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hrjWell, at least that's the cryptic note I have in my blogging ideas file. (Having a rotating-topics blogging schedule certainly helps with inspiration, but it isn't foolproof.)
Hanging out online with a lot of readers and writers, the air is always filled with a lot of book recommendations whizzing past. I've mentioned on any number of occasions how wary I am of relying on other people's recs for my own reading. There have been too many times when the majority of my friends love something and it leaves me cold. Or when people are raving about how mind-blowing a book or story is and I find it ... merely good. (Such a judgment! "Merely good." What is the world coming to when that's a disappointing experience?) It makes me doubt my taste. Certainly it makes me doubt the value of my own recommendations in return.
And then there's the whole intersecting-communities thing. If I retweet a book/story link, or mention something here on my journal, I have to think about who my audience is and what interpretation they'll put on my recommendation. I tend to ask myself, "Is this something that people will both be potentially interested in and that they would be unlikely to hear about if I don't mention it?" It puts me in something of a dilemma. I certainly consider it a goal to support my publisher and my fellow authors there, but when it comes down to it, extremely few of the books they put out would be of any interest to the majority of my readership. And I don't really have the background to recommend and promote the rest because they aren't in genres that I myself read and Enjoy.
That leaves a fairly limited set of categories. The non-fiction is the easiest. The "won't otherwise hear of it" factor is high, and potential interest will tend to focus on topic rather than flavor. Fiction is harder. I'm more likely to try to bring interesting-looking queer SFF and historical works (especially from smaller presses or even self-published) to the attention of a wider audience, simply because there's more informational value in doing so than in the converse (talking about mainstream sff/historical works to queer audiences). But there are a couple of major pitfalls to talk around: quality and sex.
Experience has suggested to me that the things a "mainstream" reader is most interested in knowing about an indie queer book in order to evaluate likely enjoyment is what the writing quality is, and what the nature and extent of the sexual content is. And thereby we land on the two hottest hot buttons in the field.
Every time I try to talk about writing quality in lesfic groups, I get challenged by people (not everyone, but a lot of vocal ones) who think "writing quality" means "grammar, spelling, and punctuation" and whose immediate come-back is "Well, I've seen typos and grammar errors in mainstream books too, so there!" It can be difficult even to establish the terms of the conversation. So when I recommend a book and find myself saying things like, "The prose is somewhat pedestrian and monotonous, but the characters may balance that out for you," one part of my audience may consider this very useful information while another part may bristle and take offense.
Sexual content presents a somewhat different problem. Within lesfic as a genre, it is considered unremarkable (though far from obligatory) to have a significant amount of fairly explicit sexual content. A level that in other genres would solidly put something in the category of erotica is often considered simply "spicy". Some publishers or reviewers will categorize works on a "heat" level in ways that the choosy reader might find useful. But overall I find myself torn between an aversion to focusing excessively on the sexual content of a book and knowing that my own readership (i.e., of this blog and my other social media) have a fairly wide range of interest and comfort levels with explicit sexual content, and that not touching on this aspect when discussing a book would be like a Thai restaurant leaving off the chili-pepper icons from the menu.
In a way, both these issues have to do with negotiating the unremarked defaults of different reading communities and trying to provide "translations" between different languages that structure meaning in contradictory ways. I've focused mainly on the "lesfic to mainstream" translation, but there are similar difficulties in the other direction. A primarily lesfic reader may insist on knowing whether the fabulous queer female character in that fantasy novel is "exclusively lesbian" in a way that seems quaint and narrow-minded to a mainstream reader. And the typical lesfic reader needs a pretty strong incentive to look outside the canon of contemporary romance/mystery/thriller stories. For that readership, my hardest job is to figure out what books might provide that incentive.
So, in short (when was I every short?), when I make book recommendations, I'm generally looking for a "value added" situation. What use is it for me to praise the same books that everyone else is praising to the same audience? But part of that added value is making sure that my recommendations come with enough context to build that bridge across expectations.
Hanging out online with a lot of readers and writers, the air is always filled with a lot of book recommendations whizzing past. I've mentioned on any number of occasions how wary I am of relying on other people's recs for my own reading. There have been too many times when the majority of my friends love something and it leaves me cold. Or when people are raving about how mind-blowing a book or story is and I find it ... merely good. (Such a judgment! "Merely good." What is the world coming to when that's a disappointing experience?) It makes me doubt my taste. Certainly it makes me doubt the value of my own recommendations in return.
And then there's the whole intersecting-communities thing. If I retweet a book/story link, or mention something here on my journal, I have to think about who my audience is and what interpretation they'll put on my recommendation. I tend to ask myself, "Is this something that people will both be potentially interested in and that they would be unlikely to hear about if I don't mention it?" It puts me in something of a dilemma. I certainly consider it a goal to support my publisher and my fellow authors there, but when it comes down to it, extremely few of the books they put out would be of any interest to the majority of my readership. And I don't really have the background to recommend and promote the rest because they aren't in genres that I myself read and Enjoy.
That leaves a fairly limited set of categories. The non-fiction is the easiest. The "won't otherwise hear of it" factor is high, and potential interest will tend to focus on topic rather than flavor. Fiction is harder. I'm more likely to try to bring interesting-looking queer SFF and historical works (especially from smaller presses or even self-published) to the attention of a wider audience, simply because there's more informational value in doing so than in the converse (talking about mainstream sff/historical works to queer audiences). But there are a couple of major pitfalls to talk around: quality and sex.
Experience has suggested to me that the things a "mainstream" reader is most interested in knowing about an indie queer book in order to evaluate likely enjoyment is what the writing quality is, and what the nature and extent of the sexual content is. And thereby we land on the two hottest hot buttons in the field.
Every time I try to talk about writing quality in lesfic groups, I get challenged by people (not everyone, but a lot of vocal ones) who think "writing quality" means "grammar, spelling, and punctuation" and whose immediate come-back is "Well, I've seen typos and grammar errors in mainstream books too, so there!" It can be difficult even to establish the terms of the conversation. So when I recommend a book and find myself saying things like, "The prose is somewhat pedestrian and monotonous, but the characters may balance that out for you," one part of my audience may consider this very useful information while another part may bristle and take offense.
Sexual content presents a somewhat different problem. Within lesfic as a genre, it is considered unremarkable (though far from obligatory) to have a significant amount of fairly explicit sexual content. A level that in other genres would solidly put something in the category of erotica is often considered simply "spicy". Some publishers or reviewers will categorize works on a "heat" level in ways that the choosy reader might find useful. But overall I find myself torn between an aversion to focusing excessively on the sexual content of a book and knowing that my own readership (i.e., of this blog and my other social media) have a fairly wide range of interest and comfort levels with explicit sexual content, and that not touching on this aspect when discussing a book would be like a Thai restaurant leaving off the chili-pepper icons from the menu.
In a way, both these issues have to do with negotiating the unremarked defaults of different reading communities and trying to provide "translations" between different languages that structure meaning in contradictory ways. I've focused mainly on the "lesfic to mainstream" translation, but there are similar difficulties in the other direction. A primarily lesfic reader may insist on knowing whether the fabulous queer female character in that fantasy novel is "exclusively lesbian" in a way that seems quaint and narrow-minded to a mainstream reader. And the typical lesfic reader needs a pretty strong incentive to look outside the canon of contemporary romance/mystery/thriller stories. For that readership, my hardest job is to figure out what books might provide that incentive.
So, in short (when was I every short?), when I make book recommendations, I'm generally looking for a "value added" situation. What use is it for me to praise the same books that everyone else is praising to the same audience? But part of that added value is making sure that my recommendations come with enough context to build that bridge across expectations.
