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stvrmwitch · 7 years ago

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50 Bookish Questions Tag!

Thanks to @enogreads for tagging me :)

1. What is your favourite book and/or book series of all time?

All-time favorites are always a stretch for me because the books that matter most to me shift based on what I need at the time, but The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and We Are Okay are books that make me feel at home. And the child in me is saying, “don’t forget to mention the Wayside School books!” so you know, those too.

2. What is the longest book you have ever read? How many pages?

Maybe Deathly Hallows? gr says it’s 784 pages.

3. What is the oldest book you have ever read? (Based on its written date)

I don’t have a lot of interest in old books, but probably Gulliver’s Travels.

4. What is a book series that everyone else loves but you do not?

Divergent. Though my main frustrations are with the writing not the story I guess. Other than that I never caught onto the Percy Jackson train. Don’t hate it, just don’t love it.

5. What book or book series would you like to see turned into a film/ TV series?

Ah yes. So many. Screenwriting is not something I’m pursuing but it’s a hobby, and everything I read gets the ��could this be adapted” thought process. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet would make a perfect limited miniseries, but could also be serialized based on the concept. Beauty Queens would be great as anything from a musical to a tv show to a movie to a comic book tbh. Ramona Blue has a “shot over a long weekend with unknowns and maybe one biggER name star who’s also producing” indie vibe. Ditto for We Are Okay. The Song of Achilles should be a miniseries as well; one of those massive budget, A-list cast, premium cable shows. I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

6. What is your favourite stand-alone book?

Ari + Dante

7. What is a book that you feel glad for not reading?

None I can think of.

8. What is a book that you feel guilty for not reading?

I feel somewhat guilty for not finishing The Dark Wife because it feels like I’m not showing wlw solidarity, but as much as I go hard for the concept, the execution was so disappointing to me.

9. What is a book you have read that is set in your country of birth?

Fun Home

10. What is a book that you own more than one copy of?

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the only one except for plays. Like I have Shakespeare anthologies plus some individual plays. And I have the off-Broadway and Broadway copies of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

11. What horror book made you really scared?

I don’t read horror!

12. What book do you passionately hate?

Ok so I’m like passionately not impressed by this book that I’m also lowkey obsessed with. It’s not good. Elements are but overall I don’t like it. but I’m just so intrigued that I’ve read it multiple times and made a million notes. It’s Fated by S.G. Browne. Every time I hope it will be less not good and it never happens.

13. What is the biggest book series you have read? How many books are in it?

There’s no way it’s not Harry Potter.

14. What book gives you happy memories?

On the Banks of Plum Creek

15. What book made you cry?

Y’all I cry so easily. The Song of Achilles tho...... sobbed.

16. What book made you laugh?

When Dimple Met Rishi is really sweet and pure and I’ve literally lol’d a few times.

17. What is your favourite book that contains an LGBTQ+ character?

Ramona Blue, currently. I’m also a big fan of The Sidhe.

18. Have you read a book with a male protagonist? What is it?

Lmao aren’t they all... um yeah idk I just looked over at my bookshelf and one of my new faves is Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor.

19. Have you read a book set on another planet? What is it?

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. (The Barsoom tales were, like, a thing for me after I was assigned that one in college.)

20. Have you ever been glad to not finish a series? Which?

Not really? I’m kinda keeping The Last Star at arm’s length because The 5th Wave was such a terrible movie and made my excitement for the series disappear. But I’m also trying to get over that because one shouldn’t necessarily impact enjoyment of the other.

21. Have you ever read a book series because you were pressured?

Probably the Hunger Games. I really wanted to get them read before the movie came out and I couldn’t avoid spoilers. Plus my college roommate was reading them at the same time so it was a good time to squee together. So pressured, but not in a bad way.

22. What famous author have you not read any books by?

Douglas Adams. Hitchhiker’s Guide has long been on my tbr but I’ve been itching to read it lately.

23. Who is your favourite author of all time?

Oscar Wilde.

24. How many bookshelves do you own?

Just bought two last week, so now I have six.

25. How many books do you own?

dont make me admit that. More than I’ve ever properly budgeted for, let’s say that.

26. What is your favourite non-fiction book?

Save the Cat! My interest in screenwriting led me to it, but it’s a really useful tool for novelists as well and anybody telling stories.

27. What is your favourite children’s/middle-grade book?

Hmmm... The Little Prince perhaps.

28. What is your next book on your TBR?

My library hold for Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari just came through this morning, so I’m going to get to that when I finish When Dimple Met Rishi.

