Scalzi, John: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Your Hate Mail Will be Graded (2008)
Written by: John Scalzi
Genre: Nonfiction/Essays
Pages: 368 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: It's taken me a while to get around to this book. When Subterranean first released it, I couldn't stand to look at it, let alone order it, all because of intentionally horrendous cover. Then, when Tor got the trade paperback release, I was more interested…. but I just never picked it up until I found it on sale on Book Closeouts. Don't ask me why it's taken so long, as I'm a fan of Scalzi's work and his blog, so why wait to read this? No good answer. But I'd been hankering to read it lately, and I'll tell you a secret: when we voted for the November Alphabet Soup selection, this book SHOULD have been on the poll, because it had the most nominations. I didn't put it on for several reasons: 1) it was nonfiction, 2) the blog entries in the book could be found for free online, which -- if the book won -- would've made me feel obligated to hunt down all those links and 3) the most important: I just wasn't sure this would be a good book club discussion pick. After all, what's there REALLY to discuss, besides one author's opinions?
So I decided to leave it off the poll and read it for myself. Yes, I'm selfish. I know.
The premise: ganked from publisher's site: On September 13, 1998, John Scalzi sat down in front of his computer to write the first entry in his blog Whatever--and changed the history of the Internet as we know it today. What, you're not swallowing that one? Okay, fine: He started writing Whatever and amused about 15 people that first day. If that many. But he kept at it, for ten years and running. Now 40,000 people drop by on a daily basis to see what he's got to say. About what? Well, about whatever: Politics, writing, family, war, popular culture and cats (especially with bacon on them). Sometimes he's funny. Sometimes he's serious (mostly he's sarcastic). Sometimes people agree with him. Sometimes they send him hate mail, which he grades on originality and sends back. Along the way, Scalzi's become a best-selling, award-winning author, a father, and a geek celebrity. But no matter what, there's always another Whatever post to amuse and/or enrage his readers. Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded collects some of the best and most popular Whatever entries from the first ten years of the blog - a decade of Whatever, presented in delightfully random form, just as it should be.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: What spoilers? This is a nonfiction book full of blog entries!
So I think it's fair to say that I'm probably a bit biased coming into this book. To date, I've read pretty much every book he's written, and while I haven't fallen in love with every book, I consider myself a fan. I'm also a follower of his blog, and consider a like-minded soul, so naturally, this collection of blog entries is really going to be up my alley, because I already know what I'm getting into and have no real expectations.
Well, except for a few: it would've been fun to see more "hate mail," and I really, really wish there were an index or table of contents. Something so that if I want to go back to a particular entry, I don't have to flip through the pages to find it. I'm quite prone to paper cuts, you see, so page flipping is rather hazardous to my health. :)
I'll also say up front that this book took longer than I expected to finish: I think that's the nature of the book. Because it's nonfiction, and blog entries at that, you can read a little at a time and there's no narrative thread compelling you to keep going to learn what happens. Of course, there SHOULDN'T be such a thread, but it still meant that I read it when I felt like it, and it meant the book was relatively easy to put down when I needed a break.
That said, talk about an ideal book for traveling. I took this sucker to Atlanta with me, and I'd read an entry or two, put the book down and look up and enjoy the scenery as we drove by, then would read a couple more entries, and look up . . . yes, this book makes for excellent reading for traveling. :)
At any rate, let's get to the meat of this review, which is actually really difficult. How do you review someone's personal essays? Technical skill? Scalzi's got that in spades, though I will note there were a number of typos that someone should've caught in the publication process. So what's there to review? I've seen criticisms that the author is far too full of himself and that's a turn-off, but seriously, what do you EXPECT from a book that's a collection of blog entries? Blog entries, by nature, tend to be about the person writing them: that person's views, opinions, and all of that jazz. Blog entries are meant to ooze the personality of the blogger (unless one's writing for a professional blog), and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded oozes Scalzi in spades. The trick, I think, is whether or not you, as a reader, find yourself to be on the same page as Scalzi. If you're like me, then you're on the same page, and while you may not totally agree with everything Scalzi says, you definitely enjoy reading it and can appreciate the approach he takes to various topics. I mean, seriously, it's easy to see how someone would get offended over various opinions or pieces, if they weren't actually reading the whole content, and by that I mean they're skimming rather than reading and are making assumptions based on what sunk in. Yeah, Scalzi talks about how much money he makes, but it's in the context of revealing the business side of writing and publishing that so many would-be writers are ignorant of. This information is GOLD. It's also conveniently balanced by Scalzi's essays on poverty, which makes for some eye-opening reading and manages to demand, without outright demanding, that the reader have a little more empathy for those who are not as fortunate.
