Joe Clifford Faust's Blog, page 9
August 15, 2012
Existence
Existence by David Brin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book is a complete and utter mess. Add Brin to the list of authors who bloat their works because Editors are afraid to tell them the manuscript still needs work (and this one needs a lot). Given two stars because Brin’s ideas are still good… but who told him to start using exclamation points?
August 6, 2012
Grumpy Old Rockstar and Other Wondrous Stories
Grumpy Old Rockstar and Other Wonderous Stories by Rick Wakeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Keyboard player Rick Wakeman seems to have a target painted on his back, which makes for some great stories. Lucky for us he also happens to be a great storyteller.
June 27, 2012
Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage
Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage by Garner Simmons
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As interesting as Peckinpah was, this is a disappointment – more an inventory of his work than a look at the man’s personality and creative process.
June 14, 2012
Enemies, A Love Story
Enemies, A Love Story by Josh Schollmeyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A too-short oral history of the Siskel and Ebert relationship, told by those closest to them.
June 7, 2012
Give War a Chance
Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer by P.J. O’Rourke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fine collection of O’Rourke’s writings as a front-line reporter for Rolling Stone during the first Gulf War.
June 2, 2012
On Fan Fiction
Is this a sandbox that you really want to play in?
Okay, so you can learn some of the basics of prose with FanFic. But what if you wrote something to that order, and you decided that it turned out pretty darn good, and instead of letting it languish in the fan community, which is the fate of most, you do a little Microsoft Word trickery and change “James T. Kirk” to “Dirk Manly” and “Yeoman Janice Rand” to “Honeysuckle Heartthrob” and “The Enterprise” to… okay, you get the idea. Then you take the resulting mess and pass it off as something original.
That couldn’t happen… could it?
Oh, yes, indeedy it could. And did. And not just with Fan Fic… but apparently with a particularly specialized kind of FF called Slash, in which the “Slash” indicates a certain form of congress between two characters who consent or otherwise during the plot. So you could have “Doctor/Sarah Jane” fanfic (pronounced “Doctor Slash Sarah Jane”) in which those two characters do the horizontal tango, or Neo/Trinity fan fic, or one particularly disturbing subset called “Kirk/Spock”, but we won’t go there. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
It seems a sharp-eyed reader on Goodreads discovered a very disturbing parallel between a piece of Edward/Bella fanfic called “Master of the Universe” and a certain bestselling piece of erotica.
That’s right, you’re already ahead of me. In “Master”, the Twilight characters get their freak on and it turns out that Edward is more of a freak than the original books hinted, but that’s okay because Bella seems to like it… and what do you know, after some Search and Replace and a little tweaking, Cullen becomes Grey, as in Fifty Shades of.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a link comparing the two. Just keep something in mind – I have not read the entire selection – I just looked at enough to convince me. I have no idea if this is from a particularly graphic part of the novel or not, and take no responsibility for content. This is the courtroom of the blog, and I’m presenting Exhibit A.
I’m not sure where to come down on this. I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey and have no plans to. If I’d been a fan of the series, I’m not sure what I would think. Probably that it was cool that somebody made it out of the bush league and was now swatting for the majors. But as a writer, I can’t help think that this is a huge swindle. When most of us pick up a novel, we expect it to be an original work, and while FSoG is self-plagiarism, it is plagiarism nonetheless, as devoid of originality as most movies coming out of Hollywood nowadays. Oh, wait a minute…
Anyway, there’s one other point that remains as Goodreads reviewer Alicia implies in her review/expose of the book: bad writing is always bad writing.
But on the other hand… the readers of Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t looking for Ernest Hemingway when they pick their copy up to read. And I to be honest, I don’t know what I’m worried about. I suspect it’s too much to ask for Erotica/Slash to have some kind of integrity.
May 31, 2012
Can Do Writing: The Proven Ten-Step System…
Can Do Writing: The Proven Ten-Step System for Fast and Effective Business Writing by Daniel Graham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Full of useful tips about the practical side of writing clearly and concisely for non-fiction.
May 12, 2012
Free Mushrooms
As promised, in honor of National Police Week (May 12-16) and Peace Officer Memorial Day (May 15), the Kindle version of The Mushroom Shift free from Amazon.com.
If you prefer paper and want to try your luck, 10 autographed copies of the trade paperback version are being given away through Goodreads.com.
Enjoy… and remember.
May 11, 2012
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lots of great thinking about what makes ideas memorable. A must for the digital age, in which we are flooded with new ideas every day.
