"Guilty, but Not Guilty"

At first, I was annoyed.

In a book called "The Sonderberg Case," is it right not to get to the case, even almost in passing until almost halfway through the book?

But I kept reading.

The case finally begins.

Then other weird things happen.

An unreliable narrator?

No, not really -- a narrator with an unreliable life.

And the plea: Guilty, but not guilty.

Then this:

"Will you ever come to understand what you did to me and to my generation? Hitler and you, you kept proclaiming it was for the future of Germany's children that you were at war with the rest of the world; for us that you were destroying entire cities; for us that you erased our right to pride, honor, and hope for centuries to come. Before his suicide, Hitler, in his will, expressed his wish to punish the German people by turning Germany into a mountain of rubble. But what you did was worse; you took revenge on us, your descendants. Because of you, all of you, though we were born long after your atrocities, we feel guilty. . . According to a Jewish saying, life is a wheel that never stops turning. Look at your life: what you did to the Jews is what you are living through now. You wanted to isolate them, you're isolated; you wanted to hunt them down, you're hunted; you made it impossible for them to live without anxiety, now you'll never live without anxiety. And you'll share the fate of your master."

I'm reminded of a story from the Book of Mormon, where a people called the Anti-Nephi-Lehies decided thwy would rather bury their weapons of war and be killed by their enemies, rather than defend themselves, as payment for the murders committed by their ancestors.

Their leader says this:

"Oh, how merciful is our God! And now behold, since it has been as much as we could do to get our stains taken away from us, and our swords are made bright, let us hide them away that they may be kept bright, as a testimony to our God at the last day, or at the day that we shall be brought to stand before him to be judged, that we have not stained our swords in the blood of our bretheren sinc he imparted his word unto us and has made us clean thereby.

"And now, my bretheren, if our brethren seek to destroy us, behold, we will hide away our swords, year, even we will bury them deep in the earth, that they may be kept bright, as a testimony that we have never used them, at the last day; and if our brethren destroy us, behold, we shall go to our God and shall be saved."

There are a lot of people out there who say they do what they do "for the children." Elie Wiesel is cautioning us to look at their methods before we consider whether what they do for the children is actually helpful.

And there are some of you reading this who'll be quick to point out the sins of the other. Well, I'm not going to. Let he who is without sin first cast a stone, because there are a lof of people with a lot of different politics out there doing things "for the children" using methods and reasons and talking points that are anything but child-friendly.

This is a powerful book, folks. Read it. Preferably in front of a mirror.

I've Entered the One Percent

I got this rather breathless email from Otis at Goodreads today:

On behalf of the Goodreads team, I want to say thank you. You’re in the top 1% of reviewers on Goodreads! Your many thoughtful book reviews help make us a vibrant place for book lovers.

And our community has been growing! We now number more than 20 million members on Goodreads.

Every day readers from all over the world are connecting over a love of books. And our 25 million reviews – including yours – are a big part of that conversation.

Thank you for your support of Goodreads, and keep reading! I’m looking forward to seeing what you think of your next book!

--Otis

Now, everyone who knows me knows I'm rather lacking in the math skills department. So forgive me if I mess this arithmetic up.

Goodreads brags in this email that they have over 20 million members. I am, by their own admission, in the top 1 percent of reviewers, assuming, I mean, that based on the number of reviews I've completed, I have entered that sacrosanct 1 percent territory.

So, how high of a threshold do you have to cross before you get a similar email?

Well, I've done 183 reviews.

This hits upon something familiar in the social networking department: the long tail. Clay Shirky and other internet gurus show that most reviewers fall within the long tail of participants: Offering little by way of input. It's a site's smallest number of contributors that makes up the bulk of the site's contributions. So with only 183 reviews, I've hit the cream of Goodreads' crop.

But that number doesn't make sense. Because the email also says they've got more than 25 million reviews from those 20 million users. That means an average of about 2.5 reviews per person. If 183 reviews or thereabouts is the threshold to enter the 1 percent, that would mean that 1 percent would have written 36 million reviews. So there are more variable and unknowns here than I'm aware of. Or I'm just that bad at math and really should stick to English major stuff like this.

Social networks have to gather hundreds of thousands of readers in order to amass the numbers they need to get the content they need to keep their site going. So of that 20 million membership, 200,000 are in the top 1 percent -- and the threshold of reviews is, well, not high.

So I'll soldier on. Reading and writing little weenie reviews is something I can do. Hopefully, I'll be reviewing one of my own books there soon enough.

How Good Is Your Book?

I’m a big believer in writing something, then setting it aside for a while before I go back to it to see if it’s any good.

A recent Goodreads infographic shows this system, favored by many writers, bears paying attention to.

We as writers have a lot of competition – and that’s just with other writers, forgetting the competition that comes from television, movies, the Internet and other sources of information and entertainment. What this graphic tells me is that for about 44 percent of average readers, we have less than 100 pages to snag their interest or we’re going to lose them.

And if we lose them, chances are that 44 percent isn’t going to pick us up ever again.

I have only anecdotal evidence for this – but I think it’s pretty persuasive.

Though I generally fall into the “I Always Finish, No Matter What” category (that 38 % of respondents to the Goodreads poll say they fall into) I have abandoned a few books when I was less than 50 pages into them. I don’t remember the titles – but I do remember the authors: Jules Feiffer (Ackroyd, I had to look it up) and Piers Anthony. I tried reading these books, just couldn’t get comfortable with them, and literally threw them away. That’s a pretty shocking thing, considering what a book hoarder I am.

There’s a third book that stands out and gives me hope, though, and that is Arthur C. Clarke’s 2061. I started reading it shortly after it came out and just gave up because it was so terrible. Years later, however, I picked it up again and read it, start to finish.

Then there are the other books: Clarke and Gentry Lee’s Rama II – which I finished but shouldn’t have, because they were terrible. They were less about the awe of discovery and more about the kaboom and flash of a Hollywood thriller.

Also in that category is Alexandre Dumas fils’ The Count of Monte Cristo. I recall reading that book in high school and really enjoying it. Earlier this year, however, I tried reading it again and gave up more than 300 pages into it, it was just that bad.

Thing is, of these four authors I mention, I’ve only read multiple books by one of them (Clarke) and only then because I’d read many of his books before I stumbled over Rama II and 2061. The other three authors just may as well not exist for me. And that’s probably a shame, because maybe they’ve written better stuff than what I started with. But I may never know. There are plenty of books to read out there, and why go through the pain of reading an author who has stung us before?

So as I look at my own writing now, I pay strict attention (well, stricter attention) to how I grab the readers in the first 50 pages – preferably, in the first chapter, yes. Haven’t written a keeper yet.