Even More Earth Day Excitement with Ian Somerhalder
As I’ve previously mentioned, working for Half Price Books over the years has made me very Earth Day conscious. Even more than that, its made me even more Earth Day Every Day aware. In additon to that, its made me pay a little more attention to the world around me, more specifically pop culture. Kids are reading Vampire Diaries? See what they’re filling their minds with and what you can offer them if there aren’t any copies to sell. Oh, the fad is being turned into a show? Check it out and see if its any good. Maintaining a book blog and networking with Twitter? Be sure you’re following people who have the same interests as you.
All of these scenarios led me to following Ian Somerhalder on Twitter. I’m not a huge fan being THAT fan, unless of course its of a writer. I have plenty of author love for people like Tanya Egan Gibson and Jane Austen, but if you haven’t noticed the latter is dead and the former is a bit too sweet and humble to be basking in worldwide limelight any time soon. (That being said, you should totally go buy her book How To Buy a Love of Reading
1. He’s an amazing actor. So amazing that in Rules of Attraction, my husband and I really thought he was gay in real life. And despite his gorgeous face, I completely forgot about him being pretty in Lost.
2. He does cool things with his money. He loves the environment and the world and has set up a foundation called IS Foundation. No naturalist, environmentalist, earth day extraordinaire could deny that this is a pretty cool thing for someone to do: http://www.isfoundation.com/.
3. He’s from the South. Being a Texan, I fully appreciate one’s dedication to his/her roots, even more so if those roots were once part of the Confederacy.
4. He runs a family business with his brother. I love small businesses, and though this business probably wont stay small because Ian Somerhalder is already famous, I love the idea behind it…
And that brings us to what this little article is really about: BOB… Built of Barnwood.
Ian Somerhalder and his brother started a business in Mississippi creating accent pieces, furniture, and all sorts of other artsy crafts out of reclaimed barn wood. It feeds into his desire to help the planet by reusing and recycling as well as (I am assuming) utilizing skills and tapping into other passions he got from his father, Robert, who was a building contractor (information from imdb.com). Go check out the site and see the special Earth Day promotion: http://www.builtofbarnwood.com/
The only thing cooler than finding this site and this business on Earth Day and sharing it with you all, would be getting an interview with Ian Somerhalder himself and finding out the name of his favorite author. After all, this is supposed to be a book blog.
A Romance to Last the Ages
Title: Dragonfly in Amber (second in The Outlander Series
Author: Diana Gabaldon
Publisher: I am reading from A Dell Book, pocket papberback, published in 1992.
Length: 947 pgs
Although the book covers are a bit outdated and have been revamped and republished, The Outlander Series itself will never be outdated… will never get old. Often shelved in the romance sections for its sexual content and love story, its a little more dramatic, a little more fantasy, and has a little more historical detail than your average romance. Gabaldon has written a saga that is a “little more” no matter where you house it in your bookstore.
Where I devoured Outlander (the introductory book of the series, published in the UK as CrossStitch), Dragonfly in Amber I mosied through. I kept it on my nightstand and read 20-30 page here and there, until I finally finished it this morning over breakfast. But not because it wasn’t good.
Jamie and Claire Fraser are the kind of characters you like to let linger with you. By book two you see more of their faults and weaknesses as well as their strengths, and they are less token flat romantic leads strictly enamoured with each other. Still definitely a romance, these books are also clearly about a marriage tried by time travel, war, and witch hunts, and more. There’s a real element to them that traditional romances don’t have, the Outlander Series is all adventure but never fairy tale. Knowing there’s a whole series of nearly 1000 page books, its easy to set it down after a little bit, assured they will be there when you come back.
Of course, the moment you get to the end of one, Gabaldon has teased you with some lingering story line that makes you want to immediately start the next. I recommend having several of the series set aside before you begin so when that moment comes you aren’t left with the deep urge to leave your house and run to the nearest bookstore hoping they have the one you need in stock. Just buy them all up whenever you see them, and toss them (in order) on your TBR pile.
Like Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, I think The Outlander Series will be a romance that lasts through the ages.
