A Fuse #8 Production is an awesome blog.  I’ve known this for a while.  Just today, I read a recnt post of Betsy’s that pointed me to my new favorite blog:

The Longstockings!  At The Longstockings, eight writers in striped socks talk about all kinds of exciting things.  I’ve not read any of their books, but the blog has me thrilled and wanting to run out and pick them up.  My TBR piles, if combined, would probably be as tall as I am, so it’ll have to wait.

In honor of Script Frenzy, I’m posting some soliloquies from my favorite scriptwriter - Wm Shakespeare.  He was a Taurus, you know.

First, from Hamlet II.2:

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

From The Tempest I.1

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

From As You Like It II.7
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.1
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Script Frenzy is in full swing. Can I knock out 667 words before midnight tonight? I think I can. That's something like three and a half pages. I'm "pants"ing it, as writers say, meaning I have a concept but no outline. I've got a beginning and an end, and the middle will be the exciting part. I apologize if, for the next month, it seems as though I should change this journal's name to scriptitans (which is a real Latin word meaning "writing eagerly and often"). I think we'll be okay though. I can't tell you what I'm writing except to say it's a play. Other than that, it's a secret. Sshhhh! (If you really care to know about it, you can e-mail me, and I'll decide whether to let you into my elite cadre of people who know. Right now I think that cadre includes Little Willow and no one else.)

I shall not be neglecting my readerly duties. Work is (at last) winding down. Unemployment during the summer months is a sad thing, but if you budget for it, it can be awesome.

Things to Come:
A Thinking Blogger Award post (Thanks, Kelly!)
Reviews of the books on my Read in 2007 list
Commentary on other kidlit stuff, depending on what I find in my inbox and publications
Interviews!
My 48 Hour Book Challenge Posts

As the only Japanese girl in her class, Sumiko knew what being lonely felt like.  Still, she was usually satisfied to work on her uncle’s flower farm and attend school.  Then, she was invited to a birthday party!  Sadly, once she got there, the birthday girl’s mother asked her to leave, because she was Japanese.  This incident presents the rest of the book’s plot in microcosm: after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Sumiko’s family is split up and her uncle and grandfather are sent to prison camp, while her aunt, cousins, brother and herself are interned.

Weedflower was my first audiobook ever, and I suspect that has affected my opinion of it.  Simply put, it did not blow me away, but I really liked it.  It got off to a slow start, but the pace quickly picked up, and I found myself caring very much what happened to Sumiko and her family.  I think Kadohata’s greatest achievement with this book is presenting a huge historic event from a girl’s perspective.  What this means is that we get a limited awareness of what’s going on in the outside world; Sumiko only knows what’s going on to the extent that it affects her life directly.  A lot of historical fiction falls prey to its larger context, losing the personal in the grand saga of history, and educating readers in such a way that the narrator/protagonist seems to know a lot of things she really shouldn’t.  Kadohata deftly avoids this trap, but still presents a picture of life in the middle of World War II that makes us aware of what was going on.

I would recommend Weedflower to readers who enjoy historical fiction, especially about World War II, or anyone looking for a good story about how a girl grows up.  I will warn you, though, that it is not a cheerful tale.

Book: Weedflower (Affiliate Link) Author: Cynthia Kadohata  Publisher: Atheneum Original Publication Date: 2006 Pages: 272 Age Range: Young Adult Source of Book: Library [Audiobook] Other Blog Reviews: Fairrosa’s Reading Journal, propernoun.net, A Fuse #8 Production, MotherReader, Jen Robinson’s Book Page

Hi there, remember me?

I’ve been neglectful of this here reading blog.  I’ve been ill and overworked, mostly, and so I have been reading more and saying less.  I am still here, still excited to be part of this whole world of lit(especially kidlit)blogging, and am looking forward to renewing my dedication to it in the weeks to come.  I’ve been reading books a good bit, skimming and scanning blogs, and have my very first issue of The Horn Book waiting to be opened.

After a week-long hiatus, I have a new question for you!

How much and in what ways might readers benefit from or be hurt by contracts like the new boilerplate at Simon & Schuster, wherein a book effectively never goes out of print, but is always available via Print-On-Demand?

This may look like an easy question to answer, but don’t be deceived.  First, you may want to head over to Bookseller Chick and acquaint yourself with what I’m talking about.

