The Saturday Morning Post (No, 24)

Today we take a look at a hybrid biography/autobiography of a fictional woman, as an early scientist in the field of botany. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert  B

This novel encompasses the fictional life story of Alma Whittaker. Born in 1800 Philadelphia, the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer/business man, and a Dutch mother who comes from a family of Dutch horticulturalists. We follow her life from her childhood to a ripe old age of 80. Raised in wealth on a large estate outside of Philadelphia, she is encouraged to explore the natural world from an early age. Gifted with the plain speaking logical mind of her mother, and the drive for knowledge of her father, over the course of decades she becomes a respected botanist within a circle of scientist of similar interest, despite being a woman, eventually becoming the world's most respected expert on mosses.

As I mentioned in my brief intro, this book reads, in parts, like the biography of a real person. Indeed, like many biographies, the first 80 some pages doesn't even concern her at all, but rather describes the early career of her father, written in the style of a popular biography, which is to say with wit and charm. Though it includes many details of the time and places, it still moves nicely along. As does the whole book, for the most part. It is told as a biographer might tell the tale - "told" being the operative word, rather than shown. However, it also reveals many intimate details and thoughts of Alma Whittaker that would only be known to Alma Whittaker, and set down as a very candid modern autobiographer, thus its somewhat of a hybrid between the two types of biographies. It also presents scenes and conversations between people, as one would find in a novel, so that respect, it is a double hybrid; biography/autobiography/novel.

I found this book mentioned in one of James Harris' recent posts. He describes it as science fiction - not as the type of book we think of when we hear science fiction, but as a book of fiction that concerns itself with science. And that is what is it is; a story about about science and the times, as well about the role of women in the world, the world's expectations of them. And about the women who defy those expectations. 

Perhaps the most profound thing that I came away with, after reading this book, is how deficient we are these days in new things to discover. Tangible things, things we can see, touch, understand. This book, has Alma's father sending people around the world to discover and ship home new plants to describe and grow in his greenhouses. Tangible new discoveries. Not software code or quantum mechanics. Oh, I am sure there are still a million things to discover, but they have become increasingly esoteric, things so small in scope that it takes years and PhDs to discover, study and appreciate them. These days it seems that fantasy fiction has come to overshadows science fiction, and I have to wonder that is, in part, because there seems to be so few things left to discover in science, things that would interest more than a PhD searching for grant money.

Anyways, back to the book. Elizabeth Gilbert has written a very entertaining novel, despite reading more like a work of non-fiction for much of the time. Perhaps that is its strength; its biographical format allows the reader to believe that Alma Whittaker was a real person, while its very candid autobiographical makes her more than the subject of a biography written a century after the person lived. My only criticism of the book is that I think it went on too long and simply got too wordy, for my tastes in the last quarter of the book, so that I found myself skim reading parts of the story set in Tahiti. But, as usual, that's on me, not the author. I don't have the attention span I may've once had.

It's a solid read, offering a thick slice of history, science, with a glimpse of life in Tahiti as a bonus. 

Red Side Story, Again

 

It's not here yet, but it looks to be actually coming. Hard to believe. There's a saga connected with this book. I've already written on post on this book, back in January of 2022, and then added some updates to that post.

The story starts back in 2010 when Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey was released. I love that book, it is one of my favorite books of all time, for some reason. Originally it was to be the first book in a trilogy, the two books to follow were to be Painting by Numbers, and The Gordini Protocals. I couldn't wait for them. But wait I did. For years. I despaired of living long enough to ever read them. Eventually I found a YouTube video where he said he was first planning to write a prequel. He never did. And finally, I found somewhere that said that the two sequels had been cancelled due to disappointing sales of Shades of Grey. Such is life.

Fast forward to January 2022, where I found on the File 770 blog that Fforde's birthday was January 11th. I commented on how much I enjoyed Shades of Grey, and lo and behold, another commenter pointed out the fact that he was planning to do a single sequel; Red Side Story to complete the story. I jumped over to Amazon UK, found its listing, with a place holding cover, and a release date, in Britain, set for August 11, 2022, just 8 moths away. I might live to read it after all, I thought. I preordered it instantly.

