An open letter to an anonymous nattering nabob of negativity

I am referring to an email that I received from an anonymous poster today about my earlier review of Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Not only did this person attack me personally, but also three of my blogger friends who reviewed the same book.(I have left out the names of my blogger friends -- otherwise the email is as quoted here).

Here's the email

You are all idiots. Dave Cullen is nothing but a lying famewhore and anyone who has even the slightest bit of knowledge about Columbine knows this.

Nancy , the fact that you can read one book on a complex subject like this and think you know so much that you don't need to read anymore shows you as being ignorant and intellectually lazy.
The success of this book shows the sad lack of intelligence in today's book buying public.

Pathetic!

As it so happens, I know who sent this email. This person left a string of rants on Amazon.com on several reviews of this same book.  Here's another example of her work re this book:

on Amazon (12/2009):

You obviously work for/with Dave Cullen or his publishing house.
Either that or your mind numbingly ignorant.
Probably the latter.

The only thing that Dave Cullen deserves credit for is being a lying , egotistical famewhore with a gift for making frighteningly stupid people buy into his false, worthless bs.

note the use of the word "famewhore," which led me immediately to Amazon.com and this person. I'd read her comments before.

and again in February of this year, in response to another comment:

However, I do understand why all you small minded folks get upset when someone dares to state the truth about your lying famewhore idol Cullen and his worthless book that should rightly be labeled a book of fiction

How can so many people be so stupid? 

Once again, she uses the word famewhore, this time with such venom that I felt like I needed to stand away from my computer to protect myself.

So let's get this straight, point by point.

1."You are all idiots."
 Neither myself nor my friends are idiots. You don't even know us so how in the world can you say we are idiots? Here is the definition of an idiot:

id·i·ot (d-t)

n.

A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.

2. "Dave Cullen is nothing but a lying famewhore and anyone who has even the slightest bit of knowledge about Columbine knows this."
 I suppose you were there the day everyone was shot and you know that Cullen is lying because you saw everything firsthand -- you were the star witness of events 10 years ago.
If you read what I wrote in my review, I noted that I wasn't there, so there was no way at all for me to comment on Mr. Cullen's veracity on the subject. I guess since you were there, you can speak to my comment.

 3. "Nancy , the fact that you can read one book on a complex subject like this and think you know so much that you don't need to read anymore shows you as being ignorant and intellectually lazy."

a)Well, why don't you write to my former PhD advisers and the panel for my oral exams and ask them for yourself.  When you're finished with that, I'll send you translations of works in Chinese and Japanese I've done and we'll sit down over a lovely cup of tea and discuss them, along with a quick little conversation about the relationship between state-sponsored Shinto and WWII in Japan. 
b) Then we'll have a lovely chat with former university students I've taught and they can give you the scoop on how truly intellectually lazy and ignorant I was for them.
c) Point your finger back at yourself:  you are a bit lazy in your reading skills, because I never said that I "think I know so much."  Here is the exact quotation:

I think I've read all I want to read about Columbine -- I'm interested but not obsessed, and quite happy with Cullen's book. I'm sure Mr. Kass' book is fine as well, but I'm done with Columbine for now.

d) I have a life. I don't dwell or obsess, especially about something that happened 10 years ago.



4. "The success of this book shows the sad lack of intelligence in today's book buying public."

 Yes. Well, I've just added UFO Kids by Allan Zullo to my Amazon wishlist. You know, the one you reviewed on Amazon with 4 stars, saying

This enjoyable book tells the true stories of some encounters that children and teenagers had with aliens and their spececraft. The names and places were changed of course but these are all real documented cases. Most of the stories involved benevolent , kind aliens but one story in the book was about a group of aliens that seemed to have sinister motivations towards humans.I guess , just like people, they all aren't nice! This book had a fresh perspective in focusing on the experiences of kids and teens because its usually only the encounters of adults that you read about.

5. "Pathetic!"
See #4 above.

