readers advisory for all discussion

so - we are going to reconvene on april 4th. that's three weeks to read this book, which i think is fine, and no one said, "noooo," so i think we are okay. we can have a traditional book discussion, if you want, but what i am really interested in is comparing reviews from real readers. don't get all scared - this isn't about judgment of a reviewer's writing quality - we are all family here. i just want to see what either draws people to or repels people from a text. and then we will be able to determine the preferences of readers when confronted with a book - if the the things one person loves are the things another person hates. this will enable us to see the range of expectations when reading, and to get a better sense of what we ourselves and others expect from a book. so - when you have read the book, post a link to your review here. and we will read it and vote for it, because we are a loving family, and then when we have a bunch, we can compare them to see how readers respond differently to the same book. questions?

Sounds good!

I have no questions for my loving family.

karen wrote: "so - we are going to reconvene on april 4th. that's three weeks to read this book, which i think is fine, and no one said, "noooo," so i think we are okay. we can have a traditional book discussion..."

Okay, I found out that it's Night Circus and I have to review it by April 4th. However, how does one vote in poll#3. I want to vote for Rohinton. Depressing novels about India always grip me, so where do I cast my vote? When I click on the book, it takes me to reviews, etc., tells me how many people have voted, but doesn't tell me where to cast my vote? Meanwhile, I'll take a chance & pile up even more money on my credit card and buy it. I detest Roth, altho I know many intelligent, decent people who relish his every phrase. 3 Men on a Boat sounds like a bad movie with Mae West.

Finally, where do I post my review of Night Circus? Since we're leaving for a month long trek thru New Mexico to pay homage to Native Americans and natural beauty, I have to get my review in early

karen wrote: "so - we are going to reconvene on april 4th. that's three weeks to read this book, which i think is fine, and no one said, "noooo," so i think we are okay. we can have a traditional book discussion..."

I just reread your comments on how to review for RA. Wonderful, but, how do I link my review to the RA site? I know I'm supposed to be something of a techie (based on my passionate embracing of all things electronic and my big mouth.)

oh, that poll was closed. we repolled with the top three books because there was a tie.

i haven't started a thread for that yet. i will do it now.

here:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

if you click on where it says (some html is okay) , it will tell you how to do it


where the stuff between the quotation marks is whatever is on the bar in the tippy-top of the page for your review.


or you can just post that, as is, without making it a fancy link. or i can do it for you. you just write your review as usual, and link to it here.

I AM AT WORK - YOU CAN START, IF YOU LIKE!

For subject, don't forget Circus, Romance, Duel (or Competition).

Do note that the author purposefully chooses what tense and POV to use. In this, for example, EM chose present tense to give the reader the melodramatic sense of immediacy and intimacy, and to keep us alert. A simple non-omniscient narrator, past tense, would have let us just read along passively. It's a better book because EM chose to present the story unconventionally.

This book doesn't really lend itself to those RA questions well, does it? Let me try:

i will be able to contribute this evening, after work. don't think i am ignoring y'all...

Ok I think we're fine on subject and pacing. I want to see what others say about appeal.

Story-line - Complex, Non-sequential, with several story-lines developing at their own pace and most coming together at some point at or after the end. A mix of plot-oriented and philosophy-oriented, with not so much emphasis on richly drawn characters.

Characterization - Limited, as the people were more iconographic than individual. The young lovers were set up by the senior magicians, but actually they were all like pawns, maybe of fate, maybe of the structure of EM's world. The characters don't much evolve/mature over time and we're not asked to like them or try to get to know them inside-out.

Frame - Hallucinatory, Dreamy, Highly Detailed World-Building, Melodramatic, Thoughtful but more Accessible than Literary.

I took notes when I read Saricks' book a little while ago. :)

Well, it was darker for the young couple. But most characters just had fun, those who built the circus and those who visited it. Even most of the performers.

I didn't sense occult or horror or creepy except for how a few folks used the magic. I don't see Bailey* getting involved in anything dark. And there were kittens!

Btw, Bailey reminded me not of Barnum &, but of George B., of the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Just saying.

so what i really wanted to do was to compare the reviews - to see what people singled out as things they liked or things they didn't like, and to make some kind of a chart and look at it. i fear i will not have time to do that tonight, but if you guys don't mind waiting until tomorrow monring, i swear i will be up at the crack of dawn, doing wonderful readers' advisory work. for us.