Alas, in due time, I got notice that the the release date had been pushed back to April 2023. I kept my preorder, and hoped. And then some months later I received a notice that it had been pushed back yet again, this time to February 6th 2024. By this time I had my doubts that it would ever come out, or I'd live to read i, if it did. It seems that Jasper Fforde takes years longer to write his books then he expects to. I think Shades of Grey was also long delayed and I know that his follow up adult book, Early Riser was delayed, I'd like to say, for almost two years. So basically, I was no longer holding my breath. Indeed, I forgot about it.

Recently I remembered it, and not having heard of any more delays, I decided to check the status of my preorder. To my great surprise, not only is the date still 6 February 2024, but it now has the actual book cover (pictured above) which tells me that the book is finally ready to go.

Of course, my joy is now tempered with the realization that it is very hard for a sequel to live up to the standard of one of, if not, my favorite book. Shades of Grey left lots of secrets to be revealed, as the story is set after "something happened" but what happened we don't know. And well, the character are a different sort of human, so what's with that? Will the answers be worth the mystery and the long wait or not? In short, how will Red Side Story affect my love of Shades of Grey? Will it increase it, or will it prove to be a disappointment, and the answers tarnish my fondness for the first book? I have only 2 1/2 months to wait (after waiting 13 years) to find out. Fingers crossed.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 23)

C 

Today we are reviewing another fantasy novel, and its anecdote. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Councillor by E J Beaton DNF 6%

Beaton is an Australian who has a PhD in English (Creative Writing), and by god, it shows. Masters of Fine Arts eat can eat her dust and be damned, she's a Doctor of English and Creative Writing and wants you to know it. Plus she's an award nominated poet as well. 

I don't believe I've ever read 24 more frustrating pages than the first 24 pages of The Councillor. If you're looking for deliberate obscurity, opaqueness, ornateness for the sake of ornateness and obscurity... story be damned, you'll have found it in this book. There is a story in there, somewhere, I guess, amongst the dreams, the flashbacks, the obscure references to things, places, events, and people we don't yet know anything about. What I can tell you is that the main character is the palace scholar, an aide to the Queen. The Queen has been attacked by a panther, with yellow eyes, while hunting, and was severely mauled. She is then poisoned to death, leaving our scholar the task of choosing someone to be the next ruler of the realm, since the Queen has no heirs.

This book seems to be the favorite of several fantasy booktubers, which is how I became aware of it. However, they get advanced review copies of books like this. I never quite trust reviews from ARC readers, as it is in their interest to give the best possible review so as to be known to the publishers as reliable promotors of their books, in order to keep getting free books from those publishers... I'm not saying that they didn't like it, I just don't trust what they say. In any event, this book is clearly not for me. It did however bring to mind the the opposite type of writing, writing that is both descriptive and concrete instead of dreamy and obscure, and the master of that type of writing. Indeed, I reached over to the book shelf next to me and picked out one of his books and started to read it, more or less as an antidote to The Councillor.

Maigret Meets a Milord by Georges Simenon  B-

The Belgium born writer, Georges Simenon wrote around 500 novels and many other books and stories in his long writing career. From his introduction in 1931, the Paris police Chief-Inspector Jules Maigret appeared in 75 novels and 28 short stories. Maigret Meets a Milord is his second novel, written in 1931 and translated into English in 1935. The edition I have, pictured above, is one I've had around for 50-some years. It is old and glue holding the pages had dried and cracked so that the pages were falling out of it as I read it.

In this story Maigret has been called to a small city northeast of Paris to investigate a murder of a woman, a murder that appears to be connected to the traffic of barges along one of France's many canals. In all these stories Maigret tries to put himself in the minds of the people involved in order to understand not only what occurred, but why it happened as it did. To do so, he talks to people and wanders around, taking in the atmosphere, as it where.

In this case, Maigret must determine first, who the woman is and then how she ended up strangled in a barn along the canal. It would seem that barge traffic on the canal was the only explanation for her to end up in the barn, so he delves into the workings of life on the canal, with its horse pulled or motor driven barges. Their movement is regulated by a series of locks, so in order to figure out how she came to be there, he studies how the canal works and who was around the night the woman was strangled. He interviews the people on the barges that were tied up that night near the scene of the crime, as well as the characters on an English yacht which was also present, in order to slowly unravel the mystery.