There were a lot of entries that had me giggling like a mad woman, and I kept putting sticky tabs in the book to mark passages that stood out to me for their personal resonance. I loved Scalzi's entries on religion, and how back in 2004, he separates the super extreme, conservative Christian from the rest of the faith, and how necessary that distinction is today (of course, they don't call themselves Leviticans, but rather the Tea Party); I really adored his entries about marriage, both his own and the concept of marriage in general and how it relates to all of us, gay or straight. Then there were entries that just begged a follow-up question to me. For example: Scalzi talks about being a father and he mocks those people who are anti-breeding in the process, noting that the people he's mocking are a different sort than those couples who choose not to have children for legitimate reasons. I found myself wondering if he'd ever posted an entry for those readers who don't know if they want children or not, and entry that perhaps discusses why he knew he wanted to be a father and an entry that shares his experiences with couples who've had children but weren't sure about it going in. Of course, this follow up question in personal, as I can't make up my own mind about being a parent, but the only advice about that decision is "You won't know until you have one," which strikes me as too little, too late. I'd like to think that someone like Scalzi might have a guide for those of us who can't make up our minds, although perhaps the answers is as simple is that: if you can't decide, you probably shouldn't have any?
And speaking of parenting, I loved Scalzi's analysis of why parents are so defensive these days if someone calls out their kid for acting up in public.
Other follow up questions focused on his entry regarding college education, written before the economy went to hell. There's a lot of new thinking about college education and what it's worth, and while Scalzi's post certainly made me feel less cynical, I'd be curious to know what this thoughts were on what a college education is worth today in an economy where people are retiring at later ages, where there are fewer jobs, where students are majoring in fields that really have no real-world application, where things like the Uncollege are getting talked about more and more?
By the way, I'm writing these out now so that the next time Scalzi offers an open-question week, I'll remember what I wanted to ask!
Given the time period this book covers, I recognize some entries from when they were originally posted, or from when Scalzi linked to them at a later date. That didn't diminish the power of those entries by any means, and I enjoyed re-reading them. Some entries startled me for their preciense, like "Loathsome Dot-Com Whiners" from back in 2001, when Scalzi states that what this country needs is a "good, long, severe depression" (page 126). We're not there yet, but that's just scary to think how soon it started happening.
Then there's Scalzi's thoughts on whether or not a published fiction writer should be so vocal about controversial topics, and while I straddle the fence on this issue, he makes a good case for how talking about such things shouldn't be a darn thing when it comes to his fiction. I do, however, wonder what he'd have to say about women doing such a thing, given that in recent weeks, there's been a lot of commentary about how women are treated far more severely online than their male counterparts, even if they're expressing their opinions in the same way.
Some entries did absolutely nothing for me, and I felt they would be best left in a blog. These were the more whimsical things, like pondering over multiple identical nephews in advertising and cartoons, or the discussion of cereal mascots. It's one of those things that's either funny or not, but such discussions added nothing to the book but length, and I felt it ran a bit long as it was.
My Rating: Good Read
Of course, I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading this without being familiar with the tone of Scalzi's blog, so before picking this up, make sure you browse through Whatever and have a grasp of Scalzi's sense of humor and his unapologetic manner for dealing with what he sees are fools. The book is well worth reading, mind you, but his personality doesn't click with everyone, and I'd hate to see someone spend money on a book that's nothing BUT personality, and said personality expressing his said opinions and observations about all topics big and small. For those of you who are already fans of Scalzi, definitely give this a go, because it's easy reading, despite being a wee bit long, and it's nice to have so many poignant entries collected in a single volume (which really does need a table of contents). I know I'll be referring back to my copy many times, and I hope that the publication of this particular book means there were be a second volume, from 2009 to 2019. We've got a while to go before that happens, of course, but I think Scalzi's blog entries are worth preserving in print format. I know there were more than a few that really made me think, and if a book makes me think, it's got my full support.
Cover Commentary: The Tor cover is SO MUCH BETTER. Except for one thing: it's white. Which means when it's sitting around a warehouse, it's gonna get dirty and icky fast. And the copy I received from Book Closeouts was -- while not filthy -- dirty enough to make me order a fresh, clean copy from Amazon. Yeah, I'm anal like that. At any rate, the design and art is quite appropriate for the book, and FAR BETTER, in my eyes, than the original Subterranean Press art, which can be seen behind the cut. I know it's intentionally bad, and for some people, it's so bad it's awesome, but I just can't abide. . . .
Next up: A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner