Born this way or cursed?
I've been meaning to post for a while. I have been LJ-absent lately. But I've been weirdly apathetic a lot lately. So there has been no post. There has been a lot of reading. (I may come back to some of the reading later.)
In other news, I went to see Frozen on the weekend. It was a spur of the moment decision. It was me in a theatre full of parents with small children. I was amused. And that movie is charming. I love it. Honestly, it is so delightful. I love the sibling relationship. I love the charming Disney side-characters. I love he subtle callbacks to previous Disney movies. The songs were delightful. The plot was delightful. I may have bought the soundtrack. And listened to "Let it Go" an embarassing number of times. It pleased me a lot. And honestly, for reasons I can't quite articulate, one of my favourite parts was [Spoiler (click to open)]when the King and Queen take Anna to see the trolls right at the start, and the grandfather troll just goes, "Born this way or cursed?" It's just such a throwaway line, but it's also such a brilliant piece of dialogue. I love that they embrace the world, and the tropes, and are relatively genre-savy. I love that that is an acceptable question to ask in a fairy tale. And I LOVE that the whole point of the movie is that the answer is "born this way" and not cursed. It pleased me so very much is all.
I have also decided that I may want this to be last season of The Mentalist. Which feels weird to say out loud (or, you know what I mean). But I want CBS to just tell Bruno Heller that this is the last season, and give them time to have some sort of appropriate resolution. As opposed to not telling them, and then there's some horrible cliff-hangery ending. Because while I love the characters, and so far the reboot has been shockingly well done, I'm not entirely convinced that the reboot will work for me in the longterm (though I'm not positive on that). I just think it'll get weird. And while I always wanted to see the Red John aftermath, that does lose its impact when A) there might be a new/related conspiracy cropping up (oh, how I'm hoping not, how I'm hoping this is a three-episode mini-arc), and B) the entire context of the show has changed. I wanted Red John resolution in the context of the CBI. In the context of how that all changes. Two years later isn't the same. It's not that I don't like the show as it is now (I really, really do), I'm just not convinced it has staying power.
And now, onto my last thing. I would like to talk about book lengths. Book lengths in the context of book clubs. I am in a book club (actually, I am in two, but I want to talk about a specific one right now). Basically how we chose books is that each person gets to pick three books when it's their month and the rest of us vote on the one we read (we're very organized and democratic). So, people were submitting their choices for the next three months. I happened to notice (for various reasons) that two of the choices submitted are 800 PAGES LONG. Now, I have no problem reading 800 pages of fiction in a month (I've read 23 books already this year, SO), but I do feel like that's a bit insane for a book club book. Because here's the thing, I know part of the point is to broaden your horizons and read things you wouldn't anyway. But it's 800 pages! I'm perfectly happy to try a 400 page book that I'm not sure about, but 800 pages? Am I the only one who thinks that's insanely long for a book club? (Obviously not, because The Goldfinch and The Luminaries are SUCH book-clubby books.) It doesn't help that I have absolutely no desire to read at least one of them anyway. I didn't vote for them. I also sent an e-mail to everyone pointing out the length. It's somewhat passive-aggressive, and I feel a bit badly about it, but on the other hand, I was discussing it with one of the people in the book club who hadn't realized the two books were that long (he'd just read the descriptions) and he just said he wished he'd known that before he voted. I mean, I know it's not an unreasonable thing to have done, because it is a useful piece of information to have when voting. And if everyone else wants to read those books, I'll read them. But even apart from the fact that I'm not wild about one of the plots, 800 pages is a major committment.
That got me thinking, I'm not sure if there's ever been a book that long that I've *loved* (anthologies/series don't count). 500-600 is about the max, and even that's sometimes pushing it. I just start thinking This book is TOO long. So I guess I'm wondering if maybe there is some point of maximum length beyond which you have to be absolutely exceptional. I know there are some fantasy epics that are that long that some people love. I guess I can kind of see that, because they're usually long for plot purposes.
Which makes me think that maybe the reason I don't generally like long books is because of the type of book long books tend to be. They tend to be what I call book-clubby books. Where the prose meanders all over the place, and you can sometimes feel how self-satsified the author is with his own prose. And they tend not to have endings, not in a traditional sense. Obviously at some point the words on the page do stop. They're just these descriptions of events, of a section of someone's life with no resolution. (They're also often ridiculously bleak.) And those types of books can get bloated if the author gets carried away with his prose. I think those are the books that I can only take so much of. Maybe my limit is around 500 pages. Maybe it's because I'm so fond of story, and traditional narrative structure, and tropes. (Don't you dare judge me, there's a reason tropes are popular.)
Or have I just missed the mark on this? Maybe my attention span is just low... I know there are long books that people love. Maybe I just haven't found them yet...