A Natural English Journey for Earth Day
Title: Birds of Selborne
Author: Gilbert White
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Length: 96 pgs.
This pocket sized series of letters from naturalist Gilbert White about the village of Selborne should be a part of every environmentalist’s collection. White studied at Oriel College in Oxford and then spent years travelling around England. Birds of Selborne is a segment of The Natural History of Selborne, a work he published after he returned home from his travels.
I love these little books, its a branch off of the Penguin Great Ideas series, an “English Journeys” collection of which this is number 19. Much of this particular edition is filled with White’s bird watching adventures, but also covers things about the trees and weather as well. If you’ve ever enjoyed the work of Darwin’s Origin of Species or Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Gilbert White is worth your while.
Tomorrow is Earth Day, don’t forget to check out your local bookstore and pick something up from the nature or gardening section to kick off your Sunday (after church, if you go). Find a spot under some trees or in the sun to celebrate your Earth while you read. Half Price Books in Humble will have Eco-friendly goodie bags to hand out to 50 customers, if you’re in the Humble area you should check it out. If you’re in the Dallas area, there’s a tree planting event on April 28th: http://www.hpb.com/treeweek/
Archie Rocks Acoustic, Totally Rocked Half Price Books
Booking musicians to serenade customers at a bookstore has been pretty fun so far. Sure, it has ups and downs… a great musician, a no show musician, a nice musician, a quirky musician… but tonight it was all UP! Archie Parks had the tips flowing, the book buying happening, and customers tapping their toes while they shopped LP’s, and applauding from the DVD aisles. A couple came to find me to ask if he had cd’s for sale and why not. So after the show, I took some time to pour over the calendar with him and conduct an interview for my blog.
Who are your biggest influences?
Bush, Gavin Rossdale, Cobain. That dude from Seether, I can’t think of his name right now, but I’d know it when I see it. 90’s Grunge music mostly, you know STP. I could go all day… Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Shoe.
When did you start playing and why?
Jr. High. My Dad had a guitar and a friend had a drum set. Started writing our own songs because if we messed up nobody knew. And then it snowballed. So I guess the answer is boredom.
Where else are booked to play?
I’m trying to set up a show at Bohemeos. It’s real chill there.
What made you decide playing in a bookstore would be right for you?
It’s chill. My new style is perfect for a chilling bookstore.
Since we’re in a bookstore, who are your favorite authors?
Asimov, he’s the shit. Herbert, I love science fiction, obviously. I heard a new Dark Tower came out, Stephen King, but not Stephen King, I like his alter ego Bachman. But Asimov is number one. I love robots, man. And those dudes that came out with new Dune books, they weren’t Herbert, but they were still pretty sweet. And I’m into Eastern Philosophy. But it’s fucking lame. I’m into it, but not to be a hipster.
Do you read much? Does your reading affect your lyric writing?
No, I don’t read much. It doesn’t affect my writing. What does is school, I’m taking Creative Works.
What messages do you wish to convey through your music?
My number one theme is love. I sing about it all the time because I love the ladies. But my goal is to help people find the right path for them. That’s why I like Eastern Philosophy and I’m not a hipster. Help people find themselves, and feel stuff.
When do you think you’ll have cds or downloadable songs ready for sale?
I have enough material for a seven track album. But I’m leery, I need moral support because I don’t want to rip people off just selling me and a guitar. I have higher standards. I don’t want to put my name on crap.
At which point, I had to tell him that I thought the idea of a cd with just him on a guitar wouldn’t be a rip off at all, it would actually be quite lovely. He’s very humble, but not in a self degrading well. He was genuinely pleased and surprised that customers were interested in buying his music if it was available.
Water for Elephants: 24 Hour Fairy Tale
Title: Water for Elephants
Author: Sara Gruen
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: I read from the Algonquin Books, a division of Workman Publishing, movie cover edition
Length: 445 pgs.
When I first see a book, I mentally catalogue it. I see On What Grounds, Cleo Coyle, mystery by author, C’s. I see On Art and Life, John Ruskin, philosophy by philosopher, R’s. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen, general fiction by author, G’s. I see Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, general fiction by author, R’s. I see Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman, History, British biographies by subject G’s.
