There’s an image that’s been making its way around the internet, popping up in both my Facebook and Tumblr accounts. It kind of drives me a little bit crazy. Here’s the image in its entirety:

So, let’s begin with the positives. First off, there’s nothing wrong with liking or reviewing or rating a book. I LOVE it when someone likes or reviews or rates my books. I even like the occasional bad review, especially if they’re fun to read. (My favorite bad review: it was completely negative and then said “I will give it credit because it’s an idea I haven’t seen before; but maybe I haven’t seen it before because it’s a really bad idea.” That’s a great review.) So, anyway, yes: reviews and likes and stars are awesome.

But:

Let me make that bolder:

BUT:

Readers do not owe one thing to an author. This is an attitude that I see often in writers circles, and it infects authors from the lowliest of indies to the most popular of bestsellers: that the author worked really hard on the book, so readers ought to like it for that reason alone. To quote the image above: “It’s a lonely journey to embark on just to tell a story, yet the personal costs are huge.”

You know what, though? Writing is just work. And while I certainly don’t mean to downplay my own profession, writing is REALLY GREAT. It’s the dream job. Even back when I wasn’t writing fulltime, back when I was right out of college and working as an accountant at a lumber yard and writing in my spare time–writing was great. It was fun. That’s why I was doing it. As the image above says: “It’s a labor of love.”

Besides that, you know what else is “a lonely journey” with huge “personal costs”? Just about any career. I got my MBA before my writing gig took off, and I can name dozens upon dozens of people who work harder than me: dozens of people who work longer hours, under higher stress, for much less recognition. And you know what? Every one of those people are just as personally committed to their dreams, be they entrepreneurship or business success or promotion or building a company from the ground up, they are just as committed to their dream as I am to my writing.

You know who has a lonely journey with huge personal costs? The guy who scraped together enough money to buy a Burger King franchise. Or the woman who sunk herself into debt and put off temporary pleasures so she could get through dental school. Or the carpenter who hangs drywall for years while he’s waiting for his own custom furniture business to take off. In other words: everyone is making a lonely journey. Everyone pays huge personal costs. And yet there’s no Facebook plea of “Please give my Burger King franchise a great review on Yelp, because I try really hard!” And there shouldn’t be.

Readers don’t owe anything to authors. It’s completely the opposite: authors owe everything to their readers.

A couple years ago I wrote about attending a concert where the crowd just wasn’t into it. I was infuriated–this was one of my very favorite singers, and my town wasn’t showing her the kind of attentiveness she deserved. But then she changed her show, singing some of her older songs, trying to connect–and when it worked, she did the same song a second time. And then she said, cheerfully: “My job is to make you happy.”

She knew the truth. She knew that SHE was the entertainer, and WE were the paying public. We’d paid to be there, and we wanted a good show, and she was bound and determined to give us one. And she did, and we loved it.

THAT’S the attitude that authors should have, rather than begging for positive reviews. That’s how writers get better, and it’s how readers get happier. And the happier those readers are, the less writers will need to beg you to give them a rating.

So, the awesome news is that my next book, Blackout, has been turned in to my publisher and is in the revision process! It’s coming along marvelously, and I have to say that I’m extremely happy with how it’s turning out. I don’t know how other authors are, but I always start a new project wondering how I ever even managed to write a book before, let alone a good one. So it’s always nice (and, admittedly, rare) when the first draft comes out so well.

Anyway, once the book was done I breathed a sigh of relief and the dove headfirst into a pile of books, music and movies that I had been ignoring while I was writing. Here are a few thoughts.

Books

The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum

I am an enormous fan of the Bourne movies. I think I’d put the trilogy (I haven’t seen the fourth one yet) into my top five favorite movies. (In fact, I have, if you look at the FAQ and see what I listed.) Anyway, I’ve always heard that the books are completely different from the movies, but I figured: they have to be kind of the same, right? I mean, they are based on them.

Well, the sad truth is that the book is kind of… crappy? Am I allowed to say that? I know these are beloved, and I’m probably blaspheming, but this really does seem to be a case where the movies far outshine the book.

Spoiler warning!

