#booksellers catalog

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How a billionaire’s mediocre pump-and-dump “book” became a “bestseller”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on, your middle name is 'Cory.'"

"That's weird. Why?"

"Because from now on, your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author.'"

That was how I found out I'd hit the NYT list for the first time. It was a huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First, because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly, because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.

Once your book is a Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book. Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.

My books became Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them alongside the book.

That "From now on your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author' gag is a tradition. When @wilwheaton's memoir Still Just A Geek hit the Times list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say @jscalzi had already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton

But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.

Famously, the Church of Scientology was caught buying truckloads of L Ron Hubbard books (published by Scientology's own publishing arm) from booksellers, returning them to their warehouse, then shipping them back to the booksellers when they re-ordered the sold out titles. The tip-off came when booksellers opened cases of books and found that they already bore the store's own price-stickers:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-scientology062890-story.html

The reason Scientology was willing to go to such great lengths wasn't merely that readers used "NYT Bestseller* to choose which books to buy. Far more important was the signal that this sent to the entire book trade, from reviewers to librarians to booksellers, who made important decisions about how many copies of the books to stock, whether to display them spine- or face out, and whether to return unsold stock or leave it on the shelf.

Publishers go to great lengths to send these messages to the trade: sending out fancy advance review copies in elaborate packaging, taking out ads in the trade magazines, featuring titles in their catalogs and sending their sales-force out to impress the publisher's enthusiasm on their accounts.

Even the advance can be a way to signal the trade: when a publisher announces that it just acquired a book for an eyebrow-raising sum, it's not trumpeting the size of its capital reserves – it's telling the trade that this book is a Big Deal that they should pay attention to.

(Of all the signals, this one may be the weakest, even if it's the most expensive for publishers to send. Take the $1.25m advance that Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins paid to Sarah Palin for her unreadable memoir, Going Rogue. As with so many of the outsized sums Murdoch's press and papers pay to right wing politicians, the figure didn't represent a bet on the commercial prospects of the book – which tanked – but rather, a legal way to launder massive cash transfers from the far-right billionaire to a generation of politicians who now owe him some rather expensive favors.)

All of which brings me to the New York Times bestselling book Read Write Own by the billionaire VC New York Times Bestselling Author Chris Dixon. Dixon is a partner at A16Z, the venture capitalists who pumped billions into failed, scammy, cryptocurrency companies that tricked normies into converting their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money into shitcoins, allowing the investors to turn a massive profit and exit before the companies collapsed or imploded.

Read Write Own (subtitle: "Building the Next Era of the Internet") is a monumentally unconvincing hymn to the blockchain. As Molly White writes in her scathing review, the book is full of undisclosed conflicts of interest, with Dixon touting companies he has a direct personal stake in:

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

But this book's defects go beyond this kind of sleazy pump-and-dump behavior. It's also just bad. The arguments it makes for the blockchain as a way of escaping the problems of an enshittified, monopolized internet are bad arguments. White dissects each of these arguments very skillfully, and I urge you to read her review for a full list, but I'll reproduce one here to give you a taste:

After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionistd) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems.

This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap,e prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs … afraid to build products" in the United States.f

As White says, this is just not a good book. It doesn't contain anything to excite people who are already blockchain-poisoned crypto cultists – and it also lacks anything that will convince normies who never let Matt Damon or Spike Lee convince them to trade dollars for magic beans. It's one of those books that manages to be both paper and a paperweight.

And yet…it's a New York Times Bestseller. How did this come to pass? Here's a hint: remember how the Scientologists got L Ron Hubbard 20 consecutive #1 Bestsellers?

As Jordan Pearson writes for Motherboard, Read Write Own earned its place on the Times list because of a series of massive bulk orders from firms linked to A16Z and Dixon, which ordered between dozens and thousands of copies and gave them away to employees or just randos on Twitter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7emkx/chris-dixon-a16z-read-write-own-nyt-bestseller

The Times recognizes this in a backhanded way, by marking Read Write Own on the list with a "dagger" (†) that indicates the shenanigans (the same dagger appeared alongside the listing for Donald Trump Jr's Triggered after the RNC spent a metric scientologyload of money – $100k – buying up cases of it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-triggered-sales.html

There's a case for the Times not automatically ignoring bulk orders. Since 2020, I've run Kickstarters where I've pre-sold my books on behalf of my publisher, working with bookstores like Book Soup and wholesalers like Porchlight Books to backers when they go on sale. I signed and personalized 500+ books at Vroman's yesterday for backers who pre-ordered my next novel, The Bezzle:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53531243480/

But there's a world of difference between pre-orders that hundreds or thousands of readers place that are aggregated into a single bulk order, and books that are bought by CEOs to give away to people who may not have any interest in them. For the book trade – librarians, reviewers, booksellers – the former indicates broad interest that justifies their attention. The latter just tells you that a handful of deep-pocketed manipulators want you to think there's broad interest.

I'm certain that Dixon – like me – feels a bit of pride at having "earned" a new first name. But Dixon – like me – gets something far more tangible than a bit of egoboo out of making the Times list. For me, a place on the Times list is a way to get booksellers and librarians excited about sharing my book with readers.

For Dixon, the stakes are much higher. Remember that cryptocurrency is a faith-based initiative whose mechanism is: "convince normies that shitcoins will be worth more tomorrow than they are today, and then trade them the shitcoins that cost you nothing to create for dollars that they worked hard to earn."

In other words, crypto is a bezzle, defined by John Kenneth Galbraith as "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

So long as shitcoins haven't fallen to zero, the bag-holders who've traded their "fiat" for funny money can live in the bezzle, convinced that their "investments" will recover and turn a profit. More importantly, keeping the bezzle alive preserves the possibility of luring in more normies who can infuse the system with fresh dollars to use as convincers that keep the bag-holders to keep holding that bag, rather than bailing and precipitating the zeroing out of the whole scam.

The relatively small sums that Dixon and his affiliated plutocrats spent to flood your podcasts with ads for this pointless 300-page Ponzi ad are a bargain, as are the sums they spent buying up cases of the book to give away or just stash in a storeroom. If only a few hundred retirees are convinced to convert their savings to crypto, the resulting flush of cash will make the line go up, allowing whales like Dixon and A16Z to cash out, or make more leveraged bets, or both. Crypto is a system with very few good trades, but spending chump change to earn a spot on the Times list (dagger or no) is a no-brainer.

After all, the kinds of people who buy crypto are, famously, the kinds of people who think books are stupid ("I would never read a book" -S Bankman-Fried):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-reading-effective-altruism/

There's precious little likelihood that anyone will be convinced to go long on crypto thanks to the words in this book. But the Times list has enough prestige to lure more suckers into the casino: "I'm not going to read this thing, but if it's on the list, that means other people must have read it and think it's convincing."

We are living through a golden age of scams, and crypto, which has elevated caveat emptor to a moral virtue ("not your wallet, not your coins"), is a scammer's paradise. Stein's Law tells us that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop," but the purpose of a bezzle isn't to keep the scam going forever – just until the scammer can cash out and blow town. The longer the bezzle goes on for, the richer the scammer gets.

Not for nothing, my next novel – which comes out on Feb 20 – is called The Bezzle. It stars Marty Hench, my hard-driving, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant, who finds himself unwinding a whole menagerie of scams, from a hamburger-based Ponzi scheme to rampant music royalty theft to a vast prison-tech scam that uses prisoners as the ultimate captive audience:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Patrick Nielsen Hayden – the same editor who gave me my new first name – once told me that "publishing is the act of connecting a text with an audience." Everything a publisher does – editing, printing, warehousing, distributing – can be separated from publishing. The thing a publisher does that makes them a publisher – not a printer or a warehouser or an editing shop – is connecting books and audiences.

