Your Weekly: D'AWWWW Moment

I decided that this blog was quite ranty, and while I am a firm believer in ranting when it is appropriate, I am also a big believer in teh cute.

This week's moment of cute is brought to you by The New York Times in this article about children's books. Besides just being a well written post about the beautiful whimsy in those particular children's books, there was this quote:

The book is a bit Hayao Miyazaki-esque in the way magical fancy interrupts an otherwise naturalistic setting; one picture even shows the bear and Emma side by side under umbrellas, in patent homage to “My Neighbor Totoro.” But who among us wouldn’t want a Totoro-like companion to call her own? (Emphasis mine) 


Who indeed? I'm sort of in love with this writer now for her nonchalant reference to an incredibly geeky childhood cute thing. Thank you Pamela Paul, for giving me hope that working at the behemoth of NYT does in fact allow you to enjoy whimsy and cute. Go read the article and support a geeky girl!

WTF Mate? Promiscuity = rape now?

A small warning: I talk about sex in this post. Nothing graphic, it's PG-13 for the most part, but if the subject of sex in general bothers you, you should not read this post.

A lot of people are angry about this post by Susan Walsh, specifically this chart (can we call it a chart? I'm pretty sure it insults the good name of charts everywhere). I can't really say anything better than Holly or Man Boobz, but I do think it's important to point idiocy like this out, mostly because it is dangerous idiocy.

For the record, rape is not a forgone and necessary conclusion to having habitual casual sex. That's like saying because you go out for walks, at some point you're going to have someone stab you for your wallet. That's just the way it is, people. In this country we have this thing about people getting to live life in the pursuit of happiness, and we have laws to protect us against people who would hurt us while we go about doing that. Rape is never excusable, never justifiable, and it is certainly never a guaranteed outcome.

Also apparently gay people don't count at all, since they can have casual sex without making babies, so it's fine? But probably also going to end with rape/ loosing money. I'm not sure where the idea that you're supposed to get money from sex that isn't prostitution came from in the first place. Does that make prostitution okay, since at least you're going to come out ahead financially?

I'm also not really sure where all of this "Women lose by having casual sex!" nonsense (also fisked by Holly) is coming from. I'm really not sure why it is that now some women, like Susan Walsh, feel the need to go about "helping" women understand this. If a woman wants to wait, then that's fine. If a woman wants to have sex with everyone on the god damned planet, then that's fine too. Why is it widely held that the woman who wants sex is hurting the woman who wants to wait? Can men only have sex with one woman and then they have to remain celibate forever, like some kind magic chest where sex is the treasure and once one woman takes it out THERE IS NO MORE FOR ANYONE ELSE! Then the cock-nabbing woman runs off into the night laughing maniacally while the "pure and celibate" woman cries at home alone. Then, these "pure" women are FORCED to go have casual sex to try to get a man, because the only way to get that treasure back is to sleep with them outside a relationship?

I know it's a hyperbolic metaphor, but I DARE you to try to make sense of this in a sane and logical way. It assumes that all men are stupid jack-asses who only ever want casual sex all the time, and that women who are saving it for marriage are limited in their choices for partner because of women who show men that they can have casual sex. This theoretically leads to women to feel pressured into having sex before marriage, and then are left crying and broken as Barney Stinson wanders off to fuck someone else. Because all most women are looking for is marriage and 2.5 kids. Right?

Let's be clear here. Sometimes people, men and women, will tell someone that they want to have sex with that they are serious about them when they are just trying to get into their pants. This is not in any way right, and I do not condone lying to someone to have sex.

That being said, I don't think that sex should ever be used as a bargaining tool. If you want to have sex, have sex. If you want to wait until you are in a committed relationship, then wait. Trying to convince someone that you should be in a committed relationship so that THEN you can have sex seems, well, silly. If all that your partner wants to do is have sex, then trying to bargain a certain amount of time or emotional attachment out of them is not going to work. If someone want to really be with you, they will wait for you. If they don't, then that's not what they are looking for and that's okay. It does not mean that they are a bad person OR that you aren't good enough. It just means that it's not going to work out.

Regardless, none of this is Random Evil Woman #3's fault for wanting casual sex. That's all that she is looking for, and the type of men that want to have casual consensual sex are not the kind of men that are looking for a committed relationship. There ARE men who want committed relationships, even if it seems like they are scarce on the ground. It is an unfortunate side effect of wanting to wait that, well, you have to wait. If you are jealous that Random Evil Woman is having sex more than you, then you can go get sex. If you think she is happier than you, and you want to be happy like her, have you tried having the casual sex? Having casual sex at one time doesn't mean that you can't later decide you want to wait, or that it ruins you for long-term relationships later. Just realize that the men who sleep with you casually are generally going to want to keep it casual. If you know that this won't work for you, then that is completely fine, you are not being judged by this ridiculous standard of how many people you've fucked.

