7.1.12: From the Editor: YA-YA Readerhood

YA-YA Readerhood

I love young adult (YA) books, and I’m not alone in that, either. Just ask the 116 million Twilight fans and the 450 million Harry Potter fans. They’re good stories, engaging and striking a chord within each of us in one way or another. Both of those particular series are categorized as young adult fiction novels, but that didn’t discourage readers of all ages to jump on the bandwagon and see what all the lore was about.

Not all YA books capture our hearts, but most of them make a real effort to do so and succeed. That category encapsulates many different genres within itself, such as romance, science fiction, mystery, and so on. There’s really something for everyone. It’s a huge market for the right writer and publisher. I’m sure that many publishers are looking for the next J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, S.E. Hinton, Judy Blume, or even C.S. Lewis. Even so, YA novels are geared for a teenage audience, usually 12 to 18 years of age. But this is such a broad age group to categorize and to write for. Mostly, these books are written with a teenager as the protagonist, more dialogue than adult fiction, plot and word usage designed to appeal to an adolescent, and ethical or moral values that add meaning to the plot and/or characters. Who wouldn’t love to sit back and enjoy that?

The problem is, because the audience has such a broad age range, it’s hard to know if the book is too “young” or too “adult” to be considered young adult fiction. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has some say in what constitutes a YA novel, but really, it runs quite a gamut of educational experience. As parents, we have to be experts-at-a-glance when approving some YA novels for our teens. That’s quite a task – barring reading the entire novel ourselves before our child does – and if your kid is like mine, when she has a book in her sights, she wants to read it NOW! So, good luck with that. I guess there has to be a certain amount of trust in the integrity of the author and publisher that what they are presenting to our kids is age-appropriate and not over the top in divulging the pains of adulthood in a way that we never want our kids to experience…ever. Pollyanna as that sounds, it is sometimes the reality.

The long and the short of it is this: I love to read young adult fiction, and just because it’s titled for one audience doesn’t mean we can’t all enjoy the fruits of the YA author’s labor. And, if you do have kids in that age group, how great is it to read the same book together and actually have something to talk about with them without too much eye-rolling and tsking going on, right?

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M. Chris Johnson is owner and Editor-in-Chief

6.4.12: From the Editor: Living the Dream – It’s an Everyday Journey Not a One-Time Decision

Living the Dream – It’s an Everyday Journey Not a One-Time Decision

It’s Friday, I’m outside on my deck enjoying the sun…finally. As much as I love Portland, the rain gets to me; I need the sun once in a while, so when it comes, I turn into this sun-zombie where I wander out in it and just stand there with my arms out moaning….Ahhhhh. The funny thing is when it rains, I want to go do things like go downtown, shop, check out local bookstores, people watch, whatever, but when the sun comes out, I don’t want to really do anything but enjoy it, soak it up, be as lazy as a cat on a sunny windowsill.

As I sit here contemplating this article, I can’t help but think I’m the luckiest person on the planet. I live in this great town with everything at my disposal, I work for myself, read books, talk about books, plot book events and book activities. I am livin’ the dream, Baby!

But, why didn’t anyone tell me that my dream was not going to be just one event but a real journey? Living the dream doesn’t mean everything is coming up roses. In fact, I think it is almost the opposite. Your dream challenges you. When you live your dream, you have to choose that dream every day. You have to make decisions every day that affect that dream. If you have a clear understanding of what you want and where you want to go, it’s easier to see the right choices in front of you but it’s not always that clear. You have to make tough decisions, decisions that aren’t pleasant or could change someone else’s course. Just because you have your dream in your hands right now doesn’t mean it will stay that way.

I’m constantly surprised by the options that present themselves and then having to determine if the choice I make/made is staying true to that dream. Hopefully, the end result will sustain that dream; keep it alive and where I want it to be. I thought I would just be all fat, dumb and happy reading a good book on a sunny day for the rest of my life!

There’s so much more to come and how we determine our next step is how our dream will play out…good or bad. My dream is only just beginning. Every day is living that dream and making it what it will be tomorrow and by golly, I’m determined to stay true to it!

So, dear Readers, get out there, take that chance and live your dream, make those decisions and don’t look back!

Readers Unite!

M. Chris Johnson
Editor-in-Chief

5.1.12: From the Editor Quandary

What is the subject suppose to be for a “From the Editor” article? Is there a standard for this forum? I’ve looked around and haven’t gleaned any set expectations. In fact, I have to admit that I never used to care what editors had to say because they edit the entire magazine; their work is already throughout the folds of picturesque pages and meaty articles, so what more would they have to say that would hold my attention?

