Claire Stevens's Blog, page 47

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

Everyone’s seen those posts on Facebook and Twitter - the ones where everyone piles in on someone who has posted something off-colour or offensive - and suddenly your news feed becomes a shitfight of disapproving comments.  God knows, I've taken part in enough of them - usually to pretty much anything the Daily Mail ever publishes - so when I saw Jon Ronson's book I though I had to take a look.  I don’t read non-fiction all that often, but I found this to be a really interesting, relevant and accessible book.  

Jon Ronson takes some really interesting case studies and explores the concept of modern shaming, focussing on media like Facebook and Twitter and on the reaction that people like Lindsey Stone, the girl whose friend took a photo of her giving the finger and pretending to shout near a sign at a war memorial that says ‘Silence and Respect’, and Justine Sacco, a PR executive who tweeted ‘Going to Africa.  Hope I don’t get AIDS.  Just kidding.  I’m white!’, received when they broadcast their ill-advised messages.  

Like Ronson says, we are in an age where a great renaissance of public shaming is taking place.  Shaming has always been used as a form of control, but with the advent of the internet justice, Ronson claims, has been democratised.

The book has been well-thought-out and it is well structured so that one case study, interview or argument flows logically to the next.  His arguments are well reasoned and only occasionally lapse into sensationalism (and frankly, who could blame him?  This is a sensational subject, after all.)

As I read the book, I found myself thinking about the things I post not only on social media but also on review sites and my blog.  If anything, I sometimes berate myself for being too average.  I rarely post personal opinions or information on Twitter or Facebook and I always try to give reviews of books that are balanced and fair.  Uncontroversial.  And if I give a poor review, I always try to back up my review with arguments as to why it didn’t work for me, rather than just posting “THIS IS CRA-A-A-A-AP!  And you’re all idiots if you like it!”  So it always astonishes me slightly when people post things like Justine Sacco’s tweet because in what alternate universe do these people think that the internet is like a private conversation?  The stuff you post is there for everyone to see.  That’s the whole point.

The pacing of the book was generally quite good - it slowed down towards the end and eventually kind of petered out rather than ending on an explosion (I like books that end on an explosion), but it did keep my interest throughout and I think this was mostly due to Ronson’s writing style.  He manages to tackle a serious subject but he has this dry wit that I really like.

I have to say, though, the one part of the book I didn’t really understand was the part concerning Jonah Lehrer - the journalist who was publicly destroyed for making up some quotes.  Like I said before I don’t often read non-fiction, so I have little idea about the do’s and don’t’s of non-fiction writing, but one of the quotes he made up was:

‘Whenever Dylan read about himself in the newspapers, he made the same observations: “God, I’m glad I’m not me,” he said, “I’m glad I’m not that.”’

Apparently the “I’m glad I’m not that” part was fabricated by Lehrer. 

Now, I’ve got no idea why he made that bit up.  Maybe in the wider context of the book it has a lot of resonance, but it doesn’t seem to be that noteworthy and the other quotes Lehrer made up were similarly shruggy.

Now, if Lehrer had made up a quote like, “And, by the way, I may look like a guy, but I actually identify as female” or “I secretly hate being a songwriter and wish to god I’d been an accountant instead” - something profound or perception-changing - then I could understand the vilification, but the bits he made up seem so ... banal.

He was also found to have self-plagiarised - he recycled passages that he had previously used in other articles or books.  Now, I certainly don’t get why this is so career-destroyingly bad.  If it’s his own work and he’s not plagiarising from someone else (which I definitely understand is wrong!), it doesn’t seem terribly professional, but hardly 

Maybe it’s just one of the differences between fiction and non-fiction writing.  I know of one YA author whose sex scene in her vampire romance novel is very, very similar to the sex scene in her zombie apocalypse novel.  Did I mind?  I did not.  It was her work and she could do what she wanted with it. (It was a pretty hot sex scene, and I read it with great interest.)  

I tried to imagine if something like this had happened in a non-fiction book I was reading.  Honestly, I don’t think it would bother me at all if I noticed two very similar passages by the same author.

