Way back in August, I wrote this post about the similarities between Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and the old TV show Roswell that used to air on the WB and later UPN. That single post has drawn more readers from web searches than any other post from this entire year. Clearly, I was on to something.
Today, Mike Moody over at the TVSquad (cheers, Mike) went up with a side by side comparison of the Roswell series and the Twilight movie. Check out his excellent post here.
While I have been very hard on Twilight on this site (this was my original review of the book) I do think there is something encouraging about its smashing success. According to Box Office Mojo Twilight raked in a near $70 million on its opening weekend, a bigger opening than Quantum of Solace the most recent James Bond effort. That's some big money.
Why is it encouraging? Because it demonstrates, yet again, that young women have buying power and that they are a demographic worthy of the attention of publishers and studios alike. And for someone like me, a writer of fiction with a decidedly female bent, that is nothing but good news.
I still hold that the comparison between Roswell and Twilight simply reveals the formulaic foundation upon which they are each built. And it's to that formula, the teen love rescue gambit, that I attribute the success of both. Women (and pre-teens, tweens, teens, whatever) enjoy a good romance now and again, and if you combine that with some creativity, and some quality writing (hopefully) you're increasing your odds of success in that market.
So who is the winner in the Roswell/Twilight showdown? Well, I know which way I vote, but the bottom line is, we all win.
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Spreading Germs One Post at a Time
An entire week has gone by and I haven't posted, but I assure you all, I'm still here and planning lots of great literary posts soon. I've just been a little busy with a few things:
Being Jewish.
Being an Obama campaigner.
Being a good employee.
Going to the movies.
Having a cold.
So I'll be back soon, don't delete me from your bookmarks yet!
And uh... make sure to wash your hands after reading this post... I just sneezed on the blog.
Being Jewish.
Being an Obama campaigner.
Being a good employee.
Going to the movies.
Having a cold.
So I'll be back soon, don't delete me from your bookmarks yet!
And uh... make sure to wash your hands after reading this post... I just sneezed on the blog.
Monday, September 29, 2008
The State of the World and Me
One of the things I love most about books is the escape that they offer from the world. I've written before about disappearing into a comforting children's book when times get tough. There is a reassuring simplicity of morals in children's books that reminds me as an adult that not all problems are so complicated and nebulous. In children's books the difference between right and wrong is clear, and usually right wins the day.
With American events being what they are recently, and my sensitive and opinionated nature, I've found it difficult to write for this blog about books and publishing without feeling a little bit beside the point. Of course life will go on, and things will not always be quite so dreary, but in the meantime I'm struggling to keep my outlook positive, and not let the nattering nabobs of negativism get me down.
This morning it was time to begin reading a new book as Wicked by Gregory Maguire had been finished last night. However, as I went through my "to-read" stack all of my literary options seemed so depressing. Why does the literary genre have to be the genre of tragedy and cynicism?
The book I finally grabbed for my bag was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I've never read it before, and yet I having a nagging doubt about whether it will be the pick-me-up I need. I'll give it a crack at lunch and see how it goes.
But what say you, readers? Can you make me a recommendation? A book that will carry me away? Can anyone give me a book that can stop me from feeling like the world is coming to an end?
With American events being what they are recently, and my sensitive and opinionated nature, I've found it difficult to write for this blog about books and publishing without feeling a little bit beside the point. Of course life will go on, and things will not always be quite so dreary, but in the meantime I'm struggling to keep my outlook positive, and not let the nattering nabobs of negativism get me down.
This morning it was time to begin reading a new book as Wicked by Gregory Maguire had been finished last night. However, as I went through my "to-read" stack all of my literary options seemed so depressing. Why does the literary genre have to be the genre of tragedy and cynicism?
The book I finally grabbed for my bag was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I've never read it before, and yet I having a nagging doubt about whether it will be the pick-me-up I need. I'll give it a crack at lunch and see how it goes.
