25 years ago, I never believed Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton would ever get published.
I’d better clarify that.
When I first heard of Sue Grafton’s alphabet series back in the early 1990s, I thought it was a dumb idea. After all, the alphabet has 26 letters, and that meant there would be 26 books with the same detective, Kinsey Millhone. I was reading B is for Burglar, and I thought it was pretty arrogant for an author to assume she could get 26 books out of the same character when she was only on her second novel in the series.
That just shows you what I know. It’s over 25 years later, and Sue Grafton is on her 25th book in the series. I don’t know if all the books are good because I’ve only read a couple of them. I remember that I enjoyed parts of the books, but I thought there were too many details about her characters’ personal lives and habits, and sometimes unnecessary details slowed down the story.
Again, that shows you how much I know. Her die-hard fans love the details about her characters’ habits and personal lives. Those details separate her novels from the countless other detective novels out there, I guess. Sue Grafton’s fans will defend her when a blogger like me criticizes her for writing about too many mundane details about her characters’ habits and personal lives.
I wish I had fans like that. I’m jealous. Even James Patterson fans don’t defend him like Sue Grafton’s fans will defend her. I respect an author who has fans like that.
Anyway, about Y is for Yesterday. The beginning is different from the other Kinsey Millhone books I’ve read. Usually the action focuses on the detective as she solves the case (and does a bunch of other stuff that has nothing to do with the case). In contrast, Y is for Yesterday starts off 10 years earlier than the rest of the story at a private school and focuses on a girl who is not Kinsey.
After the prologue, though, Grafton goes back to her usual prose, giving us a lot of descriptions about Kinsey Millhone’s everyday life and background. Here she even describes the habits of her 89-year-old landlord, Henry:
In the interest of conservation, Henry had stripped his backyard of grass, which left us with dirt, sand, and steppingstones. Henry’s two Andirondack chairs were arranged in conversational range of each other on the off chance we might want to enjoy a late afternoon cocktail as the sun went down. This was never the case. I didn’t want to sit contemplating barren packed earth, which doesn’t promote relaxation in my humble opinion. His potting bench and gardening gloves were superfluous and the row of larger tools he’d hung on the side of his garage- shovels, wood-handled garden forks, and pruning shears- had been unused for so long the spiders had spun webs and now lurked in ominous arachnid tunnels in hopes of snagging prey. Henry’s cat, Ed, seemed to look on the backyard as one big litter box and he made use of it every chance he could- one more reason to avoid the area.
That’s not bad writing at all. But Grafton’s books have the reputation for using lots of seemingly unnecessary descriptions. To be fair, there isn’t much like that in the prologue or first chapter. So far, the novel moves at a decent clip, faster than some of her other books.
Even though Y is for Yesterday was published in 2017, it takes place in 1979 and 1989. I wonder how difficult it is writing about those time periods without using anachronisms. I grew up in the 1970s, and I have false memories of me checking my cell phone all the time as a kid, even though I know I’ve only had a cell phone for about ten years. It might be easier to write about the 1800s than it is about the 1980s because there’s no way you’ll accidentally put a cell phone in an 1800s story, unless you’re writing steam punk.
I know Sue Grafton isn’t going to have Kinsey Millhone carry around a cell phone in 1989, but it would be cool if she did. It would probably help her solve the case more quickly. And it would make the everyday descriptions of Kinsey Millhone’s personal life and habits more interesting.
Even though there’s a bunch of crazy stuff going on around the world and in all our personal lives, I’m excited because today is the first full day of the NFL season. I won’t be able to sit down and watch the games (because of all that crazy stuff), but I’m still glad that the games are on.
Despite all the problems with football (concussions, off the field behavior, etc.), I still think it’s a great sport, and I’ll defend the game of football to the bitter end.
Cheerleaders might be a great reason to watch football, but they don’t make the top six list! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The same thing happens every autumn. Football season begins, and my intellectual friends wonder why I spend so much time watching it instead of reading books and writing schlock. I don’t wear face paint or get into drunken brawls, but I’ll flip channels and go split-screen to watch several games at once, and I’ll yell and curse even though I’m usually a quiet guy. This puzzles my intellectual friends. I’m supposed to be a smart guy (I think I still have most of them fooled), yet during football season, I don’t always show it.
So every fall, instead of hiding my love for football, I defend it by trying to explain what makes (American) football so awesome. At first, it was difficult to explain. I couldn’t find the words except for…
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The movie It is getting some good reviews, and that almost surprises me. I remember the 1980s when almost every movie based on a Stephen King book would suck. Even though the Stanley Kubrick/Jack Nicholson version of The Shining is seen as a cult favorite now, back when it came out, most people thought it was too campy.
I wouldn’t say The Shining movie sucked, but it had its issues. I cringed at the “Heeeeeeeere’s Johnny” moment when I first saw it, while the rest of the audience was laughing. Too many kids today know “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” from The Shining, but they don’t know who Johnny Carson is. At least they know “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny.”
Anyway, Cujo the movie wasn’t very good. Christine the movie was bleh. Children of the Corn? Haha!
I remember It was a decent TV mini-series from the early 1990s. I remember John Ritter was in it, but that’s about it which is fine because I don’t remember if I’ve even read It or not. It’s about time somebody made a good version of It. It deserves it, even if I don’t remember reading it.
Sometimes I read books from decades ago just to see if they’re as good as I remember them. I’d like to do that with It by Stephen King, but I don’t remember reading it. I had it in my house for a long time. I remember looking at it. I remember some friends talking about how great It was. But I don’t remember reading It.
I remember enough about The Stand to know that I’ve read it. I remember enough about The Shining to know that I’ve read it. But It? I don’t know.
I think It was the book that ruined clowns. That’s too bad. Before It, clowns were still kind of socially acceptable. They were annoying, but there wasn’t quite the universal hatred for them.
Back then before It, everybody hated mimes instead of clowns. Mimes were way worse than clowns. Mimes wore the…
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Seeing Red by Sandra Brown is an entertaining novel so far, but the main character’s name is John Trapper. John Trapper? That’s just a reverse of the character Trapper John from the TV show (and movie) MASH.
At first, I thought John Trapper was a lazy name for a main character, but now I realize it’s brilliant. JK Rowling used this strategy, taking a character’s name from the television show MASH, but Rowling didn’t even bother reversing the names. She just took the name Harry Potter from MASH and kept it as Harry Potter.
That was a wise decision. If she had named her character Potter Harry, the books might not have been as popular.
The next time I write fiction, I ‘m going to take a character from MASH and reverse names. The male protagonist could be Blake Henry, or Pierce Hawkeye, or Winchester Charles. The female protagonist can be Houlihan Hot Lips.
Hot Lips. Haha. It cracks me up that a righteously progressive show from the 1970s like MASH started off as really sexist.
Anyway, the first scene in Seeing Red with John Trapper has some humorous moments, but I won’t excerpt it because I’ve said there are humorous moments. Once I’ve proclaimed that a scene is funny, and then you don’t think the excerpt is humorous at all, then I’ve lost credibility from your perspective. At any rate, I’ve kind of enjoyed the early scenes with John Trapper so far.
While the author Sandra Brown seems to handle humor well, the action so far in this novel can be a little clunky.
Before the readers meet John Trapper in Chapter 1, there is prologue scene where a journalist named Kerra is stuck in a locked bathroom while somebody outside the bathroom door is trying to kill her.
The double-hung window behind her was small, but it was the only chance she had of getting out alive. She felt for the lock holding the sashes together, twisted it open, then placed her fingers in the depressions of the lower sash and pulled up with all her might. It didn’t budge.
(Then after a couple paragraphs establishing the danger Kerra was in…)
She put all she had into raising the window, and it became unstuck with such suddenness that it stunned her for perhaps one heartbeat.
The ‘it became unstuck” seems a bit passive for an action scene. Technically, “became unstuck” might not be passive because became is a linking verb (I think), and I don’t think linking verbs are categorized as active or passive. Still, I’d want an action verb in this action scene.
The phrase “the window suddenly flew open” might be lazy, but it doesn’t feel passive, and I think a lazy action verb is a slight improvement over any linking verb.
I also think “for perhaps one heartbeat” is unnecessary. Kerra is getting shot at; the window probably isn’t going to startle her more than gunshots. If anything, there would be a short-lived moment of relief.
Maybe all that is nitpicky. If you think I’m overthinking things, here’s what I noticed a little later on.
Chapter 1
Six days earlier
Trapper was in a virtual coma when the knocking started.
“Bloody hell,”he mumbled into the throw pillow beneath his head. His face would bear the imprint of the upholstery when he got up. If he got up. Right now, he had no intention of moving, not even to open his eyes.
The ‘right now” isn’t really right now because the story is using past tense. Maybe ‘right now” is technically grammatically correct (I don’t know if it is or not), but when in doubt about phrasing, I change the phrase to avoid potential confusion, even if the confusion is my own.
It would have been easy to have changed the “right now” to “at that moment.” “At that moment” is clear, and it doesn’t change the flow or pace of the prose.
I know, these are minor issues in what might be a decent best-seller. The professionals who put out these books get paid a lot more for their writing than I do, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Or maybe writers and editors are getting lazy/sloppy because they’re churning out so many books from the same authors. I don’t know. What do you think?
Now that Game of Thrones Season 7 is over, fans have to find other stuff to talk about for the next year (or maybe more). There were some great moments in Season 7, but there were a lot of pacing issues, and the dialogue wasn’t always as sharp as in previous seasons.
Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4 were so awesome because the TV show could directly use so much great material from the books. Now that the show has passed the books, the quality of the HBO series has gotten worse (in some ways) every season. Some fans blame the TV writers/directors/producers. I understand that. But maybe some blame could go to the author of the books, George R.R. Martin. Without original source material to work with, the TV show seems to struggle a bit. If he had sped up his writing, maybe the last few seasons of the TV show would have been better.
It’s probably too late for the new books to help what’s left of the TV show, but maybe George R.R. Martin should hurry up and finish the darn books anyway!
(image via wikimedia)
It’s easy for fans to be mad at George R.R. Martin. Last week the Game of Thrones author announced that he won’t be able meet the January, 2016 deadline for his long-awaited 6th book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter.
Some readers are angry with George R.R. Martin, claiming that he is taking too long with these books. It’s been several years since the last novel, he’s working on other projects, his blog posts are long when he should be writing books instead, and the HBO series has caught up with his books. In other words, fans are getting restless.
I understand. I don’t read the Song of Ice and Fire series, but I empathize with frustrated fans. When I was a kid, I got depressed after I saw The Empire Strikes Back because there was a cliffhanger…
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Tomorrow is the first day of school in my area, and today my two daughters are miserable. When I was a kid, the day before the first day of school was worse than the first day of school. For some reason, I couldn’t think of anything else that day except that school was coming and that it sucked.
As bad as school was, it rarely deserved the anxiety that it caused the day before it began. Even so, school still sucked back then, and according to my daughters (who are both reasonably successful at school), it still sucks now.
The classroom seems peaceful now, but some kid just farted. (image via wikimedia)
If you’re a student and you think school sucks, you’re not alone. There’s a certain point where all kids start to hate school. Most kids like school during their early elementary years, but something happens around 4th or 5th grade. Kids start being aware of other things around them. And at some point, kids realize school isn’t that great. In fact, it sucks.
Even teachers agree that school sucks. Teachers are mostly there because they’re getting paid (which is reasonable), and even money can’t make them enjoy the experience. If you’re in school (student or teacher) and you’re depressed, don’t worry about it. It’s normal to be depressed at school.
Famous author JRR Tolkien got depressed when he taught, and he was a college professor. His negative feelings from teaching inspired him to write The…
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At the end of my annual physical, my doctor told me I probably need to make a couple lifestyle changes. She suggested that if I exercise more and eat more leafy greens, I could probably extend my life by a few years. I told her I didn’t need to do that because I read a lot of books.
For future reference, don’t tell your doctor that your health plan consists of reading all the time. Even if your doctor has a sense of humor, which is unlikely, you’ll get lectured about healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercise and a healthy diet. Reading a lot, despite some recent research, probably won’t be one of your doctor’s recommendations.
That’s okay. When it comes to medical advice, don’t listen to me; listen to your doctor.
Get up and live your life, you bookworm!! (image via wikimedia)
Everybody who enjoys reading knows there are a lot of benefits from it. People can become more knowledgeable when they read. People who read fiction have more empathy than people who don’t read. Reading can also improve our critical thinking skills. Now a study shows that reading makes us live longer too.
The study shows (supposedly) that people who read 3 ½ hours a week or more live at least two years longer than people who don’t. There are a few more numbers in this study, but I don’t like numbers, even though I probably should like numbers because I like to read. Then again, I don’t like to read math books, so it makes sense that I don’t like numbers. Still, it seems like two years is the average extended lifespan for people who read books.
Wait a minute.
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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is probably the first book I’ve ever read that makes a reference to Robotron, my favorite arcade video game from the 1980s. In fact, Ready Player One makes references to a bunch of stuff from the 1980s. The first couple chapters of Ready Player One have already made references to a bunch of 80s pop culture like, Oingo Boingo, Family Ties, John Hughes movies, and, of course… video games like Robotron.
As somebody who grew up in the 80s, I appreciate seeing all these references. It’s part of what makes Ready Player One fun to read.
I could be biased. Maybe I appreciate this book so much because I’ve finally discovered somebody who loves Robotron as much as I did. Back when we’d play arcade games in the mall or at the pool hall, and everybody else was obsessed with crap like Frogger or Donkey Kong, I was wasting quarters on Robotron. Nobody listened to me when I told them how awesome Robotron was. Of course, I have a monotone voice, so my passion sounded forced, but it should have been obvious to them. Here’s a perfect description of Robotron from Ready Player One:
I booted up my emulator and selected Robotron: 2084, one of my all-time favorite games. I’d always loved its frenetic pace and brutal simplicity. Robotron was all about instinct and reflexes. Playing old videogames never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game’s two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.
I spent a few hours blasting through wave after wave of Brains, Spheroids, Quarks, and Hulks in my unending battle to Save the Last Human Family! But eventually my fingers started to cramp up and I began to lose my rhythm. When that happened at this level, things deteriorated quickly. I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.
I remember the Robotron wrist. As a guy in high school, you couldn’t complain that your wrist hurt from playing Robotron because people would make fun of you, accusing you of hurting your hand doing something that had nothing to do with Robotron.
Ready Player One could be a lousy book and I wouldn’t recognize that simply because the narrator and I share a love for Robotron. I bonded with this book, at least with a couple pages of it. I understand that not everybody loves the 1980s. To me, a little bit of Oingo Boingo goes a long way. Family Ties was good for only a few seasons. I liked only a couple of John Hughes’s movies. But Robotron…. I could never get enough of Robotron.
Now that Ready Player One is being made into a movie, I’m not so sure that it will be successful. Its strength as a book might be its weakness as a movie. A few million people buying a book makes a book a blockbuster. Only a few million people seeing a Spielberg movie would be a disaster, and I’m not sure that a movie based on so much 80s culture and video games will be that appealing. I like the 1980s, and I like what I’ve read so far of Ready Player One, but I’m not sure I want to see it as a Spielberg movie.
Then again, maybe Robotron will be in the movie. I’ve always wanted to see Robotron in a movie. It might be worth it to see Ready Player One just to see Robotron in a movie. Sigh! I miss Robotron.
(image via wikimedia)
I don’t remember the last names of the guys who lived on my dorm floor at the State University. I remember my roommate Kirk, and I think of guys like Eric and Tim and Shane, but the most memorable guy was named Ted Tinkle. Everybody liked saying Ted Tinkle. We weren’t making fun of him when we said his last name. We just liked the way his full name sounded, and it fit his personality.
Ted Tinkle wasn’t dumb, but he was a little scatterbrained sometimes. He would occasionally show up to classes on the wrong day. One professor would shake his head whenever he saw Ted Tinkle and mutter “Ted Tinkle, Ted Tinkle.” Ted Tinkle sometimes called his friends the wrong name. It took him at least a month to call me Jimmy instead of Johnny. I was willing to let it go, but my roommate Kirk usually corrected him for me. Ted Tinkle always looked shocked that he had gotten my name wrong and would apologize afterward.
I was jealous of Ted Tinkle because he had a cool girlfriend. She was cute, and I was the only friend of his that she’d talk to a lot. She knew about comic books and science fiction, and she understood all the nerd references I made. Ted was a good-looking good-natured jock, not talented enough to get any athletic scholarships but good enough to be a stud in the intramural leagues. Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend would hang out with me while he was participating in his league games, and he didn’t care. He knew I wasn’t going to hit on his girlfriend.
His girlfriend’s name was Paula, but I don’t remember her last name. You’d think I’d remember her last name, especially since I remember her boyfriend’s name, but it’s been over 30 years.
Paula always wore jean skirts. It was the mid-1980s, and it didn’t matter what the weather was, she always wore jean skirts. Back then, I was a sucker for jean skirts. A couple guys once mentioned (when Ted Tinkle wasn’t around) that Paula seemed to always have a jean skirt on, and they meant it as criticism, but I didn’t care. I was a fan.
Paula and I occasionally ate breakfast together in the dorm cafeteria because we were two of the few early risers in our dorm. Every once in a while, it felt like Paula was my girlfriend, but I had to be careful with something like that. Looking back, she must have known that I had a thing for her, so what she did kind of ticks me off now. But it was 30 years ago, and I have to let this stuff go.
One morning we were eating breakfast, and out of nowhere Paula asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
A bunch of ideas staggered through my head. Was Paula breaking up with Ted Tinkle? If she was breaking up with Ted Tinkle, how long would I have to wait before I made my move on his ex-girlfriend? Would he get pissed off I went out with his ex-girlfriend? I mean, Paula was awesome and would be worth it, but this kind of thing could be really awkward. Then I remembered that I had to answer the question.
“Not right now,” I said.
Not right now, what a dumb answer, I thought. I should have just said no. Sometimes when I write about my past, I get mad at myself for the stupid stuff I did and said. “Not right now” was pretty stupid, but this is just the beginning of what happened at the University Library later that semester
Anyway, I was trying to play it cool because I thought Paula was about to tell me something about her relationship with Ted Tinkle, and whatever it was, I was going to act like it wasn’t a big deal to me. I couldn’t act like I was excited they were going to break up. I had to be neutral but sympathetic. Since I was a guy with a monotone voice, I could do neutral, but I had to be careful with sympathetic.
Paula took a breath and asked, “What do you think about Brenda?”
Brenda?
Damn.
What a lousy thing to do to a guy, I thought. Paula could have led off with the question about Brenda instead of getting my hopes up and then crushing them. A woman should never ask a guy if he has a girlfriend, not unless she’s interested in him. Back then, I didn’t think Paula knew what she was doing, but I’ve changed my mind. That has to be a high or an adrenaline rush for a woman, dangling availability in front of a guy and then snatching it back.
Paula explained how she and Brenda, the girl who had talked to me at the University Library, lived on the same floor. Brenda thought very highly of me, she said. She mentioned that Brenda always talked about our conversation at the University Library. Brenda was available, Paula said. That was it. Brenda was available. I didn’t really care for Brenda too much, though.
Even worse, I realized Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend was a meddler. I knew meddlers could be trouble, but I didn’t know how bad this was going to get. Suddenly, I didn’t like Ted Tinkle’s girlfriend anymore. It’s funny how quickly things like that can change.
*****
To be continued in University Library: Scooter!
And you can start at the beginning with University Library: State School .
When it comes to Game of Thrones, it’s tough to avoid spoilers. Hackers have released scripts and scenes from upcoming episodes. YouTubers have put up videos of those scenes without spoiler alerts before the episode was even broadcast. Fans have talked about spoilers on message boarders without warning anyone. I’ve learned this year that if you want to avoid spoilers about Game of Thrones, you have to avoid Game of Thrones until you’re ready to watch it.
But you’re safe with me. Here are some lessons I’ve learned from watching Game of Thrones (spoiler-free past Season 6).
Lesson #1- Do NOT sit on that throne.
Out of all the reasons to watch Game of Thrones (violence, nudity, ripped-from-history storylines), learning life lessons isn’t one of them. Nobody watches Game of Thrones for morality lessons. If they do, they’re probably disappointed.
Sympathetic characters get killed in horrible ways, and villains seem to thrive. That’s a horrible morality lesson. But if you don’t watch with a good vs. evil perspective, Game of Thrones can give you some practical advice about how to be successful (and avoid getting yourself killed)
All of the lessons below are taken from Game of Thrones quotes. I’m not going to explain the context of the quotes (except for a couple) because that might potentially spoil the show for somebody who hasn’t watched it yet. But even if you haven’t watched it, you can learn from these quotes. Plus, if you use these quotes in…
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