Featherproof’s Free Mini-Books

Featherproof has all kinds of interesting and innovative things going on. We recently ran a piece on their new press Paper Egg Books, and now we’re reviewing their free mini-books.

The mini-books at Featherproof are short stories (often VERY short, e.g. 300-3,000 words) from both famous and unknown authors that are formatted in such a way that they can be printed out on several pieces of paper and folded into neat little mini-books that you can hold in your hands. Additionally they have cute cover images and information on the authors, with photos, in the back of the books. Their list of mini-books is relatively huge, and could be used as a great way to discover a new author. They also have excerpts from recently published books in mini-book form.

I printed out two of their mini-books today to see what they were like. The books I chose were Peanuts and the Amazing Gro-Beast by Chris Bower, which was the first book on the list and Every Night is Bluegrass night by Tobias carroll, which I chose at random. I’ll do a review for the individual books below.

As far as the mini-books are concerned, I have to say that I was somewhat charmed. It was nice to hold a little object in my hands that felt and looked somewhat like a book, though I have to say that the print was quite small and somewhat annoying to my eyes. I did think to myself that if these mini-books were available as well produced, graphically beautiful PDFs that could be read paperlessly, the same act of providing free literature and promoting new authors could be achieved with less work for the reader and less stress for the environment.

But that’s just me, always looking for ways to make publishing digital.

As far as the books go, here’s what I have to say:

Every Night is Bluegrass Night by Tobias Carroll

Of the two mini-books I read, this was without argument the more disappointing of the two. There was absolutely no character description and very little character development, even though there were lots of characters, which always leaves me, a visual reader, feeling lost and having to look back at names (which isn’t a good thing when your story is only nine mini-pages long). Furthermore, there were grammatical errors in the beginning, including switching back and forth from past to present tense (urgh), and logical errors such as a character fitting a new string to his banjo a few hours before a performance (which players of stringed instruments know is always a bad idea, as new strings stretch). It seemed to me that the story was trying to achieve a kind of character and scene analysis of a few musicians at a specific point in their lives together, but the scene wasn’t clearly presented, and neither were the characters. The dialogue, too, was weak and awkward. This story deserves a 4 |10.

Peanuts and the Amazing Gro-Beast by Chris Bower

This is the newest of Featherproof’s mini-books, and it’s very abstract. It’s decently written, in that it keeps you moving along, wondering what the hell is going on. I liked the scene dressing, which is to say that I felt like I could see the action of the scenes as they unfolded. Not too much information, not too little. Just right. The story is interjected with a poem about halfway through that was supposedly written by the narrator. I actually kind of liked the poem because it brings the act of writing a poem into the poem in a rather neat way. All in all, the story was evocative, but I think the abstraction, at times, veers in the direction of being abstraction for abstraction’s sake. I don’t have a problem with things being crazy (I loved Ubik by Philip K. Dick) but I like them to be crazy for a reason or for them to be crazy in order to show me something as a reader–to impart an idea. Senseless abstraction is frustrating, from the standpoint of the reader, it seems like the author is being like, “you think THAT was crazy, check out how much crazier I can make this! Man am I a crazy author!” Which is great if you can do it well, but worthless if there isn’t a reason for it.

Which, in all honesty, is how I feel about all writing.

In any case, I think I’d give Peanuts and the Amazing Gro-Beast a 6 | 10. As you can see, I didn’t actually like the content of either mini-book very much. I am aware that this is a very small sampling of what Featherproof has to offer, so I wouldn’t take this as a solid review of everything they have. I would like to know, however, if any of you have read a Featherproof mini-book and been blown away.