News flash: women no longer need to choose between the Virgin and the Whore. We are people, not cardboard cut-outs who can only make stereotypical decisions. Our decisions about who we have sex with, or when we chose to do so, are no one's business and they are certainly not hurting other women who make different decisions. You may disagree with how one person chooses to live their life, but you should always support their right to have a choice.

e-Death of Bookstores

Since I'm ranting about book type things, I thought I'd take this opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about the relationship between brick-and-mortar book stores and online book retailers*.

Yesterday I had a customer come into the store, who said he had come in to pick up his copy of A Dance with Dragons . This wasn't out of the ordinary, we had quite a few people reserve their copies with us, so I smiled and said sure, and asked what his name was. I couldn't find a slip with his name on it, so I asked when he had reserved it. He said he had paid for it already. "Oh," I said. "You pre-ordered it. That means that it will ship today, and it will come here in a few days."

The customer then proceeded to rant at me for the next ten minutes or so about how ridiculous it was that he had pre-ordered something and then didn't get it on the day it came out. Now, I can understand the need to have a book on the day it comes out, so part of me sympathized. But the other, stronger part of me reacted the same way I do when people complain that books are so much cheaper to buy online: with anger and frustration at the way some people not involved in the industry misunderstand the system.

Let's be clear here. The customer who pre-ordered got the book at 46% off at our online store. I have no idea what the pre-order price was at Amazon or other retailers, but I'm sure it was comparable.Why such savings? Well, partly because in order to run an online site, you need quite a few people, but nowhere near the man-power you need to run a physical store, and you sell to so many more people because you are not limited by geography. As the foreman says in "Jayne's Town" (Firefly) "We can then pass on the savings directly on to you, the customer." It's so much cheaper because it CAN be. They don't have to charge as much to make a profit.

They also have to charge shipping, so they make it cheaper so you still want to buy it with them instead of going into the store. This is where most of the difference is made up. If a $7.99 book is 30% off it makes it $5.59, which means you saved about $2.40. Shipping and handling is $3-$4, sometimes more depending how much you ordered. So, in reality. you paid $8.59 for the book, WHICH IS THE SAME AMOUNT AS IN THE STORE. So, you have saved nothing other then getting to avoid talking to a human being while buying your book.

Time. That is the other commodity you "pay" by buying online. Since it isn't gaining you money, it's pretty worthless to you, until you want a book RIGHT NOW. Then, that's a pretty precious commodity. When you buy online you have to wait at least a day before you can start reading the latest by your favorite author. Which is why most book stores get their sales by selling big-name-author-series books. Because then you are willing to sacrifice your hard earned money to save time.

This brings me to my final point: space. Book stores have finite space. Because we are only so many square feet, we can only stock so many books. While every single bookstore in the world would LOVE to carry all the little known authors, we can realistically only afford to keep those titles that will sell. Online stores keep everything in a giant warehouse where no one needs to browse, a giant claw picks the book out of a box like one of those arcade games. Again, they stock it because they can, and if the only one buying the book lives in Ohio they don't need to worry about keeping it in a store in California. So yes, it is possible to get that obscure book for a discount online, but book stores must charge full price so that they can justify having it in their store. Most brick and mortar stores have ways of ordering the obscure titles for you, and they often don't charge you shipping. Again, the only price is time, which for some reason people seem less willing to pay once they've driven all the way there. It's not going to come faster just because you order it from home, folks.

All of these things combine in such a way that if you didn't know the WHY of all of these things, you would wonder what the hell brick-and-mortar stores are doing with themselves. You'd wonder why they charge so much when Amazon is so cheap, and you'd wonder why a book from the same company would cost more at it's physical location as opposed to their website. So please, remember that all of these factors are far beyond the control of the actual person who is selling you the book. He/She loves working at their store, and it drives them a little crazy when people come in complaining about online issues especially because they have no control over it.

This is to say nothing about the competition of e-books, that are so cheap because they don't even have to send you a physical copy. But for every e-book that is sold, that's a paper copy that goes unsold, which hurts the real stores. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy e-books, mostly because that's a futile battle. Book stores are going to have to drastically change their business model in order to be successful, and that goes for Mom and Pop stores as well as the big chains.

As I'm writing this a major book retailer is looking like it's about to go out of business. People feel a lot of different things about Borders, but no one can deny that a lot of towns will lose their only local brick and mortar stores if they close. Libraries are coming under fire as well, as they lose funding all over the country. Instead of being able to browse the stacks, customers will be forced to rely on Best Seller lists or computer generated lists of similar titles, as is touched on by this article by Michael Dirda. Now there will no longer be the possibility of getting a staff recommendation to go along with your Tom Clancy or Patricia Briggs. Books like The Hunger Games, which at least at my store was sold purely by booksellers who loved it, would get forgotten and passed over.

I don't know what the solution to all of this is. But if you, or someone you know, decides to start gripping at the actual booksellers for the way things are going, stop. Take a moment to remind yourself of all the factors beyond their control, that are actually controlled by consumers like you. Are you taking responsibility for your local bookstore closing down? Or are you rejoicing at save $2.50 on a paperback you could have just as easily picked up at your local store for the exact same price?


*When I say bookstore, I mean observations and realities as pertains to my bookstore, and ones like it in my town. Perhaps your book store has a different situation, and  if so I'd love to discuss how it is effecting your store in the comments, but just saying OMG YOU'RE WRONG isn't helpful.