Seen in this light, publishing is a subset of the hard problem of advertising, religion, politics and every other endeavor that consists in part of convincing people to try out a new idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

This may be the golden age of scams, but it's the dark age of publishing. Consolidation in distribution has gutted the power of the sales force to convince booksellers to stock books that the publisher believes in. Consolidation in publishing – especially Amazon, which is both a publisher and the largest retailer in the country – has stacked the deck against books looking for readers and vice-versa (Goodreads, a service founded for that purpose, is now just another tentacle on the Amazon shoggoth). The rapid enshittification of social media has clobbered the one semi-reliable channel publicists and authors had to reach readers directly.

I wrote nine books during lockdown (I write as displacement activity for anxiety) which has given me a chance to see publishing in the way that few authors can: through a sequence of rapid engagements with the system as a whole, as I publish between one and three books per year for multiple, consecutive years. From that vantagepoint, I can tell you that it's grim and getting grimmer. The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

I don't know what to do about this, but I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.

Meanwhile, I've got to go get ready for my book tour. I'm coming to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Buffalo, as well as Torino and Tartu (details soon!).

If you want to get a taste of The Bezzle, here's an excerpt:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

And here's the audiobook, read by New York Times Bestselling Author Wil Wheaton:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459_-_The_Bezzle_Read_By_Wil_Wheaton.mp3

[oliversrarebooks]

The Rare Bookseller 90s AU: Lily's Rental

This came to me in a dream. I don't know how much of it I'm going to write, but I love the late 90s as a setting and couldn't resist.

Masterlist

tw: hypnosis, kidnapping

September 12, 1998

Lisa shook her can of Mountain Dew, dismayed that there didn't seem to be any more in it. She'd had three sodas tonight and was still struggling to stay awake.

She was working the late shift at the video store again, and she was really more bored than she was tired, the endless preview reel playing on the TV above her head doing little to hold her attention. She'd grown tired of the book she brought with her, she'd already restocked the candy and cleaned out the returns, and as she lived in a city that very much slept, there weren't a lot of customers so late on a weeknight.

Maybe no one would notice if she rested her head on the counter for just a few minutes and…

The sound of the door sliding open had her jerking back awake. "Welcome to Blockbuster, can I help you find anything?" she said on instinct.

"Well, you're a helpful one!" said the customer in an annoyingly cloying voice. "But we're just looking to browse the movies. Don't mind us."

She was wearing a floral sundress and tights, and looked a little too put-together for someone looking to rent a video at 11:40pm on a Tuesday. Trailing behind her was a man with a purple flannel shirt, a long blonde ponytail, and sunglasses perched on his head for some reason.

Far from the strangest people she saw in this job, of course.

"I'm feeling something with a lot of action," said the man as he walked deeper into the store. "What are you thinking?"

"I was thinking of -- ooh, no one told me Titanic was out on video!" The woman had stopped in front of the cardboard Titanic standee, apparently having lived under a rock until today.

"Did you somehow miss the nonstop ads on TV?" said the man, echoing Lisa's thoughts.

"I don't have time to watch that much TV. Some of us work for a living, you know," she said. "We have to rent this."

"Isn't it supposed to be four hours long? You know my attention span sucks."

"It'll be fine. I'll let you know when the interesting parts are happening."

Normally Lisa would mind her own business and not be especially interested in the usual chitchat of customers picking out movies, but right now it was the only thing keeping her alert. She idly flipped through a catalog as they talked.

The man picked up one of the many rental copies of Titanic and flipped it in his hands, a dubious look on his face. "I guess. And Lex might like it, he loves tragedy. It's cute when he's trying not to cry."

"I don't know, does Lex watch movies with color? You might blow his mind."

"I'm pretty sure he's still getting used to talkies."

"Anyway, I'm definitely getting this," said the woman. "And I think there's something else I'd like to take with me…"

Her tone of voice was a little strange. Lisa's brows furrowed in confusion as she pretended to be interested in winter fashion.

"Oh, right," the man said. "Brian wanted some video game. Ah, shit, what was it? I should've written it down. Final something."

"That's not what I'm talking about. Come on, Fitz, I want to show you something."

The two disappeared behind the rack of horror movies, their voices too low for Lisa to hear what they were saying. She was starting to get uneasy now. They were probably planning to shoplift, which was not at all the kind of excitement she was hoping for. Lisa ran her hand over the panic button on the underside of the counter, just in case.

The two split up and seemed to be browsing the movies. Lisa was keeping her eye on the man -- Fitz, what a goofy name -- who was over by the video game rentals, watching if he tried to slip one under his shirt. At the moment, he was staring at the video games as though they were some puzzle he needed to solve. This guy really didn't seem clever enough to get past our security, so maybe he was a distraction while --

"Hello, I had a question!" said the woman cheerfully. She had walked up to the front desk without Lisa even noticing, because she was too focused on the other customer.

It was probably part of their scheme -- the woman would distract the clerk, while the man stole video games. Lisa made a point of keeping her eye on Fitz while talking to her. "Sure, what do you need?"

"I was wondering if you have any good movies to help me sleep at night. Something calm… relaxing…" She yawned, and Lisa had to fight not to yawn along with her. "I have a hard time sleeping, and I take medicine that makes me so drowsy, so I could really use videos that will help me sleep."

"Um…" Lisa blinked slowly, feeling like her head was stuffed full of cotton. "We have some, um… some nature videos. Over there in the nature video section. Those are relaxing." God, she was way too fucking tired for this. She couldn't even think straight.

"Nature videos do sound relaxing. So, so relaxing." The woman's voice was very soothing, and her eyes were soothing too. "I think I might be able to fall asleep to a video of rain or waterfalls. Do you have anything else that would help me sleep? I get so tired this late at night."

Lisa yawned wide, and as oxygen hit her brain, she realized that she was being super unprofessional (not that she would get in trouble or anything) and that she had completely lost track of Fitz. Instead, she was gazing into this stranger's eyes, like that was a normal thing to do. "Well… uh…" she said, trying to tear herself away. "I think we probably have… like, lullaby videos for babies? In the kid videos. And we probably have some meditation videos over in the self-help section."

"Lullabies sound perfect," said the woman, a comforting smile on her face that made Lisa feel warm inside. "Lullabies are perfect when it's time for you to go to sleep. Don't you think so, Fitz?"

"I think you're right, Lily."

Lisa's hand was grasped by hands that were cold but incredibly soft. She realized that Fitz had also come up to the front desk, and was holding her hand for some bizarre reason. Before her sluggish thoughts could catch up to her and she could try to pull away, he began to rub a slow circle into her palm, and Lisa…

…just couldn't…

"There we go, sweet girl. You're so tired, aren't you? Tired and sleepy," said the woman. Lily.

"Mmm, she looks so drowsy. Like she could nod off at any second," Fitz agreed, as he stroked the palm of her hand so gently, a motion that seemed to steal away her focus and muddle her thoughts.

"Drowsy and docile. You'll be drowsy and docile for me, won't you?"

Fitz used his other hand to run his fingers down her jaw and tip her chin into his gaze. "You heard her. Drowsy and docile. Isn't that right?"

Lisa felt herself nod slowly. "Drowsy… and docile…" she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from a million miles away.

This wasn't right. There were alarms going off in the back of her mind, warning her of the danger. They were going to rob her. She was going to be in so much trouble. Why was she acting like this? Why couldn't she wake herself up?

"Shhh, shhh, just relax, dear," said Lily. "Everything's just fine. You're tired, aren't you? You just want to sleep."

"Go to sleep." Fitz's fingers traced down her neck. "Just go to sleep."

"I… I don't…" Lisa's vision was blurring, the buzzing fluorescent lights slipping in and out of her mind as her eyes began to close.

"It's okay, dear. Just have a little nap. You're safe with us. You can sleep."

"You look so, so tired. You want to shut those eyelids, don't you?"

"You do. You want to shut those heavy eyelids and go to sleep. It's time to sleep, dear. Sleep…"

Lisa, making a last ditch effort to resist whatever was happening here, pulled open her leaden eyelids. The new releases shelf was at an angle -- no, her head was tipped over, almost sinking onto the counter. Why couldn't she snap out of it, stay awake? It all felt like a dream -- not even the strangest dream she'd had about the shop.