29. What book are you currently reading?

When Dimple Met Rishi. So good. So sweet. And it features a girl in STEM wow amazing five stars for that.

30. What book are you planning on buying next?

Noooooooo. I just spent so much last week, and now that I’m apartment hunting, no more books. Tragic.

31. What was the cheapest book you bought?

There’s a great used bookstore in Boston with an outdoor bargain area and I think I’ve picked up stuff for $3 and under.

32. What was the most expensive book you bought?

Alright. Y’all already might’ve peeped me revealing that back in the day I was superwholock garbage. WEll. I have this “The Essential Supernatural: On the Road with Sam and Dean Winchester” donkey ass book that is $50 and I probably got a little discount but still paid really close to that amount.

33. What is a book you read after seeing the movie/ TV series?

Big Fish. I’m genuinely astounded that that movie came from that book. Like, the leaps from page to screen y’all.

34. What is the newest book you have bought?

these are all the books I bought at B&N last week

35. What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?

Radio Silence, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, and The Princess Diarist.

36. What is a book you love that has a terrible trope? (Love triangle, etc)

Ugh this is such a good question and here I am drawing a total blank.

37. Have you read a book in a different language? What was it?

Only some basic Spanish books when I took classes in middle and high school. Though my niece is in a bilingual program and brings home a lot of books with English and Spanish versions.

38. What is a book you’ve read that is set in a time period before you were born?

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

39. What book offended you?

WE ARE OKAY. ARE WE, NINA? ARE WE OKAY? nOPE

‘kay but I genuinely was offended because Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is compared to diner coffee and legit like.... no???????? Dunks never did nothin’ to you and ur rly gonna come for it like that??? ok, Nina. ur wrong, but ok.

40. What is the weirdest book you have read?

Uhhh. Yet again, she draws a blank!

41. What is your favourite duology?

Isn’t Strange the Dreamer meant to be a duology? The second book’s not even out and that’s my favorite.

42. What is your favourite trilogy?

Answering this question, I’m realizing that I haven’t read many trilogies in my life. Definitely The Hunger Games though. I just gorged myself on all three during a weekend-long summer storm.

43. What book did you buy because of its cover?

Wuthering goddamn Heights. I don’t even like that book, but the cover was phenomenal and I was like ok yeah Camille, let’s fkn do it

44. What is a book that you love, but has a terrible cover?

Aww that’s mean. I can’t think of any. I usually go for pretty covers and forget the rest. But I have the edition of Radio Silence with the cover I like less if that counts?

45. Do you own a poetry anthology? What is your favourite poem from it?

I don’t have an appreciation for poetry, sorry! I do own anthologies because I majored in English and had a writing concentration, but that’s literally the only reason I have them: they were assigned. So no favorite.

But since that seems lame and I haven’t been asked about short stories, I have a favorite from the 2013 Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses. It’s called “Juniper Beach” by Shannon Cain and it’s so wonderful. Really tight narrative woven together with zero snags along the way.

46. Do you own any colouring books based off other books?

Nope. Really wanted the Fantastic Beasts one but my wallet said ho don’t do it and for once, I listened.

47. Do you own any historical fiction?

I do not own any, but -and this feels totally like someone else’s memories- when I was a teen, I was all over Harlequin historical romance books oh my god.

48. What book made you angry?

See #39. I put that book down for weeks over it and told everyone I knew about the slanderous lies within.

49. What book has inspired you?

Paint It Black and White Oleander both make me want to be that good of a writer.

50. What book got you into reading?

Honestly my mother got me into reading, not any particular book, though imma single one out in a moment. Like my mom has literally never gone a day that I’ve been alive not spent reading. She got me started at the library young and I read my way through the whole children’s section. The Boxcar Children and the Baby-Sitter’s Club books were a big draw. And the one I’m singling out is On the Banks of Plum Creek which was a library discard. I read and reread that one about a million times. I’d loved books and reading but I’d never feasted on a book before that one. I never read the Little House series, my obsession was limited to that one book.

I’m tagging: @ozzery, @anassarhenisch, @midnightinkspill, @mariedtofiction, @rawr-booklover @booksandsweettea, and @thewizard-ofbooks

As usual, if you’re tagged please feel no pressure to play! And if you’re not tagged and you wanna play, please go forth and do so!