Well, now I read every editorial I can find! I want to know what they have to say, what they want to talk about… mainly, because I have no idea what to write about now that I’m expected to do these darn things! I feel that I’m not that exciting of a person to blog about my daily activity and make it interesting enough for readers and long enough to fill a section opposite the masthead in a publication.

Some editors I’ve been reading lately babble on about their adorable cat or their prolific garden. Others take the opportunity to vent their political beliefs and foibles. That’s just not my style. Oh, I can complain and bellyache with the best of them about any ole bothersome thing, but that’s not really what I want to display to folks reading a book review publication. It’s just not right…

What feels good and feels right is to talk about all things books, because – let’s face it – that’s an endless subject of fascinating topics. I don’t ever seem to tire of discussing books, stories, authors, and the book industry. I think I could probably even get in some bellyaching, too!

As we begin to gather reviews and book covers for our printed June edition, I am reminded of how far we have come and how many exciting new things we have in store for you in the remainder of 2012. Stay tuned and let me hear from you!

Readers Unite!
M. Chris Johnson
Editor in Chief

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3.5.12: From the Editor

Welcome to our one-year anniversary issue!

It seems as though we’ve just begun and yet, we have a whole year full of activities to look back on, learn from and vividly relive. What stands out the most to me is all the new friends we’ve made…just like you. You mean so much to us and we are encouraged by your comments and support. Without all the new friends we’ve made, I doubt we would be having this first year celebration issue. You drive us forward!

So, it seems natural that we share what we love about reading with others who want to share what they love about reading and voilà! We’ve made a new friend or deepened an existing one. It’s easy to escape in a good book and never reach out to others but I truly believe that in our introversion, we miss out on the entire experience in the life of an exceptional book; read it, tell someone about it, recommend it to others and then, once they’ve read it, talk about it with them. The impact is palpable. Your life has been touched; you have, in turn, touched someone else’s and so on. Join a readers’ group (or better yet – start your own!), or a writer’s group, go to author readings, hang out in bookstores, libraries and even some coffee shops have been known to spark lively discussions among total strangers about a really good author or book.

My mom and I walk our rat terrier, Jaxon two miles every day. He won’t let us miss a day – rain or shine. Sometimes to pass the time, we tell each other stories. We are both avid readers so usually, they are the current story we’re reading or one we’ve recently read. It’s a great way to escape the tedium of a long walk and – let’s just say it – to simply escape. I cherish these times with my mom. You certainly learn a lot about someone by listening to them tell a tale that they really enjoy. That’s the great thing about relationships – sharing. Funny, because that’s the great thing about reading too – sharing.

Don’t let people pass you by! Let’s make it our mission in life to connect people with books and make our own lives richer in the process!

Readers Unite!

M. Chris Johnson
Editor in Chief

01.05.12: From the Editor: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! What a joyful sentiment. It’s filled with cheerfulness, potential, renewed enthusiasm and giddy anticipation. A new year brings new buds of hope. Hope. As I think back over this last year, I am reminded of all the newness and growth – even through painful situations, Portland Book Review experienced. Some positive improvements but many lessons learned as well.

Portland Book Review will celebrate the beginning of its second year in publication in 2012! We have so many aspirations and are rejuvenated with fresh ideas and hopeful expectations of more great books and reviews to come! With our new Copy Editors, we are armed to move forward with renewed vigor (and accuracy!). Our distribution is growing and our web presence grows every week. We have a new theme to our website allowing us to follow through on some new ideas to engage you, entertain you and inspire you. Let us know what you’d like to see and read and we’ll get on it! Stayed tuned for more to come in 2012…

May the new year bring you joy, the excitement of a year of activities and, many good books filling you with fresh dreams and an endlessly new imagination!

Readers Unite!

M. Chris Johnson
Editor in Chief

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12.5.11: From the Editors

I want to be a writer, not just a writer, but a best-selling novelist. Many aspire to that lofty, albeit lonely dream. People blog daily to hone their craft, they self-publish, submit countless queries to publishing houses, send articles to magazines with the hope of publication, participate in writing contests, read numerous books on writing to work on their skills. Why? They do it for the love of writing, word-smithing, storytelling and ultimately sharing it with others. What drives that desire in so many of us, setting wannabe writers apart from say, an aspiring accountant, is a whole lot of determination and a little bit of blind enthusiasm.

There are good writers and then there are gifted storytellers. When the two come together then there’s magic! Recently, I’ve been reading the classics, the public domain ones mainly since I can download those for free on my iPhone. It’s rekindled my love of reading. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga all have one thing in common; they’re great STORIES. It could be debated whether or not they’re great works of prose, but each are great stories none the less.

