Review: Electric Literature

When I first read that Amazon offered many magazines in digital form straight to your Kindle, I snorted. Kindles are for bibliophiles, and when I think of magazines I think of things like Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Those aren’t things that real book readers read, right?
But while those titles are available and are very popular on the Kindle, there are also many literary magazines in digital format. Some of these include The New Yorker, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
What do all these magazines have in common? They all contain short stories. Yes, for as little as $2.99 a month, you can have multiple short stories sent to your Kindle for you to enjoy, in addition to articles and columns to keep you up-to-date on your particular genre, from politics to science fiction.
Ironically enough, none of the magazines I just listed is the one I chose to read for this review. Instead, I picked something less popular and mainstream. This independently-published magazine is called Electric Literature, and while it is a bit more costly than some popular serials ($4.95 on your Kindle for one issue), it is also quite a bit more substantial. Around a hundred and twenty pages thick in physical form, each issue contains five short stories or excerpts from soon-to-be-released novels.
The contents of Electric Literature #2 include Colson Whitehead’s “The Comedian,” Stephen O’Connor’s “Love,” Pasha Malla’s “The Slough,” Marisa Silver’s “Three Sisters,” and Lydia Davis’s “The Cows.” The stories got more interesting as they went along; that is to say, “The Cows” was my favorite, followed closely by “Three Sisters.”
Davis chronicles the life of the three cows that live in the field next to her house. Basically, they eat, they sit, they stand in a line, they eat some more. Pretty boring, right? But her writing is poetic, and she evokes the thought that our own lives can be just as meaningless if we don’t watch out. “They come from behind the barn as though something is going to happen, and then nothing happens,” she says.
Instead of taking this as a sad description of a pastoral scene, I take it as a warning to seize the moment, to take each day and make it something exciting and new. That’s not to mention that I actually enjoyed reading about the three cows, all of them trying to make their day interesting (and failing miserably).
Silver’s story gives insight into three sisters’ lives through the event of a snow day. Connie, the middle sister, trying to be responsible, fixes her siblings breakfast and ensures that they wear their jackets and snow boots to school. The storm gets worse as the day progresses, until finally a family with three daughters is trapped in the snow outside Connie’s house. While the family waits in her living room for the tow truck to arrive, Connie begins to realize just how important sisters are, especially when your parents aren’t as responsible or caring as they should be. She’s glad that these sisters would have had each other if something terrible had happened and they had not been able to get out of their freezing car.
I would recommend short stories like those in Electric Literature if you like content without involving yourself in a novel, or if you want to analyze something with a cryptic ending. If you need something a little more defined and character-based, I think you could probably pass this up.
And if you’re not sure you want to invest your money on a digital magazine, there’s more good news. Electric Literature, like all Kindle books, allows for a free sample, but also, all of the magazines offer a free two weeks’ trial subscription.

(You can also read my review at The Consortium's website.)

Janus at the door: looking behind and ahead

I thought now would be a good time to look back at where I was a year ago in my life. Well, weather-wise, we have seen some definite changes. There was no blizzard on Christmas, and it has hardly gotten below freezing this winter. Global Warming must be true! In more good news, my house is already tree-less. We might have hung on to our Christmas tree longer than recommended last year.
My resolutions for 2010 were as follows (verbatim a blog last January):

finish writing on one novel.
read more books this year than I did last year. (count for 2009: 28)
get my house more organized. a place for everything, and everything in its place.
clean the house more often.
read more Greek!

Did I succeed in these goals?
1. I sort of/not really finished writing one novel. I wrote "the end" on Into the Flames, but I skipped a lot of plot development, and Bracken and John's characters have changed dramatically. This year my resolution is to fill in these gaps, straighten out the boys' roles, and get a good second re-write in.
2. In 2010 I read 37 books, so that I definitely succeeded in. This year my goal is 55.
3. Eh, what is a "place" really? I think my house is more organized than it was a year ago, but there are still a few things looking for homes.
4. I have no idea. I don't really record how often I clean the house. So we'll go with yes.
5. I did not read more Greek in 2010 unless you count the few words that "scholarly" authors tried to teach me while I was reading their books at work. And I knew all those words already. Because I took two years of Greek.

Anyway, here's my goals for 2011, so I can hold myself accountable and what-not.
1. Be an awesome Consortium artist! THis sounds vague, but that's because I'm not quite sure what all I'm going to be required to do as the year progresses. But don't worry, my spreadsheet and I are completely ready to aid and abet Aaron and all his Consortium needs! My January list is already full.
2. As aforementioned, really work hard on finishing Into the Flames.
3. Improve myself as an editor. Not because I'm bad right now, but because we can always find ways to improve ourselves.
4. As aforementioned, read 55 books. I picked this number because that's how many Mara read in 2010, and I can't have her beating me.

And that's all I have for you today. I'm about fifteen pages away from finishing my first novel of 2011; but I'll write more on that later.

The Young Adult Series Conundrum

It bothers me how many young adult novels are part of a series. I guess this is great for you if you’ve been in the young adult section for years now, perusing its shelves with eager anticipation as each now tome is produced. You know which authors you like and you know that what they come out with next will be worth your time and money. You know which ones are bad and to avoid. But I’ve been out of the book scene for four years, and am only just now daring to inch myself out there to see what’s available. After years of assigned reading and another year of trying to catch up on some classics (and polishing off the entire Percy Jackson series in a couple of weeks), I’m finally ready to being reading the new stuff. Since I’m planning to review books for the Consortium starting in January, it kind of makes sense that I stay on top of the books that are coming hot off the presses. Nobody wants to read a review of a book that is a few years old. Most everybody has already read it and reviewed it by that time. That’s where these series really do me a disservice. When looking at the “hot new” books that are coming out in 2011, almost all of them are part of a series. I don’t want to have to go back six years or so to find the first book. And what if it turns out to be good, I don’t have time to waste on reading all the subsequent books. Whatever happened to stand alones? Even if they turn out to be dismal books, at least I can read them by themselves and not feel guilty for not picking up the sequels. I don’t have to wait and see if the series will improve.
As it is, I am going to be trudging through the young adult (my genre of choice) and other novels of 2011 with care, searching for ones I feel worth my time. And who knows, maybe I’ll come across a series I find worth reading through the entire thing.