No, right?
Okay, I can still brag.
For starters, I'm thrilled to report that Life As We Knew It is nominated for two different young reader awards in the great (and currently my most favorite) state of Missouri: the Truman Award and the Gateway Readers Award. Modesty required me to list Missouri only once on that lovely list on the left of states that have nominated LAWKI. Drat that cursed modesty.
While I'm on the subject of LAWKI, here's a link to what may be the coolest thing I've ever found on Yahoo: http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071209214603AANjy7x
Lest you think I'm not showing enough love to the dead & the gone, here's a link to a blog review of same. Be forewarned, it's slightly spoilerish and has references to Bolivian hats, so if you're sensitive about such things, you might prefer to stay unlinked: http://readingfool.blogspot.com/2007/12/life-as-you-really-really-dont-want-to.html
At some point I'll learn how to give cute little labels to those links, but today I spent figuring out new health insurance programs and trying to get Amazon to do something (I'm not quite sure what yet) with my blog (if I did it right though, they'll put my blog there somewhere but not your comments, which I didn't feel it was my place to plop in the middle of Amazon). Oh, and I put a new poll up for all of you to vote on.
Not that I'm bragging, mind you.
10 comments:
Umm Missouri as a fave state? sorry. But Missouri is a pretty bad state. Think pro slavery.
"The possible entry of Kansas into the union as a free state in the 1850s prompted anger and anxiety in slave state Missouri and escalating violence. The most infamous incident occurred during the Civil War when William Quantrill and his guerrilla raiders burned Lawrence, Kan., to the ground and killed nearly 200."
More recently 2007
I"n the buildup to the game, a photo of an unofficial Missouri T-shirt not meant for sale was distributed on the Internet. It featured an illustration of Quantrill's raid, with the headline: "Scoreboard.""
from dallasnews.com
I have been taking a civil war class so I get pretty mad about missouri.
Man, I am so glad that I do not have a blog.
Glen
Thank you for the link to my blog post. I hope you and the many people who have read my review because of your link don't think it's *too* spoilerish. My ARC is now on loan to another librarian who missed out on getting one herself. I truly am looking forward to being able to recommend d&g to my teens, and I'm sure she'll feel the same way.
Ah, "too" spoilerish is just a matter of taste. Take me: if I am really anticipating reading some book I don't even read the flap copy (actually, I think this is almost always good advice. Flap copy frequently bites). I like to walk in with the absolute minimum information possible, putting myself into the narrative's hands rather than creating expectations. I have no fear of wasting my time.
Then again, there are those fabled readers who skip to who done it on the last page before reading through the book. They are like space aliens to me, but I am sure they certainly exist (as do space aliens). So I am looking forward to reading your blog review too, someday--just someday after I read the book. I appreciate the spoiler warning.
I look forward to the criticism aspect of reviews after the fact (as well as the art of synopsis, frankly) much more than the aspect of guidance they can provide before. If that means anything.
Oh. Long comment. Sorry.
Hello to Missouri-loathing anonymous (alas, New York wasn't so hot in the Civil War either), and anonymous Glen (trust me, it's great fun to have a blog), and reading fool and mr. cavin.
Does anyone know why blogspot is opposed to capitalizing the names of those who leave comments? Granted 90% of you are named anonymous, but even so.
I love reading fool's review of d&g, which I've read (shock of shocks) more than once. Less than three thousand times, but definitely more than once. I sent it to my poor beleaguered editor, who screams every time she sees an e-mail from me (it's that lack of modesty thing I seem to be having so much trouble with).
And I'm just the kind of person mr. cavin doesn't think exists, although I admit I like the idea of being fabled. I'm always happiest when I know just how a story is going to turn out. I like detailed reviews, and there are movies I'm loathe to see unless I know just who's going to live and who's going to die. I also love watching the same movie over and over again, which is one reason why my dvd collection is threatening to take over the entire eastern seaboard.
Actually, if you love to see the same DVD over and over again, you would only have one.
Glen
I originally had a scene in my comment about how I used to never watch certain film previews, either. It's all a matter of not becoming greatly upset about sitting through something terrible. I frequently like watching bad movies, even movies I don't like watching I can enjoy not liking. All of this totally takes away the onus of being a careful, responsible consumer. Anyway, my comment was really long, so I cut that scene. Now it's an extra feature.
Of course, I too like to buy a lot of movies and watch them over and over. Only, I'll buy them without having even seen them first.
Re: commenter's lack of capitals. I think you can blame the integration of OpenID (which will allow non-anonymous commentary from LiveJournal and TypePad profiles, among others). What annoys mere the little brand icons.
Blogger Reading Fool said...
In response to Mr. Cavin (if he ever comes back to this particular post): I *love* watching movie trailers and have refused to buy library editions for my library because many of them have no jacket flaps or even anything on the back to tell potential readers what the book they're holding is about. Unless the cover or title is *really* eye-catching or the author is *very* popular, I think that tends to work against the book. (That's my bias showing!) But your comments made me aware of how I read the book I just finished. The author did a very good job of building tension. But the jacket flap told me that a particular character wasn't what she appeared to be, and I realized that that helped ratchet up the tension for me even more. I couldn't wait to see what her real story was. I don't want to hijack Susan's blog, so I won't expand on this, but thanks for making me aware of how jacket copy can affect a reader, and this reader in particular. And Susan, it's good to know I have company in liking detailed reviews and movie trailers, though I don't need to know important things like who lives and who dies.
Actually, I don't have to return to the post comments anymore, not now that Blogger will track them for me, and email updates, if I ask it to. That's pretty cool, I must say (because it’s easy and because it addresses issues regarding temporal obscurity in this particular content-generating format!).
Thanks for the note, Reading Fool. I too love the movie trailers and reviews, just after I've seen the movie is all. I understand where you people are coming from, though. Time is money (and money is too) and it's important to make select choices for that reason. My choice is to live with it if I sit down to something drastically at odds with what I want to be doing.
I can't get with you on the flap copy though--usually it's just too unnecessarily revealing, written by marketers based on profitable keywords, breathlessly repackaging individual narratives into lurid two-minute common denominator teasers. Film trailers are the same way, of course, but at least they use actual, you know, parts of the subject advertised. Flaps rarely do.
At present, I can’t remember what the flap copy of Life as We Knew It is like. Probably I never even read it. There are exceptions to the above, of course. Sometimes authors write their own copy and it turns out well sometimes, too.
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