"Poor sleepy girl," Lily whispered in her ear. "You're going to fall asleep now, all right? No more resisting, no more fighting, just a comfortable deep sleep."

The drowsiness was pouring into her from her hand and face where Fitz was touching her, like she was being drugged. Her thoughts strayed briefly to the panic button under the counter before her eyes shut and she slumped over completely. She just couldn't seem to stop herself from falling asleep…

"I've got her." Hands wrapped around Lisa's waist, and Fitz's voice was much closer now. "I can see why you wanted to take her. She smells delicious."

"I know good merchandise when I see it," said Lily.

Delicious? Merchandise? Lisa tried to stir.

"Shh, don't worry about it," said Lily, brushing hair out of Lisa's face. "Sleep tight. Pleasant dreams."

Lisa could feel herself being lifted in the air and carried, but she was too much asleep to protest or do anything about it.

"So I'm guessing we're taking her to the auction house, then?" said Fitz. "D'you think the Blockbuster's going to charge us a late fee if we don't return her?"

"Very funny, and yes, let's take her to the auction house. We can run a background check to make sure we haven't picked up anything too dangerous. I'm thinking she's going to fetch a nice payday," said Lily. "Oh, is this the video game your thrall wanted?"

"Hell if I know, but it's probably close enough. Could you grab that for me? Thanks."

Cool night air hit Lisa's face, waking her up just slightly as she realized she must be outside. Someone needs to close up the shop, she thought in a bleary daze. She heard a car door open.

"Stay with her in the back and keep her asleep, okay?"

"You're better at keeping thralls asleep. Are you sure you don't want to do it?"

"No, because I'm also better at driving. It'll be easier to keep her calm if we don't have you slamming the brakes and pounding the horn --"

"Oh c'mon, I only do that to people who deserve it."

The next thing Lisa knew, she was laying down. Her legs were only halfway on the seat and her head was in someone's lap. A chilled hand stroked her forehead and combed through her hair, and Lisa couldn't help but sink into it, losing herself.

"…could just take her home, you know."

"…don't think she's…"

"…don't you think she'd be a good match for…"

"…but she'd be worth…"

The voices slowly faded away as Lisa slipped deeper into slumber.

Masterlist

Stay tuned tonight for your regularly scheduled Bookseller update.

@d-cs @latenightcupsofcoffee @thecyrulik @dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night @wanderinggoblin

@whumpyourdamnpears @only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are @pressedpenn @pigeonwhumps @amusedmuralist

@xx-adam-xx @vampiresprite @irregular-book @whumpsoda @mj-or-say10 @pokemaniacgemini

@sowhumpshaped @whumpsday @morning-star-whump @silly-scroimblo-skrunkl

@steh-lar-uh-nuhs @pirefyrelight @theauthorintraining @whump-me-all-night-long @anonfromcanada

@typewrittenfangs @tessellated-sunl1ght @cleverinsidejoke @abirbable @ichorousambrosia

@a-formless-entity @gobbo-king @writinggremlin @the-agency-archives @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi

@enigmawriteswhump @foresttheblep @bottlecapreader @whump-on-a-string @whumpinthepot

@cinnamoncandycanes @avvail-whumps @tauntedoctopuses @secret-vampkissers-soiree @whatamidoingherehelpme

@strawbearydreams @ghost-whump @tippytappytyping @natthebatt @fire-bugg14

@fuckcapitalismasshole @slightlydisturbedbeans @paperprinxe @demetercabingreen-thumb

[sexcromancy]

young adult, new adult, and fantasy fiction: the audience of a book is who reads it

title clumsily based on the purpose of a system is what it does.

before we begin, I want to focus a bit on defining our terms. young adult, new adult, adult, science fiction/fantasy, speculative fiction, contemporary romance - all of the terms I will use in this post are created by marketing companies and readers, and all of them have fuzzy and subjective applicability to any given book. there is no objectivity in cataloging, which is the lens through which I approach knowledge organization projects like this. there is no definitive answer to what any given book or genre "is", because these categories are not fixed values. instead, their values are expanded and developed by what gets placed in which category, by whom, and what criteria they base that decision on. that's what I want to discuss.

to provide some context: debates over age categories and who is reading what books for which age ranges currently dominate discussions among publishers, authors, librarians, and readers. ages of characters in YA are skewing up, sales are slowing down. young adult as a category has existed for 50+ years, but it is currently undergoing some growing pains. here's one more article for good measure. new adult is a term created by the publishing industry in 2009, which developed in fits and starts despite multiple bestselling authors publishing under the category. oh well. in 2015, sarah j mass published her new book, a court of thorns and roses, which is widely regarded as a turning point for the popularity of new adult (more on the classification of ACOTAR itself in a moment). NA stalled out for many years, but has recently very quickly grown in popularity, especially for romance readers on booktok. some of the most popular books listed under new adult on goodreads are colleen hoover's it ends with us and it starts with us, ali hazelwood's check & mate, and rebecca yarros' fourth wing.

I want to look at two of these currently very popular authors as case studies to really dig into what new adult has come to mean.

in this 2014 interview, SJM discusses her currently running throne of glass series and the upcoming release of ACOTAR in 2015. she notes that the book is intended for "a slightly older YA crowd (aka steamy times ahead!)". earlier in the interview, she dodges a question about whether throne of glass will be YA or NA by saying she appreciates her teen and adult readers - if I had to guess, the label was still too new and publishers didn't want to alienate anyone. in 2023, I can't find anything on her website or bookseller sites that specifically identify the series (or any of her series) as YA, NA, or adult. however, Goodreads (which relies on user generated tags and is, to put it lightly, a mess wrt information organization) firmly classes ACOTAR as YA - almost 9k tags in young-adult and ya (lack of authority control is just one aspect of the mess), as opposed to about 3.5k new-adult. the thing is, though, ACOTAR comes up in essentially every blog post and article I read on the definition of new adult. it is a flashpoint in the discussion: it either did or didn't restart the term, it is or isn't too sexually explicit to be classed for teens, the writing is filled with young adult tropes and this does or does not matter. the answers to these questions aren't particularly important to me, but it's very interesting to see how people are attempting to draw those boundaries. I took a quick census of how SJM's series are classed in my library system. her throne of glass series is uniformly shelved in YA; ACOTAR is mostly YA with a few copies in adult, and her newer crescent city series is mostly adult with a few copies in YA. I do think that any discussion of ACOTAR is partially colored by this divisive relationship to the new adult category itself, so I'd also like to bring in a much newer book facing similar conversation.

if you follow this blog you might already know that I have an entirely non-neutral relationship to ali hazelwood; I love her books both as books and as cultural objects deserving of study. previously, she published three adult romance novels and a set of adult romance novellas, which all fall firmly and inarguably into those defined categories, based on age range and content (I have an argument for the love hypothesis being a horror story, but that's a different conversation). last year, she published her newest book, check & mate, as a young adult romance. it was widely marketed as such by the young readers imprint at putnam. however, on reading it, I (and many goodreads commenters) were surprised to find that it aligned more with some hallmarks of new adult. the characters are out of high school, and the challenges and growth moments are more focused on evolution, rather than coming of age. one blog post I read made the argument that YA is about high school firsts and NA is about adulthood firsts. this is amorphous, partially because there is no real one life path into adulthood by which to judge this, so let's switch focus to something more concrete: sex. in each of Ali's adult novels, there are a few explicit sex scenes. they're not as explicit as other romance novels, but they're definitely not fade-to-black. in check & mate, characters have sex, but it happens entirely off-screen and any discussion is fairly chaste or, at most, relying heavily on implied content. this is a real disconnect to me. much of NA lit (ACOTAR included) is quite sexually explicit. among those most popular NA books on goodreads, there are many books that get marketed specifically for their sexual content (spicy🌶️ to the tiktokers, smut to everyone else). to me, this cements check & mate as a YA novel - if she was going to write a book with explicit sex, like her others, she could've. she's mentioned in interviews that her chess novel concept originally featured older characters, and she aged them down once she realized what kind of story she wanted to tell. to me, it is telling that moving from adult to YA creates more clumsy caution around the handling of sex, as opposed to SJM, whose books "aged" upwards over time.

another interesting example I've noticed in the emerging NA space is how the age category intersects with genre. YA as a category has a pretty expansive genre playing field - we've all read YA fantasy, contemporary romance, historical fiction, action/adventure, issue novels, etc. NA so far seems pretty exclusively limited to romance as a main focus, especially in the most popular offerings as discussed above.

