Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be?

Most of the big publishers in this country won’t sell their e-books (or, in some cases, the e-book versions of their most recent titles) to libraries. This according to an article in the business section of last Sunday’s NYTimes. A senior vice president of the Hatchette Book Group explained its policy this way. Unlike print copies, which they do sell to libraries, e-books last forever and can be loaned “an infinite number of times with no friction.” “No friction” is corp-speak for the fact that borrowing an e-book doesn’t require the effort that borrowing a print book does. In other words, the patron doesn’t have to get off his or her duff, get in the car, etc.

Simon & Schuster keeps its e-books out of libraries for a similar reason. An executive vice president there said that they’ve never been concerned about losing sales of print books to libraries. The reason: Buying a print book is easier than dealing with a library because a purchased book doesn’t need to be returned. Also, the buyer now owns the physical object.

The good news is that over 1,000 small publishers are selling e-books to libraries. Also, according to the Times article, HarperCollins licenses use of its big sellers for a limited number of loans. After that the library can repurchase the e-book at a lower price. Its less popular titles aren’t subject to the limit.

A couple of things occurred to me when I read this. The first is that large publishers don’t have a clue as to why people buy books rather than borrow them. “Friction,” for me, is a non-issue when it comes to borrowing books. I like to go to the library because a) I can browse (the nearest bookstore is now a fifty-minute drive away), and b) I’ll probably run into friends. Given the packed state of my shelves, owning the physical book, except in the case of those written by friends, is rarely an incentive to buy. Often these days, I pass along the books I buy to friends or to our library’s used-book store.

So what do the 1,000 plus small publishers know that large publishers don’t? The obvious answer is that if you price e-books low enough, readers will indulge themselves and buy the titles even if they’re available at the library. For one thing, there’s often a waiting list for borrowing popular e-books. For another, the book will disappear from your e-reader when your borrowing time is up. So buy the e-book for $3.99 or $4.99 (the Kindle price of Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices, for example). Why not? You spend as much for a loaf of bread these days. But spend $14.99 to have Stephen King’s 11/22/63 on my Kindle? Not when I can put my name on the library’s wait list for the hardcover.

And then there’s the issue of moral imperative. Tacky to bring that up, I know, when we’re talking about big business, but I find it—well, “reprehensible” comes to mind—for publishers to refuse to sell e-books to libraries. Libraries are, after all, a cornerstone of a literate and democratic society.

Your thoughts on this?

Emerging Writer's Contest

Ploughshares is expanding its Emerging Writer's Contest in 2012 to include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The winner in each genre will win $1,000. Their definition of "Emerging Writer" is someone who has yet to publish a book.

Submissions will be accepted online between February 1 and April 2, 2012. Three to five poems would be accepted; nonfiction and fiction submissions should be under 5,000 words.

The entry fee is $20 and includes a one year subscription to Ploughshares (current subscribers can add to their subscription or give as a gift).

The winning story, essay and poems will be published in the Winter 2012-13 edition of Ploughshares, guest-edited by John Skoyles and Ladette Randolph.

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

Stay Healthy in 2012

So here is a quiz for you, what have I got in common with the President of Argentina, and the screen father of Brenda Leigh Johnson, aka The Closer? I am a survivor of Thyroid Cancer and very soon, they will be too.

Barry Corbin, the actor who portrays Clay Johnson doesn’t have Thyroid Cancer but Clay Johnson does and it is sure to play in the story line of the final five episodes next summer. Clay has already explained that he isn’t going to die but he might get moody. (As if he could be any moodier.)

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina, has been diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer and is expected to have surgery next week and return to her full duties as President on January 24th.

I was diagnosed in 2009 and described my adventures here.

So while you are making those New Years Resolutions, remember to schedule a complete physical that includes a doctor palpating your thyroid. It is the least invasive and simplest of all cancer screenings. And it could just save your life someday.

Terrie

Best Mystery & Crime Fiction of 2011

It's that time of year, when "best of..." lists start appearing.

Spinetingler Magazine (@spinetinglermag) has gathered an extensive list: "Best mystery/crime fiction lists collected."

I am honored that Derringer Award-winner Jane Hammons (@JHammons) chose to include my story, "Heat of Passion" (which appeared at A TWIST OF NOIR in February), among her "Five You Can't Miss." Jane's post appears on Chris Rhatigan's (@crhat23) "Death by Killing" (DBK) blog. Jane is among a group of writers and editors who have contributed their lists of favorite short fiction stories to DBK.

