Not All Can Be Winners
I'm reminded of something my Shakespeare college professor said in class at the beginning of the semester: "Watch every production of a Shakespeare play that you can. Every production, even the bad ones, will help you understand the plays." I've taken this meaning to heart and have related this idea to other types of stories as well. Adaptations of not only Shakespeare plays (modern movies based on his plays can also help influence my understanding of the original), but adaptations of other stories as well. How many retellings of the same story do we see over and over again, and not just with Shakespeare but with comic book characters (case in point, the upcoming Amazing Spiderman being released not that long after a trilogy of Spiderman movies had been created not to mention the plethora of Superman and Batman movies) and also with iconic characters such as Alice and Peter Pan, along with Fairy Tale characters and mythologies. I find that by watching or reading new interpretations of their stories, I can find greater understanding of the original.
And, to take this further, reading a story in a particular genre can also help define for me what that genre is about and how it should be formed. I am thinking about this lesson when I contemplate the new book I'm reading.
Let me start out first by saying I have met the author of this book, not just once but at least three time at three separate conventions. I believe I first met him at the first Steampunk convention Malinda and I went to. Then we met him again at the Wicked Faire and then again at last year's Steampunk World's Faire. He's a nice guy, we spoke to him at length about his books, his books seemed really interesting and innovative. Curious, and because I love the idea of supporting local authors, I bought a few of his books over the course of the three times we met him. The one book made me very interested as the main character was a dabbling magic user living in Brooklyn. How perfect was that! An urban fantasy story taking place in the city where my urban fantasy story was to take place! So I bought the book, along with, later, the sequel.
However, I am sad to say, that after all that time owning these books, I never got around to reading any of them. Actually, I ended up losing several of them over the last two years and didn't know where I'd put them. So each subsequent time meeting him, we'd embarrassingly have to admit we hadn't gotten around to reading his books although we were looking forward to doing so. At least we made up for that lack by buying more books from him, so it must have made him happy in any case.
The Steampunk World's Faire is coming up next month. I've been feeling terrible about not reading his books, instead picking up other paranormal books in series I've already started (trying to catch up to Malinda in Dresden, Night Huntress, Mercy, Alpha and Omega and hopefully soon with Rachel Morgan and Lily and Rule). So I thought it would be a good time to read at least one of his books. Unfortunately I couldn't find the first book.
It took a while, but Malinda helped me find it and together we've been reading the first book, a book whose main character was described as "New York City's answer to Indiana Jones". Sounded awesome.
We're having trouble reading it.
The main character is a little too full of himself. There are confusing aspects to the plot. The language is not what we anticipated for the kind of book it was, and seriously, some of the things just literally DON'T MAKE SENSE for him to have done. As Malinda said when describing the book to me (she started reading it before I did), "It would be an awesome book - if he wasn't writing it." It was really a sad thing to say, but it was true. It has so much potential as a story, and the character could be really cool, if he wasn't the author. Like if Jim Butcher was writing it. Hell, if I was writing it, or if Malinda was writing it. This is not to say it's written poorly or that the man has no sense of narrative. He is good with words, I'm just not engaged in the story because of his style (and a few weird inconsistencies - plus Malinda has noticed a ton of typos). I have no idea what we're going to say to this guy when we see him next month (provided he is indeed there). "Yes, we read it." and just leave it with that. I don't really want to tell him I haven't been enjoying it.
That being said, I am continuing to read it. You know those movies that you're really not enjoying, but you accidentally turn them on in the middle of a Sunday afternoon and about twenty minutes in you're like "Why the hell am I still watching this?" but you keep watching because well, you got this far and now you gotta see how it ends? This is kind of like that. Plus, going with the earlier lesson about experiencing it all to understand - I want to read this to see where I might be doing something similar, or to see how I could to this better and therefore make my book into the version of an urban fantasy novel that I like. After all, how can I truly understand what I like without experiencing that which I don't.
I don't think I'll be buying anymore of his books, but I'll read the one I've started. Who knows, maybe he'll surprise me. Or maybe I'll end up banging my head against a wall. It's a toss up.