At second glance, it becomes a more personal catalogue: bubble bath, afternoon, 24 hour, week, over time.
A bubble bath read is a Cleo Coyle Coffeehouse mystery series. Roughly 200 pages, usually purchased in paperback format, I can read it in an hour to an hour and a half. John Ruskin’s On Art and Life is part of my Penguin Great Ideas books collection, they are small, but involve a little more brain power than a fun, cozy mystery, I will spend an afternoon on one of these books. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen? I saw ladies pick this up for their book clubs, I weighed it in my hands, and thought: I’ll read that… looks like a romantic 24 hour fairy tale. You see the pattern.
Yet I waited. I impulsively buy many things when it comes to books… bubble bath reads because I read them often; Great Ideas books because I collect them; week longs because work like Carlos Ruiz Zafon is heaven to me; history and science books because I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. But 24 hour reads get brushed under the rug fairly often. They are often times catalogued as fluff I don’t have time for.
The movie came and went, the movie edition came by the hundreds. Still, I passed it up.
Finally, my best friend bought a copy during a Valentine’s Event hosted at the Half Price Books in Humble (Buy your favorite love story, get a chance to win a dinner for two at Italiano’s). Now, for a book reviewer, blogger, and aspiring novel writer, you’d think I had a best friend who reads with me. You probably envision a girl that goes and gets coffee and pours over reading material only to gab about it later with her bestie. Well, I have very close friends that I do that with, but Danielle isn’t one of them. My best friend absorbs books on her own, stews over them in her mind, and then cherishes them and tries to not breathe a word of them with another soul lest she ruin the magic of the experience. Point? She wont read with me. But I found out what book she bought at that event, and I picked up a copy of my own on clearance.
24 hours of entertainment for 25 cents – heck yeah!
Now, granted, I wasn’t reading Water for Elephants for 24 hours straight. Just between baby, husband, event planning, house cleaning, playdates, meals, emails, pampering, and dog walking, it took me 24 hours to finish it. If however, you are going on a vacation and have a chance to read it all in one sitting… I HIGHLY recommend doing so.
The New York Times Book Review calls Water for Elephants “An enchanting escapist fairy tale” and despite the sociopathic husband of the love interest who gets off on beating animals and people and lording over a small community of travelling circus hooligans, it really is a bit of a fairy tale, and its definitely an escape from your own reality.
Water for Elephants reads a bit like a Kate Morton novel, but at a quicker pace, with lots of layers, old age, storytelling, and flashbacks. Unlike Kate Morton, this first person narrative is written from the perspective of the man in the saga – rather than aged ladies. Where Kate Morton’s fabulous books strike me as having a very female target audience, I feel that marketed a bit differently, Sara Gruen has the potential to engross a population of male readers who have missed out under the impression that this fairy tale is a romance novel.
Gruen has done extensive research into depression era, of circuses, and of elephants, and it shows. Although Water for Elephants is about two people finding their fairy tale life in the midst of harsh circumstances, its ultimately the greatest coming of age story I’ve read in a long time. You’ve got a virginal college boy experiencing the death of his parents and loss of all his future plans, running away to join the circus, telling you the story of his life, all his trials and tribulations, from a nursing home at age ninety – or ninety three. From becoming room mates with a dwarf, losing his virginity, learning the fine art of train hopping, planning a murder, witnessing a murder, and falling in love, and becoming an unsung hero, Gruen leads you effortlessly through the life of an ex-circus vet, and its wonderful.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but when I do, I’ll tell you all what I think.
Fantine
Notes from a Les Miserables Readalong
I am reading from the Modern Library edition
On History
As a reader, I am captivated by novels about the Napoleanic Wars, or more accurately, set during the Napoleanic Wars. Long have I loved Jane Austen heroines, had my heart pitter patter to the feats of Horatio Hornblower, and kept such writers as Alexander Kent and Patrick O’Brian on my TBR pile. But I’ve never take the approach of a historian to these wars, and certainly never contemplated the affect they had on the countries involved. So with a copy of Les Miserables sitting on my night stand, I am now admonished for my previous ignorance. So much pain, so much chaos, on every level of the human experience: politics, religion, the whole of society has been torn apart. And just a few pages into Les Miserables, I can’t help but wonder: Is Hugo going to put it together again?