The recently released anthology, "The Best American Mystery Stories 2011," edited by Harlan Coben (@HarlanCoben) and series editor Otto Penzler, includes "The Hitter" by Chris F. Holm (@chrisfholm), whose debut novel, Dead Harvest (Angry Robot Books) will be released in the U.S. on February 28, 2012.

Here's an interesting twist regarding books of various genres: @GalleyCat editor Jason Boog's list, "Most Overlooked Books of 2011."

What were your favorite mystery or crime fiction books or stories this year?

Speaking of outstanding books released in 2011, don't forget, there's still time to enter our giveaway of Murder NY Style: Fresh Slices, edited by our very own Terrie Farley Moran. Three lucky commenters will receive a paperback or e-version. Let us know what book or which author you look forward to reading in 2012. Be sure to leave a contact e-mail. Contest closes Friday, January 6, 2012. Click here to be in the running. Good luck!

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

MTM: Feedstore Chronicles

Travis Erwin, esteemed creator of the My Town Monday series of posts that have brought so much joy and information to us all, is the author of a wonderfully funny memoir, The Feedstore Chronicles. You may recall that from time to time over the past five years, Travis would give us all a taste of what life was like for a sweet sixteen-year-old boy who worked at Pearl's Feed and Seed, and found out that life has a wild side. Doyle Suggs, manager of the Feedstore taught a young Travis a lot about men, women, fighting and love. And then there is the gambling.

Travis writes:

"Given the boss's fascination, I was not surprised when he invented fly roulette. Doyle was looking for a game that several people could play at once, but he also wanted to bump up the house odds to make an extra buck or ten. So, he fashioned a piece of plywood about a yard square and painted numbers in two inch squares. He then positioned the board under the bug zapper. The idea was for the gambler to choose one of the squares and lay down money that the next fried insect carcass would land within the confines of their chosen number."


You are best off reading for yourself to find out if Darcy got pregnant, whether Jerry and Travis ever fought and how it is easier to castrate lambs than piglets.


So why not use those Amazon gift cards everyone was nice enoug to give you and get yourself a copy of The Feedstore Chronicles. You won't be disappointed.


Terrie

High Noon

We've seen High Noon before, but we watched it again the other night. This is one of those movies you revisit for the pure pleasure of hanging out in that world and with those characters. As a bonus, we writers get a master class in how to create suspense.

Director Fred Zinnemann establishes a sense of danger with the opening sequence when three disreputable-looking characters meet in the hills outside town. We soon learn that they’re waiting for the arrival on the noon train of a recently pardoned killer intent on gunning down the marshal who put him in jail. As the three men ride through town, people silently flee indoors—an effective device for ratcheting up the tension.

Cut to a scene in the judge’s office, where the marshal, Gary Cooper, is about to marry a luminous and very young Grace Kelly. Now we see the battle between good and evil in terms of this couple's future, and the emotional stakes are raised. The stakes are raised further when the wedding party hears about the killer's impending arrival. Cooper’s friends urge the couple to flee. They do, briefly, but we know Cooper’s going to turn that wagon around, even while Kelly, a Quaker, threatens to leave town without him. The film, an hour and twenty minutes long, takes place in real time. Zinnemann uses the passage of time brilliantly, with the camera returning again and again to the clock on the wall as Cooper tries to enlist deputies for back-up. As for the ending, no spoilers here. You're going to have to rent this one.

An historical note: Carl Foreman, who wrote the screenplay based on John W. Cunningham’s short story, “The Tin Star,” was blacklisted in the fifties, and might have been removed from the film without the intervention of Cooper and Zinnemann, among others. High Noon is often regarded as an allegory for McCarthyism.

Your thoughts on suspense? Movies you watch again and again? Learning our craft through films? Also, see Laura's post below for our 2012 Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices giveaway.

To Welcome in 2012...A Giveaway!

Have we bored you silly with all our talk of the Murder, NY Style anthology yet? No? Great! Let's talk some more! This time, I promise to keep it short and sweet.

If you've been on the "Nice" list and have been saving your money this season to spend on other people, we're going to give away a few copies!  Let's go for three. Three paperback copies (or e-copies, if that's your preference).

All you have to do to enter is comment below telling us what book or author you are looking forward to reading in 2012. Be sure to include a contact email so we can get the book to you!

Contest closes Friday, January 6.

Enjoy!

The Year in Words

Each year Merriam Webster (the dictionary folks) puts together a list of words whose definitions were in demand at a particular time of the year due to events in the news. For example "vitriol" became a popular look-up after Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot. And a report about the potential relationship between cell phones and cancer spiked an interest in the word "carcinogenic."

If you'd like a look at the complete list, click here.

Terrie

Tuesday Twosome

Janet Evanovich has been keeping readers happy for years with her wildly popular series about Stephanie Plum. Now Katherine Heigl will bring Stephanie to life on the big screen with "One for the Money," set to be released in January. At long last we'll get to see real-life Ranger (played by Jason O'Mara) and Ranger (played by Daniel Sunjata). Personally, I can't wait.

Janet has always crafted interesting and captivating characters. In the early days of her career, her Loveswept novels were romantic and funny, and her humor became her trademark.

She does remarkable work with dialogue, whether she's speaking for Stephanie's partner, former working girl Lula or the beloved Grandma Mazur. She's also a master at giving the book a beginning that makes you want to know more.

Take her opening conversation with Stephanie from Smokin' Seventeen:

   "I had a dream," Grandma said. "There was this big horse, and it could fly. It didn't have wings. It just could fly. And the horse flew over the top of you, and started dropping road apples, and you were running around trying to get out of the way of the road apples. And the funny thing was you didn't have any clothes on except a red lace thong kind of underpants. Anyways, next thing a rhinoceros flew over you, and he was sort of hovering over top of your head. And then I woke up. I got a feeling it means something."
   "What?" I asked.
   "I don't know, but it can't be good. And she disconnected.

 What a great start for a book. Grandma and Stephanie have already aroused your curiosity and you've haven't even finished the first page.

Here's how I started my new short story featuring my vampire homicide detective from "A Vampire in Brooklyn," which is in Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices:

   Alice Landers chased the bear through the woods with absolute glee. It had been years since she’d been on a real hunt, and she almost yelled with exultation.
   Of course she wouldn’t kill the bear, just drain a bit of his blood to satisfy her hunger. Still, it was a hell of a lot of fun to chase him through the brambles and tall pines of The Smoky Mountains. She finally caught him, paralyzed him into submission with the fluid her fangs produced before feeding, and with careful attention to the sound of his heart, sated herself and left the bear tucked comfortably against a tree, sleeping soundly.

That's what I've been working on this week. What have you been up to?

A New Series for the New Year

Do you like weird? Mystery? Steampunk? I just started reading The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar. I think I am going to have to check out the rest of the series.  It has Mycroft Holmes, Moriarty, explosive books, airships, lizard royalty, just about everything you could possibly imagine and more. I'll just give you guys a taste of the writing:

He took shelter on the other side of the river, in the welcoming, warm and well-lit halls of Charing Cross Station. He stood alone amidst the constant, hurried movement of people to and from the great waiting trains that stood like giant metal beasts of burden along the platforms, bellowing smoke and steam into the cool night air. His back against the wall, the smell of freshly baked pastries from a nearby stall wafting past him, Orphan broke the crude seal on the bottle and withdrew, with great care, the sheaf of paper that nestled inside.     

Gilgamesh's jagged handwriting ran along the page in cramped and hurried lines that left no blank space. It was addressed – and here Orphan stopped, for he felt cold again despite the warmth of the station, and his fingers tingled as if still dipped in the cold water of the Thames – to him.

I am sure I'll be talking more about these books in the future because I feel the need for weird, and so far the Bookman is filling it. Do you ever get that feeling?

Happy 81st Birthday Edna O'Brien

In honor of Irish novelist and short story writer Edna O'Brien's 81st birthday today, I am posting a link to her"Art of Fiction" interview with the Paris Review, which appeared in their Summer 1984 issue. I love her opening statement, after being asked if she knows when she started writing:

"When I say I have written from the beginning, I mean that all real writers write from the beginning, that the vocation, the obsession, is already there, and that the obsession derives from an intensity of feeling which normal life cannot accommodate."

You can fast forward to 2011 and check out Rachel Cooke's article in The Guardian, which appeared earlier this year.

Happy Birthday, Edna!

The Gift of the Magi

The month of December always reminds me of the tried and true signs of Christmas past present and future. Yes there is the story of Scrooge and Tiny Tim. And each year, who doesn't watch It's a Wonderful Life?

