In which I get transparent about my blog commenting practices

It seems like every couple months, someone decides it’s time for a new round of blog-related navel gazing, and all of a sudden we’re all talking about commenting. More often than not, this conversation is sparked by a comment left on someone’s blog in which the commentor complains—often anonymously—about the failure of a blogger (or, in some cases, an undefined group of “snobby” bloggers) to respond to all comments, or visit all of their commentors’ blogs, or something like that.

I’ve been fortunate not to have had any of these comments so far (perhaps said commentors determined long ago that I don’t respond to all of my comments and just decided to abandon ship?), and I’ve stayed out of the conversation until now, but the fact that I haven’t received the nasty comments means I don’t have an immediate emotional reaction to them, and I think that puts me in a good position to say what I’m going to say here, even though some of you will unavoidably be offended or take it as evidence that I am just as awful as you always thought I was.

But that’s a risk I’m willing to take because seriously people, I’m getting tired of talking about this, and, quite frankly, I never cease to be surprised that this whole blog commenting thing can be such an emotionally charged issue for some. So I’m going to put it all out there and let you know what you can expect, and I’m only going to say it once.  Because really, I do not want to have this conversation again.

The first thing you need to remember: bloggers are not one-size-fits-all, and you as a blog reader cannot reasonably expect all bloggers to handle comments the same way. I know that many of you reading this are also bloggers, and you’ll understand that from experience, but it bears being said.  Each of us has our own priorities and limitations, and our blogs reflect that.

Now let’s manage some expectations, okay?

First, the numbers:

Blogs I subscribe to: 250+

Average time spent blogging on a normal day: 30-45 minutes

Average amount of time I get to spend reading blogs on a normal day: 1 hour (if I’m lucky)

Number of blogs I comment on per day: 5-10 (if I’m lucky)

Time spent tweeting/emailing/doing blog-related networking per day: anywhere from 0 minutes to 2 hours, depending on what else is going on in life.

You do the math…this is a realistic depiction of the time I have to blog, read blogs, write comments, respond to comments, and manage other blog-related tasks. I have to prioritize.  It is already one of the great ironies of book blogging that the more you blog, the less you read. I don’t want to end up in the situation where I spend all of my time reading blogs and writing comments and none of it reading books or writing about them. A girl’s gotta make these choices.

Not to mention that I have a husband to spend time with, other hobbies to enjoy, friends to hang out with, and nieces and nephews to corrupt :)

So it’s not that I don’t appreciate your comments. I really, really do. But if I want you to continue enjoying The Book Lady’s Blog, then I need to use my time wisely, and that means reading books and writing about them, right?

What I do:

I respond to comments when I have 1) something to add to the conversation and 2) the time to say it. That second one is really important. My responding to comments should not be taken as a measure of which or whose comments I value most. If it can be used as a measure of anything, it is of how busy (or not) the rest of my life was that day/week/month.

I give all new commentors’ blogs a chance. Just because I didn’t take 30 seconds to type a “me too” or “I agree” to your comment (those add up to quite a lot of time if you think about it), doesn’t mean I ignored it. I put all new commentors who have blogs into a special folder in my Google Reader, and I check those blogs for 2 weeks following the original comment. If the blog hooks me, I keep the subscription. If not, I delete it. There are hundreds and hundreds of book blogs, and I can’t possibly follow all of them. None of us can.

And back to that idea that there’s no one-size-fits-all for bloggers, I don’t expect every blogger whose site I enjoy to enjoy mine, so I don’t expect to enjoy every commentor’s blog, either. That’s just how it is. Not all of our relationships here can be mutually and equally affectionate, and I’m okay with that.

I read a lot of blogs, but I comment on very few. I mean, hello. If I go an entire day without checking my GoogleReader, I will be welcomed by somewhere around 650 new posts (many of the industry blogs I follow post multiple times per day). It’s a good day if I manage to comment on 5 or 10 of those posts. And it’s all because of time and prioritizing. It’s not unusual for me to follow a blog for several weeks or months before I ever leave a comment. And then my commenting will be spotty. It’s spotty even on my very favorite blogs.

I wish I could do more, but believe me when I say I’m doing the best I can.