On Writing
Reading old letters in novels always has struck me. So often characters end with something along the lines of running out of paper or their paper being filled up. Even as a child, reading all the historical pieces I could get my hands on, this concept amazed me. The idea of running out of paper! What luxury we have in this modern age of ours! (Yes, in a book about people starving and not having enough to keep a fire in winter, the luxury I am stunned by is paper, not the fact that I am always well fed!) Never am I out of stationary or cards to write letters; never am I out of journal space, always buying the next one when I see that I am thirty pages or so near the end. How spoiled we all are that now we are even less likely to run out of room to express ourselves with all the unlimited cyberspace at our fingertips – unless of course while on Twitter, confined by 140 characters.
On Personal Experience
“being in the mountains, the evenings of October are cold there.” – pg. 54
Its always the little things I get hung up on when I’m reading, often distracted by my own experiences. I see cold and October in the same sentence, I swear, for nearly ten minutes I stop reading and think of all those excrutiating Halloween nights in Texas. I distinctly remember, and most often recall, that one muggy night spent in a pumpkin suit noisily shifting the newspaper so my chest and belly could breathe. “Who thinks about pumpkin suits while reading Les Miserables?!” is the thought that occurs to me, bringing me back to the page… only to see traveller and innkeeper and start thinking about Christmas. That train of thought wasn’t done any favors by the fact that the innkeeper tells the traveller, “Monsier, I cannot receive you […] I have no room.”
On The Bishop
Of course, I adore him.
“In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious interchages of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.” – pg. 49
That description is so beautiful. The man himself is so beautiful. I envision him sitting around endless vines of jasmine under the moonlight communing with God and its just a very pretty image that resonates with me and does not leave. Then, later, I nearly cried the moment the bishop ordered the woman to put clean sheets on the bed for the convict.
On Felix, Fantine, and Cosette
Felix is such an irresponsible jerk! And the girls to praise him such with laughter! Fantine is such a fool, never met such a naive character in all my life. And poor little Cosette, the victim of their faults. Its true that while reading this book your heart just breaks and breaks over and over again. Hugo doesn’t help matters, the moment I get attached to a character – even in their woe and distress – I am whisked away to be introduced to another.
On Jean Valjean
The story of Jean Valjean is quite possibly the most depressingly awful thing I’ve ever read, until I read about all the escape attempts and deem the man an idiot for not just waiting out his sentence patiently. For his intial nineteen years in prison, I have no sympathy. However, he redeems himself and earns my care later, but I don’t want to post any spoilers at the moment… not until everyone dives into the book and gets more than their little toes wet.
Favorite Quotes
“Table talk and lovers’ talk equally elude the grasp; lovers’ talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.” – pg. 115
“He loved books; books are cold but sure friends.” – pg. 142
“Some people are malicious from the mere necessity of talking.” – pg. 155
Fantine Posts from the Kate’s Library Readalong Blog Hop
Kate’s Library http://kateslibrary.blogspot.com/2012/03/les-miserables-victor-hugo-post-1.html
Southern Bluestocking http://southernbluestocking.com/2012/01/07/les-miserables-book-1-fantine/
A Room of One’s Own http://jillianreadsbooks2.wordpress.com/category/authors/victor-hugo/
If you’re in this blog hop too, please leave a comment below with a link to your post about Part I: Fantine.
Next Les Miserables Blog Post by Anakalian Whims: https://anakalianwhims.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/les-miserables-readalong-update-50412/
Celebrating Earth Day, April 22nd
While gathering up promotional items for Half Price Books Earth Day Celebration Goodie Bags (Humble Location), one of the participating business owners described me as “earthy” to one of his associates. I’ve worked for a company I hear people refer to as “hippie” in nature for five years now, but I never thought of myself as being a hippie myself… I always just thought of myself as bookish. But I suppose working with people so dedicated to reusing and recycling, some of it had to sink into my being in an observable way.
