Category Archives: books

Or perish

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Book publishing is a tough market because not many people read.

This is true of Christians like it is of the general populace.

So, for decades now, publishers have relied on people with TV and radio outlets to “author” books.

Well, even this doesn’t always work.

Note the blogged confession:

I think book publishers have a difficult task, and so do Christian book publishers.  But I think they need to face up to the fact that they are salesmen, whether they want to be or not.

I just talked to a guy who got his start selling paint.  There are no secret formulas in paint.  Everyone who makes paint knows how to make paint the same way.  It was a frustrating job trying to get anyone to buy.  Until someone told him that he had to go find new customers in the neighborhood for the stores.  He would find a school or some other company that needed to think about repainting, and he would work to get them together with the store.  Generating new business for the store gave him a chance to get the store to stock new paint.

My point here is that book publishers are supposed to try to find ways to get people to read.  The “celebrity” circuit is just about tapped out for many (not all) and it is causing stress.  Well, maybe it is time to reconsider whether that hasn’t always been an easy fix for a more fundamental problem.  While there is nothing wrong with generating readers (or at least book buyers) in that way, the primary calling of Christian booksellers lies in a different direction: to create passionate readers.

And if anyone dares to think this is not possible, let me remind you of “the wealthiest women in show business,” who never had a radio show or a television ministry or any other platform or following–just the ability to write really good books.

So, my back seat driver suggestion, lets focus on finding really good writers who make people want to read.  And lets try every other way we can.  I think the internet opens up all sorts of possibilities.  We shouldn’t be surprised that the celebrity giganto-advance system isn’t working well as a primary support system for publishing.

Got a jones for new fantasy literature?

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dragonMy childhood friend Katherine Hooper has a website devoted to fantasy literature. Much of the literature isn’t new in any objective sense, but hey, if you haven’t read it, it is new to you! I think finding a reviewer who likes what you have read, gives you reason to check out the books he likes that you haven’t read yet.

Also, there is a great forum. Check it out: fantasyliterature.net.

What does Harry Potter and the Blogosphere teach us about Xian leadership? (spoiler warning)

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Executive summary: Harry Potter shows us that the leaders are sadly deficient and the blogosphere show us that most Christians are not.

I’ve left all this to my del.icio.us links, but I can’t stand to let it go. Newsflash to Harry Potter critics: The Bible nowhere ever says it is wrong to say Latin-derived words while waving a stick. There is nothing wrong with a fictional construct where people who show paranormal powers as the approach adolescence receive special training in how to use those powers. The X-men has been using the premise for decades without calling down railing judgments from Christian leaders, despite being a vehicle for pop-evolutionary mythology. Now there’s something for a Christian to object to.

But no. Our energy must be conserved for a woman who has just sent who knows how many thousands to google to try to figure out the significance of, “the last enemy to be defeated is death,” or “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Let me change my executive summary: Harry Potter shows us that Stephen King is a more discerning guide to literary matters than a herd of Christian literary reviewers. Christian bloggers will actually find something valuable and worth considering in Stephen King. Compare this to Michael O’Brien’s intellectual pornography. What is going on?

Dip into O’Brien’s piece at any point, at any paragraph and virtually any sentence, and one is immediately overwhelmed by a need to think hard and find some way to believe that he was not self-conciously lying when he wrote his totally inaccurate claims about that book. Rowling believes children are innately good? Anyone who has read the series knows that is not remotely credible. But perhaps that’s what she thinks. Maybe he read it somewhere.

Harry knows only “selective love”? He died to protect the whole world Muggle and Wizard, Malfoy and Granger, Dursley and Weazley, alike. When he came back, Voldemort’s magic was no longer deadly to anyone.

What kind of idiot allow this sort of filth to be published? No, what sort of spiritual blindness and perversity thinks that this sort of garbage is actually pious?

Ooooh, here’s a nasty accusation.

Then there’s the adolescent romance in the atmosphere, a potent element when mixed with magic, usually latent but growing with each volume and culminating in domestic bliss for the central characters at the end of the final volume. Yes, Harry faces near-satanic evils, passes through an unceasing trial of conflict and woe, triumphs against insurmountable odds, saves the world, marries Ginny and brings forth with her a new generation of little witches and wizards. If it were a spoof or satire we might laugh.

That’s right. Rowling shows adolescent confusion abandoned in favor of true love, marriage, and multiple children. She’s going to Hell for sure. Laugh away.

By the way, I don’t like snogging among teens. It is foreplay for people who should be waiting (of marrying early). But I and a great many other Christian parents have noticed that our children find the whole idea gross and see that it doesn’t lead to any real good for Harry or his friends. But maybe Rowling is guilty for being too accepting of an overly permissive culture. If so, notice that the disappointment can be registered in a single sentence and that it doesn’t follow that therefore her books are the AntiChrist.

“The death of God?” many a reader will respond. “Surely he is making too much of the matter!

No, that’s not it at all. Try this.

“The death of God?” many a reader will respond. “Surely he is out of his #@$%#$@!% mind. Surely he is a know-nothing who makes his living by fear and offering to his audience a rationalization for arrogance.”

I’ll end with this question for your consideration: Does anyone remember Rowling making even one reference to traditional religion/magic either through the mention of voodoo or medicine men or the Qabbalah (sp?). Isn’t that strange? She had international wizards yet I don’t remember even one mention to a true cultural form of witchcraft. Everyone does magic the Tolkien way, not the actual way that magic is done in pagan cultures. How could she miss such an opportunity. Her books would not have sold much less. That would have made a real connection with forbidden occult practice that the Bible condemns. But instead she stayed firmly in the realm of Merlin and made-up tolkienesque “magic.”

Web Widget Wednesday: Shelfari

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OK, despite my horrible experience, I really love Shelfari. So I can sing its praises let me first clear my conscience by reminding you of what happened:

How I became a spammer: A morality tale in five lessons

If you don’t have time to read that, here is the short version:

DO NOT UPLOAD YOUR ADDRESS BOOK TO SHELFARI

’nuff said.

Facebook allows you to interact with books and I’m sure that other sites do as well. But Shelfari works far better than the others to my mind. You build a shelf using Amazon.com and a search engine and then you can tag them and/or review them. You can find other people who like the same books as you and then find what else they have read and liked.

I realize this is more a straight Web 2.0 site than anything like a “widget,” but it is my blog and I can do what I want.

Here is a sight that uses the Shelfari blog widget. I’m too cheap to use it because I want to get kickbacks from Amazon.com.  For those who care, however, here is my bookshelf.  I just wish I had some way to add my Dad’s blogging novel.

J. K. Rowling the mother of the turn-of-the-century culture

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Got my hair cut today.

I never know how to strike up conversations in those circumstances….

But merely let it drop that that I’m working through Deathly Hallows and suddenly I’m in the middle of a conversation with several people. They all avoid spoilers and instead I learn of the war stories of various readers and how they stood in line on That Night.

Years from now it will be asked: What were you doing when HP7 was released.

More than Lewis or Tolkien, Rowling has invented the myth that will be the common coin of everyone in the world where it is translated.

Of course, her debt to Tolkien is obvious. If she is the mother then Tolkien is the grandfather.