Dark Thoughts about Young Adult Reviewers

I thought about doing an introductory post, but decided that intros are for suckers. Also they are probably too cool for me.

What better way to kick off this post than to respond to this article by Meghan Cox Gurdon. I do suggest that you read this in full, if only to realize just how ridiculous some people can get when they become "adults". To sum up, Gurdon posits the idea that the YA genre, a genre geared specifically for teens, is becoming darker. When I say dark, I mean that the themes and language used are adult and upsetting. So dark in fact, that parents should be steering clear of that section, and writers need to get off that depressing and violent crack they are on.

I will allow that she has some valid points. It is true that some YA books are incredibly dark. It is also true that "tweens" sometimes read YA because they are too advanced for the younger books, and sometimes come across things that are too complex for them. It is even true that parents need to become more involved with the content that their children are reading. You have no idea how frustrating it is when a parent buys Twilight for their 10 year old, and doesn't seem to mind all the anti-feminist content, not to mention the violence and the sex. I agree that there are some books that are not suitable for young children, and parents should be aware of this.

However, to suggest that the entire genre has been rendered useless is ludicrous. In her opening Gurdon tells of the woes of parents just trying to find books for their kids, beginning with this one,


She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

Um, what? If a parent is flabbergasted at the selection in YA, she should have asked one of the helpful booksellers who would have been happy to point out any number of titles that end happily, are done tastefully, or even ones without violence at all. No one expects a non-bookseller to have a handle on all the different YA titles out there. That's like someone staring at a display of shoes, and when they fail to see one in their size on display they leave, without asking one the people whose JOB it is to find them shoes. Would you blame the shoemaker? The person selling them in the store? Or would you blame the customer who apparently didn't care enough to ask. Must not have wanted that book that badly.

Leaving the fact that not all young adult books are dark aside, there is the issue with the actual dark books. As a bookseller, I am very aware of how dark the books can get. Most of the ones I've read are not violent for violence's sake, nor are they dark just for shits and giggles.

The books, and the authors who write them, are trying to grapple with the issues that face teens every day. This is the time that they are learning that no, Santa isn't real and yes, it is indeed possible that life sucks. Life sucks an unbelievable amount at this age, especially because it had never previously occurred to them that it could suck this much. All of the cute Disney tales they were fed as small children are revealed to be a hoax, nothing more than a lovely fantasy. Things don't just magically work out, and for many teens this realization is earth-shattering. The world doesn't give two shits that "they are really just children", and pretending that things are otherwise is unhelpful. Bad things happen to teens. It isn't fun and nobody likes it, but that's the reality. It's not even a matter of teens already being exposed to it in other entertainment mediums, it's that they see it every. day. On the news, at school, sometimes tragically within their own homes.

So, if you were a YA reader, do YOU want to read about happy fluffy bunnies, rainbows and how nothing bad happens to anyone ever? Probably not. Later you'll come to realize that life doesn't always suck and happy endings are possible if not magical. Right now though, you would gravitate towards those books which deal honestly with you and your life. Books like The Outsiders, which Gurdon references as the first YA book. This is significant because it is one of those books that is dark, deals with violent issues, and is one of the books most taught in schools. Are we saying now that half of America's teachers don't know what's good for kids to be reading? It is also one of the few books that is almost universally enjoyed. Ask a teen, any teen, why they liked Outsiders. They will tell you that it was honest and real, and that they could relate to the characters.

Most teens just want it told to them straight, so they know what to expect and can prepare themselves. When we give them otherwise we become Wendla's mother from Spring Awakening who fails to tell her daughter where babies come from for fear she'll go out and try it. But it is her ignorance of the subject that inevitably causes her to end up with, you guessed it, teen pregnancy! The lie damages more than the truth, and we would be lying to our children if we tell them that the world is never a dark place.

All of that being said, there are indeed some books out there that are gratuitous in their violence and sex. Still others fail to handle it tastefully, or the message of how to deal with it gets lost in the narrative. Being fair here, Gurdon has a point. Parents need to be aware of what their children are reading. Not so that they can forbid them from reading anything with violence in it, but so they can talk to them about it. Parents can and should be reading their teen's books with them so that they can be prepared for questions and discussions, so that they can, you know, do some parenting.

Or, if having read the book himself, Dad decides that the book has no redeeming qualities, then he should indeed prevent his son from reading it and explain why. I find teens react much better when they are told, "I read the book and I didn't like it. I don't think you would like it either, it's kind of gross for no reason, and the writing is awful. If you want to read something about this topic, try this other one which is much better." You know, talking to teens like they have something between their ears and can think and reason. The easiest way to ensure that the kid will find a way to read it on his own is to tell him, "No. I said no, I mean no, and that's a NO."

In the end, I don't blame the authors, as there are bad books in any genre. I don't blame the booksellers for keeping bad books in stock because, well, we still sell Wuthering Heights. I blame parents who are too lazy to read or too frightened of the dark places their children are in to help them deal with the process known as growing up.




Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. - G. K. Chesterton