Ami Maxine

Cave Point: Part…I don’t even know?

I know I’ve talked about Cave Point a few times overs the years I’ve been writing this blog, but given it’s my favorite place on Earth, I think we should all be surprised I don’t talk about it a whole lot more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A bit ago, I wrote about how I took a drive up and down the Door County Peninsula. I hadn’t planned to stop at Cave Point, but the universe apparently knew I needed it anyway.

Every time I’m there, there’s something new to see, to explore. And this time, it was parts of the land I’ve not seen in…maybe decades. I honestly can’t remember the last time the lake was THIS low:

Most often, there isn’t much climbing down to be done because the water is being pushed up against the cliffs themselves – which always makes for an excellent show of perfect splashes. Every now and then, we’re able to climb down a bit along those ledges on the right side of the photo above. (The decision to climb down also depends on the person – some are a bit more adventurous than others. If you ever go, be smart and be safe. You do not want to land in the lake. Also, if you ever go in winter, never go near the edge or attempt to climb if you are not wearing cleats!) This is what it commonly is like when the water is what we would consider low (that’s my friend Jen – she was actually on her way to grab a water bottle someone had left behind [sigh] – always take out what you bring in with you):

On a more normal day, the lake is like this – water up to the cliffs making some great splashes (the sound is unreal – provides an absolute reset to one’s nervous system) (again, that’s my friend Jen perched up on that cliff):

Another pic of the same sport on a particularly windy day:

But my last trek, the water was so low – it was almost nerve wracking how far out I could walk onto the limestone bed. The wind was minimal, so there weren’t really splashes. I should be in water up to my knees standing here and looking back at the trees:

One of my fav grabs from another trip – that’s Jen squatting near the splash. We can sit for hours and just watch the water, waiting for the perfect splash. And, sometimes, the lake gets a bit sassy about it.

Cave Point is located on the lake side of the Door Peninsula, between Institute and Jacksonport. If you go straight to Cave Point (which is a county park), you do not need a park pass. If you go by way of Whitefish State Dunes, you do need one (as it’s a state park). If you’re up to it, you can park at Cave Point (again, for free) and walk all the way to the dunes (which is a lot easier now that the state park has put in a gravel walking path).

For ages, my friend Philip has been posting photos of hearts he finds out in the word. Sometimes, they are intentional hearts. But often they were more like this:

It’s because of him I’ve started noticing them everywhere. It’s another thing Jen and I look for when we go – and we always find a slew of hearts here. So be on the look out if you go. As Philip would say, #LoveIsEverywhere.

First Friday Rec: The Sing Sing Files

Title: The Sing Sing Files
Author: Dan Slepian
Genre: nonfiction, true crime, sociology
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2024
StoryGraph* Moods: informative, reflective, tense
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: Armchair Expert interview
Other Books by Slepian: none at the moment, though Slepian has a large body of work as a journalist and working on Dateline
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

Description: In his work on Dateline, Dan Slepian had the opportunity to ride shotgun with a couple homicide detectives in the Bronx. Through this relationship, Slepian learned of a 1990 murder case for which two men were serving twenty-five years. However, the detective believed the wrong men were serving time (at this point, they had already served twelve years). Slepian began his own investigation into what happened and to find out whether or not these men who claimed to be innocent really were. One of the men in this case, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez becomes the spine of the book, bringing to Slepian’s attention other men he believed were innocent of the crimes they were convicted of.

While hitting a number of roadblocks (i.e. flaws in the justice system), these men maintained their innocence, and one by one, they were proven to be telling the truth.

This is not an easy read, by any means – but it is a necessary one.

Why I recommend this book: I will start by saying agreeing with a number of reviews about the book – there is a lot in this that paints Slepian as a hero and talks a lot about his own life. This is not a straight nonfiction story about these six men. It is written more as a memoir of the time Slepian spent with them. If that’s not your thing, I get it.