The reason I chose this book as an antidote to the Councillor is that Simenon is known for his simple, concrete writing style. While working as the private secretary of for a French aristocrat Simenon began to submit stories to the newspaper Le Matin. The literary editor of that magazine was Colette (famous for writing the novella Gigi) who advised him to be less literary, which Simenon took to mean use more common words and simple descriptions. Within a year he was one of the top contributors to the newspaper. 

Simenon's writing is not stylish or elegant. It is simple and uses concrete examples of everyday objects in such a way as to create both a sense of place and mood. In this story, to create a sort of dark, grim, and gloomy mood, he has it raining most of the time. There is mud, and wet clothes, the greyness of the canal, the muddy canal paths, and dim lit inns; a subdued palette in both the scene and the people involved. In this book, as well as all the others, he uses this straightforward, observational writing to create characters, places and moods that seem real without long, elaborate expositions.

Contemporary Science Fiction vs Contemporary Fantasy

Over the last couple of years I've gotten the impression science fiction isn't what it used to be in a number of different ways. This may simply be a reflection of my gradual disenchantment with the genre over the last few years. But I think there is something more in it. One aspect of this feeling is that, at least in traditional publishing, SF is both changing focus and slowly fading. I can't speak to the changes, as I've read only a few modern SF books, but it seems that many of the SF orientated YouTube channels and blogs only cover old, "classic" books from 20, 30, 40 plus years ago. It seems like fantasy is now the in read for fans of speculative fiction. Can I verify this? 

Unless you're a publishing insider and have access to a lot more data than I do, this feeling can not be tested. At least directly. But I think I've found a way to compare the sales of the two genre, relative to each other.

So how do we compare SF sales to fantasy without knowing the figures?

We start with the fantasy author, Mark Lawrence, who is something of a numbers guy. He has asserted that there is a direct correlation between the number of ratings on Goodreads and the sales of a traditionally published book. He says that if you take the number of ratings for a recently published book on Goodreads, multiply it by 4, it will give you a ballpark figure as to the number of books sold. His blog post  about that is here. He bases this relationship on the data he has from his books and other authors. People dispute this number, and it certainly doesn't seem to work for indie published books... At least from my experience. But I think the relationship between ratings and sales numbers is strong enough that one can compare ratings numbers to ratings numbers and get a useful comparison of relative sales. Good enough for our purposes, anyway.

Next, what books to we compare? Hundreds of books are published every year in SF and fantasy. How do you find and select books to compare? As it turns out, the Goodreads has just released its list of the Best Books of 2023. It features 20 books in both the SF and fantasy categories. Goodreads says that the books were selected by analyzing statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads and published in the last 12 months. The sample includes books from all types of publishers; traditional and indie publishers. This seems to me as valid a sample as any. For my analysis I used SF, fantasy, and romantasy (a mash-up of romance and fantasy). I did not use YA fantasy for my comparison, since I hadn't see that category until after I had done the table below. However, there is no YA SF category to compare it to, which, in itself, I think is telling.

On 16 November 2023W I sampled each of the 20 books in the three categories; SF, fantasy and romantasy. I recorded the number of ratings each book had at that time, plus the number of months each book had been on the market. I also noted the sex of the author, and the size of the publisher. I added up the total number of rating for all 20 books in each category. I then added up the collective number of months the books had been on the market. To get one figure to compare each category to, I divided the total number of ratings by the total number of months the books had been in the market to arrive at an average number of ratings-per month for the entire category. In my model, this number of ratings per month represents the relative sales of each of the three categories, which then can then be compared. 

So what do the numbers say? 

Romantasy was the most popular category, at least in this sample. First, all the books were written by female authors. It is romance, after all. One author, Jennifer L Armentrout, had three of the 20 books on this list. She must be both a popular and prolific author. One book however, Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros, dominates this category in ratings, and presumably sales, with 719,631 ratings at the time I sampled it. (The number of ratings of all the books will have gone up by the time I release this post.) Large, Big 5 Publishers, released 4 of the books, with 3 coming from what I think are medium sized publishers. The rest were either indie published or came from small presses, making their ratings numbers all the more impressive for that.