I suspect the short story that is most re-read at this time of year is "The Gift of the Magi" by O Henry. Today on Criminal Element, I talk about that story and its famous author here.

Pop on over and let me know what you think of my take on things.

Terrie

My Town Monday: A Lower East Side Story

In the 70’s and early 80’s, the boundaries of the Lower East Side (LES) included the East Village, Alphabet City (Loisaida), and the Bowery. That's when, and where, my story for the SinC Anthology took place. Read on for a bit of history about the Lower East Side.

(Click on over to Pattinase’s blog for How I Came to Write “The Understudy," and an invitation to our launch party at 7 pm, at Partners and Crime this Thursday night. 44 Greenwich Avenue, corner of Charles.)

The Lower East Side was Manhattan’s dark underworld where tenements burned, junkies lined the streets for heroin, derelicts slept in flophouses with chicken wire ceilings, and ten year old lookouts ran the roofs. 

It was also a cheap haven for a counterculture of artists, musicians, writers, and squatters who made homes, of a sort, in the shells of tenement buildings abandoned by their owners.

Its subway was a graffiti-riddled pit stop, the most dangerous in the city.

Watching over it all were the firefighters at 222 East 2nd Street in Alphabet City,  Engine 28 and Ladder 11. They were witnesses to drug deals at a bricked up building across the street, and were regularly called upon to rescusitate drug overdoses.

THE LOWER EAST SIDE TODAY

Depending on your point of view, today the Lower East Side is either the grateful recipient or the victim of new gentrification. It is now a trendy neighborhood where college kids and boutique shoppers only occasionally bump elbows with the homeless.






The photo on the right is taken at a new and trendy bar on Ave C, where my story’s characters squatted in 1978. (Avenue C has been designated Loisaida Avenue in recognition of the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican heritage.)
Photo by David Shankbone, August 2006

 

In the 21st century, luxury hotels and condominiums, of dubious architectural merit, perch oddly among the centuries old tenements and lofts.

And the firefighters of Engine 28 and Ladder 11, who once rescued victims of heroin overdoses, went to the rescue of the victims of 9/11 and lost many of their own.

Visit me at SleuthSayers

I am so pleased to have been invited to visit our friends both old and new at the SleuthSayers Blog.

I'll be talking about (what else?) the new anthology, Murder New York Style Fresh Slices.

Please click on over and join the conversation.

Terrie

An Award for What?

With greed, stupidity, war and climate change driving the headlines, a recent NY Times story about the Bad Sex in Fiction Award was a nice change of pace. The award, which has been sponsored by the Literary Review since 1993, is intended to discourage “crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description…” Apparently it hasn’t worked. The well-attended ceremony includes readings of excerpts, which, as you can imagine, are extremely funny.

This year’s winner was David Guterson for his novel Ed King, a retelling of Oedipus Rex. The story includes a twelve-hour scene between mother and son, part of which is set in a shower and involves a bar of soap. Enough said? Guterson, author of Snow Falling On Cedars, didn’t attend the ceremony but sent a message saying he wasn’t surprised he won since Oedipus “practically invented bad sex.”

The NY Times piece pretty much left out the juicy parts, but the R version in The Guardian provides relevant quotes from the winner as well as from runners-up, including Lee Child and Stephen King. Trust me, you’ll laugh.

And that leads to my question. Have you ever read an explicit sex scene that wasn’t unintentionally funny? Also, how do you handle sex in your own writing?

Some Things You Can't Do With eBooks

In searching for the perfect business card, I came across these folded paper sculptures here:  Some are book popups, others stand-alone.

Here's another site with art created for the Czech bookstore Anagram, which has a slogan – words create worlds. And these sculptures show the world a book can create.

I remember a previous post on paper art sites here at WOM a few years back. I'll see if I can find it. Meantime, enjoy.

(Ah. Found it.)

Cyclical Taste

I still have a first edition of Flood.

I have a terrible confession to make: I don't read noir.

It seems every time I turn around, one of my favorite people has a new, dark book coming out. I truly adore these people, but I can't read what they write.

Once upon a time, my favorite writers wrote the grimmest of the grim: Andrew Vachss, John Sandford, David Lindsay...an unending parade of evil tromped through my head. I could read it at any hour of the day or night.