So yes, I didn’t get why Lehrer’s transgressions, while obviously not great, completely destroyed his life and led to such a massive outcry, but Jon Ronson seems to get it (as he would - he is, after all a non-fiction writer so has a much better idea than I do of what is acceptable journalistic practise and what isn’t) and because the Lehrer story is a thread throughout the book it constantly reminded me that there was some fundamental piece of the book that I just wasn’t getting.

Despite the Lehrer thing, though, this was a really interesting insight into the internet shaming culture.  Maybe it will serve as some kind of cautionary message that we should all try to mind our own business a little bit more and think about the consequences of everyone just piling in on someone who has transgressed.  I doubt it, though.

4 stars

Cover Reveal - Not Enough by Mia Hoddell

Author Mia Hoddell has today revealed the cover of her upcoming release Not Enough. Here's the blurb:
​
Neve Colvin isn’t good enough. As an introvert, her life is a never-ending list of labels and criticism. Pressures to change come from everyone—including the one person she thought would love her unconditionally … her mother. All Neve wants is acceptance, but surrounded by extroverts it’s a wish that’s nearly impossible to fulfil.

For Neve there’s only one solution: anyone disapproving must go. Even if it means only one person will remain.

That person is her lifelong friend Blake Reynolds. He’s seen the fights with her mum, the breakdowns caused by attacks on her personality, and the battles for acceptance. Each time she is left shattered and questioning who she is, he’s the one to collect the pieces of her broken heart. Shielding her from the cruelty is his only concern. But how can he protect her when Neve is concealing a secret so dark?

Blake thinks he knows everything about her, and with their relationship developing, he assumes Neve trusts him fully. However, there is one memory Neve is too ashamed of to share. Revealing it will test Blake’s loyalty beyond what she could ever ask, and Blake is the only friend she can’t afford to lose. He’s the one person capable of dragging her from the darkness plaguing her, but with pressures to conform increasing, even Blake may not be enough to pull her back this time.
 
Add to Goodreads
 
Buy Links:
Amazon│Barnes & Noble│Kobo│Amazon UK│iBooks

About the Author
Mia Hoddell lives in the UK with her family and two cats. She spends most of her time writing or reading, loves anything paranormal or romantic, and has an overactive imagination that keeps her up until the early hours of the morning. 

By the age of nineteen, Mia had published nine books, including the Elemental Killers series and the Seasons of Change series. Since then, her books have charted on numerous Amazon Bestseller Lists, and she has also had poems published in a many anthologies. With an ever growing list of ideas, Mia continues to create fictional worlds through her writing, and is trying to keep up with the speed at which her imagination generates them.

She also designs book covers and banners on her website M Designs 
 
Author Links:
Website│Goodreads│Twitter│Facebook
 
Cover Reveal Organized by:
YA Bound Book Tours
​

Waiting on Wednesday - Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn.  Here's the blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Mercedes Ayres has an open-door policy when it comes to her bedroom, but only if the guy fulfills a specific criteria: he has to be a virgin. Mercedes lets the boys get their awkward fumbling first times over with, and all she asks in return is that they give their girlfriends the perfect first time-the kind Mercedes never had herself.

Keeping what goes on in her bedroom a secret has been easy - so far. Her mother isn't home nearly enough to know about Mercedes' extracurricular activities, and her uber-religious best friend, Angela, won't even say the word "sex" until she gets married. But Mercedes doesn't bank on Angela's boyfriend finding out about her services and wanting a turn - or on Zach, who likes her for who she is instead of what she can do in bed.

When Mercedes' perfect system falls apart, she has to find a way to salvage her own reputation -and figure out where her heart really belongs in the process. Funny, smart, and true-to-life, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn's Firsts is a one-of-a-kind young adult novel about growing up.

Wow, that sounds pretty awesome.  And racy too, which obviously a good thing.  And the MC is wearing Converse: also cool.

What about you?  What's your Waiting on Wednesday pick?

Trailer Reveal - Girl of Myth and Legend by Giselle Simlett

Author Giselle Simlett has today revealed the trailer for her upcoming novel, Girl of Myth and Legend...

CHOSEN GIRL OF MYTH AND LEGEND by Giselle Simlet from Red 14 Films on Vimeo.

Sounds good, n'est-ce pas?  Here's the Goodreads blurb:

A girl with a past she tries to forget, and a future she can’t even imagine.

Leonie Woodville wants to live an unremarkable life. She wants routine, she wants repetition, 
she wants predictability. So when she explodes in a blaze of light one morning on the way to her 
college, it’s enough to put a real crimp in her day.

And things only get weirder…

Leonie learns from her father that she is last of the Pulsar, a phenomenally powerful member of a magical species called the Chosen. It will be her sole duty to protect the Imperium, a governing hierarchy, from all enemies, and to exceed the reputation of the Pulsar before her. So – no pressure there, then.

Leonie is swept away from her rigorous normality and taken to a world of magic. There, she is 
forced into a ceremony to join her soul to a guardian, Korren, who is both incredibly handsome 
and intensely troubled, a relationship for which ‘it’s complicated’ just really doesn’t cut it.

But Leonie is soon to learn that this ancient world is no paradise. With violent dissidents intent to 
overthrow the Imperium, and dark entities with their own agenda, she and Korren find themselves caught in a war where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to survive.

Dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to be a legend.

Book One in The Chosen Saga.

About the Author
Giselle Simlett was born in England. She has studied Creative Writing at both Gloucestershire University and the Open University. She has a diploma in Creative Writing, Language and Literature and will soon complete her BA Hons Open Degree.

She does not as yet have a degree in the power and responsible use of magic, but she does have a young son, which amounts to the same thing.

She currently lives in Australia with her husband and son.

Author Links:
Website│Goodreads│Twitter│Facebook
 
Trailer Reveal Organized by:
YA Bound Book Tours

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

"I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange."
 
Never was a truer word written.  Mim is strange.  And when her family breaks apart and she learns from an overheard conversation between her principal, dad and stepmother that her mum is ill, she steals a bunch of cash and hops on the next Greyhound bus from Mississippi to Cleveland to go and visit her.
 
This book was a mixed bag for me.  Some aspects were super cool, but although there was nothing inherently wrong with it, other aspects didn’t quite strike the right note for me.
 
I really loved Mim’s narrative voice and I suspect that’s because I have a high level of regard for snarky, intelligent characters.  They tend to be an awful lot more interesting than those meeky-mopey, friend-of-the-world types.  She was very clever and her turn of phrase at some points had me laughing out loud.  She doesn’t come across as your average sixteen-year-old in the way she speaks or in the way she thinks, but I liked her narrative.
 
Although I liked Mim’s voice, I never really felt like I connected with her.  Although I got a good sense of her back story, her likes and dislikes, I never felt like I was particularly rooting for her - it was more like I was sitting next to her, observing her.  I’m not sure if that’s what the author meant to happen and it wasn’t like it soured the book for me, but I didn’t feel as engaged with it as I could have.
 
Mim herself reminded me a lot of Holden Caulfield.  I felt detatched from her because she seemed detatched from life.  I read Catcher in the Rye when I was in secondary school and although I could see it was a Good Book, it never resonated with me in the same way other books did.
 
The plot of the book revolves around the road trip Mim makes from Mississippi to Ohio to see her ill mother.  I don’t tend to go for road trip books as a rule, but this is no ordinary road trip book.  When Mim starts out on a Greyhound bus I did find myself wondering how the author was going to
 
I won’t say what happens on the road trip because half the fun is the surprise you feel when it  happens, but suffice to say a whole bunch of crazy shit happens and by the end of the book I was kind of reeling.  In a fun way and also a kind of dizzy way.  I thought the ending was a tiny bit anticlimactic, but the rest of the book made up for it and I’m struggling to think how else it could have ended.
 
I thought Mosquitoland was an okay book, but in the same way I thought Catcher in the Rye was okay.  It didn’t grab me in that visceral way that makes you rave about a book to everyone you meet, but I think that for a lot of people Mim will prove to be a twenty-first century Holden Caulfield and if you like books with world-weary protagonists then this is one for you.
 