What I won’t do:

I won’t respond to every comment on my blog. I never have, and I probably never will (barring some unforeseen circumstance in which I end up with tons of extra free time).

I won’t expect every blog I comment on to respond to me (that’s only fair), and

I won’t assume that bloggers who don’t respond to my comments are therefore snobby or haughty or holier than thou. We’re all doing the best we can, and I genuinely believe that most of us have the best of intentions. No one wants to alienate readers or hurt people’s feelings. I hope you’ll extend me the same courtesy.

I won’t follow every blogger who ever comments on my blog. I can’t do it. But I will give every new commentor’s blog the 2-week trial period mentioned above, and I’ll check back in when I can. I’ve discovered some of my favorite blogs through comments left here, and I certainly hope you’ll keep ‘em coming.

I won’t apologize for my commenting practice, and I won’t (usually) respond to accusatory comments about them…..but if I do, you can bet it won’t be to beg for forgiveness. We’re all grown-ups here (well, except for those teenagers who end up here looking for answers to their homework), so let’s act like it and stop leaving nasty comments. I’m tired of seeing them.

Expectations:

You can expect me to READ all of your comments and respond to them whenever I can. When you provide feedback, I take it into consideration even if I don’t respond to your comment. Your comments are a valuable part of what happens on this blog, especially for the conversations they generate between other commentors.

You can expect me to visit your blog after you comment here and to connect with you on Twitter. I often tweet while watching TV, cooking, and taking care of other stuff around the house, and my tweeting time is much more flexible than my blogging time. So let’s talk there instead of obsessing about what happens in the comments.

I expect each blogger to do what works best for him or her, in the context of the constraints on their time, and in balance with their other blog-related tasks. When it comes to things like this, I am truly a live-and-let-live kind of girl.

I expect my readers to understand that blogging is my HOBBY. I don’t get paid for it. I don’t get to cut into my working time to do it. Blogging is cake; comments are icing. It’s great when I have time to attend to them, but how and when that happens is unpredictable and affected by numerous variables.

The big take-home message:

My blog commenting practices are all about me and what works for my life. They are not, in any way, about your value as a person or blogger, and they should not be taken as such.

Despite what a small minority of you seem to believe, there is not some secret book blogger mafia that controls who’s in and who’s out, so comments and responding are not related to that, either. I’ve seen this concept mentioned in several snarky/whiny/woe-is-me comments on other blogs, and really people, it is just utterly preposterous.

Yes, some book blogs are bigger than others (and it seems that everyone has a different opinion on which ones are the big ones), but we all start small. Responding to every comment (or as many as you can reasonably manage) is a great way to grow a blog, but it’s not realistic once the blog really starts growing, at least in my experience as a person who works full-time and squeezes blogging in between a whole lot of other life stuff.

Some bloggers respond to tons of comments, some don’t. You love some blogs, you don’t love others. Some bloggers love your blog, some don’t. That’s just the way of it. You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth.

So let’s agree on this: I won’t judge you and your commenting practices if you won’t judge me and mine. Let’s agree that we’re all doing the best we can, and let’s remember that. Let’s decide not to take it personally.

And please, for the love of god, let’s remember that in the big scheme of things, what we’re talking about are motherf!@king comments on a motherf!@king blog, and let’s not get so riled up about them.

 

 

Book Review: Laid edited by Shannon T. Boodram

laid

Published October 2009 by Seal Press

Canadian sex educator Shannon T. Boodram thought it was about time that someone let young people speak for themselves and tell the truth about their sexual experiences. In Laid: Young People’s Experiences with Sex in an Easy-Access Culture, she presents a collection of essays, poems, stories, and personal writings about sex by young adults, for young adults. Acknowledging that “there is no one-size-fits-all format,” Boodram introduces Laid by speaking directly to her readers—a practice she repeats throughout the text—and letting them know that her goal is “to arm you with the information, hindsight, and confident to pursue an amazing sex life.”

Now that’s a goal I can get on board with!

Boodram presents Laid in five sections designed to represent common young adult experiences with sexuality: “Hookups That Fell Down” (that one’s self-explanatory), “And Then I Saw Stars” (stories of positive sexual experiences), “Haven’t Been Quite Right Since That Night” (physical and emotional consequences of sexual behavior), “When No! Loses All Meaning” (rape), and “Save Your Cherry…Or Banana (about young adults who practice abstinence).  Each chapter ends with a Q & A section, with answers provided by the contributors, and a “checkpoint” that serves as a mini-quiz and supports the book’s goal of providing sex-positive education for young people.

If you’ve been reading The Book Lady’s Blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me mention my previous life as a clinical psychology graduate student and sex researcher. I believe in talking about sex and educating young people. I believe in empowering people with information and supporting individuals’ right to make their own decisions about what constitutes appropriate sexual behavior. I believe that the best sex education is the kind that does not imply any value judgments but instead encourages people to combine their personal values with medically accurate information and go from there.

This book has many strengths, but I also saw several weaknesses. I’ve read a lot of books like this, so while I wouldn’t claim to be an expert, I certainly have high expectations and a good idea of what it takes to create solid sex ed materials for teens.

The title of the first section, “Hookups That Fell Down,” kind of says it all. As implied in the title, the pieces are wholly negative and support Boodram’s opening statement that “hooking up is nothing more than settling; it is the microwavable burrito of sex.” Now, I happen to agree with that idea, but those are my personal values, and I don’t think values really belong in what is supposed to be an educational book. Surely, there are some young people who enjoy hooking up occasionally and have had positive experiences with it, and I would have liked to see this section include some pieces by those young people. (Of course, it’s possible that all of the submitters who wrote about hook-ups wrote about negative ones, but still.)

It also irked me that so few of the pieces in this section (and in the book in general) were written by men, and the ones that were written by men all focused on the male writer lamenting his role in contributing to the tarnishing of a woman’s “purity.” One of them actually writes about his regret “for meddling with her wholesome purity,” and that was just too much for me, as was one writer’s meditation on the idea that she would someday be giving her husband “all of my heart but a used body.”  I know that many people buy into these ideas, but I find them contradictory to the book’s stated goal of being sex-positive.

I do, however, love that Boodram included pieces in which young people discuss the consequences of their hook-ups because really, teenagers have a hard time thinking about consequences, especially in the heat of the moment, and these stories provide excellent “been there, done that” examples.

The section on positive sexual experiences, entitled “And Then I Saw Stars,” really took me back to the days of raging hormones and throbbing, well, you know. These essays and poems show young people discovering that sex can be a great and wonderful thing, and they delicately explore issues of sexual identity, coming out, and the confusion between love and lust, and those are all great strengths. But there are a few weaknesses….namely, the fact that many of the pieces read like amateur romance novels and actually include the word “johnson” as a euphemism for penis. For real?

Boodram also inserts her personal values into the introduction of this section by reminding readers that “positive sexual experiences are created only through mutual admiration,” and again, I generally agree with the statement (and it’s certainly an author’s prerogative to include something like that), but why the always? Additionally, a few of the pieces in this section seemed like they would have fit more appropriately into the chapter on hookups (like the piece where a guy meets a hot girl on a cruise ship and they get it on), and doesn’t that contradict the previously-stated idea that hookups are generally not positive experiences?

The strengths of this second chapter outweighed the weaknesses for me, but I would have liked to see more editing and less editorializing.

The third chapter, “Haven’t Been Quite Right Since That Night,” which explores the physical and emotional consequences of sex (all of which, in these pieces, happen to be negative) is incredibly candid and actually quite terrifying, though I don’t think that was Boodram’s intent. It covers all the bases—unplanned pregnancy, abortion, STIs—but has very few submissions from men, which just seems to (unintentionally) capitulate to the idea that women are somehow entirely responsible for safe sex practices. However, it also has a very useful glossary of common STIs and sexual illnesses and a reminder (in the form of a girl who gets pregnant her very first time) that YOU HAVE TO USE A CONDOM EVERY TIME!

The chapter on rape, entitled “When No! Loses All Meaning,” is frighteningly realistic, and the writers who submitted pieces demonstrate great strength in telling their stories. The selections in this chapter are very affecting, and they succeed in avoding the all-too-common tendency to blame the victim. This chapter is a must-read for anyone who has experience rape or sexual abuse and anyone who works with survivors. It concludes with a fantastic piece by a young woman who chose to fight back against her attacker, stating “He looked angry but so was I. It was at that time I decided it was either him or me,” and though it was difficult to read, this chapter was very worthwhile.