Since I’m so “earthy,” I thought I’d share a little bit about what I do as part of my daily routine. I’m not out to save the world, just out to minimize my footprint when its convenient to do so.
1. Recycle cans. Its as easy as dropping your can items into a separate trash container. Sometimes loading them up and dropping them off at a recycling center is a hassle, that’s where nieces and nephews come in handy. Most kids will jump at the chance to earn some spare change (I know I LOVED collecting and selling crushed cans as a kid), so even if you don’t haul them off yourself, its probably pretty easy to find someone willing (and eager) to do it for you.
2. Reusable shopping bags. I don’t have a recycle pick up in my neighborhood. So rather than acquire a mountainous number of plastic bags I am too lazy to deliver to a recycling dispenser, I just use reusable ones instead. It saves me a lot of grief and guilt, and is surprisingly simple once you get in the habit of keeping a stash of them in your car. My favorites are Pat’s Bags at Half Price Books. They are $1.98, made of recycled water bottles, and have cute art designed by one of the store’s founders Pat Anderson.
3. Dump coffee grounds and egg shells in the garden. Instead of dumping my coffee grounds and egg shells in the trash, I make sure to mix it into my garden soil. Coffee grounds help keep nutrients in the soil, fight off diseases your plants can get, and keeps the garden soil looking dark and fresh. More specific information about coffee grounds can be found on this blog: http://groundtoground.org/2011/08/28/coffee-grounds-for-your-garden/. Egg shells are more specifically good for your vegetable garden, so I crush those up and put them with my tomatoes. More specific information on eggs shells in your garden can be found here: http://www.allotments.ie/?p=515.
4. All natural cleaning products. This habit benefits me two fold: I am allergic to everything, and its better for the environment. I am a huge fan of homemade mixes (using baking soda, vinegar, and essential oils), Seventh Generation, and J.R. Watson. As for my personal hygene, I love soap from Connie’s Bath Shack in Old Town Spring – http://conniesbathshack.com/.
5. Reuseable water bottles. I have reuseable water bottles galore from all the Earth Day Celebrations of Half Price Past. I don’t buy plastic water bottles in packs at the store, I diligently refill my Half Price Books bottles. Water bottles are a simple, yet awesome thing of genius, and you can get them anywhere, I think even Starbucks sells them.
As you can see, that’s not a lot, but I think it makes a big difference.
But, this is a book blog, so I’ll get to the bookish parts.
I love this very green ad from hpb.com!
Half Price Books loves to celebrate Earth Day, and in working there for five years, I can proudly say it was my favorite time of the year in the four and half years I worked in the store. The displays are full of my favorite color (green), the nature and gardening sections become a little more prominent, people seem more interested in buying books to read outside under trees in parks… I love that. Smack dab in the middle of Spring, people just seem cheerier in general, and with Mother’s Day around the corner, and lawn projects in the works, I always felt like I had a better chance to help people out. One year, I even got to participate in a tree planting for Trees for Houston. Half Price Books sent a group of volunteers to the planting, as part of my working hours, to plant trees! That was an all out blast.
Visit your local Half Price Books on Earth Day, they just might be doing something cool that day. But even if there’s not too much out of the ordinary happening, its good to get your books reused! One of my favorite HPB purchases is actually featured in that ad to the left, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods makes me desperately want to go hiking. This was my first Bryson, I find the author surprisingly witty and fun, although perhaps a bit truthfully cruel in the beginning. I have to admit, prior to reading this I knew very little about the Appalachian Trail – it was a trail I had heard of but didn’t really have a clue about its length (Georgia to Maine, 2200 miles), its fame, or its history. This is the perfect blend of traveling memoir and a true survival/ adventure story, and I was completely captured by the weather conditions, the terrain, the fellow hikers, and the long nights in cold shelters. Its definitely an adventure I’d like to take, even if it means I only finish 39% of the trail like Bryson himself.
Another little favorite of mine is Don’t Throw It Out
Also, one of my most recent purchases, is Generation T
So whether you pop into a used bookstore and pick up some new resources, ride your bicycle that day, take a gander in the public park or local arboretum, or start a new earth friendly habit… be a good steward of your resources and respect your world, take a moment, sniff the roses, and celebrate Earth Day!
