06.27.07
Book Awards Reading Challenge
I’m following CJ’s lead here and joining in the Book Awards Reading Challenge. I went for a variety of awards, but I already own 7 of these books so they make the top list by default. Yeah, this is an excuse to get through a chunk of my TBR pile. But then, it’s also an excuse to buy even more books…
My main list:
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (Pulitzer 1921)
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller (Hugo 1961)
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Newbery 1978)
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker (National Book Award, Pulitzer 1983)
- Dusk by James Salter (PEN/Faulkner Award 1989)
- All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (National Book Award, NBCC 1992)
- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (Booker, Governor General 1992)
- The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (Costa/Whitbread 1996)
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Booker 2002)
- Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear (Agatha 2004)
- Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (Hugo, Nebula 2004)
- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Hugo, World Fantasy 2005)
I also have a rather long list of extras, just in case I feel like changing or adding more, but I won’t bore you with those. In all, I noted at least one book from all but two awards listed on the site. I didn’t pick one from the Bram Stoker because I don’t really care for horror… though Gaiman’s American Gods, which I wouldn’t classify as horror at all, was on the list, so maybe there are others I’d like too. I didn’t look too closely at the Gold Dagger because I already had two mysteries on my list by the time I got there. But I’m so close to having all of ‘em… I may have to do it at some point 
If you see one on either of those lists that I might like, please mention it.
06.26.07
Humor in novels
CJ’s post about Janet Evanovich got me thinking. I know a lot of people who think her books are hilarious. I read the one CJ did, and I was irritated and bored and impatient and at times even vaguely interested, but never very amused. It made me wonder why.
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons, but I think I know the main one. I think it’s because what’s-her-name thought she was being funny, and she was trying so hard to be funny all the time that I just wished she’d get on with… something. Anything. Anything at all.
Humor columns are one thing. I enjoy those. Short stories can get away with a lot simply because they’re short. But I prefer novels where the characters (especially the main character) don’t always mean to be funny, and it’s more a combination of situation and whatnot that brings out the humor. Where the actions and dialogue are only funny in context, and from outside.
There are exceptions, of course. In third person I’m a lot more tolerant because I don’t have to endure the oh-so-cleverness quite so constantly, and it’s not usually so prevalent in the narrative itself. Sometimes that works in first person too. Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos is a snarky guy, but not all the time; when he feels threatened he snaps out a one-liner, but the entire narrative isn’t like that.
It’s a style thing, I guess. I like funny books, but I don’t like to have the humor shoved at me.
06.19.07
8 things about me
The ground rules: Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
Well, Janelle said I should mention things that aren’t widely known. Of course, the trick is to find not-widely-known things that I’m gonna post on a blog…
1. I rarely talk in any great detail about my personal life, so the things I post here are most likely going to be things that some of you know. But I also talk about different things in different groups, so some of it may be new.
2. I like crafts, especially embroidery stuff and origami; my latest thing is temari. I like them because they help me relax and I can let my mind wander while I do them. People are surprised when they hear about it, for some reason. Perhaps because the extent of my tailoring is to sew a button on a pair of pants.
3. I have way too many screen-names and such, and I am on way too many forums and groups. Until this blog, the twain never did meet (how’s that for maiming an expression?), and before I started it I put some serious thought into whether I wanted them to. Some of them still haven’t met.
4. My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s, and I’m very grateful that he didn’t linger for years the way some do.
5. I enjoy my work, though sometimes I hate my job. I suppose that isn’t unusual. It bothers me when people assume that the reason I’m writing is because I want to make enough money to quit my other work, because I probably wouldn’t do it even if I did.
6. If I don’t like the punch-line or note inside a birthday card, I’ll cross it out and write in my own.
7. I met my husband in high school. In all, we dated over 9 years before we got married, with one brief break-up; we lived in different states while we were in college, and then in different cities. The long dating time bothered his mother more than it bothered us.
8. I am opinionated and usually blunt. Sometimes people interpret this as an insult. It isn’t. In fact, I don’t understand people who expect everyone else to share their opinions.
And #9, for good measure: the “tag” thing makes me think of chain letters, which I don’t pass on on principle even if I’d have passed it on if it hadn’t told me to (#10: I’m not good at blindly following orders). So, those of you who see this, feel free to do it yourself. I’d love to read it. But I’m not going to do the tagging thing.
06.14.07
Dessert First — Booking Through Thursday
1. Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?
2. And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?
Nothing like a prompt to remind me to blog.
I don’t look at the end of the book. I don’t think I ever have, and I don’t think I’ve ever been very tempted to, because I don’t really want to know the ending before I get there. That probably gives the wrong impression, though, since you can tell just from the way some books are written that certain things are going to be true at the end (certain characters are going to hook up, the bad guy is going to lose/get caught, the main character will live, whatever), and that doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t even mind if all my guesses about the ending are correct. But I still don’t want to know for sure before I get there. That’s also why I never read reviews (especially on Amazon!) before I read the book. And why I rarely even read the back-cover blurb, unless I know I won’t read the book itself right away, so I have time to forget it. I want the story to open up bit by bit.