That being said, I do think it is an important read regarding the lives of these specific six men and the ways their journeys point out incredibly serious flaws in the judicial system. There are many books out there that do similar things – this is just the one that crossed my path first.

“A remarkable, moving account about the lives of people who have been too easily discarded, forgotten, and condemned. These compelling narratives help us understand why we should do better when it comes to punishment and justice in America.”
~ Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy

Drive the Door

A couple times a year, I get the urge to, as I call it, drive the Door. For those unfamiliar with my state, which is Wisconsin, the thumb that juts out of the northwest into Lake Michigan is called Door County. It’s a popular tourist place. So far, they’ve managed to keep chains out of northern Door (aside from things like gas stations and a Little Cesars in one of those stations), and they offer all kinds of summer and winter activities (though the county is MUCH quieter during the colder months). There are two main highways – 42 runs up the bay side and 57 down the lake side. So long as you don’t drive into the water, it’s rather difficult to get lost.

Every now and then, I get to the urge to visit this county that I’ve known my whole life. And that’s not hyperbole. My mother tent camped pregnant with me, and my family visited there several times every summer before we moved there when I was just about to turn ten (our record was thirteen times). There are places I like to visit often, like DC Coffee (for their hash brown bake and delicious coffee) and the Skyway Drive-In during the summer (I actually worked there while I was in college). And, of course, Cave Point – my favorite place on Earth.

And sometimes, I just get the urge to drive and visit as many of my fav spots as I can. I’ll drive up the bayside and down the lake side, which I did yesterday. I stopped at two cafes (because, well, I love a good cafe) – Blue Horse in Fish Creek and Sip in (between Ephraim and Sister Bay) (I also partook in lunch here because my fav spot, Grasse’s Grill isn’t open for the season yet). The bathrooms at Sip always make me giggle.

I did a double take when I drove by Anderson Dock, so I had to turn around and stop. The building on the dock, which houses an art gallery, is usually completed covered with people’s graffiti. (They used to have benches, but people ignored the ‘no graffiti on benches’ sign, and those disappeared. Unfortunately, the graffiti has also moved to the posts around the dock and on some areas of the cement, as well. [sigh]) Every now and then, the building gets a new paint job – which it apparently did recently since, you know, you can actually see the color it was painted.

I also stopped by Peninsula State Park to walk up the Eagle Tower – which maybe wasn’t the smartest thing to do as my legs hadn’t quite recovered from deadlift day. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the view at the top is always worth it. This isn’t the original tower, the one my sister had to run up and down while on our high school’s cross country team. (Did I mention there are, like, ninety-five steps to the top?) The plus about this new tower, though is that they made it accessible by building a ramp up to the top. (I will note that it’s still quite a hike and in places feels a bit steep if someone were to push themselves all the way up in a manual chair.) Unless you walk into the park, you will need a park pass to get to the tower.

At the tip of the peninsula, you can catch a ferry, year round, to Washington Island – which is absolutely worth it if you ever get the chance. I made it just as the ferry was finishing loading, and tempted as I was, I decided not to jump aboard. The waters were calm, though, so I imagine these folks had a smooth ride. (One time when I took the ferry over, there were splashes coming over the side. At least my car got a good wash. :-P)

I hadn’t actually planned to stop at Cave Point. In fact, I had a third cafe in mind (Roost + Banter in Baileys Harbor), but when I had stopped at Pen Park, I bought a yearly park pass at their kiosk. Unfortunately, it dispenses a receipt, and you have thirty days to visit an open station to trade it for the actual pass. Their website said Whitefish Dunes State Park had an open station, so I opted to head there first. Well the website lied (well, likely it never got switched to their winter hours). They were not open. But since Cave Point is right next door, I figured I’d stop for a few minutes and enjoy some natural ASMR. But then… the water levels were nice and low, and the cliffs begged to be climbed. What’s a girl to do?

