Big in Japan

By Jennifer Griffith

Synopsis: (hijacked from Amazon)

Buck Cooper is Texan, obese, and invisible to his colleagues. And to the voluptuous Allison Turner, the girl of his dreams, he is way below parr. Buck's entire life is about fitting in, a feat he's been struggling to achieve but has never succeeded. Until serendipity lands him in Japan. Right in the middle of a sumo match. As his life takes a new turn in a country where being big can mean fame and fortune, Buck must embark on the most dangerous, yet adventurous ride of his life-to find the ultimate meaning of love and acceptance. Even if it means risking his life and giving up everything he has.

This book was just put out by Jolly Fish Press, the publisher that bought my book, New Sight.  So I thought I would be supportive and read something that didn’t involve wizards, flying animals, dirigibles or laser blasts.

Why did I read this book again?

I read the synopsis online and thought, “Okay, sure, I can read that.”  I’ve always wanted to more about Japan, and I love watching sports.  Plus, I study Kempo and I wondered what in the world Sumo is all about.

5 out of 5

Characters

I liked the spread of characters.  Buck, the protagonist, has a great voice and I personally loved the geeky references he slipped in.  His two Sumo friends are awesome, providing a few moments of insight but also some much needed relief from the hell that is apparently Sumo training life.

It felt like there may have been a few too many characters sprinkled around who just made bit appearances, but I didn’t notice when I was reading, just now that I’m thinking about it.

4 out of 5

Did I care what happened?

Yes.  I read this book pretty fast, which is a good indicator that I wanted to know what happened.  Buck us a nice guy—really nice—and I was always pulling for him and the other characters in the book.

This is just coming from a martial artists point of view, but I wanted more Sumo in a book that was about Sumo.  Never once did I feel like my legs were going to fall off after poor Buck had to do like a million of those squat whatever things (my knees weep to think of it) and although I know more about Sumo now than I did last week, I still don’t know much.  The story focused on the characters and the relationships, which is good, but my fighters mind wanted more in this area.  I might be the only one in the world…

3 out of 5

Plot Holes

Nothing that I remember.  If anything, the plot felt a little bit contrived and obvious.   I knew the man from the beginning was someone important and wasn’t at all surprised when he came back near the end.  Things like that made it very predictable, but that didn’t stop me from reading fast to get to the end.

4 out of 5

How many times did I yawn?

No yawning .  Even though there wasn’t nearly as much action as I’d hoped for (so I’m an action junkie, so what?) the story didn’t drag.  Pace was good and I enjoyed it.

4 out of 5

Cool Factor

Never having been to Japan, I was excited to “see” Japan through the eyes of this guy from Texas.  The author did give us some of this in the beginning, but then not much after that.  And as I said before, more Sumo! But what there was if it was great. I had no idea that vending machines were so versatile, and never wanted to believe that they actually shove people into the subway trains.  Literally—shoving.  Yikes.

4 out of 5

The End

I liked the first ending of the book.  The second ending felt drawn out a bit.  But I’m not good at torturing characters over matters of the heart, so maybe I’m not the one to ask here. It felt either way to short or extraneous.  But that certainly won’t stop me from telling people to read this book.   Because seriously, it could just be me.

3 out of 5

Overall Enjoyment

This poor book got the distinction of being the first thing I read after I finished a round of edits on my own manuscript and sent them off. Less than 24 hours.  So through the beginning chapters my mind kept pointing out things I would change.  Bad internal editor, bad!

My point is that my comments may be a bit on the overly edited side. I thought this book was great.  I don’t much get into contemporary fiction, and was skeptical about this one, but liked it and would recommend it if you like a little action mixed with a little romance mixed with some very strange Japanese customs mixed with some humor from Buck and his gang.

4 out of 5

Score= 31

That’s a Brown Belt!