That’s a little odd, maybe, because I’ll reread a good book a bunch of times and obviously I know what happens the second time through. It’s different, though. I know everything, not just the bit right at the end, and I’m not reading it the same way. The first time I’m discovering things along with the characters, but when I reread it’s a more leisurely visit. I notice things I didn’t realize were important the first time through, I meet my favorite characters again, and sometimes my opinions of a character change, either due to their actions at the end (or in a sequel) or just because I’m seeing them for a second time.
At any rate, I do, sometimes, flip a couple of pages ahead and read a sentence or two, or read a paragraph on the right page when I’m still on the left page. I have no idea why I do this. In fact, I think it’s funny when I catch myself doing it.
06.05.07
Book reviews and irritating characters
I’ve decided that the world really doesn’t need yet another person writing reviews, which shouldn’t surprise you given the number of them I’ve posted.
What I’ve done for a long time, just for me, is to write down whatever I think about a book after I read it. There’s no format at all, just musings about the plot, what I like and don’t like and why, who else I think will like it (or not), what it reminds me of, or whatever else crosses my mind. And they all contain immense spoilers. Which is why I thought I’d translate them into ‘real’ reviews to post them here, and I never did this because they stop being interesting to me when they don’t have those spoilers.
Anyway. That’s a long introduction. Sorry.
I’m reading Jennifer Roberson’s Song of Homana, the second of her Cheysuli books, at the moment. I’ve been reading it for some time now. This is very unusual, since I usually finish novels in a day or two. I enjoyed the first one of the series well enough, though it was her first book and her later ones are much better. But this one… I think that it all comes down to this: I don’t like the main character, and it’s a first person narrative so I never get away from him. The first half or so was ok. He was a clueless, arrogant, spoiled brat then too, but he did show some promise, and I thought he might actually have learned from the first book (he was in it too, but wasn’t the main character) and the events in this book. But no. For the last way-too-long, he has done nothing at all redeeming. In fact, he’s gone from clueless to willfully ignorant. I just don’t like reading about him.
The lesson I get from this: Don’t take that ‘make all your character’s problems a result of his own actions’ advice too literally (or at least let the poor thing make a good decision every now and then), or you’ll end up extinguishing all hint of sympathy from your poor readers. Or at least one of them.
I think she has a different main character for each novel in the series (not sure about that, but it sounds right) so maybe I’ll like the next one better.
06.03.07
That writing feeling…
I’ve been writing quite a bit lately. Nothing terribly coherent; rather, it’s just been scenes that appear and demand to be written. They’re very persistant about it.
That happened this morning, in fact. It yanked me back to a story that’s been worrying me for a while, and that I’d put aside until I was ready to go farther with it. It’s the story about the priestess who has lost her god, for those of you who’ve read parts of it. I’d originally started it as a single novel, with a single protagonist. I started in the right place for that story. But it needed something else, so I gave the antagonist a few scenes, which triggered my problem: it was definitely not the right place to start his story. I didn’t realize this right away. No, that’s not true. What I didn’t realize was that I couldn’t tell her story unless I also told his.
In fact, I wrote half a book with that little squiggly not-right feeling growing each chapter. Then I tried to outline it into shape, but all that did was reinforce my feeling that if I gave my antagonist even half the time I was giving him I really needed to write a sequel. And then I realized that it was really his story I needed to tell, and I couldn’t do it unless I started at the beginning of his story, not the beginning of hers.
I put it away, because I didn’t know enough about his past for more than backstory, and it just doesn’t work when I rush that sort of thing. So it’s sat there, popping into my head at odd intervals, until today. When the… um… pre-climactic scene of the whole thing appeared and prodded me until I wrote it. And with it came the key scenes of the first section as well (though not quite as forcefully, which is good since I was already late leaving).
I thought the engineer story would be the next one I’d get back to after my little not-short-story diversion, but I’ll take this one as far as I can first.
06.01.07
Rambling about stories and worlds
Ok, I haven’t done so well with the blog. I’ll try again.
Well, I got to where I though my story could stand on its own, but I decided I’d like it better if I didn’t try to do that so I went back and added in the things I’d left out that were irrelevant for the, well, subplot, as it is now. And now I’m immersed in the cultures and the way they interact, which is a wonderfully enticing place in which I can lose myself for ages, and sometimes I have to force myself out of it and, y’know, actually write something.
Since I’ve already mentioned cultures… The more I think about this particular world, the more I think it may be in the same world as my engineer story (the one I started during nano last year). The magic is different but compatible, and while I don’t believe that the engineer’s people know of any non-human sentients it is certainly possible that there are some elsewhere. I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure it matters, either way, because they aren’t likely to come into contact. Though that too would be interesting, especially given the vastly different ‘technology’ levels of the cultures in question and the fact that neither’s magic will work on the other’s ground.
At any rate, I’ve been on something of a magic-from-the-living-earth kick lately. Rocks and mountains and caves earth, not Mother Nature earth, in case you’re wondering. Magic systems and their relationships to culture are also quite fascinating…