*Disclaimer: Although I am currently an extremely part-time, work from home, employee for Half Price Books (about 20-30 hours a month to organize events like booksignings, raffles, and other fun stuff), this blog is purely my own. What I say here is always of my own volition, and is not backed or on behalf of the company. This is my personal blog of all my personal interests. Those personal interests just often include everything HPB as its a huge part of my world.
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books 4/17/12
11 Experiments That Failed Deemed Awesome
“That was great! It was hilarious. It reminded me of myself. People should read it because its really, really, really funny. Its not really a story, its more about things you shouldn’t do at home,” my eleven year old niece, Ashleigh Raine, says as she finishes 11 Experiments That Failed
I brought a stack of library books with me to my sister’s house to watch five of her six children, along with my own kid, while they rushed Alexandrea (the 3rd in line) to the ER for a broken arm (compliments of the fabulous climbing tree in their backyard). After completing their chores, the kids got to sit down to a few episodes of Transformers, and then it was off to nap, rest, and reading time according to their respective ages.
The youngest asleep upstairs, the two eldest bee-line for the bag of books from the library – new books, ones they don’t see every day, like most kids in a toy store their eyes light up with glee.
I talk to Ashleigh about whether I can quote her in my blog, and as we discuss the book Ethan Blaise, age nine, asks about an illustration on an open page. “What is that kid doing?”
“You should read it,” Ashleigh pushes the book across the carpet to him. Ethan immediately stretches out, belly down, on the floor, kicking his feet while audibly snickering throughout the book.
While Ethan reads, he intermittenly laughs aloud while Ashleigh reads over his shoulder, distracted from the book she picked up to read second, apparently she would rather re-read 11ETF with her brother.
“You think its funny too?” she asks him.
“Yeah,” he grins, smacks his gum, and continues to flip through the pages while laughing and reading the best parts aloud.
When he finishes he tells me, “This one is funny!”
“Is it the most hilarious book you’ve ever read?” Ashleigh asks him.
“Yes, it is the funniest book I’ve ever read. ‘What you need is a message, a toilet, a bottle…’ ” This last bit I assume is a quote from the book as the two continue to quote the book from memory for about ten to fifteen minutes before they remember they are now hungry and flee to the kitchen to raid the pantry for crackers.
I initially checked this book out to read to Ayla, but I haven’t got around to it yet. I am posting this review solely on the reactions of my niece and nephews recommendation. If you are shopping for nine to eleven year olds, I think you’ll have a winner.
Interview With Author Tanya Egan Gibson
Tanya Egan Gibson, photo from article: http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_12499312
I read How to Buy a Love of Reading
- Fitzgerald is obviously a heavy influence for you, who else were among your first literary loves?
Kurt Vonnegut, for sure, in high school. Slaughterhouse-Five changed the way I thought about what a novel “should be.” C.S. Lewis in elementary school. I loved the Narnia books. I wanted a wardrobe. Oh, and between that, all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. I had a serious crush on Holmes—the more eccentricity the better.
I should probably clarify, too, that it took me a really long time to appreciate Fitzgerald. I didn’t like The Great Gatsby in high school or in college. It wasn’t until I was assigned to teach it at a high school in California that I saw it differently. One of my students asked, “So why is Daisy such a bee-atch?” Which snapped me out of concentrating on the book’s famous symbolism (The Green Light! The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg!) and refocused me on the people (characters) and their desperation to be loved.
- My favorite part of HTBALOR is how raw Hunter comes across, how much his character development rings true. That’s rare for a female author to write a male character so well. Is he the character you identify with most? Or did you fall in love with him a little? (Admittedly, I did a little of both.)
As a lifetime watcher of shows like Beverly Hills 90210 (the original one) and its successors, I always found the rich-kid-who-lives-alone-in-a-posh-hotel-or-other-parentless-situation to be a cool trope. (Yeah, we can call it a stereotype, but the literary ring of “trope” sounds much more forgiving.) I’m fascinated by stereotypes because it seems to me that people (real people, not just characters) often end up becoming them of their own volition, giving up on some of their most interesting dimensions for the safety/security/ease of neatly defining themselves.
