Being a Reader

There has never been a better time to be a reader. More novels and short stories are available today than ever before. Many are classics and can be gotten for free. For many others, the copyright has expired and they can be gotten for free, as well.

What were once rare gems, can also be had for free or perhaps a buck. And all with one press of the download button. The Internet, the Kindle, and the iPad make it that easy.

Sure, I love the feel and smell of a physical book. Nothing beats the experience of holding a book in your hands. It is, as one wit put it, the original hand held device.

But I actually find I read more books on my iPad. And I think that comes down to convenience more than anything else. Although cost does factor into it, as well.

Even a casual reader of this blog knows I’m averse to paying big bucks for a book. Unless it is an actual collectors item. Long before the e-book revolution, I was a big fan of used books. The main reason being the outrageous price tag corporate publishers were putting on their new books.

Granted buying used sometimes means one must practice delayed gratification. And that’s alright. Not every itch must be scratched immediately. Good things come to those who wait.

And now I see a similar trend amongst indie authors. When I first started getting into reading indie authored books, the prices were low. A free or 99¢ initial book, and then the rest of the series was usually $2.99 per book.

Now, those free or 99¢ first books are rare. And the price tag has inched up to wear many indie authors want $4.99 or more for their books. I think this is due in part to the gold rush mentality amongst many indie authors. For others, they see a higher price (mimicking the big corporate guys) as a sign of legitimacy.

For myself, I’m just not going to pay those prices. And sad to say, I’ve already started cutting back. After all, I’m not rich. Heck, I’m not even flush with cash. My wallet forces me to be frugal. One of the drawbacks to being retired.

I still live by the motto: wear the old coat and buy the new book. It’s just that I’m feeling the retirement income pinch and the intervals are getting longer and longer between new book purchases.

However, I don’t want to harp on the cost of entertainment. Everyone must make his or her own decisions based on what’s in his or her wallet.

What I do want to emphasize is that in all human history there’s never been a better time to be a reader. We readers are drowning in choices. The number of books we have to choose from is practically obscene. I’ve discovered so many writers, both old and new, that I never knew existed. I’ve been on fabulous adventures to places that only exist in the mind. And some that are real, but not really. Fiction is fiction, after all.

Expand your mind. Pick up a book, whether physical or digital, and go on an adventure. And if reading isn’t quite your thing, try audiobooks. I have friends who read very little. But they love listening to audiobooks. They could be your cup of tea.

Recently, I read two super books. Mark Carnelley’s The Omega Chronicles, a post-apocalyptic tale that realistically explores survival and the meaning of life.

And RH Hale’s Church Mouse: Memoir of a vampire’s servant, a vampire novel that brings back all the romance and all the terror that properly belongs to the quintessential creature of the night.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Bestseller Lists Are Fake

Bestseller lists aren’t what they pretend to be. In other, more blunt, words: bestseller lists are fake.

A few weeks ago I looked at what provides the best reading experience for us readers. Its characters we grow to love (or hate).

Today I want to look at how we readers are duped into thinking a book is a bestseller. And therefore worthy to be read.

I’m going to focus on The New York Times bestseller list because it’s the 800 pound gorilla on the block and has been since the 1930s when it began.

In 1983 William Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, took The New York Times Company to court claiming that the newspaper was intentionally excluding his book, Legion, from the bestseller list for editorial reasons. By looking at sales alone, it should have been on the list.

The New York Times won the case. Their defense in part was that the bestseller list was not supposed to be accurate, but merely reflected their opinion.

Here it is from the court ruling:

“Defendant further argues that inasmuch as the list was compiled in the exercise of its editorial judgment and represented its opinion of which books were best sellers, the First Amendment shields defendant from liability for interference with plaintiff's prospective advantage by refusing to include his book in the list.” (Blatty v. New York Times Company, Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, California. Emphasis mine.)

For decades, The New York Times presented the illusion that the bestseller list was in fact a list based on actual sales of books. And virtually all of us were duped into thinking that illusion was reality. In fact, the list is merely a compilation of sales based on a survey of specially selected sales outlets, heavily edited by The New York Times staff.

