Obligatory Deathly Hallows Post

Well, I finished it. I got it from my mom at 8 PM Monday and finished at 1:25 PM Tuesday. (Yes, I did fit eight hours of sleep in there.) I'll be following the (Yay) Spoiler Free mandate, but let me just say, it was amazing. J.K. Rowling really outdid herself. A fitting end to a phenomenon, I think.

That, and it apparently switched on my writer's brain, because I pulled a chapter more or less out of a hat yesterday on my own work-in-progress. It's almost five thousand words and it doesn't make me want to die when I read it, so I'm calling it a success.

Repeat Reading and Autobuys

First off, a huge Congratulations! for the winners, 20-Hour club members, and other finishers and participants of Mother Reader's 48-Hour Book Challenge is in order. I love it when people come together to do literary things.

During this weekend, when I was looking over my shelves for stuff I could read as I couldn't get to the library, I noticed a few interesting things about my bookshelf.

Oh no, you're thinking. Here she goes about that bookshelf again.

Well, yes. But I noticed there are three distinct categories of author represented there. What I tentatively call my single-title authors, repeat authors, and autobuys.

Does single-title here mean they've only published one book? Not necessarily. It just means that only one book caught my attention. This is the case with Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner, an interesting take on Scheherazade (though she tamed the spelling to Shahrazad for younger readers), and Meg Cabot's All American Girl, which I bought in an airport and loved, but haven't gotten around to getting the sequel yet. (And I think a friend of mine still has my copy, though she insists that she doesn't.) I haven't figured out exactly why these cases happen. Something to do with my eclectic tastes, I guess. Does anyone else see this happening to them? Any particular reasoning for it?

Repeat authors are those authors that I've bought two or more books from, or maybe all of a single series, but have stopped short of buying everything with their name attached. Examples would be Scott Westerfeld and his Uglies trilogy, which I think are the creepiest and coolest futuristic books I've ever read, and Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, which I've seen described as a "pessimistic vision of Harry Potter's magic released in the world," which doesn't do it justice in the least. I love those books so much I'll probably be giving away a set around October. Come to that, I'll probably be giving away a set of Uglies and the rest, too. Have a big trilogy-pimp giveaway.

(In all fairness, Scott Westerfeld's well on his way to being an autobuy for me, but with my sad lack of book funds at the moment, I'm just not there yet. And I'm waiting to see if Jonathan Stroud comes out with anything new, because the Bartimaeus books are an incredibly hard act to follow.)

And the last, the autobuys, are fairly obvious. If it has their name on it, I want it. Doesn't matter if it's subject matter I've never thought of as "me", sci-fi, historical, outright weird, whatever. I want it and I will buy it. Sometimes even in hardcover.

At the moment I have one true autobuy, one borderline, and two authors where buying the next in the series amounts to autobuying. The true one is Eoin Colfer (the Artemis Fowl books, Half-Moon Investigations, The Supernaturalist, The Wish List). I realized how in love with his voice and style I was when I picked up a new book by him off the shelf, read the first page, and bought it, despite its being in hardcover and the first person (which I can stand but don't exactly seek out). He's hilarious. It makes for fun reading. But he's not afraid to tug your heartstrings either.

Borderline would be Garth Nix (the Abhorsen Trilogy, the Keys to the Kingdom, the Seventh Tower) as there are several standalones (The Ragwitch and Shade's Children) that I haven't gotten my hands on yet, and I haven't bought his newest, Lady Friday, in hardcover, despite the nasty cliffhanger at the end of Sir Thursday. I've gotten used to nasty cliffhangers from this guy. I love his writing, but he's very different from Eoin Colfer. The Abhorsen Trilogy in particular is distinctly...dark. There's no other way to put it. The stuff is dark. That's why it's one of my top-three favorite trilogies of all time. (By now, I'm sure you can guess the others.) He does have quite a bit of humor in his writing, but it's pretty black.

My two one-series wonders are D.J. MacHale (Pendragon) and, of course, J.K. Rowling. I will go out and buy their newest books in hardcover on the day of release, but I'm hoping that once those series are done, they'll come back with more.