Now? Not so much. In fact, not at all. I don't need cozy, you understand. In fact, things that are too cozy make me grit my teeth a bit. (Keep me away from crime-solving animals or there will be blood!) I like a little edge. Something soft- or medium-boiled.

In fact, my preferred genre at the moment is the thriller. But even there, I take issue with the massive amounts of "torture porn." (I talked about this all the way back in 2009.) Luckily, it's usually fairly easy to skip, or at least skim, those bits. They rarely have all that much to do with the plot (which is another problem, quite aside from the fact that I dislike them). I like thrillers because there's enough edge, enough grit to keep me going, but there's usually a satisfactory resolution at the end.

Someone recently named a bunch of noir authors they liked and included John Connolly in that list. Naturally, I had to disagree. In Connolly's books, there's a clear division between good and evil. Sure, some people—many of them, even the best of them—fall into the gray area between the two, but good exists. In so many noir novels, it seems good is completely lost.

And that's where I can't go. I just can't stand it when the world seems like a more depressing place when I close my book (or the cover of my eReader) than it was a few pages in. I get that from the newspapers already. Every. Single. Day.

I hope someday to be able to go back to reading noir, for two reasons: first, because so many of my friends write it; second, because it will mean the daily news has a bit more cheerful slant.

Tuesday Twosome

I just finished Michael Connelly's The Drop, the latest Harry Bosch novel. There was only one thing wrong: it didn't last long enough. Harry is such a good detective, and I love going through a case with him.

As always, Connelly gave readers a satisfying trip inside the mind of a well-loved L.A. cop. Harry starts his day with a new case in Open-Unsolved. It has an interesting twist with the blood evidence now tested for DNA, and Harry's itching for a new puzzle to solve so he jumps on it quickly. Unfortunately, he's interrupted by a personal request from Councilman Irvin Irving, a long-time enemy who used to be a cop himself before being fired for misconduct and now spends a lot of his time making trouble for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Anyway, Harry wants to go after the unsolved murder from 1989, but first he has to look at the apparent suicide of the councilman's son George Irving. The two detectives who were first on the scene are ready to rule the death suicide, but Harry knows he has to dot all the i's and cross all the t's to convince Councilman Irving the case was handled properly.

All of this makes Harry's life truly complicated, which is just the way his fans like it. On the personal side, his teenage daughter is living with him since her mother's death, and he's working at staying aware that someone in his life needs him let go of the case of the end of the day.

As always, Connelly does a great job of putting the reader inside the LAPD and keeping up with the way the machinery that makes up a big-city police force runs day to day.

The fun begin as Harry and his partner, David Chu, are headed to the crime scene and Harry's trying explain why they're working a "live" case.

"The LAPD is a paramilitary organization, Chu. That means when someone of higher rank tells you to do something, you do it. The order came down from the chief and we're following it. That's what's going on. We'll eventually get back to the cold hit. But for now we have a live one and it's the priority."

"Sounds like bullshit politics."

"High jingo."

"What's that?"

"The confluence of police and politics."

Let the games begin. Harry's busier than a one-armed juggler trying to keep everything going and pursue justice at the same time.

The other fascinating part of the story is the relationship between the councilman and Bosch. They thoroughly dislike each other, but are both seeking the same goal in this matter--determining the true cause of George Irving's death. It doesn't make their relationship any easier.

Councilman Irving answered the door of his son's home. He opened it just as wide as his own body, and it was clear before he said anything that he did not want to allow Bosch and Chu admittance.

"Councilman," Bosch said. "we'd like to ask your son's wife a few questions."

"Deborah's taken this very hard, Detective. It would be better if you could come back another time."

Bosch looked around on the doorstep, even glanced behind him and down at Chu on the lower step before turning back to Irving and answering.

"We're conducting an investigation, Councilman. Her interview is important and we can't put it off."

They stared at each other, neither yielding.

"You asked for me and you told me to proceed with urgency," Bosch finally said. "This is what I'm doing. Are you going to let us come in or not?"

Irving relented and stepped back, opening the door wide.

This small exchange gives you a clear picture of the tension between these two adversaries. Connelly uses minimal words but gets maximum impact.

What have you been reading this week? Got some quotes you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from you.

Hopefully by next week I'll be back to writing myself!

100 Notable Books of 2011

Yesterday's New York Times had a list of the 100 Notable Books of 2011. As I wandered through the list, two things struck me: 1. I had not read, nor do I remember even hearing about any of the books on the list. 2. Of all one hundred there is only one book that I'd like to read. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and Murder of a President written by Candice Millard.