But what say you, readers? Can you make me a recommendation? A book that will carry me away? Can anyone give me a book that can stop me from feeling like the world is coming to an end?
Thursday, August 14, 2008
It's a... a... a Research Trip! Yeah, That's It. Research!
The blog is going to be a bit quiet for the next few days as I am heading off for a trip to Las Vegas!
Oh, Las Vegas! That sparkling jewel in the desert! That oasis of air conditioning! That bastion of excess! Global warming be damned, the city of sin calls to me!
But don't let my gambling and carousing fool you! Oh no, this is purely a research trip. I will come back recharged, and full of notes! Notes on... on... gambling and carousing!
So though you may miss me, take heart in the fact that I will return Monday, prepared to share with you all the many insights my research trip has brought me.
Farewell, dear readers! I promise not to come back married!
Oh, Las Vegas! That sparkling jewel in the desert! That oasis of air conditioning! That bastion of excess! Global warming be damned, the city of sin calls to me!
But don't let my gambling and carousing fool you! Oh no, this is purely a research trip. I will come back recharged, and full of notes! Notes on... on... gambling and carousing!
So though you may miss me, take heart in the fact that I will return Monday, prepared to share with you all the many insights my research trip has brought me.
Farewell, dear readers! I promise not to come back married!
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
The Banned Book List - A Meme Thingy
Two of my favorite reading/writing blogs, Stusplace and Tripping Toward Lucidity, recently posted this list of books that have been banned in one time or place. I found the list very intriguing, as it is simply a list and provides no information about where or when each book was once banned. In searching for the information to match the list (which I did not find easily enough) I was yet again reminded that book banning is not a thing of the past, but is ongoing.
If you're interested in current book banning a good place to follow issues of ongoing censorship is with the National Coalition Against Censorship.
That said, while I don't support censorship of books, I think we need to do more than read banned books. I think we need to recognize the power of language in shaping and defining our world, and we need to engage in ongoing dialogue about how difficult ideas and powerful language is taught in our schools and how it affects our communities.
It's one thing to make a sweeping statement that a book should never be banned from schools, and it's another thing to actually engage the mother who's concerned about how reading the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn will affect her child, or to discuss with a holocaust survivor the banning of a holocaust denial book. I think the discussions that these books can promote are just as important as the reading of the books themselves.
Here is the list with the books that I have read listed in bold:
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
It's also possible I've read portions of some of the philosophers included here, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, but since I can't remember specifically, I'll consider them unread. Perhaps they're worthy of a revisit.
If you're interested in current book banning a good place to follow issues of ongoing censorship is with the National Coalition Against Censorship.
That said, while I don't support censorship of books, I think we need to do more than read banned books. I think we need to recognize the power of language in shaping and defining our world, and we need to engage in ongoing dialogue about how difficult ideas and powerful language is taught in our schools and how it affects our communities.
It's one thing to make a sweeping statement that a book should never be banned from schools, and it's another thing to actually engage the mother who's concerned about how reading the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn will affect her child, or to discuss with a holocaust survivor the banning of a holocaust denial book. I think the discussions that these books can promote are just as important as the reading of the books themselves.
Here is the list with the books that I have read listed in bold:
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
It's also possible I've read portions of some of the philosophers included here, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, but since I can't remember specifically, I'll consider them unread. Perhaps they're worthy of a revisit.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
A Little Bit of Housekeeping
You may have noticed the shiny new masthead that went up late last night. In my on-going efforts to make this blog more like my blog and less like a blogger template, I'll be tweaking things here and there, adding various items, and shifting things around. My HTML knowledge is limited (read that as non-existent) but I'm not too shabby at googling.
If you ever have a suggestion, or strong feelings about a change I've made, feel free to just drop it in whatever comment box is handy.
Hope the new masthead is more inspiring than the last!
If you ever have a suggestion, or strong feelings about a change I've made, feel free to just drop it in whatever comment box is handy.
Hope the new masthead is more inspiring than the last!
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