In brief: In most contracts, when a book’s sales fall below a certain number, it goes out-of-print and the rights revert to the author.  The author is then free to sell the book to another publishing house.  In the new contract at Simon & Schuster, the minimum sales number would be removed, effectively allowing Simon & Schuster to keep rights to a book until it became public domain.

I’ve often been frustrated by finding a book I want to be out of print; I could see how having print-on-demand as an option would be good for readers.  On the other hand, it’s safe to assume that if a book has been relegated to Print-on-Demand only status, the publisher is not out there trying to get the book into the hands of new readers.  If the author owns the rights to the book and successfully sells the book to a different publisher, that publisher might make a bigger push for sales, thus bringing the book to a wider audience, thus benefitting new readers who might not have been looking for the book.

I’m not asking about author vs. publisher here, just potential reader benefits on each side.  If I’m a person looking for a specific book, it’d be nice to print it up.  If I’m a person who encounters a book I wouldn’t have looked for, but I do find it thanks to publisher action, then the out of print option is preferable.

What do you think?

The Previous Question:
How do readers benefit from author interviews?

Read answers at the original post.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you I have a pirate problem.  On my last day of student teaching, there were pirate festivities.  For Talk Like a Pirate Day and multiple Halloweens, I've dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.  And yelled at people if they left off the "Captain" part.  At the tender age of 7, I played Captain Hook in the Day Camp's production of Peter Pan.  (Written and Directed by me.  I wanted to be Peter Pan but they said my hair was too dark.)

Anyway.  In honor of PotC: At World's End being released today, I give you Robert Louis Stevenson's Pirate Story.

 Pirate Story

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon or off to Malabar?

Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea--
Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!
Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,
The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.

More Emily Dickinson!

Because I could not stop for Death (712)    
by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – 
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Lloyd Alexander died today.  People know him best for his Chronicles of Prydain.  They fueled my imagination when I was a child, and I did love them.  But where he really captured my interest was with the Vesper Holly series.  I like to have a character with whom I strongly identify in a book, and Vesper Holly was that character.  Vesper Holly, Teen Archaeologist.  I don’t remember much about the series except that I loved it and I read it while my parents were at the gym.  I think I shall have to get it from the library in memoriam.  The internet has shockingly little information about the series.  It doesn’t have its own Wikipedia entry.  It’s just briefly mentioned in the entry for Lloyd Alexander.  We may have to set about fixing that.  Who’s with me?

…yesterday my life’s like, “Uh oh, pop quiz.” Today it’s “rain of toads.”

Thus spoke Xander Harris in part two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s pilot episode, “The Harvest.”  Even in its later seasons, Buffy didn’t have the special effects budget to create an on-screen rain of toads.  The advantage to books is you aren’t limited by those sorts of budget constraints.  In Out of the Madhouse, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder bring the rain of toads, along with all the trolls, sea monsters, skyquakes, and nasty Cordelia-chasing demons you could ever hope for.  What’s that, you say?  Trouble in Sunnydale?  Must be Tuesday.  The difference is, this time, it’s all happening at once.  Also?  Giles is out of town.  It turns out there’s an interdimensional mansion in Boston that’s been keeping these monsters at bay, but now its caretaker, the “Gatekeeper,” is ailing and his magic is weakening.  Buffy, Xander, Cordelia and Giles head to Boston to put a stop to the monster leak, while Willow, Oz, and Angel hold down the fort against an invasion of evil monks who are out to get Buffy.  (Note: I said evil monks not evil monkeys.)

Like any tie-in, Out of the Madhouse suffers from the fact that you can’t kill off major characters.  What you can do, however, is injure them severely, and in every fight scene in Out of the Madhouse I expected someone - usually Cordelia - to end up in the hospital.  Out of the Madhouse has a structure somewhat like a multi-episode arc; you’ve got the main problem of new scary monsters, plus signs that the Watcher’s Council might be sketchy, subplots involving outside forces looking to hurt Buffy, and some new recurring characters who are quite likeable.  The dialogue is strong, though not Whedon-quality, and except for the wild special effects that would be necessary to pull it off and the unlikely requirement of on location filming in Boston, I completely believed that this was a story I might see on the show itself.  Add in a surprise ending and you’ve got a recipe for fun and nostalgia.  (Plus, Golden and Holder manage to avoid the Ethan Rayne trap!)

I’d recommend Out of the Madhouse to any Buffy fan looking for stories to tide them over between issues of the comic book or to take them back to the good old days.

Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One: Out of the Madhouse
Author: Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Original Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 384
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: Library