I had a few other stops on my trek, like looking for ice shoves (as the ice on the bay breaks up, the wind will push it toward the shore; in some cases, sheets upon sheets will get stacked in places – makes for an incredible sight) and swinging by Cana Island. It’s always nice just to wander without much of a plan, and DC in the winter/early spring is a great place to do that.

Book Fair Reflections

A couple weeks ago, I participated in an event at my local art gallery. Recently, The Art Garage in Green Bay, WI, has been looking for ways to expand to include the literary arts, which I’m all for. I love this spot (it even makes an appearance in my first book, though I may have relocated it to Chicago, IL). They put on shows and hold classes, and now they are offering writerly things like community gatherings and book fairs.

During one of those community gatherings, they even offered the chance for us to have our books in their gift shop on consignment. How could I say no to that opportunity? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wrote in a previous post about some of the prep that I did for this event (you can read about it Book Fair + Author Fest: Prep). I will say things went as expected – I caffeinated and spent five hours being outgoing in an effort to intrigue people enough to buy my books – and then I absolutely crashed into a little introvert puddle. I did have a shared table, and I landed next to Bob Seize (who wrote Supermanic, which has a really killer cover), and we had a nice chat (and even swapped books).

Neither of us remembered a table cloth (well, to be fair, I did as I was arriving… but I didn’t want to bother going to find one) – but we were ok with that. The tables were paint-splotched, and we thought it looked cool. (The gallery offered us one, but we opted to keep it uncovered.)

I did managed to successfully accept sales through both Venmo and Square (though I learned it will be handy to have that swipe once it arrives – the chip on the first card a customer tried didn’t work; she said it was an old card, so maybe too worn or too old for the tech – her second worked perfectly. If this happens again, I’ll be able to connect that device and swipe the card instead). I also overdid it on how many singles and fives I brought to make change – not one person used cash to buy (though I did make change for my tablemate at one point). 😛

I think one thing I will do differently (aside from buying a nice tablecloth to have on hand) is not use the foam core displays and blurb cards I made. People still reached for the pile of books I had behind them – they want to feel them in their hands, I guess. Which I get. I think I will just pick a copy of each to use as the display. (My worry had been all the hands touching and finger prints – and what if they bend the cover when they flip through it, etc. – I won’t be able to sell it.)

One other thing is I might put a rainbow sticker on my Goode vs Melville display cover so that people can see from a distance that it has queer representation. I saw some folks who were clearly part of the community, but unless they stopped to talk or read the blurb, they had no idea. In fact, one of my sales came from talking to the mom of a trans teen – soon as she heard the book had queer representation, she called her kid over, and they ended up buying a copy of both books. A little rainbow sticker might draw people to the table who might just walk by otherwise. I might also create smaller foam core displays that say things like “Like Magic Realism?” or “Like stories of found family?” (Clearly those both need some editing and more thought. But you get the idea.) Things that will draw folks to the table to even begin that conversation.

I also need to work on my elevator pitch. GvM is an easy one – but trying to explain Lucy’s story in a sentence or two has proven time and again to be tricky. She’s been in the world two years, and I’m trying struggling to find the right words.

They will be holding another event in November, and thankfully my sales from this first one already covered the initial application fee, as well as the five bucks per event table fee (only five since I’m sharing, which I will do again) and then some. Hopefully, I will have figured out my pitches by then. 🙂

Creepy Craig

Starting last semester, I taught in a classroom/hallway I hadn’t taught in for quite a while. Right across from my classroom door, there’s an admin office door with a window that runs down the left side of it. And sitting in this window was a creepy little gnome. I hadn’t thought to take a photo of that version, of the gnome just being his little gnome self – because I had no idea what I was in for with this little creeper.

Then Halloween hit:

And this little gnome upped his creepy game tenfold. 😐 It was hard not to take notice of him after that. While this was the height of his creepiness, he did not sleep on the costumes:

Little Craig has gathered a bit of a following among my non-work friends, so I thought I would share with you all out there in cyberland. In fact, it was in sharing him that I learned he even has a name.