So. Big question after a big post: What makes an autobuy for you? What keeps you coming back to an author over and over? What can make you stop short of full-on fangirling (or fanboying, as the case may be) but still keep you with an author within one series or subgenre? What can keep you from buying any more of an author's books, even if you loved the first one?

On a mostly-unrelated note, Diana Peterfreund is volunteering a lot of really good basic knowledge for anyone in the publishing industry - part one and part two. Be sure to check it out!

Last Warning--Err, Reminder

Just in case you haven't seen it already, Mother Reader's 48-Hour Book Challenge starts tomorrow at 7:00 AM sharp! (Well, for me it does. For everyone else it can start any time between then and 7:00 AM sharp on Saturday, if they're putting in the whole 48 hours.)

Here's the official sign-up post, and here's the most recent reading of the rules.

Hope to see you there!

At a Total Blogging Loss

Yep. I have no clue what to say.

So time to go to an old standby: books!

Awhile ago I started a mini-meme on the anatomy of a bookcase. Well, that took off as a picture meme instead, which is awesome! So, a bit late, here's a picture of my lovely bookcase:


Now then. A serious question.

What are you interested in getting from this blog? I feel like I should update more, but I rarely have anything I feel would be worthwhile to say, and I think I'm getting to where I have enough readers for this to potentially be a problem. So, shout it out. What do you think I should blog about? Life? Writing? Specific eras of history? (I'm always up to a research project, as long as I don't have to write up a double-spaced formal report on it. -shudder-)

If you recognize any of your favorites on my bookcase, please mention it! I love talking books.

Writerly Update

Current wordcount: 34,100 words. Making progress, albeit at the speed of a striking snail. It's just not the same as November. I'm hoping for a productivity boost next month, though, when I'm acting as accountability for a friend who's staging an April version of NaNoWriMo. The main thing for me is to get back in the groove of writing something every day. I've let myself slip quite a bit over the last couple months.

Current feeling: I'm really liking the way this is turning out. Actually, a better way to put that is: I feel like I'm getting back to my roots. I've always been an avid reader of fantasy. From C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia in the second grade, at least nine out of every ten books I've read has had something markedly fantastic about it, from the not-really-magic unusualities of The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer (which is really more sci-fi, I suppose) to the all-out, amazingly inventive, not one but two magic systems in Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen (complete with magic bells). The only thing I'm slightly worried about is that I'm rereading said trilogy at the moment (I finished Lirael earlier today and am about to start Abhorsen) and quite a bit of the musical aspect of Nix's magic seems to be seeping into mine.

But back to what I was actually saying. Lately I've been focusing on the political aspects of my story, the more mundane problems of plot and characterization, and leaving little time for the magic that I think will make it really shine, the truly fantastic element that I grew up loving. Somehow, I conveniently left myself little clues that I can expound on when I go back through, to make it more apparent that the magic exists before it actually comes out in the open (a problem of mine that was especially marked in the first rough draft I ever finished, from NaNo 2005, which I sadly still have not been able to pull out and revise), but it is going to require a lot of reworking to make all fit like I want it to. Ah well. A worry for another day.

Happy Monday to everyone. I hope your writing and other pursuits are going well.

Truth vs. Fiction (Truth's stranger. Who knew?)

I recently finished reading The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory. My immediate impression of the book is a good one - it's the extremely well-woven tales of three women in Tudor England, the three women involved in Henry VIII's court about whom we know the least (Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Jane Boleyn). I've always been interested in the era, but this particular book, so much richer than other's I've read, has strengthened my desire to know more about each individual character. It's funny how that happens - the first Tudor England book I bought was a YA called Nine Days a Queen by Ann Rinaldi. I loved the writing, but the story was what really took my breath away - because, save for the details, it was true. From there it went on to Carolyn Meyer's Beware, Princess Elizabeth, and later her other books in that set - Patience, Princess Catherine, Mary, Bloody Mary, and Doomed Queen Anne. When I found The Boleyn Inheritance, I knew (by the page count alone) that it would be a more complete look at what is believed to be these women's lives, but I wasn't prepared for the depth of characterization, the intricacy of the story.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the character of Jane Boleyn just would not have worked if she hadn't been real.