I received a copy of Mosquitoland in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Headline and Netgalley.
​
3.5 stars

Library Haul! Woo Hoo!

Check out my awesome LIBRARY HAUL! I had a message from my lovely local library this morning to say that the books I'd requested online have come in.  Check out what I got:

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Woop!  Woop! Book Club Alert!)
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness 
Forgotten by Cat Patrick
It's Not Summer Without You by the wonderful Jenny Han

And can I just give a big 'well done' to Essex Libraries for having The Rest Of Us Just Live Here on shelves and available so soon after release date.  Colour me impressed.
​
These, along with a bunch of review copies I've just had through, are going to keep me well out of trouble in October!

Waiting On Wednesday - The November Criminals by Sam Munson

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is (insert fanfare) ... The November Criminals by Sam Munson.  Here's the blurb:

'What are your best and worst qualities?'

This is the title of the essay Addison Schacht has to write to gain a place at his chosen university. Straightaway, Addison sees an opportunity to tell his story-so-far: to unburden himself, so to speak.

And boy is there a lot to unburden.

His 'business' - dealing pot to his peers - is booming, and requires a certain extra effort. His relationship with Digger, his best friend (NOT girlfriend), is getting 'complicated', as they say. His classmate Kevin was murdered point blank, and now Addison can't stop thinking about who killed him, and why? And then there's the small question of the rest of his life . . .

Over the course of his unorthodox application, Addison confess his triumphs, tragedies, strengths, weaknesses, blessings and curses to his academic jury.

I think this book sounds awesome.  I love it when YA goes a bit dark and this plot sounds totally twisted and tangled.

The November Criminals is released in the UK on the 5th November (see what they did there?) by Atom.

What about you?  What's your Waiting On Wednesday pick?

What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi

What You Left Behind is the story of Ryden, a seventeen year old high school senior whose girlfriend has just died, leaving him the single parent of their baby daughter. Before this, Ryden had dreams of playing football (soccer-football, that is) for UCLA. Now, he’s changing nappies and learning about weaning. As Ryden desperately tries to reconcile fatherhood, schoolwork, football practise and work, he meets Joni, a girl who manages to forget all the crap he’s got going on and reminds him what it’s like to be young and carefree again.

Wow. I really enjoyed this book. I think the author has done a really good job of writing a male MC with an authentically male voice whilst making him readable for target-audience female readers. 

Ryden was a perfect choice as a main character, and he was so well drawn it felt like I knew him. I loved the way he’d been put into an impossible situation and didn’t act like some martyr or self-sacrificing Perfect Peter. He was selfish and hated the fact that his entire world had been turned on its head and mixed in with all this was his guilt over Meg’s death and his attempts to care for Hope without resenting her. His relationship with Joni was well done (although is six months after his girlfriend’s death too soon? It felt a little bit too soon) and I liked the development between them as well as the inevitable shitfight when Joni inevitably finds out that Ryden has been hiding Hope’s existence from her (this shouldn’t be a spoiler - obviously she has to find out at some point!).

The story itself has enough facets to keep it interesting but doesn’t try to do too much. The ‘What You Left Behind’ of the title refers to a few things: Ryden, Hope and Meg’s journals and there’s also a nice mystery element to the story where Ryden tries to find Meg’s old journals to see what she was thinking in the months before Hope’s birth. The story is really well paced throughout, with a huge burst of action and drama at the end that kept me up reading well past my bedtime.

One thing, though - I did want to punch Alan Kang, Meg’s best friend, in the face. Seriously, if you’ve got some life-altering news to impart, you don’t do it just before someone is just about to play the most important football game of their career. And also, if you know that someone has been keeping secrets, you stay the hell out of it and mind your own business instead of blurting said secrets out all over the place. Idiot.

Still, despite Alan Kang’s social ineptitude this was a really good book: really readable with some great characters and a decent plot and I think there’s even some re-read value in there too. What more could a girl want?