I've seen many a tiktok alleging that despite the drawn out fight scenes, extensive lore, and huge interconnected web of characters, the ACOTAR books are not "real fantasy." even more so for the fourth wing books. I've seen these books compared to Tolkien, as if to say, well, if you didn't invent a language, you're not really on the same level. that's entirely unfair, imo - plenty of fantasy doesn't engage at that level. but there is a wide array of contemporary fantasy I do think we can contrast with ACOTAR and other popular NA series.

we've discussed some of the hallmarks of YA and NA as categories: the age range of characters, coming of age, explicit sex for NA. i'd add fast-paced, immersive writing, especially in first person or close third, because so much of the appeal described on booktok is a book sucking you in completely. now, i want to bring up a few books that, on the surface, might check several of these boxes: dune by frank herbert has an 18yo protagonist, and the first book is very much a coming of age story. eragon (christopher paolini) and the name of the wind (patrick rothfuss) focus on a young person coming into their magical abilities through school/mentorship, a similar setting to many YA series. mistborn (brandon sanderson) and game of thrones (george r.r. martin) both have prominent protagonists that are 18 or younger when the story starts. of all these series, only eragon has young-adult as its most popular age-related tag on goodreads, and eragon was, at the time of release, very specifically marketed to and shelved in young adult in bookstores and libraries. some of these books have explicit or non-explicit sexual content, but only GOT has even close to as much as your average NA novel (to my knowledge).

i am not alleging that any of these books should be classed as YA, necessarily. but the glaring difference in their marketing and readership does point to one thing: these books are largely about men, and they are all written by men. i am not the first person to point out this gender gap in fantasy writing, and i don't have anything particularly new to say about it, except to bring it back around to my original point. none of these novels "are" adult fiction, and plenty (plenty!) of teenagers read them, in an interesting reversal of the trends in YA. who is making the decisions about where these books go, and why? what can we draw out about the books and their marketing? how is the future of "adult fantasy" shaped when these are the benchmarks by which we measure new entries?

i did also look into a few of my own favorite sci-fi series by women to see how they ranked by similar parameters. parable of the sower by octavia butler, featuring an 18yo protagonist and sexual content, has no age category at all in the top 20 most popular goodreads tags. it's in adult fiction in every library in my system that owns a copy. ive seen gideon the ninth (18yo protag, and yeah lets go ahead and say explicit sexual content) on YA shelves in bookstores, but its adult tag on goodreads is more popular, and almost every library in my system has it in adult. in my opinion, these books are important in rejecting the "women write YA, men write adult" narrative around speculative fiction, but they're not necessarily an exception to a different trend. it is not difficult for me to think of more adult scifi/fantasy books by women, because i actively seek them out. however, almost every single one of them has a protagonist under 25, as is the case with so much of the adult fantasy written by men listed above. last year, i read the adventures of amina al-sirafi, by s.a. chakrabotry, which was (i believe) the first non-contemporary/realistic fiction book ive ever read with a middle aged mother as the main protagonist. the book club at my library branch, mainly composed of middle aged and older women, read it, and expressed such genuine joy and excitement over a fantastic, adventurous book featuring a woman they saw themselves in. representation really does matter, and it matters to everyone, not just young people. but that's a different soapbox.

young readers are extremely picky. i've watched many a teenager (or younger) browse the YA section and turn up their noses at books with a cringey cover, an overly dramatic blurb, or just because. marketing books to teens is hard. booktok is an incredibly powerful marketing tool and divisive social force. it skyrockets an author one day and by the next week, other accounts are tearing that same author to shreds. in this environment, its no surprise that the sensationalized books - extremely good or extremely bad, blatantly sexual, shocking, consumable - become flashpoints of discussion. who should be reading ya? who is it for? what is inappropriate for young teenagers to read? what is inappropriate for adults to read? i think about these topics a lot, especially as what the publishing industry terms a "gatekeeper" - i'm a children's librarian; i control the access teenagers in my community have to these books. i take that role seriously, and i want to be thinking deeply about the books i put in my YA section and who will read them. our decisions, about where we class books, how we label and present them, how we discuss them: that is part of what dictates what genre and age classification a book "is", in addition to marketing.

[archivist-goldfish]

The Main Library Card Catalog

My other blogs:

The Library of Paranormal Experience - Art, design, music, general weirdness, and my paranormal miniature photography.

The Library of a Former Bookseller - A catalogue of my library of illustrated books, mostly devoted to natural history, art, design, typography, and other general weirdness.

[ripeteeth]

Hi! I hope this isn't too random or intrusive, but I discovered your blog recently due to coming across your post about reading Frankenstein when I was searching a book ask meme tag. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about the books you like and I found I shared quite a few of your tastes and opinions as well (eg. I wasn't a big fan of Love in the Time of Cholera or Neil Gaiman's solo writing either, I really love grotesquely interesting and oddly pretty stories like Perfume).

please don't feel any pressure to answer this if you'd rather not, but I was wondering if you had any other books to recommend or talk a bit about that have really stuck with you? I'm also curious about how you usually find more good books for your future reading list – if you have any tips or advice you could share Thank you! ♡

Hi! I’m always down to talk about books I love or loathe! There’s so much out there in terms of grotesque beauty, so to speak!

I worked in a bookstore all throughout college, so I had a ton of resources there in being connected to other book lovers and had the pure luck to spend thousands of hours shelving books and having so many titles pass through my hands. Many of my favorites are here because something about the cover or summary intrigued me while I was reshelving it or finding it for someone (or pulling it during zoning to return to the publisher if it hadn’t sold). If you have a good used bookstore near you, I HIGHLY recommend just taking time to wander through and just look for something weird! Something that catches your attention, even if you can’t put your finger on why. Ask the booksellers there if they have any recommendations - I’ve rarely met a bookseller that didn’t have an opinion or five about good books to share.

I also had the benefit of having a very book-centric family, especially my mom. She’s my best friend and she introduced me to so many incredible titles, like The Stranger, Jane Eyre, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, Lolita, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Anna Karenina, Murder on the Orient Express, and the collected hijinks of Jeeves and Wooster. So many of the books I read are ones she recommends!

Beyond that and recommendations from friends, I tend to pick up books from following publishers. Right now I’m obsessed with reading publications by the New York Review of Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions, both of which publish incredibly high-quality writing from authors I’ve usually never heard of. A lot of these books are either experimental or have never been translated into English before (or haven’t been published in decades). I really tend to just go through their catalogs and grab a book at random and I haven’t had a miss yet. Right now from NYRB, I’m reading Mourning A Breast, a memoir of living with breast cancer by Hong Kong writer Xi Xi, and I have Vasily Grossman’s Leningrad on deck. From Fitzcarraldo, I recently loved Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and am going to start Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor soon.

Right off the top of my head, based on the few you referenced here such as Perfume and Frankenstein, I’d recommend:

Grendel - John Gardner

Along with Frankenstein, this is probably my all-time favorite book. It’s a fascinating retelling of Beowulf, all from Grendel’s point-of-view. It’s lush but in that way of undergrowth and decay, and Gardner leans into Grendel’s wretchedness and monstrosity, letting it sing. He’s not interested in rehabilitating a monster, but in giving this pathetic creature a voice. I have a deep love of retellings that move the viewfinder and give the reins to a side character or villain. (Though I admit I haven’t liked many of the recent releases in this vein. They give me the crawling sensation that they were written because it became popular, not because the author had an interest in the story or characters, which is perfectly valid - hey, it’s a capitalist hellscape we all live in, no shame in getting paid - but those aren’t the books I enjoy.)