The big issue I have with the books is that Jason Bourne just isn’t very competent. Sure, he’s a good fighter, but that’s really all he is. He’s not inventive, he’s not a strategist, he’s not brilliant and clever. He’s just good in a fight. And that’s disappointing. In one of the more egregious examples, he lets Marie (the girl who starts as a hostage and becomes an ally, similar to the movie) plan an operation. I’m all about girl power, and I like that Marie isn’t incompetent (instead of the wandering, down-on-her-luck Marie of the movie, the Marie in the book is a doctor of economics and a high ranking official in the Canadian government), but she isn’t the super soldier that Bourne supposedly is. And yet he lets her decide timing, who stands where, when action should be taken. The Bourne in the book is practically incompetent: a boring nobody who can only be heroic when something snaps in his brain and briefly turns on his Super Soldier mode–and then he goes back to being a nobody.

Anyway, I admit I have a pro-movie bias in this franchise. But I’m trying to be as objective as possible when I say: the Bourne movies really improved on the source material.

On The Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

It seems that the concept of fragmented, boarding-school-style societies have popped up all over books these days: think of the Houses in Harry Potter, the Factions in Divergent, even the gangs in Variant. It’s becoming a common trope, especially in genre fic, but I’ve never seen it used so well and so meaningfully as in the contemporary YA, On the Jellicoe Road. The book is Austrailian, and the three factions are the Townies (kids who go to school in the town), the Cadets (the kids at a military school), and the Jellicoe students (kids who go to a private boarding school on the Jellicoe Road).

There’s all the same kinds of things you’d find in a Variant or a Divergent or even a Harry Potter: wars over territory, fights between faction leaders, invasions and diplomacy. But the difference between On The Jellicoe Road and all those other books is that On The Jellicoe Road is intensely personal, and intensely character-driven. There are deep and serious mysteries, but they’re all about what happened to this character, or what memory is that character suppressing, or what terrible personal tragedy happened long ago to shape the way things are now.

I always like to say that I’m not a fan of contempory YA or literary fiction, but then I’ll run into a book like this that completely blows me away. It’s such a completely different experience reading it than most of the books I read: so much more rich and dark and emotional and personal. It makes me wish I could write half this well.

Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer

I read this one about two months ago, and kept meaning to blog about it: it’s a pop-science look at where creativity comes from, and how our minds develop ideas, and how the brain works.

And then it was revealed recently that the author, Jonah Lehrer, who I’ve loved from other books (like How We Decide) and podcasts like RadioLab and This American Life, did something unethical in this book: he made up some quotes that fit his narrative, and attributed them to Bob Dylan.

The book aside, it’s made me wonder a lot of ethics. As far as I can remember, the book would have been just as strong without the fictional quotes; they simply added a little flair. Why would such a successful up-and-comer like Lehrer–he’s only 31!–resort to something so stupid?

I don’t know. It makes me want be more attentive, more cautious.

And it sucks all the more because Imagine was a great book.

Mind Games, by Kiersten White, and Taken, by Erin Bowman

I recently read these two ARCs. I plan to blog about them in more detail later, but let me just say that Erin Bowman and Kiersten White are both brilliant.

Music

“What We Saw From the Cheap Seats”, by Regina Spektor

I’ve been familiar with Regina Spektor for years, but never a huge fan. That all changed when I heard this new album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats. I wish I was more of a music critic so I could speak intelligently on the subject, but I can’t. Instead, I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves. This is the song “All the Rowboats”, which presents a museum from the point of view of the artwork.

All the rowboats, in the paintings
They keep trying to row away
And the captain’s worried faces
Stay contorted and staring at the waves
They’ll keep hanging, in their gold frames
For forever, forever and a day
All the rowboats, in the oil paintings
They keep trying to row away, row away

(I’m having trouble embedding the YouTube video today, but here’s the link: All The Rowboats)

I’ll also say this album has two songs that are immensely meaningful to me. I won’t say what they are. Just listen to the full album. It’s terrific.

Movies

Hunger Games

I finally got around to watching the movie, now that it’s out on DVD. (I’ve been eager to watch it since its release, but my agoraphobia and I don’t go to movie theaters.) I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. There were so many ways they could have screwed this up, but they managed to do the book justice while also making accomodations for the different medium. (I particularly liked how they would cut to Caeser Flickerman for commentary and background information. It was a clever little bit of writing that managed to maintain the depth of the story while not bogging us down with out-of-place infodumps.)

Other thoughts:

• Cinna was underused. Why get Lenny Kravitz and then give him nothing to do?
• Haymitch was perfect. As was Effie Trinket.
• Gale’s audition: “Show us your pouty face.”
• Jennifer Lawrence is pretty hot.
• This is a little thing, but I liked the cornucopia. I could never picture it in the book.

