I’m a published author. I’m also an avid reader.
So is it okay for me to talk online about the books I enjoy?
Long before I was published, I was a book blogger. I wasn’t on
anyone’s mailing list and I didn’t receive ARCs, I just read widely and
wanted to chat about the books I loved.
I started my first blog in 2007, called Great Stories.
After a few years of building up a reasonable following of like-minded
readers, I realised my reading choices were too eclectic for a single
blog, so I created a second one dedicated to fantasy, urban fantasy,
paranormal and zombie stories, called Other Worlds (mostly YA, but not exclusively).
Even back in those days, I confined my posts to books I enjoyed.
Probably because I bought most of what I read and reviewed, and – with
my own writing going on in the background – I didn’t have the time to
invest in books that didn’t appeal to me.
And then in 2011, after many years of writing and submitting my own
work to publishers, I was signed by Text Publishing in Australia (and
then later by Indigo/Orion in the UK and Tundra Books in North America).
So I started a third blog focused on my own writing (the one you’re
reading now).
Within a few months of that first contract, I wound down the other
two blogs (due to time commitments). But I still kept track of what I
was reading on Goodreads. I had never given starred ratings on my own
blogs, but picked up the habit on Goodreads, given it’s a convention of
the site.
When Shadows debuted in Australia in 2012, I became a Goodreads author, which gave me a completely different perspective on the site.
Now, with a click of a button, I can see what everyone is
saying about my work. Most reviews of my books are thoughtful,
encouraging and often grin-inspiring. Others rip my heart out and leave
it crushed on the side of the road. The latter are never easy to read,
but I respect everyone’s right to express their opinions – after all, I
don’t have to read them.
But experiencing Goodreads as an author made me realise that
everything I write about other books can be read by their authors. A
no-brainer, yes, but I’d never really sat down and thought that through.
My reviews were always for my fellow readers: “Here I loved this, you
might too”.
I started to wonder what authors thought about having other authors
rate and review their books. Granted, my ratings and comments were
overwhelmingly positive, but still….So for a while, I didn’t know how to
‘be’ on Goodreads. I still wanted to keep track of what I’d read and
what I wanted to read. (My Goodreads TBR collection is always my go-to
list when I can’t decide what to pick up next.)
Then I changed tack. I stopped reviewing all together. But I missed
it. I actually enjoy writing about books I’ve loved, especially when it
leads to conversations with other bloggers/readers about those books.
So I decided to write comments about books I’d read and not give a
rating. But that felt like a cop-out. And I know how lovely it is to get
a strong star rating on Goodreads.
As of lately, I’m back to leaving ratings and (mostly brief) comments
because it feels more meaningful to me as a reader. As usual, I only
post on Goodreads about books I’ve really enjoyed, so they’ll generally
all be novels I feel deserve five stars. And again, this is because I’m
only reading books I seriously expect to love. So my Goodreads posts are
definitely recommendations. They are not intended to be a critical
analysis. (By the way, I also include my ever-growing favourite reads
list here on my site.)
I know there are divided opinions about how authors should behave as
readers, particularly online. I’m trying to find a comfortable middle
ground where I tread lightly in both roles, but still offer something
meaningful for my own readers, and readers who share my tastes in books.
I’m interested to hear thoughts from book bloggers (and authors) on the topic.
(Side note: I wrote a post on Life of Pi – particularly
focused on the island scene – on Great Stories back in 2008 that, for a
long time, had the number one Google ranking for ‘Life of Pi explained’.
It still gets hundreds of hits every week and still attracts comments.
I’m actually kind of proud of that. You can find it here.)
Life of Pi explained
Life of Pi
by Yann Martel is one of the most analysed, discussed and debated books
of recent years, not just because of its plot, but because it makes the
reader question what they have read and what they believe.
The
Booker Prize winner author was one of the major draw cards at last
weekend’s Brisbane Writer’s Festival, and he didn’t disappoint. He spoke
about his motivation for writing Life of Pi, and how researching the
story changed his life along the way.
In this post, I’m going to share a few of the things he spoke about. Those who haven’t read Life of Pi – and intend to – may want to look away now. Don’t spoil the experience of discovering the book’s talking points for yourself.
Life of Pi
provides the kind of literary experience fans tend hold close to their
hearts. Yann understands that, and opened his talk by promising to try
and do “the least damage” to individual interpretation of the story.
Because the interpretation of this story is everything.
The tale
begins with Pi, the son of a zookeeper in India, who becomes curious
about religion and simultaneously practices Hinduism, Islam and
Christianity, much to the consternation of his respective religious
teachers.
Pi’s religious instruction is interrupted when his
family decides to relocate – along with a large menagerie of animals –
to Canada. Tragically, the ship sinks during a storm.
What follows is a fascinating, perplexing and occasionally disturbing story of survival.
When
Pi finally washes up on the shores of Mexico 227 days later, he
recounts two versions of his story. The same facts are offered, with a
different interpretation.
In the first, Pi is the sole human
survivor on a life boat with a zebra, hyena, orangutan and a huge Bengal
tiger called Mr Parker. The second has no animals and is far more
brutal. One requires suspension of disbelief, the other is “reasonable”.
Yann
said the very structure of the story itself is designed to force the
reader to subconsciously choose whether they are prepared to walk away
from the “reasonable” to accept the better story. In other words to have
faith, when to do so makes no sense.
The background to how the
novel came about is interesting in itself, but this post is more
concerned with the story what makes it such an original piece of
narrative fiction.
The key for Yann was the question posed by Pi
at the end of the book to the Japanese shipwreck investigators: which is
the better story? For the author, this is the question at the heart of
choosing a life of faith.
While researching Life of Pi,
Yann – who describes himself as being “secular” before writing the book –
read a lot of scripture and books about scriptures. In doing so, he
started to ask himself “what would it be like to have faith?”
To
find the answer, he put aside the aspects of religion that repel him and
went to India’s diverse holy places “pretending” to have faith. He
candidly admits that once inside that space, he didn’t want to leave.
Up
to that point, Yann says he’d always considered himself a “reasonable”
person. “When you’re reasonable, you have to make sense of everything.”
But
he said being reasonable didn’t leave a lot of room for religion. “And
when religion is ignored, art suffers. Society doesn’t dream when it is
being uber reasonable.”
Life of Pi was his personal protest to stop making sense. To believe in a reality beyond the chemical.
One of the great moments of the session on the weekend was Yann’s
explanation of the purpose of “the island”, one of the more obtuse plot
developments in modern literature.
He said it served the sole
purpose of making the “animal” version of the story harder and harder to
believe. Even more so than the chance of a blind boy and blind tiger,
coming across another blind shipwreck survivor, it’s at the point of the
island that disbelief breaks down and the reader wants rationality
kicks in.
“Many readers assume it is something deeply symbolic
they just don’t get, or it’s an hallucination –they need a reason to
prop up the fiction.”
But in his own words “religion goes beyond the confines of the reasonable”.
The
second story – the one without animals and strange flesh-eating islands
– involves no faith. “It’s all about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s
not the reality I want. I want to go back to the first story and choose
to believe.”
For him, life is a matter of subjective
interpretation of objective reality. Ultimately, Yann presents a very
post modernistic perspective (all stories have equal validity – there is
no ultimate truth, only what you believe).
Having said that, the
author admits that after looking at all major religions, he’s become
“pretty comfortable with Jesus”, although it’s safe to say he is not a
member of any organised religion.
Regardless of whether you share his views on religion or philosophy, there’s no denying Life of Pi
is an amazing use of narrative structure to encourage readers to think
beyond the story – to even question what they believe and why.
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