Crash - J.G. Ballard

This is a weird one. A wonderfully messy, fucked-up weird one where the heartbeat of the story is about psychosexual car crash fetishes. Cronenberg made it into a film in 1995 and the fact that Cronenberg made a movie about it at all should tell you everything you need to know.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories - Flannery O’Connor

If you like dark and oddly beautiful, nothing fits that criteria more than Flannery O’Connor. Something heavy and somber hovers over her work. A sense of dread. Dry grasses. Revival tents. The dead eyed stare of a preacher. A fire you cannot escape.

[A list of recs below the cut]

A few others that come to mind as titles you may enjoy, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. These are all beautifully written, fascinating, and many are uncomfortable in the precise way I like fiction to leave me feeling.

Cassandra - Christa Wolf

The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist

Hunger - Knut Hamsun

Solenoid - Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu

We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

Rashomon and Other Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson

Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age - Bohumil Hrabal

Voices From Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich (Proof that non-fiction can be poetic and haunting)

Just Kids - Patti Smith

A Map To The Door of No Return - Dionne Brand

This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Tadeusz Borowski

The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz

Lote - Shola von Reinhold

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson

Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino

2666 - Roberto Bolaño

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

The Pearl Diver - Jeff Talarigo

Beyond The Gates - Molly Gloss

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Self-Help and Other Stories - Lorrie Moore

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Get In Trouble: Stories - Kelly Link

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Consent - Vanessa Springora

Medea - Christa Wolf

Simple Passion - Annie Ernaux

[formlines]

Red: A Haida Manga - Sheet 07

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

from the website:

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Haida) is known for pioneering the hybrid “Haida Manga” style. “Manga” are Japanese-style comics that developed out of ancient caricatures, illuminated scrolls, brocade prints, and were influenced by the arrival of American and European comics after World War II. Yahgulanaas’ hyper-kinetic drawings combine the bold lines of traditional Northwest Coast design and the narrative form of manga, to retell the family legends in a genre-bending, mind-twisting way. The combination of these two cross-Pacific cultural artforms is an exhilarating and successful genre pairing that he has explored across multiple media.

Yahgulanaas’ masterpiece is the 18-panel, 15ft long narrative mural, RED. Painted in 2009, RED was the culmination of two years of storyboarding and three months of painting. Yahgulanaas’ art is chameleonic throughout, showing tell-tale influences from Hokusai to Eisner, MAD Magazine to Edenshaw to Picasso.

This open edition run of prints debuts with Stonington Gallery. Each sheet represents two sections of RED’s narrative, and comes with a reproduced artist’s signature. Printed on high quality watercolor paper, the prints have been color-matched to the original watercolor masterpiece. The full mural is 18 sheets, though they may be purchased individually.

The plot is based on a story from Yahgulanaas’ family. Red and Jaada are orphans growing up on Haida Gwaii. When Jaada is captured by raiders from another village, Red swears to recover her. Red becomes leader of his village, but can think of nothing but his missing sister, and brings his people to the brink of war and disaster in his quest for revenge.

Yahgulanaas made his formal American debut in 2015, with a solo exhibit at Stonington Gallery, displaying RED at SAM, and having work enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Limited and open edition prints of RED are available through Stonington Gallery. A book form of RED is available through booksellers.

Click here for a digital edition of the catalog

[equatorjournal]

Fête des baleines à Point Barrow Alaska, 1923. Photo by Leo Hansen (1888-1962). "The Nalukataq consists of the dancer maintaining the most graceful position when propelled into the air from a trampoline." "The catalog Inuit features early twentieth-century portraits from the archive of the writer-journalist Victor Forbin: half of the 350 photographs they had bought in 2019, on a whim, from Yves Bouger, a well-known gallery owner and bookseller based in Granville. They originally belonged to Victor Forbin (1864–1947), who thought himself an “adventurer,” and who assembled a personal iconography to illustrate his articles, translations, and books (his first novel, Les Fiancées du Soleil, came out in 1923).  When they were confronted with “this vanished world,” the Jacquiers had known nothing about the Arctic or about polar expeditions, such as the Canadian Arctic Expedition led by the ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1963), between 1913 and 1918, and the 5th Thule Expedition led by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) between 1921 and 1925. Although they could see at once that, by their very subject, the photographs were of great value, and not just sentimental, they were yet to document their discovery. This they did during the first months of lockdown, consulting online libraries and Northern museums, moved by these portraits of the Inuit, and the “reciprocal gaze” exchanged between the photographed and the photographer. “It is true, we were touched by this gaze devoid of exoticism,” emphasized Philippe Jacquier, “by the presence of the Inuit, their power in the endless white landscapes. These photos are more than a century old, and yet they seem so close… Those who took them understood that photography is an indispensable tool.” https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp3NPKjth47/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[noelcollection]

Step aside, St. Patrick! This March we’re celebrating St. David’s Day, the feast day honoring the patron saint of Wales, with a post on our seventeenth-century copy of a Welsh-English dictionary. 

Y Gymraeg yn ei Disgleirdeb or The British Language in its Lustre was “compiled by great pains and industry” by Thomas Jones (1648?-1713), a Welsh publisher and bookseller who was likely the first Welsh journalist, although no copies of his newspaper are extant. Desiring to revive and purify the Welsh tongue, Jones endeavored to create this Welsh-English dictionary.

In this selection of entries, we can see where Welsh has impacted our modern English: “bard” from “bardd,” “druid” from “derwŷddon,” and “dad” from “tâd.”

And here is a sampling of Welsh terms that capture some of the rich culture behind the language:

Finally, if you need to brush up on your astrological and alchemical symbols in Welsh, look no further: 

Images from: 

Jones, Thomas. Y Gymraeg yn ei Disgleirdeb = The British Language in its Lustre. London: Lawrence Baskervile and John Marsh, 1688. Catalog record: http://bit.ly/3xURGrA

[garbagefarm]

Garbage Farm (#48)

2024-03-25, session #48 of Garbage Farm! Spanning Winter 3 through Winter 9 of Year 4!

cast:

me (@mothmute)

E.B. (@blueherin)

Kimi (@2kimi2furious)

Highlights include, but are not limited to the following:

pre-game:

it's been a while, but Garbage is back, woohoo!

—oh. logistical difficulties. welp, it was bound to happen.

“so, uh, what'd you have for dinner?”

I did my Garbage Homework and I came prepared with a to-do list and everything! But nobody knows what we're doing.

(the song from titanic plays softly in the distance)

Possum is gonna be so so glad to see us, he might do a li'l hop and everything, maybe get all flat

Winter 3:

LET GARBAGE BE JOINED

oh god I've got clown shoes on and they jingle now, let's see how long before they notice

(spoilers: they don't)

I visit Marnie. Lewis assures me he is there strictly for business reasons.

Cringefail, one (1) more duck.

felled tree remains mysteriously appear in the graveyard??

Kimi finds a mystery door......

Clint caught me digging in the trash, who cares

Special order for Taro Root!

Alex is wearing his special shorts, but Kimi's are more special (hint: they are purple)

Winter 4:

Mr. Qi flies by on an airplane. Mystery boxes can now be found.

The Wizard Catalog is amazing.

I try to renovate my house, but all my stuff is in the way!

Made another shed big, though.

E.B. finds a mystery box. “what's inside?” “mystery, duh”

Honestly, a lot of the day is spent mindlessly wandering.

Big chests!! I'll miss the stone ones' aesthetics, but big chests!!

We all went to bed early

Winter 5:

Bookseller is in town???

Cool pig had an Elliott Portrait, that's not weird at all

(apparently had an Alex portrait, too)

I go ahead and max out the ducks

then I go consume all the books at once

Kimi finds powdermelon seeds??