TV

Breaking Bad

I started watching Breaking Bad halfway through season four, so I watched as far as the end of season three and then waited for four to come on Netflix to catch me up. And then, the day it appeared on Netflix, I stayed awake THE ENTIRE NIGHT and watched season four straight through.

Man, this is the best dang show on TV.

And the winners are:

Taken, by Erin Bowman, was won by blog commenter Colleen!

Mind Games, by Kiersten White, was won by Twitterer @RachLSavage!

Feedback, by me, was won by blog commenter Kat V!

Use the “Contact Me” page (above) to send me your mailing addresses.

Congrats to all who won! And for the rest of you:

I love to create playlists for my books, to evoke mood and set the tone while I write. I previously blogged about the playlist for Variant; this is the playlist for Feedback. (This isn’t the complete playlist, of course. But it’s some of the most relevant songs.

“Run”, by Gnarls Barkley

One of the influential songs for Variant was Gnarls Barkley’s “Going On”, a song about a desperate man making an impossible journey. On the album it’s followed by “Run”, which, while being peppier, is also considerably darker.

Yeah, I’m on the run. See where I’m coming from.
When you see me comin’, run
Before you see what I’m running from.
No time for question asking, time is passing by.

and

You can’t win, child; we’ve all tried, too.
You’ve been lied to. It’s already inside you.
Either you run right now or you’d best get ready to die.

While “Going On” (and Variant) were about a single person dedicated to escape, “Run” (and Feedback) are about very anxiously spreading the word and urging others to act.

“All Along the Watchtower”, by Bob Dylan

(The song’s by Bob Dylan, who is awesome, but the link below goes to the Jimi Hendrix performance, which I prefer.)

There are some lines in this song that are very on the nose: “There must be some kind of way out of here… too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.” And “No reason to get excited…there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.” But, while those lines are awesome, I was more influenced by the overall feel and message of the song.

It’s been said that “All Along the Watchtower” refers to the biblical passage in Isaiah: “Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” I think Benson and Becky both fulfill this role in Feedback. They’re not just individuals in a bad situation; they’re part of something bigger, and they’re trying to proclaim the truth that others can’t (or won’t) see.

“In the End” and “What I’ve Done”, by Linkin Park

I’m including two songs by Linkin Park, because I think they represent the personal growth of Benson. In “In the End”, the singer is hopeless and angry:

I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter

This reflects Benson at the beginning of the book: he’s just had what was supposed to be a major victory–he escaped from the fences of the school–but he also led dozens of people to a vicious, bloody fight. Out of all his followers, only he and Becky escape, and she’s critically injured. He blames himself. He hates himself.  The song “What I’ve Done” reflects his character change. He starts with more self-loathing:

There’s no alibi,
’cause I’ve drawn regret
from the truth
of a thousand lies.

But in this song he seeks both personal forgiveness and a broader redemption in which he rights his wrongs:

For what I’ve done
I start again
And whatever pain may come
Today this ends
I’m forgiving what I’ve done!

“Don’t Drink the Water”, by Dave Matthews Band

For lots of reasons that I won’t get into here (because they get too spoilery) I view this as a song being sung directly to Benson by the antagonist. I love it all, but especially this beginning:

Come out, come out
No use in hiding.
Come now, come now
Can you not see?
There’s no place here.
What were you expecting?
Not room for both,
Just room for me.

“Walking Far From Home”, by Iron and Wine

Upon first listening, this might seem like a weird choice because the song has a very upbeat–almost inspirational–tone to it. But I love this one for the images it evokes. The song, depending on how you interpret it, is either a story a specific journey, or a story of a person’s life; it’s a long list of things the storyteller has seen: some good, some bad, some bizarre. A few examples:

I saw sunlight in the water.
Saw a bird fall like a hammer from the sky.
An old woman on a speed train;
She was closing her eyes, closing her eyes.

and

I saw flowers on a hillside
And a millionaire pissing on the lawn.
Saw a prisoner take a pistol
And say “Join me in song, join me in song.”

None of the little vignettes are specifically related to Feedback, but I just love how they can convey so much emotion and imagery in so few words. I also love how it’s sometimes beautiful and sometimes uncomfortably jarring.

“Steady As She Goes”, by Dave Matthews Band

(Two DMB songs!? I know!)

This one is for Benson and Becky:

In the darkest times,
You shine on me.
You set me free.
And keep me steady as we go.