4.5 stars

I received a copy of What You Left Behind in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Sourcebooks Fire and Netgalley

Spinning Starlight by R. C. Lewis

Sixteen year old Liddi Jantzen has grown up in the media spotlight as the billionaire heiress to her family’s technological empire, so when a group of uninvited men show up at her house she assumes they’re paparazzi. Except they’re not; they’re there to kidnap Liddi. She escapes but gets pulled into a conspiracy involving interplanetary politics, alien races and mysterious godlike light-beings.

The thing I liked more than anything about this book was the worldbuilding. It is imaginative and unique and goodness knows how long the author spent devising all the details. A long time, I’d warrant. The alien races, the idea of the seven planets connected by portals and the living, thinking Khua - all good. I could have done with a bit more information about what the societies and towns in Sampati and Ferrine, but the ideas behind the story were really cool.

The plot was interesting and it was good to see a re-telling that wasn’t Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella (I will literally poke my eyes out with a spoon if I see any more re-tellings of those stories any time soon). The Wild Swans is pretty obscure and although (by necessity, bearing in mind this is far-future sci-fi) the author has changed the storyline quite a bit, it was interesting to read. The problem is, Wild Swans isn’t a very long story, plot-wise, and this is a fairly long book and it felt like there was quite a lot of padding in it. There were pages and pages that could have been edited out without affecting the story arc and would have made the book tighter, punchier and faster-paced. As it was, the story drifted in some places and I found it hard to keep going.

I also found a couple of details a little odd. One of the central conceits of the novel is that Liddi can’t speak to anyone for fear of the transmitter in her throat emitting a signal that will kill her brothers. This, coupled with the fact that her far-future society has done away with writing means that she can’t communicate and this obviously leads to lots of confusion and misunderstanding. So I kept thinking: why doesn’t she just whisper? Whispering doesn’t use your vocal cords, so presumably wouldn’t set off the transmitter. And if whispering did set off the transmitter, then presumably breathing would as well, because whispering and breathing are basically the same thing. I found this (and the fact that any society would just arbitrarily do away with writing!) quite hard to get my head round.

I liked Liddi as a character - she was brave and resourceful and I think the author did a good job of using her internal monologue to give us insights into her personality. I do think she was hobbled somewhat due to not being able to talk, though. I hadn’t realised how necessary dialogue is not only for rounding out a character but also for building relationships with other characters. I liked Tiav too, but I think he would have come across better if he and Liddi had been able to spark off each other in conversation.

All in all, I was a bit conflicted over this book. Some elements were awesome, but others fell a bit flat. I’d recommend other people to read it for themselves to make their own minds up.

I received a copy of Spinning Starlight in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley.

3 stars

Cover Reveal - True Born by L. E. Sterling

Author L. E. Sterling has this week revealed the cover for her upcoming novel, True Born: Welcome to Dominion City.

After the great Plague descended, the world population was decimated...and their genetics damaged beyond repair.

The Lasters wait hopelessly for their genes to self-destruct. The Splicers pay for expensive treatments that might prolong their life. The plague-resistant True Borns are as mysterious as they are feared...

And then there's Lucy Fox and her identical twin sister, Margot. After endless tests, no one wants to reveal what they are.

When Margot disappears, a desperate Lucy has no choice but to put her faith in the True Borns, led by the charismatic Nolan Storm and the beautiful but deadly Jared Price. As Lucy and the True Borns set out to rescue her sister, they stumble upon a vast conspiracy stretching from Dominion’s street preachers to shady Russian tycoons. But why target the Fox sisters? 

As they say in Dominion, it’s in the blood.

About the Author 
L.E. Sterling had an early obsession with sci-fi, fantasy and romance to which she remained faithful even through an M.A. in Creative Writing and a PhD in English Literature - where she completed a thesis on magical representation. She is the author of two previous novels, the cult hit Y/A novel The Originals (under pen name L.E. Vollick), dubbed “the Catcher in the Rye of a new generation” by one reviewer, and the urban fantasy Pluto’s Gate. Originally hailing from Parry Sound, Ontario, L.E. spent most of her summers roaming across Canada in a van with her father, a hippie musician, her brothers and an occasional stray mutt - inspiring her writing career. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. 

Website: http://www.le-sterling.com/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/LESterling
Cover Reveal Organized by: YA Bound Book Tours

.