Winter 6:

After moving all my furniture, I get a bunch of renovations to my house. To be honest, I have no idea what to do with all this space, my place was already a little sparse.

Kimi dies in the volcano because she didn't bring food!

(Somewhere in here, I suggest EB take the lead on the Taro Root quest)

Wind in the night...

Winter 7:

The big tree! Noooo! —eh, it was only there a few days.

A little hardwood turns it into a cute little house, though

Turns out, I'm the only one of us cool enough to explore the mystery cave 😎

It's wine night, and I drastically underestimate just how many kegs I have

Winter 8:

There's always so much to do! —and yet I can recall almost none of it!

Ice fest??

Kimi is running late to ice fest, but no worries. ... okay, maybe some worries, I am anxious-typed.

Hey, whole bunch of new dialog!

Evelyn is worried it might be the last time she make a snowman with Alex. That's so sad!! (It's okay, nobody dies here)

Harvey froze his face

Clint is completely useless at making snowmen

KIMI CAUGHT DOPING IN THE CONTEST AND STEALS 1ST PLACE

(it's okay)

I call out how nobody noticed my literal clownshoes and then realized, “shit, I sound like Clint,” 100% clown behavior

Winter 9?:

non-canon day!!

possum gives us a snail

MAYO CHUG hang on let's try and get a picture

Kimi tries and fails to count down

I suggest using a bomb as a timer; when the bomb goes off, drink!

we are so bad at this

over 12 in-game hours and no mayo chug picture, truly phenomenal

TO-DO:

crystalariums for coffee project and so many stairs

💀💀💀

I've been putting off kegs, preserves jars, and some tree-tap improvements for so many sessions, now

friendship!!

walnut room......

long-term projects, shopping lists

OPERATION MAGIC HAT (strictly confidential)

Keep exploring 1.6 content!!

Gotta defeat the ocean. The whole ocean.

... do we want extra garbage cottages?

oh right, darts

-

A short session, but it's good to be back, and I'm looking forward to exploring more 1.6 content with my friends

[aquilaofarkham]

Hello! Your blog is so cool! I absolutely love castlevania and it’s wonderful to hear your thoughts and writing on the series. I was wondering if you don’t mind sharing what your day job is/what field you’re in? I’m currently looking for work but I’m having a hard time picking something out bc of like capitalism you know. I figured you’d be a good person to ask bc of like how cool ur blog is ??? If that makes sense lol. Thanks!

aawhh thank you so much!! that's so sweet of you to say, i'm glad this blog has been providing you with some joy! ;0;

so before the height of the pandemic, i worked as an archivist for a film festival which meant that i assisted in digitizing and cataloging various film related materials and ephemera. then recently i worked as an online bookseller for rare, collectible, and out of print books. i have a degree in archival and museum studies which meant that i was qualified to handle delicate materials such as older books as well as categorize them by condition. however, i had to resign from that job for various reasons so now i'm just taking a mental health break while also casually searching for a new job either in the archival, library, or museum field

idk if this will help at all but archival and library studies is basically my main field of work! as well as academic and fictional writing~

[insidemyfavoritemanuscript]

Thrilled to share Episode 1! Listen to it on PodBean, it should soon be available wherever you get your podcasts. Visit our About page to see where the IMFM pod is available now. If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating or a review!

[i-cast-teatus-deletus]

Part 3 Entertainment - Books Part 1

I know I said I wouldn't have anything for the entertainment section, but I figure it might be a nice change of pace from my other content.

I don't have a lot of hobbies that I think are interesting or relatable, and your mileage will vary, but I DO think both recovery and the waiting around of the appointment phase is easier with a book or two.

Obviously, your library is a great resource (though I'd be terrified of leaving a library book at the doctor's office), and if you want to get books for free some other way, people on the internet move fast and will have better resources on where to get free books than I do. But I do have two places to get books that I think are hidden gems:

For ebooks: BookBub

Bookbub is a legal site for free and discounted ebooks via publisher discounting schemes. It operates across a variety of devices and bookselling platforms (so you're not inherently locked into amazon or apple books or a specific branded device inherently.) and lets you sort to see specific genres only.

You don't need an account or to sign up for their mailing list to use it (though I think you can get more personalized recommendations with an account, past that I have no idea what having an account does since they are not the selling platform, they basically just advertise the sales).

For paper books: Hamilton Book

There's a lot of places on the internet to buy remaindered (new but unsold) books, but Hamilton (formerly Edward R Hamilton) is my favorite. If you're looking for specific books (especially semi-recent releases), you're very much in the wrong place. But if you have the time and energy to browse what they DO have (which definitely does have some popular authors and series), you can find some really good books for some really good prices. I've gotten new books for as little as $1.95 via Hamilton, and they charge a flat $4 shipping fee. My family has been buying from them since the 90s, when you could only do it via the catalog.

I will add that, back in the 90s, Hamilton made most of their money selling shopworn (lightly damaged) new books, and some of them still are. The overwhelming majority (probably 90+%) of what they sell now is remaindered and is in perfect condition, but I have occasionally gotten books that had torn dust jackets or stains. If you're giving the books as a gift and want to be assured it will look picture-perfect, Hamilton may not be the place to buy, but if you're okay with a single-digit percentage being damaged but readable, you won't find a better deal anywhere.

For some perspective, I think I bought 20 or 30 books from them in the past 18 months, and I got ONE paperback book that had something sticky on the cover and ONE hardback with a torn dust jacket, and both were last chance sales so likely all of the stock left was damaged. Everything else looks perfect, other than the remainder mark.

If books aren't your thing, they also sell remaindered CDs, DVDs, and Blu Rays, as well as having coloring books and puzzle books. I managed to pick up a pair of puzzle books for one of the guys that I've put aside for recovery for a few dollars each.

[oliversrarebooks]

The Rare Bookseller Part 70: Alexander's Punishment

Previous > Masterlist > Next

tw: mind control, body control, captivity, hand whump, eye whump, everything whump, stabbing, psychological torment

September 1905

There was no possibility of Fitz relaxing, of course. Not when both his fate and Lex's hung in the balance. Not when tonight would make the difference between a life of freewheeling theater and travel and laughter and a life where his body was no longer his own and his mind was tortured out of him bit by agonizing bit.

He idly flipped through a catalog that Lily had left on her coffee table, trying to trick himself into being interested in fine wool housecoats and imported cosmetics. The tick of the cuckoo clock on the wall was loud enough to be deafening, and the cheerful floral wallpaper felt as though it were closing on on him. He wished that he could pray -- but then, none of the gods he'd ever heard of were likely to want to help a vampire succeed in his mission.

Lex usually tried to conceal his feelings from Fitz, blocking off their shared mental connection, but tonight was different, perhaps because all of his mental efforts were directed towards controlling his platoon of vampire hunters. Fitz could feel his fear, tempered by his determination, and just the briefest flashes of hope. At one point, Lex consciously reached out to Fitz, calming him, and Fitz closed his eyes and allowed himself to soak up the comfort.

His chest ached with the intensity of Lex's fear.

The cuckoo clock was becoming unbearable.

A sudden terror washed over Fitz, and then everything went quiet. Fitz's heart skipped a beat, knowing what this might mean and wishing he didn't. And then Lex's command echoed through his mind, clear as a bell.

"Run."

The clock chimed.

"Fuck," he muttered to himself, standing up. It was over. The worst had happened. They'd lost.

He had to go. That's what Lex wanted him to do. Lex had handed him a small fortune in loose bills and very clear instructions, and Fitz had no desire to still be here when Lex's sire arrived. He could hail a cab, get to the train station, hop on the first train out. He could ride it as far as it would go, or hop in another state and try to get on a boat to another country -- somewhere he couldn't be found. He needed to do it right now, before it was too late.