The rich-kid-who-lives-alone is nearly always a misunderstood “bad boy” who (when we meet him at, say, the beginning of a CW television series) is engaging in self-destructive behavior and has a mean streak. Usually, as the series progresses, the character cleans up his act (usually for the love of a good girl) and he learns to become a responsible person (with, perhaps, a couple of dips into recidivism when the ratings need a boost) and discovers his inner poet/artist/recycling advocate/vegan.
So, when I wrote Hunter, I kept wondering what such a character would be like the other way around: What if the character was originally a responsible, mature-beyond-his-years person who knew who he was? What if living alone with too much money and little supervision hadn’t turned him into a spoiled, self-destructive brat? What if he liked to cook and knew how to clean and didn’t act or feel embarrassed about being a book geek? What would it take for that character to end up turning himself into the self-destructive-kid-with-a-mean-streak stereotype? Looks. And being looked at.
I suppose that’s a long preface and I still haven’t answered your question—sorry! What fascinates me about Hunter is that being so highly visible (an overnight hottie who never meant to be a hottie) deprives him of being himself. He wants to be kind and gentle and loving and loved. At his core these—and privacy—are what he most values. But these aren’t qualities valued in an appearance-obsessed community or expected of him as the community’s golden child.
So many of the good things Hunter does for other people are quiet, under-the-radar, private. Yet he’s constantly getting the message from his parents and peers—and even his college application essay prompts–that nothing matters if people can’t see it. (Thank you, reality TV society.) So he kind of splits himself into public-Hunter and private-Hunter. And in so doing, unravels.
Which, finally, brings me to answering your question: Yeah, I probably understand Hunter the best out of my characters because he’s desperate to reshape his world into something lovely and full of love—and also made to feel embarrassed about such inclinations. Like private-Hunter, I’m hopelessly thin-skinned and I get crushes on authors (even dead ones) and I daydream about them being kind. I’m very self-conscious, an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert because I really like people and like to talk with them—even though they often scare me. I write about love and loveliness; I believe there is much love and loveliness in life waiting to be discovered. (I’ve been called a Pollyanna. To my face.) But I’m no longer embarrassed by it.
- It’s clear you have a love/hate obsession-like relationship with meta-fiction. It’s also clear how beautifully you write the layers of a book, like a rose in bloom or an onion being peeled. When you are writing, do you find that meta-fiction lends itself to these unfolding layers or does it work against it?
Yup, I wrote a novel that makes fun of meta-fiction while taking the form of meta-fiction. So yeah, I do both love and hate it. Oh, and thank you for the compliment. Back to the love-hate relationship: It’s complicated. Self-consciousness tends to get in the way of emotion. (Have you ever watched a play where one of the actors is supposed to say something like, “I swoon for you!” but is too embarrassed to go all the way with it, his self-consciousness turning it hollow?)
Meta-, of course, is about consciousness of self. But it also invites the reader backstage, saying, “Slip in behind the curtain. It’s okay, there’s room. Check out that actor’s insincerity!” Maybe this affords the reader the opportunity to observe up-close that the actor is shaking, and gives him or her clues to the emotion behind the hollow “I swoon for you.” Maybe the real story isn’t the play on the stage, but rather the story of why that actor is too terrified/nervous/exhausted/ill to embody the emotion of that line. So the question is whether it’s worth sacrificing the outer story (the story being played out onstage with the supposedly swoon-worthy damsel) to this inner story.
For me, the answer is sometimes, and only if I’m sure that the main narrative (swoon-worthy damsel) is ultimately deepened, emotionally, by that meta- jolt. When you go meta-, you’re sacrificing the readers’ waking dream—plucking them out of a world and then asking them to willingly reenter it. That’s a lot to ask.
The short answer to your question: I cut way more meta-material than I ever use.
- One of the characters, Bree McEnroy, writes a meta-novel. Do you have a favorite book from another author that fits this genre? If so, what is it and when did you first discover it?