I look forward to your queries, karen.

Meanwhile I agree, BB, that it would have been cool if there weren't such a mystery about why the senior magicians set up the competition. I think there were clues, but I don't think they added up to anything definitive. I would *not* have wanted EM to "explain" their motivations, though.

Also meanwhile - whose hand is on the cover image???

Also why does the image of the tents look like a Mother Gigogne doll, or am I the only one who saw them like that?

That's my guess - but if I'm right about it being Tsukiko, it makes her role much stronger than I took it to be.

here i am.

what is most interesting, to me, is how everyone agrees that this book has more descriptive elements than seem to fit between its covers, but how different the reactions to that description are.

so i am just going to chat about that. aimlessly and in an unorganized fashion because i don't really know what i am doing over here, but it interests me, the different responses people have to this.

i loved brian's review, because it made me laugh, but the whole time i was reading it: ""Always precisely at midnight, at the moment the grandfather clock in the foyer begins to chime, the first plates are placed at the table…" Aw, fuck; get over yourselves. "An invitation to a Midnight Dinner is coveted in certain circles…" Yeah? Like who? Who would want to hang out with this vacuous bunch of arrogant mincing posers? Debutantes and prettyboys? Syphilitic circus groupies? Grab-ass dandies trying to hobnob with the cool necromancer set? Gimme a break. “They are selective, these dinners. Though occasionally there may be as many as thirty people, there are often as few as five…"

i was reading that and i was like, "me! me!" the food sounded wonderful to me, even if it wasn't fully described. i liked that air of mystery, but it's probably the same way i like heathcliff. if i actually went to one of those parties, i would probably be quite bored, but in reading about it, the mystery makes it terribly alluring.

i am hitting "post" but continuing to muse - i just don't want this to be a huge block of text.

but it is so interesting to me that there are people like dana, who hate description, and so are obviously going to hate this book, and people like me who are drawn to it for the exact same reason; the swirly purply prose.

i like that for some people, the details obscure the story, but for me-ple (i word i have just invented meaning "people like me"), the details are enough to be a story. i wouldn't want to read fifteen pages of nat hawthorne describing a hallway, but i could easily read fifteen pages of night circus description without realizing that nothing had actually happened.

sorry this isn't really an appeal-factor-based discussion, which i can play with later, if you want - we can walk through nancy pearl's four doorways and all, but i really wanted to explore the reader-based responses in all their details.

i think most people agreed that it was cinematic, but some were pleased and some disgusted by this.

this is just the kind of basic observation i wanted to make note of. this is the kind of thing that i should know about. "how do you feel about descriptive writing?" is an important question. although i find that my RA interactions of late are always marred by the person on the other side who does not want to help me find them a book. "oh, i will read anything." is not helpful. if that is true, you wouldn't even be asking me.

sorry, siderant.

but i like seeing a range of reactions to the same book, is all. i am glad this book one, because i don't think the other two choices would have been so divisive.

the love story is another point that keeps coming up in the reviews; that it is unconvincing.

i agree with that, but i am just interested: how important is the love story to a book? i don't know that i have ever read a convincing love story that was intended to be a love story, you know? and this is something i have become interested in exploring. so many people come to me for "a good love story" and it is my biggest stumbling block. ("something funny" is another one, but that's just because every one has a different idea of what "funny" is, and that's easy enough to work with)

but love stories...

they are tricky, right?

i always ask people, "well, does it have to end happily" which sucks, because then you are giving things away, but i don't know any truly great love stories that aren't nicholas sparks stuff, which he always seems kind of schmaltzy to me.

are there convincing love stories?

i have been reading a lot of YA lately, of course, and love stories in books bore the crap out of me, usually, and in YA i think they are often there just because it is expected and are therefore just unconvincing template love stories, i wonder about love stories in adult fiction. because, yes, here, it is very tepid and not passionate.

tell me about good love stories that work for you.

Lonesome Dove. Definitely it is not a love story but there is a love story within it that I think is convincing.

i have been meaning to read that.

It's a fantastic book.

in this book, i really liked the visual aspects of it, because i have a problem when i read of not picturing it. which is why i generally have difficulty with action-based books. i don't "see" it, so it diminishes the appeal for me. but this one was so lush and vivid, it really won me over. generally, when i come across long descriptive passages, i will make an effort to "see" them, but usually the effort is abandoned if there are a lot of similar passages. thomas hardy loves to describe nature, and i willingly go with him, but in other books of that time (excluding woolf, who handles hers beautifully), i will find myself humming through them. literally. out loud.

this just really came alive and the atmosphere and the visuals became the story, because they were so dreamy. and i think i gave the story a lot of leeway because of the general air of dreaminess.

i don't "expect" books to be made into movies, but it would be naive to think that authors don't.

so far, i have read 2 murakami novels and disliked them both. and yet i love other magical realists.

Maybe it's the type of books that I normally read, but I didn't find the writing to be too over the top descriptive. I thought it was relatively fast-paced. The cinematic element I thought was very noticeable, and it was a little distracting at times, mostly because I think of movies and books as different forms of story-telling and I got the feeling that the book was a flushed out screenplay at times, it also had the structure of a film, or at least a Shakespearean drama, five scenes with a similar structural pacing. I'm putting this in a spoiler, because maybe everyone reading this hasn't read the book yet, but (view spoiler)[there is even the famous Chekhov element of a gun (or here a knife) showing up in the first act will be used in the third (hide spoiler)]. From the way the book is packaged, event the boards on the hardcover and the constellation pages at the start of each section there was a very Tim Burton feeling, which a lot of people noticed, and I don't think there is anything good or bad about that but I do think that some of the novelists work was being done for her by having this feeling visually present in the physicality of the book. My own imagination was sort of primed and probably filling in details that weren't really present in the book with scenes from Tim Burton films, for me it happened to be Beetlejuice and for the Ice Garden scenes Edward Scissorhands.

This isn't helping at all with reader's advisory sort of discussions though.

I can't remember any good love stories off the top of my head, but... I'm sure, to be convincing, the love would have to be fully informed. Neither lust nor infatuation are love. I believe in the possibility of 'huge attraction at first sight' but not love at first sight. The attraction can grow into love, sure, but probably not seamlessly and not in just a week or two either.

I wasn't disturbed by the love in NC being unconvincing on the basis of the characters seeming passionless. Swooning and obsession aren't love, either.

Wow - I just don't read books with love stories. The only one I could find in my five star reads was The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore. Great book, but not great because of the acceptable love story.

sooooo is there more you guys want to discuss?? i am terrible at this group-leading thing.

Well, I'm still hoping someone wants to respond to my questions in msg 24.

First, because of the tattoo, it could be Tsukiko's hand. But if so, the cover image would seem to be signaling that she's the creator or mother or overseer of the circus - and I just didn't catch that she was that critical or powerful. Did I miss something that speaks to her power? Or is it not her hand? Or is the cover image misleading? Or...?

Second, the cover image looks, at a glance or without glasses, to me, like a doll with full skirts sitting on the hand. It also looks metaphorically 'light' and 'frothy' whereas the book had plenty of dark and serious elements. Am I the only one who has that sense of dichotomy?

Does anyone else remember what they thought the book might be like based on the cover (rather than based on reviews, description, hype)?

come on!! let's not fail!!!

i always thought the cover was a plump little lady sitting in someone's hand. my first thoughts were "ooooh, pretty."

Thanks karen - Yes! So, did you find it kinda weird when the cover didn't really support the book? Do you think it was harder to get into the story because you had been 'misled' at least a bit? I know that I had that difficulty.

I think the people who talk to librarians informally looking for RA services, do tend especially to judge books by their covers. That is to say, the people who pick up thrillers from the supermarket discover new authors because the cover reminds them of something they're already reading, for example. I know, because my husband is one of those people.

And at the same time fashions in cover art change. I think part of what the designer for Night Circus was trying to do was to use that idea of a mostly black, simple, background, that effect that worked so well for the Twilight series. In a Target store a couple of years ago I saw a new edition of Jane Eyre with a cover that strongly resembled Twilight's.

Or consider the different covers for Little, Big. Different readers, different clients of RA services, will definitely be attracted to different editions.

that is an interesting point about the color-scheme from twilight.

even though my visual literacy failed and i thought it was an image of something else, i was still drawn to it. so i think it is an effective cover. but then, those are the colors i am wearing right now, so i might be biased. i think it is an appropriate cover - it is frothy, like the book, and the colors, as we have been told countless times, are definitely the colors of the book.

i am a sucker for covers. that is usually my introduction to a book, and i am very easily led by them...