In other words, the list is a sham. It’s fake news, as it were. The list It is in reality merely the opinion of The New York Times staff as to what books should be bestsellers. It’s an op ed piece telling you what they think you should be reading.

So what does this mean for us readers? I think it means we can safely ignore bestseller lists. Because the books on them are not true bestsellers. They are not a true measure of what people are actually buying and reading.

We associate social proof with quality and acceptance. Author Mark Dawson makes this point all the time to authors when it comes to Facebook advertising. The more 5 star reviews an author has the better. This is part of our herd instinct. We are, after all, social creatures. There is a tendency within us to not go contrary to the group think. The Times knows this and exploits it in their bestseller list to get you to read what they think is best for you. In a way, this is a type of fake news.

The other lists, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today operate in similar fashion.

Even Amazon plays this game by creating micro-categories for books, so that authors can get a “bestseller” tag — which generates more sales for the Zon. One author noted that his book on Washington, DC didn’t sell until he took advantage of Amazon’s Washington, DC micro-category. Suddenly it became a “bestseller”.

What this all means is that the term “bestseller”, when it comes to books, essentially has no meaning. It’s valueless.

Reading, as with all things in life, is a personal experience. What moves me, may very well not move you at all. I’ve laughed my head off at a passage in a book, while my wife doesn’t think it is at all funny.

Commercial fiction has proven that most people do in fact ignore bestseller lists. Starting back around World War I, the pulp writers ignored the academics and literati. They wrote what the average guy or gal wanted to read. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs never made the New York Times bestseller list and I don’t think he cared. He got rich off Tarzan. Lester Dent made a decent living writing crime and suspense novels and most of the Doc Savage books. Murray Leinster wrote thousands of stories and made a nice living at it. The same goes for Seabury Quinn, Robert E Howard, and many others.

And this continues today with many indie authors making a very nice living without the help of The New York Times or USA Today. And that means most books which are enjoyed are not bestsellers. By extension that means that most books worth reading, aren’t on the bestseller lists.

William Shakespeare, who predates all these lists, wrote with one thing in mind: give the theater goers a play worth their money, and they’ll be back for more. It was the public Bill wrote for and he made a nice living doing so. In effect, he was a pulp writer.

We readers, I think, can safely ignore the claims made by authors of bestseller stardom. Because such a claim is no guarantee their books are actual bestsellers, or that they are any good. I know that has been my experience more often than not.

I’ve noted before in this blog, there are many gems that have never gotten into the top million on Amazon’s paid Kindle list. Those books are very much worth reading. Often they are far more creative and entertaining than those much higher up on the list.

Jacques Barzun, in his preface to The Selected Letters of Lord Byron, wrote: A letter is in fact the only device for combining solitude and good company.

I think the same applies to books. Leave the fake bestseller lists (and their fake social approval) behind. Be thyself.

Here are 4 articles that go into more detail regarding the bestseller list sham:

Tim Grahl tells us the truth on bestseller lists:

http://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-and-wall-street-journal-bestseller-lists/

Ken Kurson gives us a look at political bias in the NYT bestseller list:

http://observer.com/2014/01/dueling-ailes-bios-and-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list/

Tucker Max on bestseller list bias:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280520

Noah Kagan on how writers can hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list:

https://okdork.com/hit-1-amazons-bestseller-list/

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy non-bestseller reading!

The Detective Novel - Some Authors

I don’t know why bestsellers are touted so much. Quite honestly, I’ve read a lot of bestsellers that weren’t any better, IMO, then your average mid-lister — and a significant number that, again IMO, were just plain bad.

On the other hand, I’ve read quite a few books that are nowhere near bestseller territory and have found them to be truly superb reads. They actually deserve to be bestsellers.

Then we have the whole idea of just exactly what is a bestseller. The New York Times bestseller list is not a list of actual bestsellers. It’s a curated list compiled from specially selected outlets, with a dash of editorial tampering to make sure the “right” books are on the list.