Jane Boleyn was not, in fact, a Boleyn. She was born Jane Parker, daughter of Henry Parker, Lord Morley and married George Boleyn, the brother of Anne Boleyn, who became King Henry VIII's second wife in 1533, before the anullment of his first marriage. Nice folks. Jane benefitted from Anne's ascension as queen, but only just escaped the scaffold after Anne and George's rather spectacular fall in 1536, pulled from the flames of the court by her uncle-by-marriage Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (another nice guy). Thus she got to keep her title, the Lady Rochford, and her head (until her execution following the fall of Queen Katherine Howard in 1542. For the record, historians are fairly sure that Katherine was guilty of the adultery that sent her to the block, but Anne almost definitely wasn't) .

That's all background. Historical evidence leads us to believe that Jane was very much in love with her husband George, and found his strong relationship with his sister (thus excluding her) too much to bear. It was her evidence that sent the two Boleyns to the scaffold, for no other reasons that jealousy, malice, and spite, tempered with a desire to preserve the Boleyn inheritance rather than the Boleyns themselves.

If I read a novel in which the villain acted out of nothing but jealousy, malice, and spite, with such disastrous and personal results, I'd be a little skeptical. The inheritance is a big deal, but in that day and age, when your head wasn't securely attached to your neck if you were too close to the king, I'd think that allies would be a tad bit better. Especially allies in high places, never mind the Queen of England.

But you see, in historical fiction (and I'm not taking potshots at authors of historical fiction, either, because I absolutely adore what I've read of it, and I'm definitely not saying it's any easier to write than, say, fantasy), there's that shred of a shield you can hide behind, because this person was real, and this motivation was true to them.

This brings me back to Philippa Gregory's superb writing, because, though I can think about how unbelievable Jane Boleyn is now, while I was reading the book it seemed entirely believable. I'm impressed.

Anatomy of a Bookcase

I'm a packrat. I will cheerfully admit that I'm a packrat. (My mother will cheerfully admit that I'm a packrat.) This is particuarly defined when it comes to books. As of last count (and yes, I do keep count), I own 111 books. Add in the manga, that number jumps to 131.

Of those 131 books, how many authors do I own at least one book by? 56.

How many do I own two or more books by? 18.

Three or more? 12.

More than one series? 2.

One series and stand-alones? 2. (Different 2. Above was Garth Nix and Tamora Pierce; here it's Eoin Colfer and Cornelia Funke.)

Of those 131 books, how many are part of a series? 74. (This is including all of the manga (which is comprised of two series: 5 volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, and 15 of Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya, all of which were worth the $10 per volume). This is not including books which I bought the first of the series and stopped, or just haven't gotten around to the next ones yet. Books fitting that description: 15.)

Average length of a series that I own? 3.375 books (This is NOT including the manga, because throwing a 5 and a 15 in there would have really messed up the averages.)

Trilogies I own the first two books of and am waiting for the third? 2 (Huh. Thought it was more than that.)

And now, for a genre/subject breakdown, leaving out the manga (I guess Fruits Basket counts as contemporary fantasy, and Fullmetal Alchemist is definitely historical science fantasy. How's that for an overly specific categorical tag?):

Nonfiction: A resounding and amazing 6.
Fiction: 105.

Fiction is further subdivided into:

Historical fiction: 9.
>>(Historical fiction, England, circa Henry VIII: 6.)
Contemporary fiction: 3.
Science fantasy: 13.
Other fantasy: 80.

I've heard it said that you can tell a lot about a woman by looking in her purse.

Well, you can tell a lot about me by looking at my bookcase.

You know what? I think this would make a neat meme. (And I'm a nosy soul.) Just for grins, give us a general breakdown of your bookshelf, by number of authors, genre, series, anything you want. (That and I've always been interested in the rate of information spread.)

I tag Carrie.

(Feel free to ignore me.)