You can disagree with me all you want. In fact, I think it's absolutely wonderful that you don't have to think like me, and vice versa. What a dreary world it would be if that were the case. But know this: my thoughts about Columbine came from my head and they're my opinions. You don't have to like them and I don't write my book reviews to win any popularity contests. They're written so I can remember what I thought of a particular book at the time I read it.  To attack me and my blogging friends because you disagree with my opinion (and doing it behind a blanket of anonymity) is just uncalled for.  I have never attacked you or what you've written about any book so why do it to me? You don't even know me.  If you have something to add in terms of discussing the book, awesome. You can disagree, you can state why you think what I'm saying is not to your liking, but quit attacking me and people who share my interests in books. That's just wrong. I've never hurt you nor have I gotten in your business.

So please, just go away and leave me alone. I don't know you, nor do I want to. Discussion about books is fun, but not when you are bullying me or people who write on my blog. 

*Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter

9781590173244

NYRB Classics, 2009

308 pp.

originally published 1966

A tough novel to categorize, Hard Rain Falling isn’t going to do it for you if you need a book that offers warm fuzzies and a happy, feel-good ending. It is dark, gritty and real, a no-holds barred kind of novel that goes well beyond the much overdone “angry young man” trope to become a story that is intrepidly honest.  Considering its initial publication date of 1966, it’s also a novel much ahead of its time in the way that the author deals with racism, homosexuality and the harshness of unreasoned authority.

The main character is Jack Levitt, whose parents were young and stupid when he was born, leaving him in a hellhole of an orphanage. Jack runs away from there when he is older, lands in Portland, Oregon. 


There he meets Billy Lancing, a young black man from Seattle who gets by as a pool hustler, and with whom Jack finds friendship. But Jack can't stay out of trouble, and eventually lands in a reform school, where he spent much of his time in a dark cell in solitary confinement after nearly killing one of the guards. There 

"At times, all his senses deserted him, and he could not feel the coldness of the concrete or smell his excrement, and the small sounds he made and the sounds that filtered in through the door gradually dimmed, and he was left alone inside his mind, without a past to envision, since his inner vision was gone, too, and without a future to dream, because there was nothing but this emptiness and himself. It was not uncomfortable, not comfortable. These things this did not exist. It was colorless, senseless, mindless, and he sometimes just disappeared into it." (81)

This feeling of utter isolation pervades Jack Levitt's character throughout the novel. Eventually Jack finds himself in San Quentin on a trumped-up charge. It is there he meets up again with Billy Lancing, who maneuvers things so that he and Levitt become cell mates, and what starts out as just prison sex turns into something else, a human and feeling connection between the two, although Jack can't bring himself to admit it until it's too late and Jack is once more in the depths of loneliness.  And even though Jack is eventually somewhat transformed after his release, when he marries and has a kid, the freedom he envisioned in the past continues to escape him.

Hard Rain Falling is a book that is raw in emotion. Every character is real and feels.  This in itself is an incredible achievement - I can't think of another book in which the characters are so powerfully alive, especially Jack. And while so many novelists are into the game of blaming society for an individual's lifelong ills, that's really not the case here. As George Pelecanos notes in the introduction to this story, "the damage done to Jack at his very core can never truly be healed (xi)," and Jack notes that underneath it all, it wasn't really society that had abandoned him, but his parents.

Truly an amazing novel that I can recommend wholeheartedly.

June: Rain in the forecast - "watery" titles

June is the beginning of hurricane season, and it's also the beginning of the daily afternoon downpour that is so regular you can set your watch by it.  The rain is a standard part of the Florida summer experience, so I thought I'd mark it by reading books with titles featuring some form of water.

On the list:
Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter
Taken at the Flood, by Agatha Christie
The Sea and Poison, by Shusaku Endo
Creatures of the Pool, by Ramsey Campbell
Blood River, by Tim Butcher
The Sea Came in at Midnight, by Steve Erickson

and whatever else I can scare up from my shelves that fits. I'll be reading Dave Eggers' Zeitoun and a couple of other books about hurricanes during the month as well. If you have any suggestions, they are most welcome.

