Oh, Orson!

First off, Ender's Game is one of my favorite books too, but Orson Scott Card is pretty insufferable. I hope if I ever write a genre-breaking YA classic I don't get super crazy in the head.

I saw OSC (as he's known) at a school media conference. He said his success came in spite of his religious beliefs (and I wish I had the quote right, but I don't want us to get sued), that Nathaniel Hawthorne was a terrible writer, and that global warming was a myth. This met with a very chilly silence from a room full of librarians.

I thought that was pretty poor repayment for listening to him talk about how he had rewritten Shakespeare and inspired the troops and how War of Gifts would make an excellent holiday present.

Orson calls Rowling a "pretentious, puffed-up coward." I'm not here to defend Rowling, but as far as I know she didn't feel the need to improve Shakespeare by rewriting some of his most-famous works and putting on the productions in her church, as Card did. That seems a little pretentious to me.

And also Rowling managed to extend a wonderful and fulfilling series to seven entertaining volumes without shipping her main character off into space to talk to ghosts and pig-like aliens. I think Ender's Game is fantastic, but what Rowling did with Harry Potter in terms of scope and success just can't be compared.

I think Cecily von Ziegesar may have also stolen from Card to write Gossip Girls. Think about it:

A young kid with certain natural advantages in enrolled in a elite training academy with his/her peers. He/she must overcome both rigorous training as well as rivalries with his/her classmates, including assaults on his reputation and person. All the students are tuned in to computers and technology to an almost constant degree and almost exist in a virtual world. Each conflict is treated like life and death and the fate of the world is on the line.

Maybe OSC will call her out next!