You can be an MFA, a published author or even have a job where you write every day but that doesn’t make you a best-selling author. Even if an author puts all the right words in the right order and follows all the grammar rules, it still doesn’t make them a good storyteller. That’s the difference, it’s the story; the believability, the creativity, the colorful descriptions that make readers relate to the characters, giving them a plausibility and a camaraderie with the reader. Plot notwithstanding, the “show it, don’t tell it” philosophy makes the story come alive.

That is what reviewers look for in fiction work; the next best-seller, the make-me-swoon with a good tale regardless of the genre. Anyone can read a romance novel and either enjoy it or hate it but a story told by a truly gifted storyteller can be any genre, have anyone or anything as the hero. If the story is told the way a story should be told, it will come to life and organically become the next best-seller, the next big classic.
Regardless of the vehicle used to read a good book, I’ll say again, Readers Unite!

M. Chris Johnson

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10.20.11: From the Editors: Wordstock!

<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-34056" title="Whew!  Wordstock 2011 has come and gone.  We have a huge pile of books and materials, and hundreds of new friends.  We, the editors of Portland Book Review, would like to thank everybody who came to our booth Saturday and Sunday October 8th and 9th.  You made us feel like a welcome addition to the Portland literary scene, and for those of you who signed up to become reviewers, I hope you have had a chance to respond to Chris Johnson’s email welcoming you to the fold.

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-34059" title="On a personal level, I was deeply impressed by how friendly and open of an experience Wordstock is for readers, writers and publishers.  Wordstock is a major literary event, drawing 10,000 plus visitors, and writers of international acclaim, but because of the nature of the experience, there just aren’t any barriers between us.  It was my first Wordstock, either as a participant, or as a festival goer.  I was very impressed with the wide variety of people who visited, and participated in the event.  It’s a warm and inviting convention, filled with like-minded people.  Wordstock attendees love books, and even more so, we love sharing books with one another.

 

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-34057" title="From our perspective, Wordstock is about forging connections with the readers, writers and publishers in the Portland area.  Our magazine appears in nearly all of the libraries in the Portland metro area, and in many coffee shops and restaurants in and around the city, and it was our honor to finally get a chance to meet our readers face to face.  For those of you who hadn’t had a chance to meet us, or who up to then, hadn’t read our magazine, it was a chance for us to get the word out. While Portland Book Review is a quarterly publication, our effort to produce the magazine, and publish reviews to our website at http://www.portlandbookreview.com, or maintain our twitter feed @PDXbookreview, or facebook presence at http://www.facebook.com/portlandbookreview, is a full time labor of love.  It was gratifying to discover how many of you feel like we do, that Portlanders are passionate about books, and about sharing that experience with others.

Going forward, we have many plans to improve how we reach our readers.  We want to continue to provide quality reviews, whether they are from Portland based authors and publishers, or writers from around the country, or around the world.  It’s our responsibility to try to remain unbiased, but it’s difficult when every time you meet a new book, you want to share your excitement by shouting it from the rooftops.  We’ll do our best.  If you’re reading this, and are thinking about becoming one of our reviewers, please feel free to contact us at info@portlandbookreview.com.  We want our readers to feel as connected to us, as we feel connected to you. <img class="alignright size-full wp-image-34058" title="

Brad Wright, Executive Editor

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I’m the Executive Editor, sometimes it feels like I’ve jumped into the deep end of the pool. Although, embracing this opportunity means jumping in with both feet.
My background is as a teacher, and history buff. I genuinely look forward to getting to those books. I’ve always been a person who loves wandering through book stores. As an Executive Editor, I see my responsibility as being the person who will help the reader make that same trip easier.

9.1.11: From the Editors

I feel like we got cheated out of a warm summer this year. In fact, I’ve been complaining about it to anyone who would listen. Why do we complain about the weather? We can’t change it. If we moved away, we’d only discover different weather to complain about; perhaps it is just human nature. It occurred to me as I was strolling through Saturday Market, that it’s been a perfect Portland summer. Overcast, but warm enough to wear short sleeves and not carry a jacket with a few hot days thrown in here and there. We Portlanders have a farmer’s market to go to any day of the week, not to mention the garlic festival, the air show, county fairs and the State fair. We have rivers and lakes to play in, wineries and breweries, dog parks, bike runs and walkathons to attend. I would like to applaud my sister-in-law, Liz Church. She just completed her first triathlon at Blue Lake Park this summer. The weather was, again, overcast but warm, perfect weather for such an arduous feat. Congratulations Lizzie! I’m so proud of you, and all that you’ve accomplished in your life!