Fantasy was dominated by books released by large publishers; 14 out of the 20, with 6 coming from medium sized publishers. No indie published books made this list. Women authors once again dominated, authoring 15 of the 20 selections. Hell Bent, by Leigh Bardugo, had the most ratings, 88,513, followed by Brandon Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea, with 74,180 ratings. Martha Wells had a book in this category as well as one in SF.

Now, looking at SF, the book with the most ratings in SF was In the Lives of Puppets, by T J Klune, with 40,266 ratings. Martha Well's entry, System Collapse, a MurderBot story had just been released in Nov, so the ratings for that book only clocked in at 1,857. It is probably significantly higher now. This category featured 12 male and 8 female authors. As for publishers, 10 of the books in this category were published by large publishers, 2, medium, and 8 appear to have been indie or small press releases. I should also point out that the SF list includes books from five well known SF writers; Martha Wells, John Scalzi, Pierce Brown, Ann Leckie, and Adrian Tchikovsky, so that I don't think SF's best selling authors are under represented on the list. They may well be over represented.

Now on to the comparison;

Romantasy came in with an average of 9,940 ratings per month for the field of 20 books, largely thanks to Fourth Wing.

Fantasy clocked in at 3,815 ratings per month average for the 20 books.

Science Fiction trailed the pack with a 1,496 ratings per month average for their 20 books.

The combined categories had 43 female vs 17 male authors. 72% vs 28% US readership split is 64.3% female vs 35.7%, male, so the author to readership ratio is fairly reflective of the audience.

Using these figures, it would seem that fantasy outsells SF by more than 2 1/2 to 1, 72% vs 28%. For comparison, years ago when the Data Guy broke out Amazon sales numbers, I think the fantasy to SF ratio was more like 3 to 2  66% vs 33%. Fantasy was outselling SF even then. But using this data it would seem that since then fantasy's lead has only grown.

However, if we roll romantasy's average monthly ratings into the general fantasy, it is fantasy, after all, and divide that total by 2 to get an average of the combined fantasy categories, we get a monthly average of 6,877 ratings per month. Using this figure, fantasy outsells SF by 4 to 1, 82% vs 18% And remember, we're not counting YA fantasy in these comparisons, which I am quite certain, judging from my granddaughter, would make the sales ratio even more daunting.

You can discount these results, as you please. One might argue that SF readers are reading older SF titles, if SF booktube is any guide, not the 2023 titles, which this sample only includes, and thus this comparison may underestimate SF readership. Or that the total number of books published in each category are probably not equal, as they are in this sample, which could distort the result. No doubt true, but that likely works in fantasy's favor, as I am certain that publishers are publishing more fantasy than SF these days. And since we find indie published books in this sample, I think we have a pretty well rounded sample. While fantasy, has never entirely absent from speculative fiction, it played a minor role until the early 1970's when Lord of the Rings became popular. Clearly it has come a long way in the last 50 years.

Fashion rules the world. Everything comes into fashion, and then fades away, before returning again in a different guise. SF may rise again, or it may evolve and change into something unrecognizable. But for now, at least in books, SF seems to be falling out of favor with readers of the fantastic.

The data I used;

