Not all my Nook reviews are drivel

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Richard Bowker

After this post, I thought I should mention that Nook readers generally have very nice things to say about Dover Beach. Here’s the current “most helpful” review:

The most satisfying read in a long time. This was my first book by Mr. Bowker, but it won’t be my last. Unpretentious, well written fun. Effortlessly realized characters who inhabit an engaging, imaginative story. You don’t have to be a fan of the noir detective genre to enjoy this book, but for those who are, it will be a real treat.

So there. That was a five-star review. Here’s a nice four-star review:

A post-apocalyptic Boston and its first private eye? Sure, why not? Quite good character development and plot, great atmosphere. I dare to say it could move to the big screen very well. There was nice exposition of the “whats” of this future, but never explained much about the whys and hows of the apocalypse – just enough – I was satisfied. I would hardly call Dover Beach a science fiction novel, though. I could hardly put it down, and plan to buy more after this Free Friday treat. Enjoy!

Of course, ya gotta love reviewers who say they plan to buy more of your stuff. That, of course, is the point of making a book free. This seems to be working, at least on Barnes & Noble. Dover Beach‘s sequel, The Distance Beacons, currently has a very nice sales rank of 819, which, oddly, is higher than Dover Beach‘s rank. This is working out way better than on Amazon, where Dover Beach is still free, but The Distance Beacons has a rather dreary sales rank of 176,736. Too bad. But here’s a nice review of Dover Beach from an Amazon reader to compensate:

Richard Bowker presents an awesome look at the role of a P.I. in a post-apocalyptic world. My first reaction was what on Earth would the remains of society need a Private Investigator for—it’s unlikely a P.I. would be hired to checkout phony insurance claims when there ain’t no more insurance companies. Richard builds a compelling plot with polished nuances sparkling for the reader. The plight of the survivors in Boston is rather frightful. The contrast between the shattered United States and merry old England is striking. He provides a nicely developed depth to his cast of players, and with all things considered, their surroundings are believable. I liked how he addresses real world money issues and there isn’t a P.I. with a pocket full of cash—but a meal at a London McDonalds is affordable. Richard did a marvelous job of resolving all the dangling loose ends—including a few dangling parts the reader doesn’t suspect are dangling—so to speak.

I like the way he calls me “Richard.” Like we’re friends. And we are!

Is it just me, or are Nook customer reviews somewhat lacking?

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Richard Bowker

. . . at least, compared to Amazon review.

That “Free Fridays” publicity got a lot of people downloading Dover Beach. And some of them apparently have more free time on their hands than I do, because they’ve already left reviews. Some are reasonably well written, but then there’s this sort of one-star review:

DO NOT EVER LEND LendMe BOOKS TO NON- EXISTIENT PEOPLE!!!!!! NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I left out about 50 exclamation points.)

The good news is that only three of out of 73 people (currently) found this review helpful. The bad news is that there are three people out there who found this review helpful.

Here is a one-star review that I’m actually OK with:

This was a weird book. It started out almost as if missing half of it or it was part 2 in a series. You just felt lost like they were talking about things that happened and you werent a part of it. There was no explanation for anything, while the premise might have been good, a little more explanation would have made this book much better. As is, it sucked. Woild not recommend at all. Terrible.

Somewhere on this blog I’ve probably mentioned that I made a conscious decision not to give the backstory of the war in whose aftermath this story takes place. The war happened in someone else’s world; these characters inhabit another world altogether. If that doesn’t work for a reader, my apologies. If you’re a Free Fridays reader, all you’ve lost is your time.

At least I can get some consolation from this.

Pull on a thread, unravel a subplot

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Richard Bowker

My writing group sits by the fire, drinking Whale’s Tail and eating cashews. They have read my latest chapters, and it’s time to comment on them. They like them! That’s great, because the first draft is almost done and lots of stuff is starting to come together.

There’s just this one teensy tiny plot thread that doesn’t seem quite right. Do I need to add a sentence? Do I need to explain a motivation a little more? Well, no, that doesn’t quite do it. What if my hero does this? What if the female character does that? What if something happened in a previous chapter to set things up better? Her husband — what if he does something? But wait, we haven’t even met the husband! And suddenly he’s the key to everything! How did that happen?

By the time I finish my Whale’s Tail I have another whole subplot to write, and I am further away from finishing my novel than when I started drinking. Time for another Whale’s Tail.

Thanks a lot, writing group!

Dover Beach is the Free Friday book at Barnes & Noble!