Aussie Author Giveaway goes International - through June 20th

If you go on over to this blog (Booklover book reviews), you can enter to win one of these titles from various Australian authors. She's opened the contest up internationally, so the winner could come from anywhere in the world. Why shouldn't it be you? It's very easy to enter -- go take a look!  You have until June 20th to enter. 

Good luck!

May Reading Roundup

May was an okay reading month, and I think it was because I wasn't home for most of it so I had no guilt feelings about reading. Normally I'll sit down with a book and a cup of coffee, read a chapter and then start thinking about all of the stuff I could be doing around here.  But being away from home with no responsibilities is a good way to get through a hefty stack of books. Here's what I managed to get through in May:

British Crime Fiction
City of Fear, by David Hewson  (not yet reviewed/ British author, set in Italy)

Escape Reading
Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child  (#10 in the Pendergast series)


Fiction (general)
Tell-All, by Chuck Palahniuk
The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas (Australian)
Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel (not yet reviewed)
Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcon (not yet reviewed)

German crime fiction
The Murder Farm, by Andrea Maria Schenkel


Historical fiction
The Informer, by Craig Nova
Regeneration, by Pat Barker (not yet reviewed)

Nonfiction:
Columbine, by Dave Cullen.


Scandinavian Crime Fiction:
Sun Storm, by Asa Larsson (not yet reviewed)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson (not yet reviewed) 
Don't Look Back, by Karin Fossum

 
 Speculative fiction:
Blackout, by Connie Willis

So that's what, 14 books?

Other book/reading news:
1) My book group read and discussed The Jane Austen Book Club, and the overall census was that we didn't much care for it, but it did bring out a lively discussion which is really all that matters. 

2) Added to the Amazon wishlist:
Our Circus Presents, by Lucian Dan Teodorovici 
Nineteen Seventy Four, by David Peace
Scream Black Murder, by Philip McLaren
The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica, by Ian Thomson
Villain, by Shuichi Yoshida
Apartment 16, by Adam L.J. Nevill
Broken Glass, by Alain Mabanckou 
A Deal with the Devil, by Martin Suter

3) 10 books left home via Swaptree and Paperback Swap; an ARC of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was given away via Librarything's Member Giveaway Program; and Sheila Korman won my copy of The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo


4) I went a little nuts buying books this month -- a combination of being in close proximity to two Half-Price Books stores in the Seattle area and being released from my earlier self-imposed ban on buying new books. 


so that's it for May.  I am going to have a LOT of reading time in June, because Larry's traveling pretty much the entire month, and it's summer - time to stretch out on the lounger by the pool and lose myself in a few novels.






  

The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas

9780143117148

Penguin (non-classics)

496 pp.


This book has won a veritable slew [Irish Gaelic sluagh, multitude, from Old Irish slúag] of awards and recognition since its publication:

Winner, Overall Best Book the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009
Winner, ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2009 and Overall Book of the Year 2009
Winner, ABA Book of the Year 2009
Winner, ALS Gold Medal 2009
Winner, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2009
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize 2009Shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award 2008
Longlisted, The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2010 [but missed the shortlist cut]

 Its premise is simple, based on an experience from Tsiolkas' real life:

A small, humorous incident gave rise to The Slap. I was at my parent’s house, a few years ago, and they were hosting a barbeque for relatives and friends. At the time there was a couple there, friends of mine, who had a three year old son. My mother was in the kitchen cooking up a storm – pita, pasticcio, potatoes – while Dad and “the men” were firing up the barbeque. I was in the kitchen helping my mother, and she, slightly frazzled with all she had to do, was getting annoyed that the three year old boy was opening up cupboards and drawers, taking out pots and pan and using them as building blocks. She kept trying to make him stop and go out and play, but he was taking no notice of her. Nearly tripping on a saucepan, she became exasperated with him, pulled him up gently and with the smallest of taps on the bum, said ‘No  more!’
The little boy - and I won’t forget the look of shock on his face - placed his hands on his hips and said to my mother, ‘No-one has a right to touch my body without my premission!’ To which my mother replied, ‘You naughty, I smack you.’ There was no violence in her action and all the adults laughed, including the parents. (from the reading group guide at Allen & Unwin).  

The incident in his book however, in which a small boy is slapped by an adult at a family barbeque in Melbourne, was not a laughable matter to any of the participants. What was supposed to be a great party with friends and family is hosted by Hector, and his wife Aisha. Hector comes from Greek stock; Aisha is from India.  Things turn ugly when 4-year old Hugo, son of Aisha's long-time friend Rosie and her alkie husband Gary,  picks up a cricket bat and threatens to hit Hector's nephew with it. Hugo is one of those bratty, out-of-control kids unliked by the other children there, and his parents don't care.  Harry, Hector's brother and the dad of the kid who is about to be whacked with the bat, takes matters into his own hands when it's clear that Rosie and Gary aren't going to do anything and slaps Hugo, effectively ending the party and causing a great deal of turmoil, as Rosie decides that she's going to call the police and press charges against Harry. The question here: was Harry wrong to slap Hugo, or did someone need to step in because his parents wouldn't? Since friends, co-workers and family are all present, they're all involved in some manner, especially when it comes to taking sides on the issue. Ultimately friendships, family relationships and loyalties will be tested as things come down to the issue of responsibility -- not just in terms of the slap, but in other areas of the characters' lives as well.

The slapping incident and the upcoming court case gives seven different characters an opportunity to examine their connections to and feelings about what happened that day, and to scrutinize their own lives -- who they are, where they are in life, their various relationships, their futures, etc.  It also provides the author with a means to examine several cross-sections of Melbourne's multicultural population and how well (or not) they interact with each other.  Each narrative is from the perspective of a character whose life crosses over into the lives of other characters, providing continuity among the players as well as important histories of the bonds (for better or worse) between them. This aspect of the novel is done well and showcases what's positiveabout the author's writing. His ability to make these people real enough to like or dislike was also well done. 

There are a couple of  things which made me feel that this book was good, but not great. First, some of the scenes tended to be a little on the heavy, melodramatic side, or droned on and on to the point where I felt like skimming to escape. I didn't -- you can't help but read on --but there it is. Second - the tie back to the original slap was often tenuous as each chapter went on and on -- if this was meant to be the one central event that linked all of these people, it needed to be brought back around a bit more strongly now and then, instead of letting the story ramble tediously off into more peripheral areas.

The premise is good, and I liked the story overall, but the writing could have been much tighter, more focused and less melodramatic. I would recommend it with a couple of warnings: first, you're in for a long ride and second, if you don't like romance-novelish sex, masturbation scenes or the gratuitous use of the word c*nt, you may want to try something different -- there's a LOT of that in this book.

 fiction from Australia

Woot is a hoot...look what I just bought

I just bought a t-shirt with this picture on it at woot.com.  Here's the blurb:

Dude, everybody can see your ISBN

If you purchased this book without a jacket, you should know that it is either stolen property or else some kind of perverted nudist that gets its sick kicks frolicking around in the altogether. It may have been reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, or it might have just shucked its garb and skipped off the shelf to prance through the countryside au naturale like a shameless pagan, but either way, neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this dirty, dirty “stripped book.”
Wear this shirt: between the covers, if you know what we mean.
Don’t wear this shirt: to the emergency PTA meeting about LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER. (Go topless!)
This shirt tells the world: “NAKED LUNCH is both my favorite book and my favorite meal.”

If you haven't met woot.com, go check it out. They have t-shirts for every occasion (and other stuff as well) but the shirts are what will catch your eye.  Seriously. 

The Devil's Star, by Jo Nesbø -- Winner of the Giveaway

and the lucky winner is  (drumroll, please)....skkorman! For all of the rest of you who entered to win, thanks very much for playing, and do check in often because I think I like doing this giveaway thing.