Waterland, by Graham Swift, is one of my favorite books ever. I discovered it in graduate school, where my love-hate relationship with postmodernism and all things meta- broke down into way more hate than love. Waterland was assigned in a British Literature course I did, in fact, love–a respite from talking about literary theorists with difficult French names.
The novel is about a history teacher who is supposed to be teaching his students about the French Revolution. But who, because he’s sort of losing it, starts telling his students about his own personal history instead. Among other things, the book calls into question the difference (if any) between story and history.
- Your book references several fictional characters as authors and includes excerpts from their work. Do you have full manuscripts of these books lurking away somewhere? Like J.K.Rawling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages, do you have plans to publish these?
No full manuscripts exist of Between Scylla and Alta Vista or Unwritten. I promise. I did write small excerpts of them for my website, though, where a few pages of each of these books “exist” on a virtual bookshelf. In “Hunter’s journal” (on my website)—the story he wants to write about a girl and boy going on a ski trip in fact existed as a large flashback in an earlier draft of HTBALOR. (It was originally the story of how Hunter and Carley, the protagonist of HTBALOR, met. Later, it was replaced by a shorter flashback near the end of the book where they bond over an incident on the Long Island Sound.)
- As a writer, I dread asking this question (I have no idea if I will finish my own novel this year or this decade), but as a fan I am dying to know: when can we expect another book?
HTBALOR was published eight or nine years after I started writing it. I’m hoping the novel I’m currently writing (the working title is LANDS) won’t take quite that long. Like HTBALOR, it contains a meta- element, and getting all the layers of it to line up (while at the same time making each layer emotionally true to itself) is, as I indicated above, kind of tricky. Plus, I’m balancing writing with taking care of my two wonderful children, ages 7 and almost-4. One nice thing about LANDS: it takes place at a fictional theme park, so my children love coming along on amusement park research trips and think the pictures in my shelf full of amusement park research books are very cool.
- The cover art of the Dutton hardback edition, also featured on your website, is the reason I picked up your book. As a writer and art fanatic with a Bachelors in Marketing, I can’t help but wonder: Were you involved in picking out this art, or was it all Dutton? If so, what was your level of involvement?
Dutton chose the cover design and illustration, which were done by an artist named Ben Gibson (no relation). I think it’s beautiful, and I was particularly happy about the way the girl’s body. The spine of the book kind of becomes her spine, but the rest of her body seems to blend into/disappear into the couch. Weight is overly important in the fictional community of HTBALOR—the protagonist, according to the personal trainer hired by her mother, is 57 pounds overweight—and this rendering of Carley honors the conclusion of the book, in which the reader is never told what “size” she ends up.
- Does the cover art for this book represent your own art tastes? Who is your favorite artist? (Or what is your favorite piece?)
I’m kind of a Philistine when it comes to art. Not a three-dogs-playing-poker or velvet-Elvis glow-in-the-dark wall art Philistine—but still pretty unknowledgeable. (I did, at least, learn something from doing research for Bree’s never-to-be-completed book about art patronage.) I’m particularly fond of my seven-year-old daughter’s pastel rendering of two orange Amazon rainforest frogs and my three-year-old son’s multi-colored blob paintings that he insists are either trucks, dinosaurs, or me.
- Carley and Hunter are both only children. Did you have siblings growing up?
My brother wasn’t born until I was ten or eleven and we were raised in different households—after my parents divorced, my father remarried, so we’re half-sibs who were kind of each raised as only children. While it’s wonderful to have a sibling as an adult (my brother is very cool), I definitely wondered, as a child, what it would be like to have someone there to do things with. My daughter likes to tell people that my husband and I had her little brother “so I’ll always have someone to play with.” Which is not exactly untrue.
- What is one thing you want your readers and fans to know about you?
I love reading and writing so much, and feel unbelievably fortunate to have a book out there in the world. I love to write emails to authors when I enjoy their books, and when I receive emails/Facebook messages/Tweets from readers who connected emotionally with HTBALOR, it makes my day. Reading, for me, is all about connection, and when people take the time to tell me that my novel made them feel something, I’m thrilled beyond words.
Please follow Tanya Egan Gibson on Twitter @tanyaegangibson.
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