And then we have all of these awards writers brag about receiving. The Science Fiction Writers of America called out Readers Favorites, for example, as being more or less a scam. Pay your money and get a favorable review. Not in so many words, but it’s not hard to read between the lines.

Kirkus isn’t much better. Indie writers can pay $500 and get a review. No guarantees, but who wants to disappoint a paying customer?

So what does all this have to do with detective novels? Last week I said I’d mention a few authors who are lesser lights in the mystery field. What I want to emphasize here is that being on a bestselling list or being an award winning author essentially means nothing. 

Neither awards nor a “bestseller” badge is a guarantee that the book is a good read, or that the author can even tell a good story. We are in subjective territory here. It’s all opinion. Just like the popularity contest known as Homecoming King and Queen in high school. For example, scifi/fantasy writer Patty Jansen delivers a good read and she is not a “bestselling” author - by her own admission. And yet she says she makes a decent income.

In the end, the consumer more or less determines success. Although the crowd is fickle. If Shakespeare hadn’t been able to sell tickets to his plays, we wouldn’t even know he existed. And E L James is laughing all the way to the bank for a novel that is basically poorly written fan fiction. 

I repeat: the public is fickle and tastes change. And often change rapidly. George Frederic Handel was knocking it out of the park writing Italian opera for London audiences. They couldn’t get enough. Then, suddenly, almost overnight, Londoners got sick of Italian opera. Handel went bankrupt, then discovered English oratorio, and the rest is history. Messiah and the “Hallelujah Chorus” are ever with us.

Dead - And Shouldn’t Be Forgotten

Jacques Futrelle

When I was a kid, I loved Jacques Futrelle’s The Thinking Machine stories. I still remember “The Problem of Cell 13”, a classic locked room study.

Sadly, Futrelle was only 37 when he went down with the Titanic, telling his wife to save herself. Several Thinking Machine manuscripts also lie at the bottom of the Atlantic.

You can get Tales of The Thinking Machine for free. Well worth reading.

Edgar Wallace

One of the most prolific authors ever, today Wallace is a virtual unknown. In his lifetime, he wrote 175 novels, 957 short stories, 18 stage plays, and reams of news reports (he was a journalist), articles, screen plays, poetry, and historical non-fiction. His works sold over 50 million copies, although few are in print today.

His prolificity was due to his dictating his work onto wax cylinders, the dictaphone of his day, and having his secretaries type the dictations. By dictating, he often produced a novel in 2 or 3 days.

Not finding anyone to publish his first novel, he self-published it in 1905; creating his own publishing company, Tallis Press.

Never heard of him? Does King Kong ring a bell?

Wallace died suddenly, while working on King Kong, in 1932 at the age of 56.

Many of Wallace’s books can be found for free online. One source is ebooks@Adelaide, and there are others. He’s worth checking out.

Patricia Wentworth

Agatha Christie is a towering figure to this day, and Patricia Wentworth had the misfortune to live and write when Christie was in her prime. It’s pretty tough living in the shadow of a towering figure.

However, Ms Wentworth was by no means a hack writer. I think she’s on par with Christie, and the Miss Silver mysteries are as good as Christie’s Miss Marple.

What’s more, Miss Silver is a working woman instead of a gossipy busybody. Miss Silver is a private investigator, the forerunner of Sharon McCone, Kinsey Milhone, VI Warshawski, and all the rest.

Faded Page has all the Miss Silver mysteries, except number 4. And best of all, they’re free!

Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh is another good mystery author who is obscured by Christie’s long shadow.

Her Inspector Roderick Alleyn was a bit unique in the day, because he’s a police detective. While Christie’s detectives are either private investigators or amateurs, we enter the world of the police procedural with Marsh.

Marsh was also heavily involved in the theater and her novels have a certain theatrical flair to them. They are very much worth reading. Check for them on the used market.

A.A. Fish

A.A. Fish is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, another prolific author, best known for Perry Mason.

