Fifteen Things About Books
I was tagged by Chance. I'm not tagging anyone, but if you want to write fifteen things about books, I will only encourage you.
1. A partial list of writers I read while growing up: Arthur Ransome, Nicholas Fisk, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Johanna Spyri, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Isaac Asimov, CS Lewis, Willard Price, John Wyndham.
2. A partial list of writers I have read this year: Kelly Link, Justina Robson, F Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margo Lanagan, Tricia Sullivan, Charles Stross, Mary Doria Russell, Ian McEwan, Chinua Achebe, Michael Chabon, Ken Macleod, Matt Ruff.
3. There is no iceberg. I do not read nine times as many books as I write about. What you see is more or less what you get.
4. Don't ask me why I mostly read science fiction, and mostly read contemporary books. Don't try to tell me, either. I can make guesses, but I don't really know.
5. 'Genre' is a loaded word because it means both 'marketing category' and 'content', and though books in the marketing category will have the content, the reverse is not true. When I say 'I like science fiction' I almost always mean the content (or, I should say, more accurately, the mode, until someone can define science fiction by content in a satisfactory way) rather than the marketing category.
6. I am increasingly aware of how small and how big the world is, how much of it is far away from and unfamiliar to me, and how many stories lack any sense of that perspective. I don't ask that all stories sprawl--although I tend to like ones that do--but increasingly I think I need some self-awareness. This is perhaps particularly true of sf stories.
7. I wrote upwards of 35,000 words about books this year. Writing reviews doesn't feel like an obligation; it's something I do because I enjoy it, because I want to be and enjoy being part of the conversation. This week, for the first time, I was paid for a review I wrote. I'm not complaining, but it felt weird.
8. When I write a review, I don't have a mental checklist of things that I look for in a good book. I start with 'did I like this?' and then try to work out 'why?'
9. A corollary of this is that I can't think of a single characteristic that all the books I like share. I do not, for example, think that a story has to have great characters to be a great story. It has to have decent characters, but there are other virtues--plot, perspective, style, setting, subject--that can raise a story to greatness. (Equally, of course, a story can be great by virtue of its characters.)
10. Characters are other people's guesses of how other people work. We judge whether a character is convincing by validating them against what we know--'does this portrayal of an internal experience match my own internal experiences, or seem plausible as a model for the experiences I have seen others go through?' If the answer is no, the character will seem unconvincing. If the answer is yes, the character will seem convincing. Note that creation of a good character is dependent on the writer and the reader; different people will therefore find different characters memorable. Very good writers may be able to make characters convincing even if they are outside our personal experience, and will likely make us think about the experiences they go through in a way we hadn't done before.
11. I have to go and collect a parcel that couldn't be delivered earlier this week. I hope it contains books. UPDATE: It did! Although for Strange Horizons rather than for me.
12. Getting free books in the post is never, ever going to get old.
13. Books are comforting. I have piles of books all over the place. I tell myself this is because I don't have enough shelves--and that's true, but I suspect that even when I do have enough shelves I'll still have piles of books all over the place.
14. I've been putting off and putting off starting Stephen Baxter's latest, Transcendent, until I've got a clear run at it. At this rate, that will be sometime in 2006.
15. I always wish I read more nonfiction, but almost every time, when I'm wondering what to read next, a story seems more tempting. Maybe it's that I get my nonfiction fill from individual essays, or from work. Having said that, the last book I read was The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, which was brilliant.
1. A partial list of writers I read while growing up: Arthur Ransome, Nicholas Fisk, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Johanna Spyri, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Isaac Asimov, CS Lewis, Willard Price, John Wyndham.
2. A partial list of writers I have read this year: Kelly Link, Justina Robson, F Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margo Lanagan, Tricia Sullivan, Charles Stross, Mary Doria Russell, Ian McEwan, Chinua Achebe, Michael Chabon, Ken Macleod, Matt Ruff.
3. There is no iceberg. I do not read nine times as many books as I write about. What you see is more or less what you get.
4. Don't ask me why I mostly read science fiction, and mostly read contemporary books. Don't try to tell me, either. I can make guesses, but I don't really know.
5. 'Genre' is a loaded word because it means both 'marketing category' and 'content', and though books in the marketing category will have the content, the reverse is not true. When I say 'I like science fiction' I almost always mean the content (or, I should say, more accurately, the mode, until someone can define science fiction by content in a satisfactory way) rather than the marketing category.
6. I am increasingly aware of how small and how big the world is, how much of it is far away from and unfamiliar to me, and how many stories lack any sense of that perspective. I don't ask that all stories sprawl--although I tend to like ones that do--but increasingly I think I need some self-awareness. This is perhaps particularly true of sf stories.
7. I wrote upwards of 35,000 words about books this year. Writing reviews doesn't feel like an obligation; it's something I do because I enjoy it, because I want to be and enjoy being part of the conversation. This week, for the first time, I was paid for a review I wrote. I'm not complaining, but it felt weird.
8. When I write a review, I don't have a mental checklist of things that I look for in a good book. I start with 'did I like this?' and then try to work out 'why?'
9. A corollary of this is that I can't think of a single characteristic that all the books I like share. I do not, for example, think that a story has to have great characters to be a great story. It has to have decent characters, but there are other virtues--plot, perspective, style, setting, subject--that can raise a story to greatness. (Equally, of course, a story can be great by virtue of its characters.)
10. Characters are other people's guesses of how other people work. We judge whether a character is convincing by validating them against what we know--'does this portrayal of an internal experience match my own internal experiences, or seem plausible as a model for the experiences I have seen others go through?' If the answer is no, the character will seem unconvincing. If the answer is yes, the character will seem convincing. Note that creation of a good character is dependent on the writer and the reader; different people will therefore find different characters memorable. Very good writers may be able to make characters convincing even if they are outside our personal experience, and will likely make us think about the experiences they go through in a way we hadn't done before.
11. I have to go and collect a parcel that couldn't be delivered earlier this week. I hope it contains books. UPDATE: It did! Although for Strange Horizons rather than for me.
12. Getting free books in the post is never, ever going to get old.
13. Books are comforting. I have piles of books all over the place. I tell myself this is because I don't have enough shelves--and that's true, but I suspect that even when I do have enough shelves I'll still have piles of books all over the place.
14. I've been putting off and putting off starting Stephen Baxter's latest, Transcendent, until I've got a clear run at it. At this rate, that will be sometime in 2006.
15. I always wish I read more nonfiction, but almost every time, when I'm wondering what to read next, a story seems more tempting. Maybe it's that I get my nonfiction fill from individual essays, or from work. Having said that, the last book I read was The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, which was brilliant.