The cover I thought was pretty accurate. Maybe it was the cover that was responsible for some of my Tim Burton feelings towards the book, the cover reminded me of the scene in Beetlejuice where he makes the circus sort of thing appear while holding the family captive.

So, you RA folk, to whom would you recommend this book? Say, if someone has been reading paranormal YA, and wants something a little bit different but not too much, that's easy, yes, they'd probably like this.

Would you rec. it to someone who reads mass-market love stories and is looking for something a little different? Why or why not?

What would you want to know about a patron to know if s/he'd be open to this?

i think it would be fine for people looking for vacation/subway books - something they can pick up and put down without losing the thread.

i don't think it would be a good match for people looking for period fantasy pieces - the historical setting isn't really developed, but it would be perfectly suitable for people who read a lot of YA because they have a higher tolerance for brian's lack of "why??"i'm thinking of the crop of dystopian YA that i personally love, but so few give solid foundations as to why things are the way they are.

i think as far as questions, you would want to know what the reader values: if they don't like descriptive passages, this is not the book for them. is they want psychological insight, this is not the book for them. but for a light, fun read that is escapist and not just about chicks buying shoes, i think this would be a good match.

koeeoaddi - i agree - it was not a lasting stick-to-your-ribs read, and although i personally enjoyed it, i am finding it difficult to recall specifics.

i didn't see your post before i posted mine.

i mean, maybe it would. i just don't see this having the same appeal as someone like sara waters, whose attention to historical detail is top-notch, you know?

Well I think that expectations & beliefs matter. I see people saying it was a frothy forgettable book are the same ones saying they read it casually. I think that it's actually more substantial than that (though it's not Great Literature), and that if one reads it with careful attentiveness one will find more depth & complexity.

So, if I were an RA person, I'd want to know if the patron has any experience at all with books that are more complex than chick lit or YA paranormal.

I'd also make it clear to the patron that, yes, in a way, it's fantasy, but it's not at all sword & sorcery.

Did anyone else get a 'horror' vibe? I've not read any horror novels, only the occasional tales in anthologies, but I still felt creeped out. The shadowy man in the gray suit, and the 'puppet masters' that were that man and Hector, and the midnight parties, and the mansion, etc... Not to mention Hector hanging around much like a ghost.

Cheryl in CC NV wrote: "Did anyone else get a 'horror' vibe? I've not read any horror novels, only the occasional tales in anthologies, but I still felt creeped out. The shadowy man in the gray suit, and the 'puppet mas..."

I did - for me it was Tara, et al feeling disturbed over their lack of aging (view spoiler)[and what happened to Tara after she tried getting answers (hide spoiler)]. Of everything potentially dark in this book, that creeped me out the most.

i didn't get a creepy vibe, really, but i am probably really desensitized to creepiness. i find it very difficult to be scared by books, and it's all that i want. i want something that is going to terrify me, but it is so hard! i wish i could be affected in that way, but it never never happens to me.

in this book, i was so attracted to the setting, i wasn't creeped out at all. this is a kind of world i would like to be in.

but i wouldn't invite brian to any of my snooty dinner parties.

i don't want you to be nice, i want you to be you, which is nice with opinions! i would invite you to a regular dinner party, but not one like was described here, only because you wouldn't have a good time.

and you're right - magic is insidious and ultimately harmful. i thought christophe was cute and befuddled. i know it is cruel to treat someone like that, but i don't think his ...condition was anticipated by the magicians, right? it was an unfortunate side-effect?

yeah,i don't have the book in front of me, so i don't know. my sense was that the older magicians would probably have known the effects, but that noobs like celia and marco might not have. but that might just be readerly-sympathy for the protags talking.

hahaha exactly.

i'm sorry if this discussion is unsatisfying. i am truly terrible at doing the teacher-bits. i have no leadership abilities...

Cheryl in CC NV wrote: "So, you RA folk, to whom would you recommend this book? Say, if someone has been reading paranormal YA, and wants something a little bit different but not too much, that's easy, yes, they'd probab..." i would recommend to those who need toilet paper, or fresh cat litter, or a recycler. but at first glance the cover DID look to me like a doll in a hand or something like that. i liked the texture of cover too. but it is such a supremely bad book i would never recommend when there are so many great great books going begging for a reader, like say unsworth's "mercy"

The Quality of Mercy: A Novel now THAT book should be wildly popular and have all the readers talking. curmudgeon signing off,,,,

hahahaah i think it is just my curse...

i don't know. i am a failure ):