While Gardner and Perry Mason are household names, Fish, Bertha Cool, and Donald Lam, are not.

The Cool and Lam mysteries are good reads. My only complaint is that Bertha gets short shrift most of the time, which is too bad as I think she is far more interesting than Donald Lam. I think Gardner missed a bet here. He could have had something going like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

The books are good nonetheless. Get them on the used market.

Richard & Frances Lockridge

Popular in their day, the Lockridges produced scores of novels, all set in the same world, spread across several different series and characters.

Unfortunately time has not been kind to them, and that is a shame. They were good writers. They’re probably best known for the Mr & Mrs North mysteries.

I like Pam and Jerry a lot. New Yorkers with money (Jerry’s a publisher) and a lot of time on their hands, especially Pam, they get embroiled in some very interesting situations and murders. Pam is the one who mostly helps their friend Lieutenant Bill Weigand solve the crime.

Funny and suspenseful, the books are all around good reads. Pam is a most entertaining female sleuth.

You can find a complete list of all of the Lockridges’s works on GoodOleBooks.

Look for these on the used market. They’re very good.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Taylor was on one occasion referred to as the Buster Keaton of the mystery genre.

I’ve only read her Leonidas Witherall series. The man who looks like Shakespeare. Asey Mayo, the “Codfish Sherlock”, is her other and more well-known creation.

The Witherall mysteries are zany fun. Something along the lines of the Keystone Cops in book form. Long on laughs and light on the mystery, they are well worth your time if you want something light and not taxing to read.

Catch these on the used market.

Alive - And Need to be Read

There are a number of writers of the traditional detective story today, featuring either amateur or professional sleuths. I’m not acquainted with them all, but I’ll share a selection of those with which I am.

P.F. Ford

Ford’s Dave Slater and Norman Norman mystery series is dynamite. Full of humor and suspense, as well as the mis-adventures of Slater’s love life, Dave and Norman make the quintessential odd couple.

The books are something of a blend of police procedural and cozy. And while there is plenty of humor, the stories can be on the dark side.

Great books. I’ve read the entire series and am champing at the bit for the next one.

You can pick them up on Amazon.

J.P. Choquette

Tayt Waters is a contemporary private investigator who is quite a colorful character.

The mysteries are funny and suspenseful. Clean reads with a lot of grit and a splash of the dark about them.

There are currently 2 Tayt Waters mysteries, I hope more are in the works. You can get them at Amazon.

J.A. Menzies

Menzies’s Manziuk and Ryan mysteries start off with a bang in a classic country estate murder. Shaded Light: The Case of the Tactless Trophy Wife. Who would have thought there were “country” estates in suburban Toronto, but I guess the rich get it all.

Manziuk and Ryan are another odd couple team police procedural team. Much more at odds with each other than Ford’s Slater and Norman. Their goal is to try and work together as a team.

I enjoyed the Golden Age feel in a contemporary setting of Shaded Light and look forward to reading the other books in the series, which may be found on Amazon.

Ellen Seltz

Ms Seltz writes a classic English-style whodunit, complete with that droll understated British humor and memorable characters.

If that’s your cup of tea, then her Mottley and Baker series is for you. Get them on Amazon.

Summing Up

As I’ve noted before, I prefer the traditional whodunit over the thriller. And while thrillers are all the rage these days, I take comfort in the fact that we do have (myself included) writers who wish to carry on the tradition of the classic detective novel.

While the mystery audience is aging (it can be a bit disconcerting to a writer to see your audience dying off), I find hope in younger characters, such as Tayt Waters entering the fray; or mixed race teams such as Manziuk and Ryan, making their appearance; and the contemporary issues Slater and Norman deal with. This approach will help to make the traditional mystery more relevant to a younger audience.

The western died off quickly. But now with the indie revolution, I see the western making a comeback. Not dependent on the bottom lines of big corporations, indie authors can write what they love and target very specific audiences.