Are you someone who decorates? If so, what holiday would you be most excited to dress up little Creepy Craig?

First Friday Rec: Legends & Lattes

Title: Legends & Lattes
Author: Travis Baldree
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, LGBTQIA+
Pages: 305
Publication Date: 2022
StoryGraph* Moods: Lighthearted, Hopeful, Relaxing
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Other Books by Baldree: Bookshops & Bonedust
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

This series had popped up in a few conversations over the years, and I’ve been meaning to read it – and I finally had managed to get ahead enough in book club reads to sit down with it. And I devoured it (and then the prequel Bookshops & Bonedust) fairly quickly.

Description: In this story, our narrator, Viv, is an orc looking to hang up her sword for a gentler life. She had it all planned out – earn enough money to open her own coffee shop in Thune and put the world of being a warrior behind her.

But no one has ever even heard of coffee, and some are unwilling to even try it…at first. But little by little, and with the help of a baking Ratkin, the shop becomes a success – and all of Thune is hooked on the beverage and the baked goods. This review sums it up nicely:

Don’t think it’s all coffee and roses, though – there are adversaries to be dealt with and magic run amuck. This, too, is handled in a cozy sort of way. From everything I’ve read about it, you will either love it or hate it. And I loved it. Can’t wait for the next one!

Why I recommend this book: It’s a cozy (which is NOT code for boring), low-stakes (also not a code for boring) sort of read – more character driven than plot driven, which is right up my own alley. (There’s a third, Brigands & Breadknives, set to come out later this year, as well as a short story prequel that comes in the L&L second edition.) If you like stories of friendship/found family, as well as some magic (or coffee!), give this series a shot!

“After twenty-two years of adventuring, Viv had reached her limit of blood and mud and bullshit. An orc’s life was strength and violence and a sudden, sharp end — but she’d be damned if she’d let hers finish that way. It was time for something new.” ~ Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

book fair + author fest: prep

My introvert is officially hating me. For SIX HOURS tomorrow, I will have to be outgoing and sunshiny, and I will have to have my saleswoman pants on.

The joys of a writer who actually wants to share their stories. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why couldn’t I have been one of those writers satisfied with just writing the thing?

I’ve said before on this blog that it was my dream as a child to write a book and someday see it on the shelf of my local bookstore (which I have) and my local library (which I also have). Past me, little me, didn’t really think through the process of getting there. Sure, I can dream up stories and type them out and spend way too many hours obsessively revising and even more hunting for typos (and then STILL find some in the book…). But little me didn’t anticipate the number of people I’d have to then talk to in order to get said book out into the world.

If you’re not an introvert, this post might be incredibly confusing (what do you mean you don’t relish the idea of meeting strangers and talking to them for SIX HOURS??). As an introvert, I’m already worrying about how exhausted I’m going to be at the end of the day. I’m worrying about all that small talk I’ll have to make.

I’m also worrying about all the things I didn’t consider while I’ve been ignoring the fact that I committed to this even several weeks ago. Like – I don’t have a square (or other device) to take credit cards. (I do at least have Venmo.) And I’ll have to run to the bank to get singles for folks who have cash but don’t bring anything smaller than a twenty. And I need to make signs. And I need to come up with something quick and clever to include with my signature. And I’ll need to have my elevator pitches at ready. (Do you know how hard it is to distill an entire novel in a few seconds?

And I need to prepare myself for the fact that I may do all of these things, and no one will buy a single copy. So. There’s that. *laughs through the tears*

So here’s some tips if you ever want to embark on such an adventure:

Get a Venmo account. If you use it ‘carefully’, you won’t have fees. (I started using it for royalties from my local bookshop – if you are ok waiting a couple days for the money to transfer from your Venmo to your bank, they don’t charge a fee for it.) Profit margins on books aren’t great, so it’s important to watch those fees.
On that note, I just started looking into Square – because I do worry about what if someone only has a credit card? I know I rarely have much cash on my these days. (I have a miles advantage card, so I’m #TeamChargeEverythingAndPayItOffEachMonth. Gimme those miles, bay-bee!) There are several devices and apps and such – I’m just most familiar with Square and have watched my friend use it for ages. (As I said, I do not currently have one, nor am I receiving any money for talking about them here.)