The final section of the book, given the obnoxiously adolescent title “Save Your Cherry…Or Banana,” presents young people’s discussions of their reasons for practicing abstinence. If you’ve read this review, then you know I’m not a fan of the abstinence-only movement, but I’m happy to say that this chapter did not bother me nearly as much as I expected it to.  One young writer muses that “sex gets its value from true love, not the opposite,” and another wins the award for best line with “It’s not my responsibility to make sure that a guy’s penis has a great day.” Sure, some of these pieces are a bit saccharine and sentimental, and I wished that Boodram had opened the book with this chapter and then included a chapter with young people discussing why they chose not to abstain, but overall, it wasn’t bad.

So, the bottom line on Laid?  The pieces are candid and realistic, but the book feels unbalanced and skewed toward negative stories. Despite the weaknesses, Laid will be a solid resource for young people who want to hear about their peers’ experiences, and it is an excellent conversation starter, but it should not be used as a primary source of sex education material or viewed as a representative sample. Teen readers will probably relate to the writers’ voices and the nature of their stories better than I did, though I do think the pieces should have been edited more closely. Overall, this one is a 3.5 out of 5.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

October Reading Wrap-Up

While October wasn’t my slowest reading month ever, it was perhaps my slowest reviewing month. I got the flu, and I changed jobs, and life was just generally kind of crazy. So here’s what I read, with cover art linked to my reviews of the first four. The rest of the reviews are coming soon.

manhoodforamateurs goodgoodpig veraandtheambassador

thelastsong laid samekindofdifferent

badmother gossipofstarlings

This was a month heavy on the nonfiction, and that was a nice balance to my almost all-fiction September. Given that the only two pieces of fiction I read this month were The Last Song and Gossip of the Starlings, it pretty much goes without saying that Gossip of the Starlings was the best. Most of the nonfiction was great, so rather than selecting a favorite, I’ll anti-recommend Vera and the Ambassador, which just didn’t do it for me.

What was the best book you read in October?

Book Club Breakdown: Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore

My book club read this as our September selection. Our meeting was cancelled, so we discussed it last week in conjunction with our October book. Here’s what went down.

salvationatdairyqueenWhat it’s about:

A description from the publisher:

Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.

It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.

Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective–and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself–Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

Why we chose it:

I tend to prefer heavier books, and that was starting to show in book club. Somehow, having the Book Lady in the book club made everyone else slow to recommend selections, so I chose our first three—The Help, The Gargoyle, and The Believers—and the other ladies decided it was time to read something that wasn’t such a thinker. Something less…..depressing.

The weather was warm, and we were all feeling a little antsy. We needed a selection we could devour in one gulp while sunning on our patios. Something light. Something fun. Something we didn’t really have to think about it. But something that would still be well-written and interesting.  I’d heard about this book from a few customers whose book club was reading, so I figured we could give it a shot.

What we liked:

We approached Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen looking for a quick, light read, and it did not disappoint. Catherine Grace’s lilting southern accent was ever-present in the narration, and we felt right at home with her in Ringgold. The story was sweet, if a bit predictable, and it went down easily. Gilmore’s vivid descriptions made us feel like we, too, were suffering in the sweltering heat, longing to escape small town life, but looking forward to that weekly trip to the Dairy Queen for a few minutes of quiet time with a Dilly Bar.

I think that desire to grow up and get away is something we all felt as teenagers, regardless of where we lived, and Gilmore brings it to life quite skillfully. On the day she is to leave, Catherine Grace still can’t quite believe that her dream is actually coming true, and that conflict between excitement and fear of the unknown rang true for many of us.

What we didn’t like:

Well, as book club fodder goes, this book didn’t provide much. More about plot than it is about character development, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen is a bad book club selection for the same reasons it is a great choice for a sunny summer afternoon: it doesn’t really make you think.

Additionally, the whole small-town-girl-who-wants-to-run-off-to-the-big-city trope is too familiar and predictable, and though Catherine Grace’s late-adolescent longing to escape is recognizable and easy to relate to, it is also frustrating in that we never know why she wants to get out so badly.

And there’s a totally unnecessary surprise twist near the end that isn’t much of a surprise, and you know I don’t like that.

Should your book club read it?

If you need a break from the heavier stuff, sure, why not? Though I would recommend waiting until the weather gets warm again. It’s just that kind of book.

If you’re looking for something that will make you think and a book whose thematic material will just naturally raise questions for discussion, then this one probably isn’t for you.

What else?

If I hadn’t been reading this for book club and looking at it from that critical perspective, I think I would have just gobbled it up and not cared about the flaws. For a summer afternoon or a day spent traveling, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen would be a good companion. I don’t read many books that fall into that category of “light reading,” but I did enjoy this one and would recommend adding it to your TBR pile or filing it away on your list for a day when you want to read without having to work too hard. Fans of southern fiction will also appreciate Gilmore’s ability to paint the people and character of small-town life.

 

 

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.

It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.

Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective–and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself–Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

A Book Lady’s Blog Exclusive: Audrey Niffenegger reads from HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY

The good folks who represent Audrey Niffenegger at Regal Literary love bloggers, and I think they just might have appreciated my extensive gushing about Her Fearful Symmetry. So they’ve offered me an exclusive of this video of Audrey reading a chapter entitled “The History of Her Ghost.”  There’s nothing better than getting awesome content just for talking about a book you love, right?

As a Halloween bonus, scroll down to the second video to see the amazing Ms. Niffenegger answering the question “What is a ghost?”

If you’re reading this in your feed reader, you’ll need to click over to my site to view Ms. Niffenegger’s reader.

Regal is also running a special offer on Facebook where they’re giving away 25 hardcover copies and 10 ARCs of Her Fearful Symmetry. All you have to do is become a fan of the HFS Facebook page by November 13th and follow the instructions on the special offer page. You get bonus entries for tweeting and blogging about the giveaway, so be sure to head over and check it out.

Wanted: Audio Book Recommendations

So, I started a new job last week, and one of the beautiful perks is that I work out of a home office. Which means that Mondays and many mornings, I can pretty much slog up the stairs in my PJs, sit my iPod in its little speaker thingy, and get down with the productivity (which, by the way, is INCREDIBLE without all of the distractions of regular office life).

But the challenge is that when I’m not in the (home) office, I’m out working with team members in company locations throughout Richmond, so I spend a lot of time in the car.

AND I’M GETTING BORED!

So I’m thinking audio books are in order…..but I don’t really know anything about them. And that’s where you come in.

I usually read literary fiction, serious memoirs, and narrative nonfiction, and I’m not sure how much of that will translate well to audio, when I’ll need to be giving most of my attention to the road….but I do know that many of you love audio books and listen to a lot of them, and I would love your recommendations.

So fire away!  Handsell me the audio books you think would fit me best.

I will be most appreciative, and the drives of Richmond will thank you. The happier I am, the less crazy gesticulating I do. And that’s good for all of us.

My horrible dare is complete!

If you’ve been following along here lately, you know all about the HORRIBLE DARE in which Trish challenged me to read a Nicholas Sparks novel. I completed the dare during this weekend’s Read-A-Thon by reading and tweeting about The Last Song.  Check out those tweets with my customized #IHeartTheSpark hashtag. Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me explain a bit about where all of this came from.

I’ve never really given much thought to Nicholas Sparks.  Sure, I’ve seen The Notebook (still mad at my sister for forcing that one on me), and in my bookselling career, I’ve watched a virtually endless parade of sentimental teenage girls who haven’t yet discovered Jodi Picoult and little old ladies whose book clubs read only Nicholas Sparks novels, but I’ve never really done more than roll my eyes and move along. I may be a snobby reader—a fact I’m willing to admit—but at the core, I just want people to read.

Even if it means they read Nicholas Sparks or James Patterson or Dan Brown or, god forbid, Stephenie Meyer.

(Yep, there’s that book snob thing creeping in again.)

Usually, when people rave about some author I consider commercial or pedestrian, I just smile and nod and then suggest something that is, at least in my opinion, similar but better. It’s the gateway drug concept I’ve mentioned before. Your teenage daughter got hooked on poorly written vampire romance novels?  Well, the good news is that the characters in those novels actually read classic literature, and you might be able to hook your kid into it that way. You get the idea.

So Nicholas Sparks has just always been one of those authors whose existence and success I tolerated but tried to ignore. He just wasn’t on my radar.

But that all changed at the National Book Festival, when Nicholas Sparks spoke in between John Irving (a hard act to follow for anyone) and Junot Diaz and really, well, made an ass of himself (read my wrap-up here). If you don’t believe me, or if you’re just morbidly curious, you can watch the video yourself.

The whole thing was kind of appalling, but I had a great time joking about it with the other bloggers in attendance, and when the subject came up at our bloggers’ dinner, someone suggested that I should have to read a Nicholas Sparks book. Stupidly, I agreed that if someone else would pick it out and pay for it, I would read it.

So that’s how I found myself reading The Last Song this weekend.

The rest of this post is spoilerific, so if you don’t want to know, read no further.

Now, I know you’re just dying to know what this book is about, so let me tell you. But first, you should know that before this was a book, it was an idea….an idea that Nicholas Sparks sold to Disney for a movie….a movie starring Miley Cyrus.  And Nicholas Sparks wrote the movie before he wrote the book (so, this is a BOOK based on a MOVIE, how wonderful), and Miley Cyrus actually named the main character. Ronnie (short for Veronica).

So, Ronnie is eighteen and has just graduated from high school in New York City. It’s been three years since her parents’ divorce, and she is still mad at her father, to whom she hasn’t spoken since the divorce. But now Ronnie’s mom is forcing her and her little brother Jonah to spend the summer with their father in Wilmington, North Carolina near Wrightsville Beach.  (I know, I know. A Nicholas Sparks book set near the beach? Unheard of.)  Most kids would be stoked about a free summer at the beach, but Ronnie is far from it.

Have I mentioned yet that Ronnie, in all of her angsty sullenness, wears a lot of black and has a purple streak in her hair?  Oh yeah, she’s bad….but unlike all of the other kids in her crowd, she doesn’t drink or do drugs or have sex.

On her first real day at the beach, Ronnie, dressed in her usual black, stumbles upon a volleyball game, and whaddya know, the superhot boy playing volleyball trips right into her, causing her to spill soda all over herself. And that’s how she meets Will.

In the same day, she also meets a partner in angst named Galadriel (but she goes by Blaze….as if that’s any better?) and an apparently sociopathic creeper named Marcus who performs fire shows on the boardwalk.

Now, I’m hazy on the details because 1) I was reading this in the middle of the read-a-thon and 2) I honestly wasn’t giving the book my complete attention, but somewhere in there, Ronnie and Blaze have a disagreement that results in Blaze setting Ronnie up to be charged for shoplifting (and it’s not the first time Ronnie’s been charged for shoplifting…gasp!), and Ronnie and Will start dating and falling in love and kissing. A lot of kissing. But ONLY kissing. Because that’s so realistic for horny 18-year-olds.

And somewhere in there, Ronnie finds out that Will’s family is rich, which turns her off, but Will is so sweet and earnest and down-to-earth that she gets it over it….and somewhere else in there Ronnie discovers a nest of loggerhead turtle eggs near her father’s beach house and decides she needs to sleep outside to protect the nest from predators (and Sparks mentions not once but TWICE that only one in every thousand baby turtles will survive to maturity…see, these books are educational!), and the scene where the turtles hatch is actually kind of sweet.

But then there’s all the stuff about how Ronnie refuses even to look at the piano in her father’s house (he’s a former concert pianist who taught at Juilliard and tutored Ronnie from a very young age) and feels SO MISUNDERSTOOD and doesn’t know what to do with her life.

And, of course, there’s the inevitable HORRIBLE TRAGEDY that I’ve heard all of Sparks’s books contain. This one involves Blaze unknowingly spilling lighter fluid on herself and then being horribly burned during one of Marcus’s shows on the boardwalk (betcha didn’t see that coming, since her name refers to fire and all). But wait! There’s more!

RONNIE’S DAD HAS CANCER!

He’s known about it for several months, of course, and it was the reason he asked Ronnie’s mom to send her and Jonah to N.C. for the summer, but he only reveals it to the kids at the end of the summer, right after the baby turtles hatch and Ronnie is finally starting to feel like her life is going to be okay.

So, Ronnie’s dad has cancer, and then Ronnie finds out that Will has been keeping a very big secret, so they have a fight and stop speaking to each other, and Ronnie hunkers down to care for her dying father, and that part is actually kind of heartbreaking.

Have I mentioned yet that the chapters alternate between several characters’ points of view?

As Ronnie’s angsting it out over Will and her father and Blaze’s unfortunate accident, we’re also getting a play-by-play of her father Steve’s existential crisis and search for God in his life. Steve does a lot of Bible reading and takes a lot of walks with Pastor Harris and just can’t figure out why he’s not feeling God’s presence in his life……but as he spends his dying days with Ronnie and reflects on it all, he realizes that God is everywhere and he’s been experiencing it all along.

So Nicholas Sparks has given us teenage romance, tragedy, illness, death, and RELIGION!

Wonderful.

By the way, if you’re curious about the title, it refers to a song Ronnie’s father had been trying to write for a while but couldn’t get quite right….while he’s in the hospital, Ronnie knocks down the plywood wall her father built to keep her from having to look at the piano (really) and finishes the song, and then she plays it for him.

Then he dies, and Ronnie moves back to New York, takes up the piano again, auditions for Juilliard, and gets back together with Will, who has decided to transfer to Columbia from Vanderbilt.

After reading The Last Song, I can sort of understand why people read this crap stuff.  I suppose it’s like the literary equivalent of watching Steel Magnolias when you need a good cry. But it’s just so obviously manipulative.

I say “obviously” because really, all fiction is intended to manipulate our emotions. But what makes a book (or an author) good is how subtly, how skillfully, that manipulation is done. Reading this book, I felt like I could picture Sparks in his office, clasping his hands in front of himself a la Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, thinking “Yes, yes….this is the part that’s really going to make them cry.”

And frankly, I just don’t appreciate that.

It’s cheap. It’s too easy. It assumes one’s readers are not capable of understanding subtext or of seeing things coming. (Did I mention all of the awful foreshadowing in this book?) Does Nicholas Sparks think I just fell off the turnip truck?

Am I not supposed to notice that the book reads like it was written to follow a movie and that the characters speak in cliches and that the writing is clunky? (My friend Mark, the evil genius behind I Hate Your Book, ran the e-book of The Last Song through text analysis software and found out that the words in this book average only 1.45 syllables each!)  That whole thing about how writers are supposed to SHOW and not TELL? Sparks could use a refresher on that.

And it just drove me crazy that I knew the main character was going to be Miley Cyrus. Not only did I have to read 400 pages of drivel (pages, I should note, that contain rather large font and spacing), I had to read them with Miley’s voice in my head.  Yea gods.

But it’s over now, and I’ve fulfilled my snark quota for quite a while.

And that’s the story of how I read a Nicholas Sparks book.

The Sunday Salon 10.25.09

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We all know I usually relish my lazy Sundays on the couch, and I’m sure today will be no different, except that I spent 19 out of the last 26 hours on this couch, and I’m starting to worry that my ass my have permanently fused itself to the leather. Seriously.

I was really hoping to make it all the way through my first 24-hour read-a-thon yesterday, but after 19 hours of reading with only a few short breaks and no napping, I had to call it quits at 3am. I was starting to lose it, and if you don’t believe me, just scroll down and read my last update.  Here’s a quick recap:

I kicked off the morning with three hours of Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving.  I slow down when I read Irving because I want to absorb the details and savor the language and allow myself to be pulled completely into the story, and Last Night in Twisted River hasn’t disappointed so far, but it didn’t do much for my page count because I do read Irving more slowly and deliberately than I read most other authors.

That’s okay, though, because the read-a-thon wasn’t about quantity for me. I can admit that I’m a snobby reader, and if I was going to spend 24 hours reading, I wanted to spend them reading good books.

So, of course, after three hours of Irving (which I then put on hold until after the event), I picked up Nicholas Sparks.

I made it through 172 pages of The Last Song, happily tweeting along at #IHeartTheSpark until my brain just couldn’t take any more. I had to switch to something with substance.

So I read Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother, then I jumped into Same Kind of Different as Me, which was wonderful, but damn, if I had known it was going to be an emotional read, I wouldn’t have read it in the frazzled-nerves portion of the read-a-thon, and I felt pretty accomplished for finishing those two heavy-ish books.

But my brain was turning to mush, so I figured it was a good time for more Nicholas Sparks, so I read another 100 pages, and then I just couldn’t take it anymore.

So here I am, on Sunday, snuggled in my jammies on my favorite corner of the couch, and I still have 100 pages of The Last Song to finish before I can move on to my book club’s selection for this Wednesday, Gossip of the Starlings, and then, someday, finally finish the Irving.

Aside from the read-a-thon, I had a pretty quiet week here at the blog. It was the first week of my new job, and I just didn’t have much reading or writing time. I did review Vera and the Ambassador, though, and I’m hoping to have a full week of reviews if I can just motivate myself to write about the books I read last night.

Before I wrap up, I just want to give a shout out to the cheerleaders who faithfully commented and tweeted and kept me motivated throughout the read-a-thon. It really did make a differene, an I SO appreciate it.

So tell me, did you read-a-thon?  What are you up to this weekend?

Read-A-Thon Wrap-Up (or, 19 hours ain’t so shabby, right?)

So, it’s 3am, and I haven’t taken a nap yet, and I have that Matchbox Twenty song about 3am stuck in my head. This is not good.

Sweet lady sleep is beckoning to me, and I’m smart enough to know that, at this point, there’s no such thing as “just taking a nap.” Even if I did manage to wake up in an hour or so, there’s no way I could be awake enough to read, blog, or tweet. Just typing is challenging right now.

So I’m calling it a night and admitting defeat in the face of project #IHeartTheSpark. I have 100 pages to go (I’ll finish tomorrow, I swear), but I have successfully predicted the disaster (a character named Blaze unknowingly spills lighter fluid on herself and ends up being badly burned) and have a feeling that the big father-daughter reunion will revolve around composing a piano piece together, right before either the father or the daughter dies, making it THE LAST SONG. My money is on the dad kicking the bucket.

And have I mentioned how creepy it is that Sparks repeatedly describes the Miley Cyrus-inspired character as having a “tight little body?”

Granted, it’s the bad-boy villain thinking those thoughts about Ronnie (short for Veronica…Miley actually named the character!), but still. Ewwww.

Has this stream-of-consciousness rambling convinced you that it’s time for me to go to bed?

Here’s my 19-hour recap:

Time spent reading: 16 hours and 30 minutes

Final page count: 874 (I swear I could have finished the Sparks book if I hadn’t been tweeting about it while reading, but it was so much fun!)

Books Finished: Bad Mother and Same Kind of Different as Me. I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed it’s not higher….would have finished at least one more if I hadn’t been stubbornly devoted to idea of starting the day with John Irving, but it was worth it.

How’s it hanging? It’s not. It’s barely awake. It needs to drag itself to bed and hope its husband hasn’t stolen all the covers.

Etcetera:Well, at least my eyes aren’t bleeding, right?

Read-A-Thon Update #6 (18 hours in)

Current selection: The Last Song, which I’m hoping to finish with some sleep-deprived snark for #IHeartTheSpark

Time spent reading: 15 hours and 25 minutes

Page count so far: 805

Books Finished: Bad Mother and Same Kind of Different as Me; still in the middle of the John Irving, which I’ll finish tomorrow.

How’s it hanging? You know how they say that being sleep deprived can make you function as if you were drunk?  I’m kinda feeling like that. And the typing? It’s not happening so easily.

Etcetera: The dog finally figured out that Mommy is just crazy and decided to go to sleep, so I am truly going it alone now. And I still haven’t napped.  Can I really make it six more hours?  How am I going to keep reading? And who wants to bring me a snack?

Also? I think my couch is going to have a permanent ass-shaped indentation in the spot I’ve occupied for most of the last 18 hours.

And Millie looks so cute and happy curled up next to me. Sleep must be nice….