Writing in My Modern Age

Between the ages of 12 (see the last post) and around 27 I wrote sporadically.  One year I would fill several notebooks (back then I couldn’t type a story, the keyboard was way too distracting) and other years I would do nothing but perhaps think about writing after I read a good book or saw a great movie. I believe these were the years in which I actually read epic fantasy.  Now days I start to twitch if I see a really long novel sitting on my dresser.  I really need to do something about that,.

So maybe I was ingesting more than giving back to the world.  We’ll go with that for now.

Then I met a good friend of mine that we will call Cola.  Because her initials were RC.  If you don’t understand, just forget I mentioned it.  Anyway, Cola and I did some traveling together (Russia and New Zealand) and she kept threatening to start a writing group.  I swear she toyed with the idea for at least a year before doing it.

We actually talked about this the other day, and can’t remember exactly when the group started.  Maybe eight or nine years ago.  I could dig through my journals and figure it out, but they’re all packed away at the bottom of my cedar chest, and I’m not up to the Tetris game that I would have to master in order to get everything back inside. 

For a couple of years we just did short stories every month off of an assignment that we would randomly come up with.  I wrote some good ones, and some bad ones.  We had a good time, and learned a few things about writing.

One of the girls in the group introduced me to Nanowrimo.  (I may have mentioned this before)  Before my very first Nanowrimo, I’d never finished anything longer than 30 or 40 pages, and most of them were old stories in notebooks.  So when this girl told me about 50,000 words in a month, I wasn’t sure I could do it.  As a matter of fact, I debated until two days before November started before I decided to go for it.  I had the characters in mind (Now THAT’S a funny story) and while I was at the doctor’s office (probably for my knee—darn thing) I jotted down a tag line for the novel.  That and a brain full of epic fantasy novels that I’d been reading over the past six or eight years was all I started with.

The moment I knew that someday I should be a writer came somewhere in that first week. I woke, sat up in bed, rubbed my face and immediately thought, “What will Paul and his playmates be doing today?”  It was like the story had settled into my blood and just kept pumping around inside of me, waiting to be let out.

Well, I wrote 50,000 words that year and every year since.  That first story spanned three years, and at the end of those three years I actually undertook editing it.  The poor thing will never see the light of day, but it stands as a marker in my writing career.  185,000 words of a somewhat coherent story that only mostly sucks…and I wrote it.

Since then I’ve written five or six other novels and I’ve done Nanowrimo every year.  And I have no plans to stop.  Apparently I like it, and who doesn’t want to do something you like?

Writing-In the Beginning

Stories have always been at the core of my life. I love reading them, I love watching them, when I was I kid I loved replaying them with my friends again and again and again.  I’m pretty sure we had more imagination in six girls under the age of eight than Hollywood has today.

I remember the first book I tried to write and illustrate.  It was a Halloween story with ghosts.  I could draw ghosts, thus the topic.  And that was the last time I tried to illustrate anything.  Second grade, if my memory holds true.  Art has never been my strong point.

When I was around 12 years old I saw Aliens on TV (maybe I’ve shared this story before—like I can remember).  It scared me to death—seriously, I was huddled on the bing-bag chair in the exact middle of our family room, making sure my arms and legs did not breach the imagined bubble of protection that I had around me and hardly daring to breathe—but it also intrigued me.  The military characters, and the way they stuck together like a team, drew me in, and I couldn’t stop watching.  The next day I started writing a similar story using my friends as characters. I probably still have a notebook somewhere with this stuff in it.  It should be burned.

But that is how I started my journey in writing.  I wanted to write a story cooler than Aliens so people would read it and feel the same way that I did at the end of that movie.  Although I’m pretty sure I decided that I would never kill almost everyone in a story I wrote.  And it took me years to figure out that the reason they didn’t leave anyone on the ship in space is because there would be no story otherwise.  There need to be good reasons for these things people, especially when a 12 year old is asking the question.