Title	Author	M/F	Ratings Numbers	Pub.	Months on Market
Romantasy
The Jasad Heir	Sara Jasjem	F	6,592	Lg	5
The Foxglove King	Hannah Witten	F	12,254	Lg	8.5
A Dawn of Onyx	Kate Golden	F	14,017	IP/sm	11
Assistant to the Villain	Hanna Nicole Maehrer	F	36,173	IP/sm	2.5
The Ashes and the Star Cursed King	Carissa Broadbent	F	101,042	IP	7
Zodiac Academy, Sorrow and Starlight	Caroline Peckham Susanne Valenti	F/F	34,123	Med	11.5
The Hurricane Wars	Thea Guanzon	F	4,383	Lg	1.5
A Soul of Ash and Blood	Jennifer L Armentrount	F	41,379	IP/sm	4
The Hanging City	Charlie N Holmberg	F	7,738	Med	3.5
The Coven	Harper L Woods	F	22,757	Med	8
A Fire in the Flesh	Jennifer L Armentrout	F	13,640	IP/sm	.5
Bewitched	Laura Thalassa	F	6,580	IP/sm	7
Slaying the Vampire Conqueror	Carissa Broadben	F	10,602	IP/sm	6.5
Rule of the Aurora King	Nisha J Tuli	F	13,587	IP/sm	7.5
A Game of Gods	Scarlett St Clair	F	6,237	IP/sm	3.5
Fall of Ruin and Wrath	Jennifer L Armentrount	F	18,983	IP/sm	2
Fourth Wing	Rebecca Yarros	F	719,631	IP/sm	6.5
Throne of the Fallen	Kerri Maniscalco	F	7,061	Lg	1.5
Queen of Thieves and Chao	K A Tucker	F	2,247	IP/sm	2
A Court This Cruel and Lovely	Stacia Stark	F	9,824	IP/sm	8
	Average Ratings per month per book: 9,940	21F	1,063,630 total ratings	4 Lg 3Med 13 IP/ Sm	107 months total
Fantasy
A Day of Fallen Night	Samantha Shannon	F	20,315	Med	8.5
Ink Blood Sister Scribe	Emma Torz	F	20,239	Lg	5.5
The Fragile Threads of Power	V E Schwab	F	7,940	Lg	2
Atalanta	Jennifer Saint	F	9.830	Med	8
The Adventures of Amina AL-Siraf	Sharron Chakraborty	F	26,335	Lg	8.5
The Unmaking of June Farrow	Adrienne Young	F	10,929	Med	1
Sword Catcher	Cassandra Clare	F	4,713	Lg	1
Victory City	Salman Rushdie	M	8,201	Lg	10
Bookshops and Bonedust	Travis Baldree	M	4,748	Med	.5
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries	Heather Fawcett	F	40,942	Lg	11
Stone Blind	Natalie Haynes	F	30,974	Lg	2
VenCo Cove	Cherie Dimaline	F	6,508	Lg	10.5
The Book that Wouldn’t Burn	Mark Lawrence	M	8,096	Lg	6.5
Clytemnestra	Constanza Casat	F	12,532	Lg	6.5
Tress of the Emerald Sea	Brandon Sanderson	M	74,180	Lg	7.5
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride	Roshani Chokshi	F	15,529	Lg	0
Witch King	Martha Wells	F	10,507	Lg	5.5
Hell Bent	Leigh Bardugo	F	88,513	Med	11
Starling House	Alix E Harrow	F	22,534	Lg	1.5
The Will of the Many	James Islingto	M	7,591	Med	6
	Average Ratings per month per book: 3,815 Combining Romancy with fantasy Aver. Rating per month per book: 6,877	15F 5M	431 156 toal ratings	14 Lg 6 Med	113 months total
Science Fiction
The Ferryman	Justin Cronin	M	20,161	Lg	7
System Collapse	Martha Wells	F	1,857	Lg	0
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself	Marsha Crane	F	3,146	IP/sm	11
Deluge	Stephen Markley	M	2,347	Lg	10
Starter Villain	John Scalzi	M	12,481	Lg	2
Translation State	Ann Leckie	F	5,547	Lg	5
Light Bringer	Pierce Brown	M	20,694	Med	3
In the Lives of Puppets	T J Klune	M	40,266	Lg	7
Some Desperate Glory	Emily Tesh	F	4,648	Lg	7
Ascension	Nicholas Binge	M	5,865	IP/sm	7
The Light Pirate	Lilly Brooks-Dalton	F	21,684	IP/sm	11
The Great Transition	Nick Fuller Googin	M	1,042	IP/sm	4
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport	Samit Basu	M	236	Lg	2
The Marriage Act	John Marrs	M	11,074	IP/sm	11
Bridge	Lauren Beukes	F	811	IP/sm	3
The Future	Naomi Aldersman	M	870	Lg	1
Chain-Gang All-Star	Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah	M	15,061	Sm	6
Children of Memory	Adrian Tchikovsky	M	12,942	Lg	10
The Deep Sky	Yume Kitasei	F	3,144	Med	5
Land of Milk and Honey	C Pam Zhang	F	3,168	IP/sm	3
	Average Ratings per month per book: 1,496	12 M 8 F	187,044 total ratings	10 Lg 2 Med 8 IP/sm	125 moths total