#tag game #book talk #about me #i try to switch up tagging ppl because it's hard to tell who wants to be tagged #also like #sorry if you've already done this and i tagged u

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nothingman · 8 years ago

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A few days ago a discussion and subsequent interview with David Gabriel, Marvel Comics’ Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, at their retailer summit began making the rounds, but not for the reasons the publisher was hoping. Marvel has every reason to be concerned, as their share of the market has shrunk dramatically in the last few months. Figuring out the cause of that decrease is vital for Marvel’s survival—yet the answer they’ve come to isn’t just inaccurate, it’s also offensive.

Later, Gabriel gave another interview that, in part, rehashed that hoary old proverb that diversity doesn’t sell: “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.” And with that, comics Twitter was all a-tizzy.

The stated goal of the summit was “to hear directly from [retailers] on what they are encountering within the industry and how Marvel can work with them to make sure they know that we hear them.” This summit was only open to cherry-picked retailers and Marvel offered no means of communication to those not attending, all of which puts the whole event—and the assumptions being made as a result—into question. Although the conclusions drawn by the summit can’t be totally dismissed, they also shouldn’t be used as the foundation of a whole new business model, either. Unfortunately, though, Marvel doesn’t seem to agree.

Disregarding the sugarcoated PR update Marvel made praising diverse fan favorites, Gabriel’s comments are so patently false that, without even thinking about it, I could name a dozen current titles across mediums that instantly disprove his reasoning. With its $150 million and counting in domestic earnings, Get Out is now the highest grossing original screenplay by a debut writer/director in history; meanwhile, The Great Wall, Ghost in the Shell, Gods of Egypt, and nearly every other recent whitewashed Hollywood blockbuster has tanked. Even sticking strictly to comics, Black Panther #1 was Marvel’s highest selling solo comic of 2016. Before Civil War II, Marvel held seven of the top ten bestselling titles, three of which (Gwenpool, Black Panther, and Poe Dameron) were “diverse.” Take that, diversity naysayers.

No, the crux of the problem with Marvel’s sales isn’t diversity; the problem is Marvel itself.

Old Guard versus the New Wave

Comic book fans generally come in two flavors: the old school and the new. The hardcore traditionalist dudes (and they’re almost always white cishet men) are whinging in comic shops saying things like, “I don’t want you guys doing that stuff…One of my customers even said…he wants to get stories and doesn’t mind a message, but he doesn’t want to be beaten over the head with these things.” Then there are the modern geeks, the ones happy to take the classics alongside the contemporary and ready to welcome newbies into the fold. I’ve walked out of at least a dozen shops run by guys like that gatekeeping retailer, and yet I regularly commute across two counties just to spend my money at a shop that treats me like a person instead of a unicorn or fake geek girl (Hera help me, I hate that term). I should also point out that these old school fans aren’t even all that old school: until about the 1960s, when comics moved into specialty shops, women read comics as voraciously as men. Tradition has a very short term memory, it seems.

This gets to the point made by a woman retailer at the summit: “I think the mega question is, what customer do you want. Because your customer may be very different from my customer, and that’s the biggest problem in the industry is getting the balance of keeping the people who’ve been there for 40 years, and then getting new people in who have completely different ideas.” I’d argue there’s a customer between those extremes, one who follows beloved writers and artists across series and publishers and who places as much worth on who is telling the story as who the story is about. This is where I live, and there are plenty of other people here with me.

Blaming readers for not buying diverse comics despite the clamor for more is a false narrative. Many of the fans attracted to “diverse” titles are newbies and engage in comics very differently from longtime fans. For a variety of reasons, they tend to wait for the trades or buy digital issues rather than print. The latter is especially true for young adults who generally share digital (and yes, often pirated) issues. Yet the comics industry derives all of its value from how many print issues Diamond Distributors shipped to stores, not from how many issues, trades, or digital copies were actually purchased by readers. Every comics publisher is struggling to walk that customer-centric tightrope, but only Marvel is dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot, then blame the rope for their fall.

Stifling the Talent

As mentioned earlier, it’s not just the characters comics fans follow around, but writers and artists, as well. Marvel doesn’t seem to think readers care all that much about artists versus writers, but I’ve picked up a ton of titles based on artwork alone that I wouldn’t normally read. Likewise, I’ve dropped or rejected series based on whether or not I like an artist. Even with the lure of Saladin Ahmed as writer, my interest in Black Bolt was strictly trade. The main reason I switched to wanting print issues? Christian Ward. Veronica Fish single-handedly kept me on issues after Fiona Staples left Archie, and her leaving is the main reason why I dropped down to trades. I’ll follow Brittney L. Williams wherever she goes, regardless of series or publisher.