His hands felt slick with sweat as he grasped the wad of bills. He knew exactly what he needed to do, but actually doing it meant acknowledging the worst -- that Lex had lost, that the future they'd hoped for had gone up in smoke, that he'd probably never see Lex again. That he might be lucky if he never saw Lex again.

He really should have known that this was all too good to be true.

Just as Fitz dug deep for the willpower needed to get his feet moving, Lily appeared in the doorway of the parlor, disheveled. "Lily," Fitz croaked, his mouth gone dry. "I think Lex failed. I need to leave now."

"Mmm." She looked intently at the floor, not moving from the doorway.

"You could go too. There's still a few hours before sunrise, but I don't know what you'd do after that. But I don't think you want to face your sire either," he said. "But I have to run now. I need to make it to the train station before…"

"Showtime, Fitz."

Fitz's eyes went wide, his mind starting to shut down before he could even register what was happening. "What? Why?" he asked, struggling to keep his eyes open as he began to slump over.

"Shh." Lily approached him, taking him in her arms and laying his head on her shoulder, stroking the back of his head. Fitz was fighting the enthrallment with everything he had, but he still couldn't pull away from her. "Shh, Fitz, it's showtime. Just sleep now, Fitz."

"Don't…"

"I'm sorry. I really am sorry this time. I don't want to do this, but I had an order from my sire, just a few moments ago. I have to keep you here, or else he'll torture my Nellie along with you." She brought Fitz, now limp and pliable against his will, over to the couch, and laid him down with his head in her lap.

The floral wallpaper was a blur as his eyelids began to flutter shut. "You betrayed me. You betrayed Lex," he managed.

"I can't simply disobey my sire, and Lex knows that. He knows this is a consequence of his failure. I'm sorry. I know it doesn't mean much that I'm sorry, but I am. But you'll be taken either way, don't you see? Even if I tried to help you escape, he'd only hunt us both down. It's better this way." She pet Fitz gently as he fell under her spell. "For what it's worth, Lex couldn't save me either."

Perhaps he was just imagining it because his vision was blurring, but Lex thought he saw tears in her eyes. "What do you…?"

"Shhh, just sleep. Get some rest and comfort while you can. Just sleep, dear, and have a lovely dream."

A loud, crisp snap caused him to open his eyes. He was no longer on the couch with Lily. Instead, he was in in the middle of a nightmare. He was standing ramrod straight, stiff as a board, in front of the Maestro. His pitch black suit made him look like a tear in the fabric of reality.

The panic within him felt like it would make his heart leap from his chest. Lex had just tried to kill him. They both had. If the Maestro had burned him merely for showing off on the auction house stage, what would he do as revenge for attempted murder? Fitz was very certain that he'd be better off dead.

The only small comfort was the wound on the Maestro's neck, mostly concealed by his collar, but visible nonetheless. At least one person had managed to touch the untouchable.

"Good evening, Fitzwilliam," said Lex's sire in that musical voice that did not reveal his cruelty. "It seems as though Alexander was eager for me to begin your training a day early."

Fitz wasn't sure his question would be tolerated, but he had to ask anyway. "Where is he, sir?"

"Alexander is in his customary cell in my dungeon, bound in silver. He will remain there without comfort and without blood for some time. He has not yet been punished, as I needed to collect you first."

Apparently, being locked in a dungeon and bound in burning metal didn't count as punishment. "I would like to see him, sir," he said. Maybe if he could at least see Lex, and put on a brave face, it would give him some small relief -- which was why he was certain the Maestro would not allow it.

"And so you shall," said the Maestro, to Fitz's surprise. "Lily."

"Yes, sire."

Fitz hadn't even realized that Lily was standing behind him until she stepped forward. She looked only at her sire, as though Fitz weren't even there, resignation written on her face.

"Oh, Lily." The Maestro took her hand gently, oh so gently, and ran his hand over hers several times before snapping her index finger with a sickening crack. "You knew about this." He snapped her middle finger. Lily barely flinched. "You knew about this, and you didn't see fit to warn me." Her ring finger was next. Fitz felt lightheaded from the sounds and the sight of her digits unnaturally bent. "I can understand why you didn't. You'd be a fool if you didn't wish me dead, and I know very well you aren't a fool." Her smallest finger was bent all the way backwards. "You aren't a fool, unlike your sire-brother. That's why I'm so disappointed in you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sire," she said, her voice wavering.

"I will attend to your further punishment later, but I must see to Alexander tonight," he said. "You will need to be patient."

"Yes, sire."

"Very well then, I'm off. Follow." He snapped at Fitz, and Fitz's body followed him out the door as though he were a wind-up toy soldier, his legs refusing to obey him no matter how much he pleaded.

The night breeze blew through his hair, and Fitz wondered if this was the last time he'd ever feel it. Was this the last of his autonomy? Would he ever be free again? He'd squandered his precious freedom while he'd had it, always wanting more, more, more. And now he would have nothing, not even his own body and mind.

There was a carriage waiting outside of Lex's house, and it was, unsurprisingly, as black as the night, with black horses to match. The Maestro didn't acknowledge the coachman as he entered the carriage, pulling Fitz in after him, and Fitz guessed that this was another thrall. Fitz found himself compelled to sit next to Lex's sire -- no, his new master, wasn't he? -- as the carriage lurched forward.

Fitz was a child again, sitting up straight next to his father, watching and listening so carefully for the inevitable disapproval and punishment.

The Maestro took one of Fitz's hands. His skin was like a doll's, or like fine china, smooth and cold. Fitz couldn't stop himself from letting out a whimper, sure that his fingers were about to be broken just like Lily's. But instead, the Maestro rolled up one of his sleeves and ran a finger up his arm.

"Exquisite. I will need to exercise caution when I scar you, lest I mar the canvas."

"Scar me, sir?"

"You should realize that I am presenting you with an opportunity that few are ever given, the opportunity to be made perfect. You should be grateful."

Fitz swallowed hard. "Yes, I am grateful, sir." Before he could register it, his ears were ringing from the slap to his face.

"You lie very prettily, but you still lie."

Fitz knew this game. Search for the thing that would appease him and spare Fitz the pain. "I will have to learn to appreciate the opportunity, sir."

"Better." The Maestro sighed and leaned back just slightly, not relaxing at all, still as stiff as a steel bar. "I was expecting a quiet evening before all of this nonsense began, you know."

He couldn't actually expect Fitz to feel sorry for him, did he? Fitz kept his head low and said nothing, wondering what the punishment would be for ignoring his new master.

Several long minutes passed by in silence before Fitz realized he wasn't being punished. His body was still in the vampire's grip, but the Maestro himself was staring out the window as they rode through city streets.

Fitz took what little range of movement he was allowed to look out the window himself. If only he weren't being held, he could take this moment to leap from the carriage and flee. The momentary fantasy danced before his eyes -- running through alleyways to evade the vampires, begging and busking for money, leaving on the farthest train out of town before the sun set the next day.

It was all just a fleeting fantasy to take his mind away from the present moment, one which crumbled to dust when they arrived at the Maestro's manor. It managed to be as foreboding as its occupant, surrounded by a high wrought iron fence and a stone courtyard. Every window was shuttered, with no hope for sunlight in daytime and no indication of life at night. The paint and trim were eerily pristine for a house so old that otherwise appeared to be abandoned, as though it were frozen in a time long gone.

As he drew nearer to the dread entrance, Fitz strained as hard as he could to stop himself from following along behind the vampire and sealing his fate, to no avail. All too soon, the moon and the stars and the city streets were gone, possibly for good.

The inside of the manor was pitch dark, the only light the faint flicker of a gas lamp from a distant room. If Fitz had to navigate the manor himself, he would never be able to do it without fumbling and bumping into walls. Instead, he was being moved effortlessly through the blackness, as though he'd been untethered from the Earth and was now floating in a starless night sky. His stomach lurched as he was puppeted down a steep spiral staircase, the air growing cold and dank as he went down, and down, and down.