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Richard Bowker

Take a look here!

I don’t see how life can get much better than this.

I’d rather write than talk about writing

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Richard Bowker

This is the weekend when the Arisia science fiction convention takes place in Boston. Back in the day, I was the guest of honor at the first Arisia. It was just about the last science fiction convention I’ve attended. This can’t have had a good effect on my writing career (such as it is). But I just don’t like talking about writing, or publishing, or science fiction, or anything related thereunto. But I’m happy to write about that stuff here!

Many (perhaps most) of my acquaintances don’t know that I write novels. And that’s fine with me. Because when they find out, the conversations are mostly painful. Where do you get your ideas? Why haven’t your books been made into movies? Why do you still have a day job? Also: I have this great idea for a novel, but I’ve never had the time to write it up. Maybe you can do that for me, and we can split the profits!

At conventions, you’re basically trying to sell your books to people who are mainly there to dress up in costumes, which is a different sort of pain. Or you’re talking to other writers, which can be fun, but it’s mostly depressing. Either they’re like you, and therefore they’re going to complain about everything having to do with the publishing industry. Or else they’re more successful than you, in which case you have to contain your envy.

I have always envied Thomas Pynchon, who was successful early enough to never have to deal with any of that. Just write your books and cash your checks. What could be better?

What do you do if you discover that you’ve made one huge mistake?

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Richard Bowker

I’m closing in on the completion of the first draft of my novel, and I have finally, definitively realized that I made one huge mistake in my plotting. I revealed a secret too soon, and as a result everyone’s motivations for the rest of the story are messed up. So, should I go back and start rewriting? Or should I soldier on to the finish, knowing that I’m going to have to revise a lot of what I’m currently writing?

I believe the answer, alas, is to soldier on and complete the first draft. The problem with stopping to rewrite is that I can’t know what else I’ve messed up until I get to the end and survey the damage.

The mistake stems from not having a clear enough idea of the various subplots when I began the thing. So I’ve ended up with a bunch of characters who weren’t there in the original outline. They just, er, showed up as I made my way through the story, and I never managed to integrate them well enough into the plot.

I always think: next time I’ll get everything right in the outline. But I never do. I figure out the journey I want to take, but there are always lots of unexpected detours before I get where I want to go.

Writers in moves: Leave Her to Heaven

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Richard Bowker

This is my second offering in this series.

Leave Her to Heaven was a popular film noir (beautifully filmed in Technicolor, actually) from 1945. Here is IMDB’s summary:

A writer meets a young socialite on board a train. The two fall in love and are married soon after, but her obsessive love for him threatens to be the undoing of both them and everyone else around them.

Gene Tierney is the psychopathic socialite; Cornel Wilde is the writer. The premise is fine, and Gene Tierney is great (and gorgeous). The problem I had with the movie was that the Cornell Wilde character is a complete drip, and Cornell Wilde isn’t enough of an actor to make us care about him.

The fact that the main character is a writer is of little significance to the plot. It mainly allows Wilde and Tierney to meet cute — he sees her reading his novel on a train. This lets him quote a line from the novel to her:

When I looked at you, exotic words drifted across the mirror of my mind like clouds across the summer sky.

Oh, dear. I’m pretty sure it’s always a mistake to quote from a fictional writer’s work in a movie.

(As an aside, on a plane once I sat across from a woman who was reading something I had written — not one of my novels, alas, but a work-for-hire I had perpetrated for a high-tech company. When I mentioned the coincidence to her as we deplaned, she was signally uninterested. At least she wasn’t a psychopath. I think.)

After the train scene, we just see Wilde occasionally pecking away at an old-fashioned manual typewriter, always wearing a writerly jacket and tie. There is no discussion of the creative process; there is no angst over deadlines; he finishes the book, and one day a copy arrives in the mail. Writing novels is just what he does, because he comes from Boston, don’t you know, and went to Harvard.

I’ll just add that the trial sequence, featuring Vincent Price as the DA who was also Gene Tierney’s scorned lover, is about as over-the-top ridiculous as anything I’ve seen recently.

Any Ian McEwan fans out there?