As fall approaches, we are still blessed with mild weather, hopefully even an Indian summer to enjoy all the outdoor activities our beautiful cities provide for us. What could be better? We have all of the seasonal fun that fall brings; the Friend’s Library Book Sale (page one), Wordstock (page 8), harvest parties, pumpkin patches, back to school and … [insert fun fall activity here]. There’s so much more to look forward to. With the season changes comes other activities like, getting your storm windows replaced from Aloha Glass (page 15) or buying books at Bearly Read Books (page 7), attending Wordstock in October (page 8), getting new furniture, especially that bookshelf you’ve always wanted from Murphy’s Furniture (page 2) or getting back to the dentist at Rose City Dentist (page 16). Yes, I’m shamelessly plugging our advertisers. Without them, there would be no us.

No matter what the weather, we are the luckiest people in the country with so much to offer its residents and travelers. So, get out there! Enjoy the city and merchants and don’t forget to tell them you saw their ad in Portland Book Review!

Readers Unite!

M. Chris Johnson
Editor-in-Chief

8.16.11: From the Editors

We’re coming up on our third printed issue now, and as of this column, we have close to 750 reviews. Generally speaking, I am responsible for posting the lion’s share of the reviews to our website. As part of that, I’ve read most of them as I prepare them for posting. Not to blow our own horn, but I have to say that for such a new publication, we have some really talented reviewers!

What does a good review look like though? What’s the difference between a good review and an unusable one? I’d like to share our process, and let you, our readers, see how we decide the answers to those questions.

As a staff we agree that not every book we get is going to get a positive review. We have made it clear to our reviewers that the only thing they owe us, and our readers is the honest truth as they see it. The best reviews give the honest truth, respect the writers, even if they don’t like the book, and also respect the readers. We take that responsibility seriously.

For the most part, our reviewers get to select the books that they will read. This means that as one of the reviewers, I’m not forced to read a book that I would be prejudiced against, for example, anything with a Vampire in it. There are plenty of reviewers available who love perfectly coiffed, haunted yet misunderstood Vampires. I am NOT one of those people.

For the most part though, my personal tastes run towards Sci-fi/Fantasy novels, Detective novels, or any ancient history book, ESPECIALLY if it’s about Rome. Generally, at the beginning of the month we send a master list of the books we have available for review out to our review staff. Over that week the reviewers will email their selections to our Editor-in-Chief, M. Chris Johnson. Those books then get sent out to the reviewers. The reviewers have a little bit of time to read the books and write their reviews. At that point, the review is edited for grammar, spelling and accuracy. It’s important to note that other than simple editing we leave the reviews alone. It’s not just words on those pages; it’s the honest opinion of the reviewer as well. We’re blessed to have people that really get what we need. Once that process is completed, the review will be posted to the website, and it ends up on the list available for printing in the quarterly editions.

The unsung heroes of this product are our wonderful group of reviewers. We simply wouldn’t have enough time in the day to put all of this together, without our group of volunteer reviewers.

If you think that you would like to become a reviewer, please feel free to email M. Chris Johnson, or myself. We’re always on the lookout for talented reviewers.

Brad Wright

 

 

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7.2.11: From the Editors

Well, we got our second issue out! What a relief that was to “put it to bed” as they say. As I delivered our papers from distribution site to distribution site, I was struck by how connected so many of our neighborhoods are within themselves and yet interwoven within each city in our Tri-County area. There are books about that. Pocket neighborhoods and communities make up much of who we are, the area in which we live and how we relate to one another as people.

You see folks working in their beautifully ornate yards, others are having garage sales, working on their cars, walking their dogs together, riding bikes, shopping in local shops, children playing with their yards and sometimes even in the street fills each neighborhood in its own special way. There are books about all of that.

How about sidewalk chalk art, the activities in the city such as on the Waterfront & in Pioneer Square, restaurants with patios that are finally getting used with the coming of summer – it is coming, right?! Shops with their doors standing wide open to let in the fresh air loom on every corner. There are books about those too! In fact, there probably isn’t a topic or subject out there that someone, somewhere hasn’t written about, often multiple times with as many different perspectives.

To me, that’s the most exciting part, to be able to experience something, an event in history, a piece of art in nature, death, love or just to meet every day people through another’s eyes…and, guess what? There are books about all that!

So get out there, experience life, if not in your own life, then live it through someone else’s words! You won’t regret it.

M. Chris Johnson, Editor-in-Chief