So why then does Marvel think that “it’s harder to pop artists these days”? A lot of it has to do with the dearth of decent advertising (especially outside comics shops) and a lack of institutional support for those artists. Also, scattering artists from book to book before they can establish a presence on a title, turning creative feats into flashbang one-offs with little continuity, is a grave Marvel has dug for itself.

But we also have to talk about how publishers don’t let their artists talk freely about their projects. Social media contracts often make it impossible for creators to address audience concerns, as Gail Simone points out, and change the way they interact with their fans. The more the Big Two seek to control expression and discussion, both on the page and online, the more they drive creators to small presses, indie publishers, and self/web publishing. A tangential arm of this conversation is how craptacular the pay is for freelance comics creators and how publishers should be utterly ashamed of themselves. But that’s a topic for another day.

Oversaturation

There’s soooo much stuff. If longtime fans are drowning in options, think how newbies must feel staring at shelf after shelf after shelf of titles. CBR crunched the numbers and found that in a 16-month window from late 2015 to early 2017, Marvel launched 104 new superhero series. A quarter didn’t make it out of their second arc. How can anyone, especially new and/or broke readers, be expected to keep up with that? Moreover, with that many options on the table, it’s no wonder Marvel can’t establish a tentpole. They’ve diluted their own market.

At first blush, giving everyone what they want sounds good, but in practice it simply overwhelms. Right now there are two separate Captain America titles, one where Steve Rogers is a Hydra Nazi and one where Sam Wilson is an anti-SJW jerkwad. There are also two Spider-Mans, two Thors, and two Wolverines, one each for longtime fans and one for newer/diverse/casual fans. And the list goes on.

Adding a steady stream of events and crossovers isn’t helping matters. Event fatigue is a genuine problem, yet Marvel has two of ‘em lined up for 2017. Given the sales for Civil War II, I acknowledge that I’m in the smaller camp here, but I stopped buying all but my hardcore faves during that crossover event and will do the same again through Secret Empire and Generations, assuming they don’t get cancelled and relaunched. I’m not going to follow characters across half a dozen titles I don’t want to read when all I want is a good, self-contained story told by talented creators. Events often end up relaunching already strong-selling titles, sometimes with the previous team but oftentimes not, which forces the reader to decide whether to drop or keep. Given Marvel’s numbers, looks like most fans are opting to drop, and I can’t blame them.

Diversity versus Reality

When you look at the sales figures, the only way to claim diversity doesn’t sell is to have a skewed interpretation of “diversity.” Out of Marvel’s current twenty female-led series, four series—America, Ms. Marvel, Silk, and Moon Girl—star women of color, and only America has an openly queer lead character. Only America, Gamora, Hawkeye, Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! (cancelled), are written by women. That’s not exactly a bountiful harvest of diversity. Plenty of comics starring or written by cishet white men get the axe over low sales, but when diversity titles are cancelled people come crawling out of the woodwork to blame diverse readers for not buying a million issues. First, we are buying titles, just usually not by the issue. Second, why should we bear the full responsibility for keeping diverse titles afloat? Non-diverse/old school fans could stand to look up from their longboxes of straight white male superheroes and subscribe to Moon Girl. Allyship is meaningless without action.

“Diversity” as a concept is a useful tool, but it can’t be the goal or the final product. It assumes whiteness (and/or maleness and/or heteronormitivity) as the default and everything else as a deviation from that. This is why diversity initiatives so often end up being quantitative—focused on the number of “diverse” individuals—rather than qualitative, committed to positive representation and active inclusion in all levels of creation and production. This kind of in-name-only diversity thinking is why Mayonnaise McWhitefeminism got cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi while actual Japanese person Rila Fukushima was used as nothing but a face mold for robot geishas.

Rather than getting hung up on diversity as a numbers game, we should be working toward inclusion and representation both on and off the page. True diversity is letting minority creators tell their own stories instead of having non-minorities creating a couple of minority characters to sprinkle in the background. It’s telling a story with characters that reflect the world. It’s accommodating for diverse backgrounds without reducing characters to stereotypes or tokens. It’s more than just acknowledging diversity in terms of race and gender/sexual identities but also disabilities, mental health, religion, and body shapes as well. It’s about building structures behind the scenes to make room for diverse creators. G. Willow Wilson said it best: “Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*…It’s not “diversity” that draws those elusive untapped audiences, it’s *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.”

Alex Brown is a teen librarian, writer, geeknerdloserweirdo, and all-around pop culture obsessive who watches entirely too much TV. Keep up with her every move on Twitter and Instagram, or get lost in the rabbit warren of ships and fandoms on her Tumblr.

via Tor.com

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