There are a lot of levels of square devices, and I assumed they would all be expensive. I was a bit surprised to see that the square you plug into your phone is ten bucks* at my local electronics shop (this is a swipe-only device; there are ones that can tap and accept chips, which cost more – take some time to look into the risks of a swipe-only system before making any decisions). According to their website, their fees are as follows: 2.6% + 15¢** for magstripe card transactions, chip card transactions, and contactless (NFC) payments. 3.5% + 15¢ for manually entered transactions (which I assume means you can skip buying the device, download the app, and manually enter everything). So take all of this into consideration for how often you might use the thing.

Let’s say your book is $15. Square is going to take 2.6% ($.39) plus another $.15 (for a total of $.54). (Make sure you also take into account what it cost to print and ship the book when figuring your profits per book to decide if the fees are worth it.) (If you manually enter, that transaction will cost you $.675. In this scenario, the break even for just buying the square versus entering manually would be seventy-four sales.) All in all, not as bad as I originally assumed.
Some people will pay cash. So take into account what sort of change you might need. If your book is a rounded number, you won’t need coins. (Mine all end in .99, so I’ll be bringing pennies [facepalm]). If your books aren’t evens of ten or five, make sure you have singles. Don’t forget to take into account combinations of your books – if they buy both or all, what is the total? Mine are 15.99 and 11.99, so I will need plenty of ones. (Also consider if you want a full-on cashbox or if one of those blue, zippered canvas bags banks use will suffice. Just have a plan for organizing your dough.) You can consider rounding numbers down or offering sales for in-person since when you sell direct, there is a bit more of a royalty than if you sell through an online or brick-and-mortar store.
Also, when considering your break-even, also consider the cost of the event. There was another event a friend had reached out and told me about – but the booth fee was forty bucks, and they required a seller’s permit, which is another twenty. (I’ve not sold enough yet to warrant needing one, so this was an added cost for me.) Make sure you take that event total and divide by the royalty per book – this is how many you would need to sell just to break even. For me, it would have been fifteen books. Not worth it.
Consider how the table will look. If you’ve got the personality to just draw people in, to chat with complete strangers and pull them toward your table, a pile of your books might suffice. For others, we may need our tables to work a little harder. Consider a display. Using Canva, I whipped up a flyer for each of my books (I kept it simple – cover and tagline). I bought some 8×10 foam core from my local craft shop, as well as a couple stands to hold them up. (I bought stands that are sturdy enough and have wide enough ledges that I could also use them to prop up a book in case I ever need them in that capacity. These came from the same craft shop.) I plan to print them later today at my local print shop so that they are clean and crisp. I also created pages with the back blurbs, which I’ll laminate. Figured better to have these on the table than folks getting their fingerprints all over copies of the book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Consider also ‘extras’. I have in the past printed things from Vista – if you have the time to watch for sales, do so. I’ve gotten some good deals on bookmarks, which I’ll have on hand tomorrow, as well. Don’t go overboard with giveaways – remember, they eat into your profit, too. They can also aid in catching a customer’s eye.
If you are going solo, consider what you might need to bring (water, snacks, lunch, etc.). This event has a drinking fountain and bathrooms on the premise, and they are offering some author snacks (though if you’re like me and don’t eat things certain things, like meat, it might still be best to bring something just in case). Also, it can help to make friendly with the folks on either side of you, so you can watch each other’s stuff while you run to the bathroom. If you require anything for accessibility purposes, don’t be afraid to ask and advocate for yourself. If they wish this event to be a success, it needs to be accessible to any who wish to participate or wander through. (This event included a note that if we need a power supply, we’ll have to provide our own – not something I would have thought of, but a good thing to include in your list of questions if you are creating one. Which, on that note, make sure your phone is charged and ready to go if you do go the Square route.)

I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting (or don’t even know about because this is my first event of this kind), so feel free to add tips and tricks in the comments if you have any to share!

Meanwhile, wish me luck. [strained smile]

*I’m updating this because I’ve now gone through the process. If you sign up for the Square app, there is a prompt where you can order and be sent a magstripe Square for free. In addition, during the set up process, if you have an Apple phone, you can set up Tap to Pay through Square, which means you don’t need the magstripe reader (but probably good to have on hand just in case). In this instance, once you get to the appropriate screen, they tap their card to your phone to pay.

**Square also allows you to send invoices. The fees for that are 3.3% + 30¢ per invoice when customers pay with credit or debit online.

Seventeen: Part Two

In December of this last year, I wrote a post about an experience I had where I received an influx of returns from Ingr@amSp@rk (IS). I wrote about the experience as a heads up for other indie writers who might be thinking of going this route. It took a month (and eight emails from me) to finally get something other than perfunctory answer about what was going on (I kept getting the same “here is our return policy copied and pasted from our website” rather than someone actually reading what I was asking).

I had reached out to some groups I was in on social media, as well as posted to the Authors Guild community board, and I got quite a lot of responses from folks going through the same thing. My writing bestie also had a slew of returns around this time.

My friend opted to reach out to IS and ask for a bill so that he could pay it off and get rid of the debt. They told him that’s not how they do things – the debt would be paid from future royalties.

Cut to earlier this year – an invoice arrived in my inbox. Not a bill. An invoice telling me that the card I have on file has been charged for an amount they deemed required based on these returns. There were three lines – all with the same description, all with a quantity of one, and all three different prices. Nowhere on this entire invoice did it tell me how many book returns I was being charged for, or even what I was being charged for – like printing versus shipping:

I got on the IS chat and demanded to know what the specific math was for these charges; I also asked what the timeline was for when they move from “paid by future royalties” to “we charged your card for the entire amount.” The chat got nowhere, and they asked if they could email me the answers within twenty-four hours. I said ok.

They responded by coping and pasting the compensation policy and hitting send. I wrote reiterating my questions, ready to have another month-long back and forth. They said they had to forward my request to someone else. In this case, I did get an email a few days later with an answer to the first question. They neglected to answer the second.

To me, this is utterly ridiculous. I shouldn’t have to demand math on what they are charging me – this should be transparent on that initial invoice sent.

My writing bestie has opted to end their relationship with IS, and I don’t blame them. I will be following suit once I can find an alternative. Again, just another heads up if you are considering self-publication.

A Belated Love Letter to Ginger

No, I didn’t not post yesterday as any kind of VDay protest. I got sick this week. Careful as I’ve been, some germs found their way in and knocked me for a loop. Strangely, the slew of snow my state has finally received helped me out a bit. (A few weeks ago, we were ten to fifteen inches below average total snowfall. It is currently snowing for the *I think, I’ve lost track* the fifth time in a week and a half.)

Last week, it snowed every day I needed to travel more than a few miles from my home (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday). One of those travel days was less a ‘need’ than a ‘want.’ A friend of a friend owns Alice’s Rabbit Whole out in Amherst, WI. (And, yes, her name is Alice.) I’ve heard so much about her over the years and even sampled some of her stuff when my friend, Ashley, brought it by. So when Alice posted about hosting a tincture class, I thought – that could be fun. And it was. Despite the snow and small-town back roads.

It didn’t hurt that the first thing we learned about involved ginger and several ways to prepare it. I LOVE GINGER. And even with the all caps, it feels like an understatement. I love ginger tea (especially with lemon or turmeric). I love it in my salad dressing (sesame ginger for the win). I also love it in my chocolate. (The Willy Street Co-Op in Madison, WI, has dark chocolate covered ginger… *drool*)

Cut to this week, and more snow on a day I needed to travel, so my plans were altered, and I came home from work early. Turned out to be a good thing, because I woke up the next morning ill. (I think “my sinuses feel like an angry beehive and my throat is on fire” is how I described it to my friend.) So while the snow trapped me out west on the day of learning about other ways to love ginger (and hey, I like sage – who knew?), it allowed me to be home in my own bed to recuperate. (Didn’t help that I had two rounds of papers coming in that needed to be graded between sneezing and blowing my nose.)

So my silence was not a protest against the ‘day of love’ – I didn’t get anything written in time because I ran out steam just doing the dishes after I made my first ginger syrup. I rested, and I graded, then rested some more. Today I’m finally feeling up to more, which is probably good because it’s been snowing again since last night, and that means cleaning off my driveway for the third time this week alone. But at least it’s pretty.

First Friday Rec: 2001

Title: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Genre: Science Fiction, Fiction, Classic
Pages: 297
Publication Date: 1968
StoryGraph* Moods: Adventurous, Mysterious, Reflective
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Other Books by Clarke: So Many
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

I spent a lot of time looking forward to the year 2001 – but not because of a book or movie. That was the year I graduated high school – and I could not wait to for the next step of college. That year seems so long ago now, but here I am finding myself once again entrenched in it.

During my second year of graduate school, I had a Graduate Assistantship with the Film Studies department. Part of my duties included attending the classes, and therefore watching the films. (I’ll admit it hurt while watching Dirty Dancing and realizing most of those in the room had been born after the film’s release…) I remember distinctly when the professor showed 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’d never seen it before, but there were pop culture references I was at least aware of. Now I would understand more about where they came from.

I thought it was an odd film, and so I did appreciate the discussion that followed it. Most of which I don’t remember anymore. Because that was somehow almost twenty years ago?

Cut to now, and my SciFi/Fantasy book club read the book for our last meeting. I have to admit there’s a lot I didn’t know about how this film/book came into being. For one, I had always assumed Kubrick had based his movie on Clarke’s book. But that turns out to be not quite true. The idea for both the film and book was based on a few of Clarke’s short stories – the film and book were actually written in tandem. The differences between the two are a result of the book being written alongside an earlier draft of the script that was then revised (thus, the movie goes to Jupiter, and the book goes to Saturn). I have to be honest and say that I didn’t go into this book with high hopes – but there’s a reason it’s one of the best-selling SciFi books ever – well, many reasons. For me, the top reason is how well written it is. Some SciFi focuses more on story than craft – this did both.

Description: As an allegory, the book follows man’s evolution starting with our time as apes discovering tools. (If you’ve seen the movie, read the book – there’s so much more access to the thoughts of these ape-men. The monolith plays a much more interesting role, too.) The book jumps in time a couple times – first to a discovery on the moon, then on a voyage to Saturn. There are explorations of both human and technological evolution – some of which, looking at you HAL, feels a little too real at the present moment. We definitely aren’t ready to travel all the way to Saturn as the book predicts, but the AI stuff… [strained smile] I mean, are we anywhere near computers taking over? No, of course not. But AI is suddenly everywhere now.

I didn’t know at the time that this is actually a series – one of four, in fact, followed by 2010, 2061, and 3001. I’ve not read these yet, though most folks I’ve talked to that have read them all say that the next two are great, the fourth ‘meh’ (their word).

Why I recommend this book: The writing. Honestly, the prose is well done. Nicely detailed throughout. And the science is not at all hard to follow. (Andy Weir is still the master of this particular skill, but Clarke is up there with him.) But also, the insight into evolution and the questions is raises – namely, just because we can, should we? Last, if you have seen the movie, you need to read the book – it opens so much more of this world to you.

“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey