Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Sorry…sometimes an image to describe a type of book just pops into my head. I was thinking about mysteries and adventure stories where we expect sinister things. The book is like a pie with certain ingredients and a special form.
The top and bottom crust is the world we enter, perhaps a big city, perhaps a peaceful countryside, or on a cruise ship. Within that crust is a detective or PI, victims, and suspects. Oh, and a few red herrings to spice it up.
It can be unsettling if the evil doer is so unhinged that there is no rhyme or reason for what he/she does. We expect there to be the usual filling like means, motive, and opportunity. We turn the pages to find out what alibis the characters have. We expect the usual reasons like rage, revenge, self-defense, and jealousy to be present.
The villain has something he wants and he often finds a way to get someone else blamed for his deed. The innocent person needs help. The abducted person needs to be found quickly. The stolen thing needs to be returned. The plot to harm a large number of people needs to be stopped. These are all ingredients in our pie that we expect when we put our fork in the pie to taste it.
The more sinister the plot and villain, the darker the thoughts we share with the characters who are in trouble.
Peter May’s books are one example:
The Blackhouse
The Lewis Man
The Chessmen
Fin Macleod has returned to his island home with a heavy heart. He faces old friends who he has left behind and a terrible doubt about what really happened here long ago enters his mind and the reader’s.
These books are gripping as well as sinister. The island is a character, too.
In Louise Penny’s books, there is a sinister person or cabal hiding in the highest places of the country and they have Inspector Gamache in their sights all through the first several books. It scared the daylights out of me, for sure, as it brought pain and agony to Gamache and his assistants.
There are cozy mysteries and mysteries with complex plots that are interesting, but not necessarily as sinister as my examples.
In the Dorothy Dunnett historical fiction books, The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, there are some very sinister and evil people who cause pain. Some of them are discerned early on, but there are some that are lurking traitors that are not uncovered by the reader until the very end. The books are nerve-shattering and yet I love them.
Great North Road is a fantasy/mystery story by Peter F. Hamilton that has a sinister character causing trouble. One lady has seen it, but she is not believed. Like Cassandra, she is punished for telling the truth. Before the end of the book, we will meet it face-to face.
The Expanse fantasy/space books by James S. A. Corey have unusually horrible aliens to be faced. And behind them are worse things we have yet to see.
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
What sinister aspects of stories and villains do you appreciate? What keeps you shivering as you read?
Diaries of the Week:
DK5 Tutorial: Writing a diary, embedding images, navigating comments
By elfling
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/09/1447378/-DK5-Tutorial-Writing-a-diary-embedding-images-navigating-comments
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Cranky Users: Drafting, publishing, and editing diaries in DK5
By nomandates
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/10/1448083/-Cranky-Users-Drafting-publishing-and-editing-diaries-in-DK5
Preview mostly works. However, authors should be aware of one potential pitfall. When your article is published, it will have a large square ad in the upper right corner, taking half of the article's width. That will push the text in your first 2 or 3 paragraphs to word-wrap within the left half of the article space until it gets below the ad and then starts to flow again naturally to occupy the entire article width.
So do not put blockquotes, tables, images or anything else in the first few paragraphs or the displacement by the ad will make everything look odd. Subscribers may not be aware of this since they don't see most ads and thus the format they see is what they previewed...but the majority of readers will see it otherwise.
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5 Cool New DK5 Things For Your Diaries
By Magnifico
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/11/1448564/-5-Cool-New-DK5-Things-For-Your-Diaries
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/06/1445150/-Write-On-Making-a-scene
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Cow Worship in Nepal. Nov 11th Day 49 of Petrol Blockade
By guavaboy
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/11/1448085/-Nov-11th-Day-49-of-Petrol-Blockade
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15 questions the liberal media would ask if there were a liberal media
By akadjian
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/11/1448710/-15-questions-the-liberal-media-would-ask-if-there-were-a-liberal-media
NOTE:
I put this on Face Book, but I want to also say it to people here as well because I consider you all to be friends:
Celebrating Veterans Day.
To all my cousins, first cousins once removed, husbands of cousins, and friends or their family members who have served: Thank you!!
This works, sort of: Not quite as much white space at the bottom. I copied just the names, etc, first and pasted them in the diary and a comment below. Then I highlighted them and added the table and then there was a cursor in the first part and I clicked on that and a pop box made me paste into it and when I clicked OK...voila...