Posts Tagged ‘books’

Rewriting Classics, or Why I Will Be Murdered By Herman Melville’s Ghost

Posted: July 23, 2012 in life, lists, reading
Tags: , , ,
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English: Illustration from an early edition of...

I’ve got your white whale right here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, my friend Kat, who blog over here, was reading Fifty Shades of Grey* and texting me some of the more hilarious lines.** And she mentioned that a friend of hers had jokingly told her to write Fifty Shades of Dorian Grey as her next writing project.

…You probably see where this is going.

So, purely as a creative exercise, we began coming up with titles for erotic versions of classic novels. And now I’ve come up with plots for some of them. Again, purely creative.

Stop judging me.

So here’s the highlights (and maybe your new summer reading list):

Moby’s Dick: Captain Ahab realizes his obsession with the ‘white whale’ is just a Freudian misdirect to avoid dealing with his dual attraction to the wandering sailor Ishmael and the handsome harpooner Queequag.*** When the boat is far out to sea, he begins his ‘hunt’…

The Caning of the Shrew: When his attempt at courtship fails, Petruchio must find a new way to woo the bad-tempered dominatrix Katerina. An introduction to the world of BDSM gives him a new plan: become her latest sub.

The Gropes of Wrath: On the road to California, Tom Joad encounters a frisky parole officer bent on returning him to Oklahoma. His only way to remain with his family is to give the officer something else to chase.

She Poops to Conquer: A comedy of manners, as a young woman posing as a house maid discovers her lover’s scatological fetish while cleaning the bathrooms.

The Hos of Kilimanjaro: This collection of short stories details the adventures of a group of loose women, from the bored socialite on safari with ‘interesting’ people to the young woman who was a man’s first lover and “did first what no one ever did better”.

Think you can do better? Tell me in the comments. Or, better yet, write it. And then submit**** it to the same publishers that did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Clearly there’s a market here. We just need to tap it.

*Don’t judge her. She’s a librarian, so technically she was reading it for work. Or so she tells me.
**Seriously, there’s a shitload. Don’t mistake me: I like erotica. Hell, I did my master’s thesis on it. But I like well-written erotica, and this ain’t it.
***Man the harpoons. If you know what I mean.
****I just cannot get my mind out of the gutter now.

Four Types of Books On Everyone’s Summer Reading List

Posted: June 29, 2012 in lists, reading
Tags: , , ,
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"Study drawing shows the allegorical figu...

“God, I can’t believe I have 49 more shades of grey to get through. Maybe reading in the nude will make this seem like less of a piece of shit.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

When temperatures rise and the television becomes a hopeless vortex of reruns and boredom, people start turning to books again. Most people have a stack that they want to get done between the end of June and the beginning of September. Well, to help you get organized, here’s a list of the four most common specimens:

1. That Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read: Everyone’s got one. It can usually be identified by its presence on a bookshelf, covered in dust, but with a curiously pristine spine. No dog-eared pages, no coffee stains, no notes in the margins. Usually weighs more than the cat, or possibly two cats if you picked up this particular book in a lit class in university. You know it’ll be good for you to read it. Hell, it’s a fucking classic! People are probably judging you right now because you haven’t read it. You’ve just got to get around to it. And maybe stop using it to prop up your couch. Chances of completing: 1/6, unless Armageddon happens and there’s nothing else to do. Then 1.25/6.

2. That Book You Pretend You’re Not Reading: You’re so fucking embarrassed to be reading this one. Often sketchy, incredibly popular but also hated, this is the book you badmouth on the internet. But you heard so much about it that eventually your curiosity got the better of you and you started reading. You’d just die if anyone caught you reading this, which is why you either do it on an e-reader, so no one can see the cover, or in the privacy of your own home. In bed. Under the covers. With a flashlight. Chances of completing: 5/6, but you’ll develop a nervous twitch.

3. The Wild Card: It lured you in with its flashy cover and catchy title, and you added it to the stack. Now it’s time for it to prove what it’s made of or get the fuck out of Dodge. Chances of completing: Roll a dice. Take off two points if the protagonist has an endearingly obscure hobby (luthier, competitive origami, artisanal sex-swing constructor) or if the words ‘nuclear reactor’ are involved anywhere in the back cover copy. Add one if there’s lots of sex/violence/witty dialogue.

4. The Old Favourite: You’re read this book so many times it’s falling apart. Rounded corners, broken spine, herds of old book marks lost in the pages…but you love it anyway. Maybe the summer you first read it, you were having a good one. Or maybe it’s just a damn good book. Either way, when the mercury rises, you find yourself searching your shelf for it once again, thinking that maybe this is the year you finally update to a new copy, one that isn’t held together with a rubber band and a prayer. But you never do, until it finally gives up the ghost and drops into a watery grave in the kiddie pool. Farewell, old friend. Chances of reading: 6/6, and then you’re going to have to buy a new copy and give the old one a proper burial.

Angry Beard Power, or Why I Need Book Recommendations

Posted: June 11, 2012 in reading
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George RR Martin at the Comicon

Behold the Beard of Power. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve hit a slump.

Not with writing; that continues at the usual pace.* But I haven’t found a good book in what seems like ages.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve found lots of okay books. Some of them I’ve even gotten halfway the way through before losing patience and interest. Others meet the fate described here. And a few I finish, but they leave me unsatisfied. It feels like eating a low-fat, low-calorie, no-sugar ‘dessert’ when what you really want, down in the depths of your grubby little soul, is cheesecake. Yeah, it’s sweet(ish) but it doesn’t satisfy the craving.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but I can pinpoint when it started. I began reading The Song of Ice and Fire series about eight months ago. Got all the way through A Game of Thrones and halfway through A Clash of Kings before the ennui set in. Not that they’re bad books; I can definitely see why so many people enjoy them so much. But I wasn’t feeling it.

And that’s when it started. I don’t know if George R. R. Martin is using his fearsome Beard of Power to reach out through the  internet and punish me for not finishing his epic series**, but I’ve hit the worst reading slump ever since putting that book down. It seems like I lose interest in every novel halfway through. Short story collections, too. Non-fiction still seems to be going well, but I need some fiction in my diet, man. I feel bereft without it.

So I’ve been hitting the bookstores, virtual and physical, looking for something. I’ve tried different genres: epic fantasy, urban fantasy, horror, mystery, science fiction, dystopian, literary. I even had a go at reading some sample chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey before bursting into uncontrollable laughter. I’ll admit to being a little stumped as to what to do next.

But I do know exactly what I need: I need a good book. A new one. Going back to an old favourite, no matter how much I love it, isn’t going to fix this. I need something new, something fresh, something I’ve never read before that hits me between the eyes like a squirrel on PCP that has learned to fly.

Tall order, maybe. But it’s been done before. Last time I hit a slump like this, Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind pulled me out. And somewhere out there is a book waiting for me to read it. I just have to find it.

So: what are you reading?

*Varying between rocket ship and sea ooze, with nothing in between.
**Of course, he hasn’t finished it, either. So there.