Dave Farland is a big voice on the topic of story is emotion.  I’m with him on this.  A story that stirs the recipient will stick with that person, and they will tell their friends about it because it was cool and they’re dying to share.  Story is about emotion, and my very first goal with writing was to produce something that struck people as hard as Aliens struck me.

I’ve never done it, I don’t think, but I’ve come a long way, and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

Uglies

By Scott Westerfeld

Synopsis: (hijacked from Goodreads)

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

I know, I know, I'm WAY behind on reading this book. What can I say, I just can't keep up.

Why did I read this book again?

A girl I met at a writing conference a few months ago commented that in this book the government simply wanted to make everyone happy, and that she had never heard of a dystopia like that before.

I thought, hello, ever read Brave New World? So I figured I would check it out.

4 out of 5

Characters

I listened to this as an audio book (how else would I listen, hmmm?) and unfortunately, this made Shay, the best friend character, sound like a tard, so I didn't like her. Tally, our heroine, did great. I liked her character arc. The other characters in the book filled the storyline in nicely. All in all I liked what the author did with the characters.

4 out of 5

Did I care what happened?

Mostly. Tally held on to her lie for so long that I wanted to smack her. But that never stopped me from wondering what was going to happen next, so that's good.

4 out of 5

Plot Holes

I didn't notice any huge plot holes. Tally carried around her idiot, lying ball for too long, I thought (I actually complained about it to a friend) but that's not totally a plot problem.

The one thing that boggles my mind is if the Specials/the government are so controlling, then why in the world do they not have cameras everywhere and know exactly what everyone is doing? These kids get to run around wherever they want, and basically do whatever they want and no one monitors them. At least not that I noticed. For such hi-tech, this part felt convenient to the story.

4 out of 5

How many times did I yawn?

I only got bored once, during the journey back to the city. Like the camping part in Harry Potter book 7, it dragged on and on. It may have only been one chapter, but it felt like much longer.

4 out of 5

Cool Factor

I loved the inventions and the technology in this book. And in general, who wouldn't want to be pretty? I mean if that other thing didn't happen too? A very cool premise that got me thinking a couple of times about how I look at myself and others and the world as a whole. Very thought provoking, and I hope that loads of teenagers read this and realize that being you is way more important than fitting yourself into someone else's box of “perfection.”

Unless of course you can be Batman.  Always be Batman.

4 out of 5

The End

I do not like cliff-hangar endings for first books. Not cool. However, I didn't hate this one. I very much respected Tally's choice (or maybe I was finally un-irritated with her after she told the truth) and liked how it played out. But beware, this first book doesn't have a nice, clean ending.

4 out of 5

Overall Enjoyment

So this is pretty much Brave New World for teenagers and with a few, awesome twists. That's putting it simply, but I was happy that my first impression of the book was right.

4 out of 5

Score= 32

That's a Brown Belt!

The Beginning of my Kung Fu

The other day my mind wandered down a path I hadn't seen in a while.  The question of why I started training in Kempo stood at the end of the path, and I had to metaphorically cock my head to one side and narrow my eyes as I thought about it.

Why did I start taking a martial arts self-defense class?  I started years and years ago.  I was way overweight, had no physical skill except eating to brag about and I didn’t know anyone in the class.

But I’d always wanted to be a Jedi, and as another class member pointed out, this was the closest I could ever get without being delusional.

I’m still considering the delusional option, by the way.

My first exposure to the dojo that I’ve now been a part of for eight years was at a women’s activity for my church.  One of the girls in our congregation was a member, so she brought a few students and they let us hit and kick the pads and then showed us how to get out of a lapel grab—when someone grabs the front of your shirt with both of their hands.  Stupid way to try to man-handle someone, in case you’re wondering.  Just leave them all of their weapons while both of your hands are tied up.  Great idea.  Yell really loud in their face, that’ll teach ‘em.

Anyway, I had a great time.  Kicking those pads as hard as I could had to be one of the best things I’d ever done.  Even in tight jeans. (Ugh)

So I went to one class, and immediately knew I was in.  If you’ve never had the “I just knew it” moment, then you might not  understand, but if you’ve ever felt the universe align in just the right way to tell you that you’re exactly where you need to be and doing just what will be right for you, then you’ll get it.  I agreed to a lesson the next week and signed up after that.  It has to have been one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.  Through the martial arts I’ve learned to deal with adversity, I’ve been forced to think outside of my own personal box, I’ve done a total overhaul on the inside of my personal box a few times, I’ve had the chance to get to know people I NEVER would have met otherwise and at one point I could jog for a mile.

The jogging days are long gone (I hope to get back to them soon) but I will never regret my decision and I will always be grateful for the “do it” feeling I got the day I signed up. Stepping out of your comfort zone is scary, but don’t let that stop you!

Next time we’ll travel down a different path-why did I start writing?

Crystal Doors #1 Island Realm

By: Rebecca Moesta and Kevin J. Anderson

Fourteen-year-old cousins Gwen and Vic have lived together ever since the mysterious deaths of Gwen's parents and disappearance of Vic's mother--until Vic's father accidentally transports them through a magical doorway to the island of Elantya. Vic and Gwen are soon caught in a tempest of ancient magic, vicious creatures, and fierce battles--all connected to a territorial feud with the sea-dwelling merlons, an age-old conflict between the bright and dark sages...and the cousins' own mysterious roots.

Why did I pick up this book again?

Because I met the authors and they gave me a signed copy. I’d never read anything by Rebecca before, and really wanted to.  So not a great fan-base or thrill factor reason.  Sorry!

3 out of 5

Characters

I thought the two cousins were cute.  Certainly a great contrast between brains/logic and being spontaneous and how both can be good.  By the end of the book the cousins had met a trio of others that became friends, and since I’m all about camaraderie in stories, I have to say that I dug the characters.

4 out of 5

Did I care what happened?

Yes.  This is a lower YA / higher Middle Grade read, so there isn’t much depth to anything but the ocean in the story, but the characters certainly all had virtues and faults, and I was quite concerned about the magic carpet at one point.

3 out of 5

Plot Holes

You know, I don’t recall anything that made my plot hole radar go off.  Of course both of these authors are titanically experienced, so it might be a lost cause to try to delve for a hole.

5 out of 5

How many times did I yawn?

No yawns.  If I was between the ages of ten and twelve I certainly would have been glued to the pages of the book.  As it is, I didn’t devour the story, but liked it and didn’t get bored.

4 out of 5

Cool Factor

Loads of magic, a flying carpet, sea monsters, mirrors, crystals, ships, shape shifting messengers and all sorts of other creations kept the cool factor high.  I wanted more flying stuff, but I’ll be okay…

4 out of 5

The End

The end worked out.  The very end is a lead in to the rest of the series.  Curse you Rebecca and Kevin.

4 out of 5

Overall Enjoyment

This is a little lower on the reader age group than I usually pick up, but I still really liked the characters (which is a must for me) and the world was brilliant.   The writing style is a little slow to start out, which tripped me up a bit. But I read it pretty fast, and even told my niece that I would loan it to her after I was finished.  She doesn’t love reading (I’m working on that) but I think she’ll like this one.  So if I’m recommending it to others, that means I liked it, right?

4 out of 5

Score=31

That's a Brown Belt!

Sucker

I am a total sucker for the Olympics.  It all started in 1984 when we moved to Colorado.  Our new house lacked grass, and some of the homes around us weren’t even sold yet.  Being 9 years old, and having no friends, I got sucked into watching the Olympics.  If I could go back in time I’m sure I spent an unhealthy amount of time in front of the TV that summer, and now whenever I see an Olympic event I have to stop and stare.

Hello, Mary Lou Retton anyone?  She was only a few years old than me!  It was like seeing my friends winning gold medals, only none of my friends did gymnastics. But I did for a year after that summer.  My proudest moments being the one time I did a forward roll and didn’t fall of the beam—no one was watching—and winning a hand stand contest. That was the pinnacle of my gymnastics career.

