Avram's journal

Google Books has confirmed for me something I recall noticing — that Orson Scott Card’s 1995 novel Alvin Journeyman takes place in a world populated by owls:

• Page 35: Becca hooted.
• Page 38: The boy hooted.
• Page 57: Alvin hooted derisively.
• Page 138: […] but Horace hooted […] It was Vilante’s turn to hoot with laughter.
• Page 192: The lanky one hooted and several others chuckled.
• Page 195: Measure hooted with laughter.
• Page 199: Marty Laws, the county attorney, hooted at the joke.
• Page 210 Alvin hooted.
• Page 215 “Only so’s you can lick it out after!” hooted Mike Fink.
• Page 218: He hooted twice, high, as if he were some kind of steam whistle, and Holly hooted back and laughed.
• Page 316: The bailiff rummaged through the handbag, then suddenly hooted and jumped back.
• Page 360: Measure hooted once — after the door was closed.
• Page 366: He looked at Margaret with all the meaning he could put in his face, and everybody hooted and clapped.

There are also a couple of people not giving hoots, on pages 73 and 337.

This was the book that put me off Card’s writing permanently. I’m not the only one; this was also the first Alvin Maker book not to get a Hugo nomination (and it’s not as if the competition was particularly strong that year), and none have gotten one since. In fact, as far as I can tell by skimming through Locus’s records with bleary eyes at 2 AM, Card’s last Hugo nomination in any category was in in 1992, around the same time that news of his anti-gay bigotry was starting to spread through the SF fan community (I first saw photocopies of the linked essay handed around as photocopies at the 1991 Worldcon in Chicago).