Now I am a bit of an American history buff, but my interest wanes at the start of the Civil War, so President Garfield's assassination is a little later than my normal area of interest. Yet this first paragraph of the product description on Amazon, lured me in:

"James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back."

And the premise of the book, that the shot didn't kill him but his doctors surely did, along with the upheaval of American life at that time make it sound like a winner to me.

Santa, are you listening?

Terrie

Silencing the Critics

WOM friend Sandra Seamans blogs today about her struggle to believe in her writing despite the disparaging voices of those who'd discourage her. For those who don't know, Sandra, a much-published short story writer, is the current president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Her blog--one of the most helpful around--keeps up to date on markets for short crime fiction. The story she tells today is, in some way, all our stories. Every writer, even those of us fortunate enough to have support from family and friends, battles to silence the internal critic--that whiny, little voice that suggests we'd do better cleaning the house or paying the bills.

If so moved, do stop in at My Little Corner and join the conversation.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Wins Legal Battle

Authors can rejoice along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won a 17-year legal battle after blending fact with fiction in his 1981 novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

A Colombian court ruled against Miguel Reyes Palencia, who claimed the author unlawfully used his life story as the basis for his fiction; he also demanded 50% of the book's royalties as well as a co-author credit. Garcia Marquez, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, has long argued that although the story was inspired by real life events, the names and the rest of the plot were the fruits of his own imagination.

In 1951, shortly after a woman was married, the groom dumped her after learning she wasn't a virgin. Her family, in disgrace over the rejection, pressed her to name the man responsible for deflowering her. Her brothers subsequently murder the accused man.

For an in-depth look at Chronicle of a Death Foretold, stop by the Random House, Inc., Academic Resources.

The court decided, "Hundreds of literary, artistic, and cinematographic works have had as their central story facts from real life, which have been adapted to the creator's perspective, without this being an impediment to [the author's right] to claim economic rights over them."

As far as Palencia's demand regarding co-authorship? The court opined, "Mr. Miguel Reyes Palencia could never have told the story as the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez did, and could never have employed the literary language that was actually used. The work is characterized by its originality."

According to Tom Phillips in The Guardian, Marquez's lawyer, Alfonso Gomez Mendez, told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, "This ruling is important, because it helps enhance the central thesis, which is valid for literature and art in general, that

what matters is the way it presents an object of reality, not reality itself. It's like a woman who poses for a painter [but] then demands half the copyright. She owns her body but the work itself belongs to the painter."

IMHO, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work is phenomenal. One of my favorite pieces written by Garcia Marquez is "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." Do you have a particular Garcia Marquez favorite?

Come follow me on Twitter @katcop13.

At the Bijou

We went to the movies every Saturday, no matter what was playing. In fact, we didn’t know what was playing until we got there, which was often after the movie had started. Didn’t matter. We’d catch the beginning the second time around. We’d buy our candy—Bonomo Turkish Taffy for me, frugal little soul that I was, since it lasted the longest—and follow the matron with her flashlight down the aisle.

In those days, I was bored by movies with mostly male casts, like Westerns and war movies. Give me Doris Day and Rock Hudson every time. That was about as risqué as Saturday matinees got in our neighborhood theater. When we were old enough to be sneaky, say eleven or twelve, we’d hide out in the bathroom at the end of the matinee, then slip down the dark aisle to an empty seat for the first showing of, say, Ruby Gentry or From Here to Eternity. I was so uneducated in these matters, that my friend Ellen, who had an older brother, had to explain what was actually going on when the waves crashed on the beach or night turned into day outside the window.

I was thinking last night, as we watched Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales, how my tastes have changed. Somewhere along the line I’ve become a fan of Westerns, and will watch even a bad one for the scenery. (I distinguish here between “bad” and “unwatchable.”) The Outlaw Josey Wales isn’t quite bad, though it’s a half-hour too long and with some fairly wooden performances. The 1976 film, which Eastwood directed, is the classic story of the bereft hero who undertakes a perilous quest to avenge evil. Eastwood does manage a couple of surprises, but for the most part you know what’s coming. However that didn’t detract from the pleasure of watching the story play out. And of course, the scenery was gorgeous, as was Clint. I say there's nothing wrong with relaxing your standards once in a while.

How about you? Any not-quite-bad films you've enjoyed recently?