The writer gives the competition the evil eye

I had thought I was the first ashram child to write a memoir, but actually a guy named Tim Guest who grew up on the repulsive (profiteering, sexual abuse, orgies, rape, biological terrorism-- seriously) Rajneesh ashram got in ahead of me. His book came out in England last year and will be published in the US in February 2005. (Mine is due September 2005.) I'd say that the big difference is that mine is primarily a black comedy and his is primarily a psychological/sociological report. All the same, I totally expect to get this kind of review:

"I felt alone, different from all my friends. They all had great careers. And then I realised I could trade on my childhood. Fever Pitch meets Bhagwan. What more could a publisher want? My very own autobiography before the age of 30. I was going to be the talk of Radio 4."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,6550,1131392,00.html

I also expect to get this sort of notice, from "Sannyas News" (ie, "The Ashram Post"):

"There are also subtle insults : sannyasins doing dynamic "flap" their arms. After the Ranch, "sannyasins had begun manufacturing the drug ecstasy"; in reality a very small number did this, and a great many more went back to the often professional lives they had before living in the organised communes. .Throughout the book he implies that sannyas ended in 1985 when the orange coloured clothes were dropped. For some this is when it began!"

http://www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/Life%20in%20Orange%20review.html

My take, from when I first read it:

"Although the sentences are well-written, the sensibility is thoughtful, and there are some moments of humor and insight, the book as a whole was in the last category I would have expected: worthy but dull. Although the goings-on were hair-raising, more was told than shown and it spent too much time as a history of Rajneesh, but retold without enough wit and flair to lift it above simple history. The author's personal recollections were recalled vividly but the telling was flat. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong, but I suspect not enough drafts. At one point my memoir had the same problems."

The writer gives the competition the evil eye

I had thought I was the first ashram child to write a memoir, but actually a guy named Tim Guest who grew up on the repulsive (profiteering, sexual abuse, orgies, rape, biological terrorism-- seriously) Rajneesh ashram got in ahead of me. His book came out in England last year and will be published in the US in February 2005. (Mine is due September 2005.) I'd say that the big difference is that mine is primarily a black comedy and his is primarily a psychological/sociological report. All the same, I totally expect to get this kind of review:

"I felt alone, different from all my friends. They all had great careers. And then I realised I could trade on my childhood. Fever Pitch meets Bhagwan. What more could a publisher want? My very own autobiography before the age of 30. I was going to be the talk of Radio 4."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,6550,1131392,00.html

I also expect to get this sort of notice, from "Sannyas News" (ie, "The Ashram Post"):

"There are also subtle insults : sannyasins doing dynamic "flap" their arms. After the Ranch, "sannyasins had begun manufacturing the drug ecstasy"; in reality a very small number did this, and a great many more went back to the often professional lives they had before living in the organised communes. .Throughout the book he implies that sannyas ended in 1985 when the orange coloured clothes were dropped. For some this is when it began!"

http://www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/Life%20in%20Orange%20review.html

My take, from when I first read it:

"Although the sentences are well-written, the sensibility is thoughtful, and there are some moments of humor and insight, the book as a whole was in the last category I would have expected: worthy but dull. Although the goings-on were hair-raising, more was told than shown and it spent too much time as a history of Rajneesh, but retold without enough wit and flair to lift it above simple history. The author's personal recollections were recalled vividly but the telling was flat. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong, but I suspect not enough drafts. At one point my memoir had the same problems."

Rachel’s Essential Very Modern Fantasy, Part III: YA/Children’s

Quite a bit of the best modern (and older) fantasy has been either written for or marketed to children and teenagers; it tends toward equally sophisticated themes and the prose is better, on average.

For a lengthy exploration of why that might be, see my essay “The Golden Age of Fantasy is Twelve,” which also has more in-depth discussions of The Darkangel and The Homeward Bounders than I will write here. However, it also has huge spoilers for both (and also for Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tehanu and C. J. Cherryh’s Rider at the Gate.) I suggest reading the intro section of the essay, then stopping before you get to the clearly marked sections where I discuss any individual books which you haven’t yet read.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020708/twelve.shtml

Many of the books I recommend here are available in lovely new paperback editions from Firebirds or Starscape.

http://www.firebirdbooks.com/

http://starscapebooks.com/

Cut for even more extreme length than the last one.

( Read more... )

Note: Susan Cooper, Tamora Pierce, Elizabeth Marie Pope, Francesca Lia Block, E. Nesbit, Diane Duane, Will Shetterly, William Sleator, and Margaret Mahy will appear on the final list, the one on “further reading.” Alan Garner will appear on the unclassifiable/other list, because the book I want to mention is Red Shift—surely a watermark in the annals of “unclassifiable/other.