While the mystery isn’t dead by any means, I see hope that, like the western, indie authors will give this venerable genre a continued lease on life. And who knows? Tomorrow the thriller just might be passé.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

The Detective Novel

Last week we looked at the mystery vs the thriller. And we all know the thriller is hot, hot, hot these days. The traditional mystery? Not so much. Although the mystery in its chick lit cozy form is doing very well. This probably has something to do with the chick lit element, more than the mystery.

In any case, I’d like to take a look today at the detective novel. That form of the mystery that started the mystery craze, and in effect defined the mystery genre.

Crime stories go all the way back to the Arabian Nights. However, the crime story as we know it today, comes from the fertile imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, with his creation of C Auguste Dupin in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in 1841.

Poe even invented the word “ratiocination” for the thinking process that Dupin used to solve crime.

If Poe invented the detective story, and all detective stories ever since have more or less followed Poe’s formula, it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that made the detective story a mainstay of the literary scene.

I find it of interest that Dupin and Holmes are not professionals. They’re amateurs. The police are at best bumblers who know when they’re licked and need to call in the brilliant amateur specialist. And this is a feature of most mysteries that have an amateur sleuth.

Of course CSI-type forensics were a long ways off and the solution of crimes often did require the exercise of those “little grey cells”, whether or not the sleuth was a professional or amateur.

The 1930s are often called The Golden Age of the mystery, by which we mean the detective story. During that time, scores of amateur and professional sleuths appeared and disappeared. A few became household names: such as Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, and Ellery Queen.

Others have faded to near oblivion. Sleuths such as Miss Silver, Mr & Mrs North, The Thinking Machine, Dr Thorndyke, Asey Mayo, and Loveday Brooke.

These sleuths, and many others, used ratiocination to solve the crimes that frequently baffled the police.

Today, however, the amateur is, or seems to be, very much out of his depth. DNA. Advanced surveillance equipment. Hacking of phones and computers. Traffic and surveillance cameras. Highly advanced crime labs. All these things are beyond the amateur sleuth, and even small town police departments.

Which may explain the rise of the modern chick lit cozy craze, that unlikely fusion of chick lit and the cozy mystery, and the vintage mystery, which is set in the pre-CSI past.

The vintage mystery, if well done, can be a very satisfying read, taking us back to The Golden Age — our glamorized view of the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.

The chick lit cozy, focuses on a small town, or a small circle of people within a large city, crafts and small businesses, women’s issues, and at some point the crime. These reads are very popular. They’re not officially labelled “chick lit cozies”. That is a term I adopted from another writer who used it to differentiate them from traditional cozies. They’re simply called cozies and have essentially taken over that sub-genre.

Personally, I’m not fond of the chick lit cozy. Generally, there is more chick lit than cozy mystery in these books. Particularly the sweet romance element. Which probably explains why the sub-genre is dominated by women writers and readers.

However, they may end up being the mystery genre’s salvation. Mystery readers are aging. A fact brought vividly home to me recently when a Facebook ad for my Justinia Wright mystery omnibus was almost totally served to those 65 and over. And in that group, overwhelmingly to women.

The mystery is essentially a puzzle. A problem, the crime, that needs to be solved. It is a riddle, and we want to know the answer.

Which, to my mind, means that for all the sophisticated data gathering equipment available to the professionals, it still takes ratiocination, those little gray cells, to make sense of all the data and determine motive, means, and opportunity.

This fact actually makes the detective story very modern. A part of our ongoing discussion concerning the role of people and machines. The detective story clearly comes down on the people side of the equation.

The detective story is a human story. It is a story about righting wrongs. Wrongs done to people and society at large. The detective story focuses on a small group of people to find a killer and bring that killer to justice. It’s personal. It’s about bringing balance and order to the world of a group of people that has gotten out of balance and lacks order due to the violent crime.

Which is why I do think the mystery will endure. What it will take to bring it back into popularity, I don’t know. But the success of series such as Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone give me hope. Lots of hope.

We all know the big names of the mystery genre, even if some of us aren’t mystery fans. Next week, though, I’d like to focus on some of the lesser lights and their creators, and even a few of the new kids on the block.

Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!