Finally, the Maestro lit a weak lamp, which flickered and guttered as though it did not want to be here any more than Fitz did. As his eyes adjusted, Fitz could make out iron bars and stone walls. Occasional soft groans and rattling of chains made it seem as though it was inhabited by ghosts.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps Fitz was a ghost as well, a poor soul who was already dead and simply hadn't realized it yet.

The Maestro wordlessly brought the lamp over to one of the cells. The flame was reflected in blue eyes, eyes so dull and lifeless that Fitz nearly didn't recognize them.

Lex.

He was slumped over against the wall, wrists and ankles bound in heavy silver cuffs. To Fitz's surprise, he seemed physically uninjured, but mentally, he was a million miles away. He didn't look up at Fitz, and Fitz couldn't call out to him, even if he wanted to.

Fitz wished he could be a million miles away as well, dream himself to wherever Lex had gone and leave their bodies behind in this miserable cell.

There was a wooden crate next to Lex, and the Maestro picked it up and dropped it in front of Fitz with a rattle. His head was directed downwards so that he could peer into it. It was filled with wooden stakes and silver knives of many different shapes and sizes, some roughly hewn and some with delicately wrought handles, all sharp and ready.

"These are the material goods that I confiscated from the intruders Alexander invited into my house," said the Maestro, as Fitz flinched from hearing his voice so suddenly after so long in complete silence. "They are weapons that are used to kill vampires, of course, but they are only fatal if the vampire is stabbed through the heart or beheaded. Otherwise, they only cause immense pain, and wounds that are difficult to heal."

Fitz felt himself bend over, forced to pick up a serrated silver knife, weighty and cold in his hand.

"That is why you will not be stabbing Alexander in the heart or the neck."

Fitz's arm was pulled upwards, a puppet on strings. Lex didn't even look as Fitz's body stabbed the knife into his thigh, not even making a sound when the Maestro compelled Fitz to twist the knife, dark blood gushing forth and pooling on the floor.

"Alexander meant for these weapons to be driven deep within my heart," the Maestro said. "It is a mercy, then, that I am avoiding any place that would kill him."

The next knife was driven into Lex's face, his beautiful face, and Fitz was not even able to close his eyes or look away as thick, chilled blood ran down his hand and around his wrist. He couldn't block the sight. He couldn't block the smell.

It had been easy to think that this would all be worth it, when he was safe in bed with Lex and the Maestro was a distant threat, one which could be thwarted. It had been easy to think that, even if he were captured and it all ended in tragedy, that Lex would never regret it, that even in captivity and torture he could comfort himself by knowing that it had all been worth it for a moment where he'd felt wanted.

It had to be. It had to be worth it. Or else…

Everything felt like a nightmare as Fitz was made to take the implements from the box, one by one, each one finding its home in a wound on Lex's body. Pretending like this was a nightmare, like none of this was real, was the only way Fitz could endure this. Judging by the emptiness in Lex's eyes, the way he barely looked at Fitz, he was doing the same.

Lex's body would heal from this, but who could say if his mind would?

How many times had something like this already happened to him?

What if this was what it was like from now on? Fitz forced to torture Lex each day until neither of them recognized the other? The Maestro could do that, if he wanted.

After an eternity, the box of weapons was empty. Lex was barely recognizable, lying in a pool of dark blood and silver knives. Some of the knives were still sticking out of his body. He was slumped over, unmoving.

He wasn't dead, Fitz knew he wasn't dead, but it might be better for Lex if he were.

"You've played your part adequately, child," said the Maestro. "As I expected, Alexander decided to care about you, enough to risk… this." He walked closer, standing just behind Fitz, with Fitz unable to move or even flinch. "I want you to answer this honestly. Do you think you were worth all of this pain?"

Fitz couldn't even pretend to himself that it wasn't an easy answer. "No, sir. I'm not."

"Of course not," he said with something dangerously close to amusement. "Hopefully Alexander will learn an important lesson from it."

He'd learn that it had been a mistake to care about Fitz. That's what this had been about all along.

Fitz felt himself turned around to face the Maestro. He looked Fitz up and down with disdain, and Fitz was acutely aware of how much of Lex's blood had soaked through his suit.

"Because your presence has been educational, I won't punish you for Alexander's trangression," he said, and Fitz almost laughed at the notion that he hadn't already been punished. "After all, a thrall as yourself couldn't possibly know better. No, child, I intend to reward you with the gift of my tutelage. I will make you perfect."

He pulled out a single black glove from his pocket, put it on, and used one finger to tilt Fitz's chin upwards so that he was looking straight into cold, dark eyes. "I have no doubt that you'll commit transgressions of your own that will require punishment, in due time."

Committing transgressions was one thing Fitz excelled at. And he might as well commit one now while his tongue was still in his head.

"I wish Lex would've killed you, sir."

He tried not to look terrified as he stood, anticipating the torture that he had been fearful of all night -- no, the torture he'd been fearful of since that day in the auction house. A part of him wanted it to happen, to end the dreadful uncertainty. But after several long minutes, it was apparent that it wasn't coming. Not yet.

"No doubt," said the Maestro. "Unfortunately, despite his considerable innate talent, my Alexander is a failure more often than not. I do hope you won't be like him."

Previous > Masterlist > Next

Next week: How Alexander was initially broken.

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[newty]

man maybe im too much of a layman collector but the bookselling market is way too dependent on exclusive fairs and insider handshakes and antiquated catalogs. i dont want to waste my time signing up for fairs and scrolling thru overpriced daguerreotypes and scrapbooks that would be $50 tops out of context in an antique store. i just want a reginald bancroft cooke translation of platen but none are for sale bc theyre probably in the hands of some guy who goes to 3 in person fairs a year in spain.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

#15yrsago Zoe’s Tale: Scalzi’s smart-ass young-adult sf thriller https://memex.craphound.com/2008/11/12/zoes-tale-scalzis-smart-ass-young-adult-sf-thriller/

#10yrsago UK home secretary wants to overturn human rights treaties and make terror suspects stateless https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/12/theresa-may-british-terror-suspects-stateless-passport

#10yrsago David Nutt wants to make non-addictive, safer synth-booze that comes with a sober-up pill https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/getting-drunk-without-the-hangover-or-health-risks-scientist-seeks-investment-for-alcohol-substitute-drug-8931946.html

#10yrsago Irish Freedom of Information amendment will send FOI fees to infinity https://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2013/11/10/freedom-information-fees-multiplied-new-amendment/

#10yrsago GCHQ used fake Slashdot, LinkedIn to target employees at Internet exchanges https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/uk-spies-continue-quantum-insert-attack-via-linkedin-slashdot-pages/

#5yrsago A catalog of ingenious cheats developed by machine-learning systems https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRPiprOaC3HsCf5Tuum8bRfzYUiKLRqJmbOoC-32JorNdfyTiRRsR7Ea5eWtvsWzuxo8bjOxCG84dAg/pubhtml

#5yrsago Youtube CEO: it will be impossible to comply with the EU’s new Copyright Directive (adios, Despacito!) https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/i-support-goals-of-article-13-i-also/

#5yrsago Italian prosecutors have given up on catching the person who hacked and destroyed Hacking Team https://www.vice.com/en/article/3k9zzk/hacking-team-hacker-phineas-fisher-has-gotten-away-with-it

#5yrsago Wells Fargo: We can’t be sued for lying to shareholders because it was obvious we were lying https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-wells-puffery-20181109-story.html

#5yrsago Global antiquarian bookseller strike brings Amazon to its knees https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/technology/amazon-bookseller-protest-strike.html

#5yrsago New, “unbreakable” Denuvo DRM cracked two days before its first commercial deployment https://torrentfreak.com/hitman-2s-denuvo-protection-cracked-three-days-before-launch-181112/

#5yrsago How many computers are in your computer? https://gwern.net/turing-complete#how-many-computers-are-in-your-computer

#5yrsago The market failed rural kids: poor rural broadband has created a “homework gap” https://www.wired.com/story/rural-kids-internet-homework-gap-fcc-could-help/

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