hero of another type, let's say a moral hero, which is so much more important and believable. Bilbo's bravest moment is when he walks down the tunnel to see the dragon. Not to fight the dragon, just to see him. I love that bit:

Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

And his most significant contribution to the end of the story is standing up against his friends when they are set on a wrong path. Neville Longbottom's stand against his friends and Dumbledore's rewarding of it very much reminded me of Bilbo handing the Arkenstone over to Bard.

Basically, despite what everyone says about "all fantasy" being based on Tolkien, almost no fantasy is based on Tolkien. What Tolkien did was original and, amazingly, remains original to this day. No one else has written a story like The Hobbit (and, although people have attempted stories like The Lord of the Rings, no one has succeeded), and I have to wonder if that's because the story becomes so much bigger in our minds after we read it. Bilbo becomes this larger than life hero that he's really not in the book, and that's, frankly, amazing. We remember him fighting the spiders and riddling with Gollum and the dragon, but we forget that it's Bard that kills the dragon and the Eagles that save the day in the Battle of Five Armies. It really is like what Gandalf tells him in the end:

You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.

We don't tend to have characters like that in our fantasy. Our protagonists are huge, essential characters who have the fate of the world hanging on their shoulders, and Bilbo is not that kind of hero.

He's just a guy that learns that he's capable of more than he believes he is, and I think that's an important lesson to learn. And I love that we see that change through the pages of The Hobbit. He goes from being a guy that runs away from just the idea of an adventure, of anything different, to the guy that gets them all caught by trolls, to the guy that everyone depends upon. There's no unlocking of the secret, magical talent that only he possesses; there is only Bilbo learning to use the "gifts" that everyone is given. There is only Bilbo deciding to go instead of stay and to do instead of not. It is Tolkien telling us that there is a bit of the Tookish inside of all of us... if only we can wake it up.

The Hobbit: A Review (Part 1)

Disclaimer: The fact that I'm reviewing this right now has nothing to do with the release of the movie.

Note: Those of you who have read my "Of Significance..." page may remember that The Hobbit is listed there, so this is (by far) not my first reading of the book.

As I've mentioned, I'm teaching a creative writing class at my kids' school. When it was discussed, back at the beginning of the school year, about assigning them a book to read to go along with the class, I immediately suggested The Hobbit. It was not on the "short list;" it was the list. I really can't think of a better book from which to teach writing form. Also, there is the part about introducing the kids to great literature.

My choice of The Hobbit as a book I think everyone should read has nothing to do with it being a great book. I do think it's a great book, but, mostly, I think it's a simple book. And, when I say "simple," I mean "straightforward." It is not a book with a complicated and convoluted plot. It doesn't have hidden meanings and subtleties. It is what it says it is, a fantastical adventure story. That's why I wanted to use it for the creative writing class assignment.

If you want to look at plot arc, you can. The story follows only one protagonist, and there aren't any twining branches or confusing twists. It's just "hero gets into trouble"/"hero gets out of trouble." It's easy to look at and map out and, most importantly, it's easy for them to understand.

If you want to look at character development, you can. Bilbo is not the same person at the end of the story as he is going in, and you can see the changes as they happen, and that's good for these young writers to see. Especially, it is good for them to see in a literary world where so few characters do any real changing these days other than becoming awesome fighters through some brief training montage. Actually, as I'm typing this, I think The Hobbit should be required reading for anyone hoping to be an author. These days, it's all about "voice," but I really don't care how good your voice is if your protagonist doesn't grow within the story. If the protagonist doesn't change, your story falls flat. [And, now, I'm thinking of a ton of books that I have been less than pleased with, and I think this is the reason: no character growth.]

If you want to look at how to deliver a message within a story, The Hobbit has that, too. Not hidden or veiled messages but messages told through the repercussions of the actions of the characters. I mean, you can't get more clear than when someone tells you to stay on the trail, you need to do it. And, no, that's not really what I'm talking about, but I don't want to get into the specifics until I actually get into the review. The book does, though, have strong messages about greed and war in particular.

The Hobbit, in many ways, is the perfect introduction to reading. It's a clear story that most of us can actually relate to in some way. It has humor and sorrow. It's fast and it's fun. It's simple enough for a child yet full of things only an adult can understand. It's the story that you would beg your grandfather to tell on a cold night in front of the fireplace, and Tolkien tells it that way. Right down to the hypothetical question, "What is a hobbit?" right in the middle of the narration. In short, the story is delightful. And scary. And exciting. And sad. It is full of life and what life is, and, yes, I think everyone should read it. Earlier is better than later, but, if you missed it when you were 10 or 12, there is always time to go back and make up for it.

Having said that, no, I don't think everyone will love it or, even, like it, but it's one of those things -- like chocolate or cheese -- that you just need to taste. Skipping it entirely is too much of a risk.