Even now, I’m sitting here typing between swimming heats.  And I love it.  There’s something about watching someone who has mastered a skill perform.  Especially physical skills.  I think I get drawn in because I’ve never been good a physical skills.  Well, besides eating.

Anyway, onto writing.  Think back to the last book that you stayed up late to read.  You know, the one you didn’t want to put down—sneaking it on your phone during a meeting or when your spouse was talking about…something.

Right there is a writer’s Olympic gold medal—sitting in your hands.  And they may never know that they made your day, or stretched your mind, or that the cover got cracked because you were gripping it so hard during the best parts.  You, the reader, are the judge, and only you can give a book the gold.  Writers don’t get very many awards, and we don’t have public displays of prowess (at least nothing anyone should talk about) so a kind word, a review on Goodreads or a like on Facebook may be the only way an author knows that anybody cares.

If you’re a writer, cherish people’s comments, and remember, you might be their hero.  Either that or you wrote a character they’ve fallen in love with.

The Dark Night Rises

Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham's finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

No snarky comments from me on this one.

Why did I come to this movie again?

Uh, because it's Batman. I have to admit being a bigger fan of Spiderman than Batman in general, but the first two movies in this trilogy were so dang good, that I was way excited to see this one!

5 out of 5

Characters

I think I have to say that Commissioner Gordon is my favorite character of this whole series—he is the man. The new kid is cool, Cat Woman did great and since I'm a big fan of Christian Bale I'd go just to watch him. Of course in a universe as established as this one, they writers had a lot to work with. I'm not sure the villain alignment in this movie ever happened in the comics, but I thought it was great. The bit part by the Scarecrow cracked me up. Bane isn't as crazy as the Joker is/was, but he revels in his badness, and in general provided a presence that is hard to overshadow on the screen.  And he kind of sounded like Sean Connery.

4 out of 5

Did I care what happened?

Yes, I totally cared what happened. The writers pulled every emotional strand they could throughout this movie, and I have to admit that it didn't feel even close to 2 ½ hours long. The journey of Bruce Wayne had me on the edge of my seat, as well as the cops and everyone back in Gotham.

4 out of 5

Plot Holes

Okay, so these aren't plot holes, but bits of the movie that made me go, “What?” In my head, of course, not out loud. And I won't go into specifics, but there were three moments (pivotal for the characters involved) that didn't ring true to me. The emotional ramp-up to these moments felt weak and one I didn't really understand at all. They make sense for the plot and for the subsequent series of new Batman movies that I assume is coming, but these three psychological moments did not work for me. There were subtle clues, but nothing concrete enough for me to totally believe the reactions. I'm being nit-picky, but I'm a customer, so I'm allowed.

4 out of 5

How many times did I yawn?

Uh, never.

5 out of 5

Cool Factor

The opening scene with Bane has to sit at the top of my list on this one. Very cool. This movie didn't feel as much as a “wow me” movie as it did a deeper story. Which I liked, but it does keep me from giving the movie a 5 in this category. All the toys were cool, and the bad guys plan was brilliant.

4 out of 5

The End

The moment that reversal happened all I could think was, “Why didn't I see that coming? I knew that!” But the writers distracted me enough that I think I actually gasped out loud at one point. Nice job writers.

Then the VERY end made me walk away from the otherwise dark and depressing movie (laced with hard-won triumph of course) a happy girl.

5 out of 5

Overall Enjoyment

I need to see it again. They put a bunch of hugely profound lines in there that I want to hear. The one that struck me the most was when Bane leaves a broken Bruce Wayne and says something akin to, “Real despair cannot be felt unless there is some hope.” True and cruel all at the same time. There were like ten of those lines in there, and frankly I didn't expect them out of Batman. Again, kudos to the writers.

5 out of 5

Score=36

That's a Black Belt!