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Richard Bowker

Ian McEwan is a superb writer, and his subject matter is the sort of thing I’m attracted to: murder, science, espionage, literature. I’ve read most of his novels, and each one of them leaves me feeling dissatisfied for one reason or another. The latest is called Sweet Tooth (bad title), which is kinda sorta an espionage novel set in the England of the 1970s. I raced through it, but I was thoroughly annoyed by the end. Here’s why:

Despite being set in England’s MI5 and filled with espionage types, the book is really light on plot. Not much actually happens.
In reality, the focus turns out to be on a fairly uninteresting love triangle among three not very sympathetic people.
The novel ends with a post-modern twist. (McEwan did something similar in Atonement.) Time was I was very much in favor of post-modern twists. My tastes have apparently changed, or maybe McEwan just didn’t pull this one off. In this case, it just made me want to toss the completed book against the nearest wall.

The novel got lots of rave reviews from critics, but on Amazon it has a relatively modest 3.5 rating (by contrast, my novel Senator has, ahem, a 4.3 rating and Dover Beach a 4.1). Lots of people seem to share my reservations.

What I liked about the novel was its wonderfully detailed depiction of England in the 1970s. On the other hand, the couple of times McEwan wrote about something I’m familiar with, he got it wrong. (No one “takes a legal degree from Harvard” — at least, not back then.) Kinda shakes your confidence.

A blizzard helps us get modern

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Richard Bowker

We had a little blizzard here yesterday–a foot of snow, single-digit temperatures . . . the usual. It was bad enough that our Boston Globe couldn’t be delivered. So we were forced to go modern, and download the digital version onto our his-and-hers iPads:

Reading a hardcopy version of the newspaper is, of course, hopelessly old-fashioned, but we’re a bit stuck in our ways. And this reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s 1964 essay about what life would be like 50 years in the future. It was written in response to the New York World’s Fair that year–and hey, I was there! (I don’t remember much about the exhibits he talks about, but I do recall standing on a moving walkway to view Michelangelo’s Pietà.)

Predicting the future is tough, as I realized when I re-read some of my old science fiction.

This is the sort of thing Asimov gets more or less wrong:

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it.

He gets some things right, of course:

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the ’64 General Motors exhibit).

Bu the most interesting prediction is probably this one:

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.

This hints correctly at the rise of automation and service jobs, but obviously Asimov didn’t foresee his-and-hers iPads. How can you be bored with them?

The best books I read in 2013

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Richard Bowker

I don’t read anywhere near as much as I’d like to. Here’s a brief list, more or less in order, of my favorites from 2013, most of which came out in earlier years.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (audiobook) — A wonderful mixture of science, sociology, and human interest, beautifully narrated.
Pride and Prejudice (e-book) — Filling a gap in my education here. I probably would have enjoyed it better in a print version, but it was wonderful nevertheless.
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls (audiobook) — David Sedaris has turned himself into a national treasure. His essays are funny on their own, but even better when he reads them.
Olive Kitteridge (print book) — How come no one told me about this novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago? It suffers a bit from being a series of interconnected short stories (like Winesburg, Ohio) rather than a true novel, but it’s still moving and beautifully written. On the other hand, I tried listening to Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, The Burgess Boys, and gave up on it for various reasons.
Lawrence in Arabia (audiobook) — A long, engrossing look at the Middle East during World War I. (It helps that I have a kid living over there now, in a country that didn’t exist back then.) I should have read it rather than listened to it, since I wanted to study maps, see photos of the characters, etc.
The Particle at the End of the Universe (print book) — I cannot understand physics, but I like to try. Sean Carroll is a very engaging writer who really understands stuff like the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Boson, to the point where I could delude myself into thinking this stuff finally made sense.
The Signal and the Noise (audiobook) — I love Nate Silver’s 538 blog, and this book was pretty good too — a look at how prediction works (and doesn’t work) in various fields. Again, I should have read it rather than listened to it — there were too many graphs I wanted to look at rather than have the narrator describe them to me.
Telegraph Avenue (e-book) — Not Michael Chabon’s best novel, but still very enjoyable.
Why Does the World Exist: An Existential Detective Story (e-book) — For some reason I’m interest in why the world exists. I enjoyed this book a lot, although it also annoyed me a lot. Here is my moderately clever review written with the limited vocabulary of Up Goer Five.
The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix (print book) — Filling another gap in my education. The annotations and illustrations added considerably to my enjoyment of what by now is a familiar story. On its own, Watson’s narrative wasn’t as interesting as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Other books I enjoyed: Lee Child’s One Shot and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. I most emphatically did not enjoy Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.(including the parts supposedly written by Shakespeare) or Lee Child’s A Wanted Man. Neither Kyd nor Child (hmm, that’s an odd juxtaposition) will care.