ETA: So, I realized something (and I KNEW one had to exist). I love The Pickwick Papers, and that might be at least that long. So not all long books are terrible. Just a lot of them.
In other news, I went to see Frozen on the weekend. It was a spur of the moment decision. It was me in a theatre full of parents with small children. I was amused. And that movie is charming. I love it. Honestly, it is so delightful. I love the sibling relationship. I love the charming Disney side-characters. I love he subtle callbacks to previous Disney movies. The songs were delightful. The plot was delightful. I may have bought the soundtrack. And listened to "Let it Go" an embarassing number of times. It pleased me a lot. And honestly, for reasons I can't quite articulate, one of my favourite parts was [Spoiler (click to open)]when the King and Queen take Anna to see the trolls right at the start, and the grandfather troll just goes, "Born this way or cursed?" It's just such a throwaway line, but it's also such a brilliant piece of dialogue. I love that they embrace the world, and the tropes, and are relatively genre-savy. I love that that is an acceptable question to ask in a fairy tale. And I LOVE that the whole point of the movie is that the answer is "born this way" and not cursed. It pleased me so very much is all.
I have also decided that I may want this to be last season of The Mentalist. Which feels weird to say out loud (or, you know what I mean). But I want CBS to just tell Bruno Heller that this is the last season, and give them time to have some sort of appropriate resolution. As opposed to not telling them, and then there's some horrible cliff-hangery ending. Because while I love the characters, and so far the reboot has been shockingly well done, I'm not entirely convinced that the reboot will work for me in the longterm (though I'm not positive on that). I just think it'll get weird. And while I always wanted to see the Red John aftermath, that does lose its impact when A) there might be a new/related conspiracy cropping up (oh, how I'm hoping not, how I'm hoping this is a three-episode mini-arc), and B) the entire context of the show has changed. I wanted Red John resolution in the context of the CBI. In the context of how that all changes. Two years later isn't the same. It's not that I don't like the show as it is now (I really, really do), I'm just not convinced it has staying power.
And now, onto my last thing. I would like to talk about book lengths. Book lengths in the context of book clubs. I am in a book club (actually, I am in two, but I want to talk about a specific one right now). Basically how we chose books is that each person gets to pick three books when it's their month and the rest of us vote on the one we read (we're very organized and democratic). So, people were submitting their choices for the next three months. I happened to notice (for various reasons) that two of the choices submitted are 800 PAGES LONG. Now, I have no problem reading 800 pages of fiction in a month (I've read 23 books already this year, SO), but I do feel like that's a bit insane for a book club book. Because here's the thing, I know part of the point is to broaden your horizons and read things you wouldn't anyway. But it's 800 pages! I'm perfectly happy to try a 400 page book that I'm not sure about, but 800 pages? Am I the only one who thinks that's insanely long for a book club? (Obviously not, because The Goldfinch and The Luminaries are SUCH book-clubby books.) It doesn't help that I have absolutely no desire to read at least one of them anyway. I didn't vote for them. I also sent an e-mail to everyone pointing out the length. It's somewhat passive-aggressive, and I feel a bit badly about it, but on the other hand, I was discussing it with one of the people in the book club who hadn't realized the two books were that long (he'd just read the descriptions) and he just said he wished he'd known that before he voted. I mean, I know it's not an unreasonable thing to have done, because it is a useful piece of information to have when voting. And if everyone else wants to read those books, I'll read them. But even apart from the fact that I'm not wild about one of the plots, 800 pages is a major committment.
That got me thinking, I'm not sure if there's ever been a book that long that I've *loved* (anthologies/series don't count). 500-600 is about the max, and even that's sometimes pushing it. I just start thinking This book is TOO long. So I guess I'm wondering if maybe there is some point of maximum length beyond which you have to be absolutely exceptional. I know there are some fantasy epics that are that long that some people love. I guess I can kind of see that, because they're usually long for plot purposes.
Which makes me think that maybe the reason I don't generally like long books is because of the type of book long books tend to be. They tend to be what I call book-clubby books. Where the prose meanders all over the place, and you can sometimes feel how self-satsified the author is with his own prose. And they tend not to have endings, not in a traditional sense. Obviously at some point the words on the page do stop. They're just these descriptions of events, of a section of someone's life with no resolution. (They're also often ridiculously bleak.) And those types of books can get bloated if the author gets carried away with his prose. I think those are the books that I can only take so much of. Maybe my limit is around 500 pages. Maybe it's because I'm so fond of story, and traditional narrative structure, and tropes. (Don't you dare judge me, there's a reason tropes are popular.)
Or have I just missed the mark on this? Maybe my attention span is just low... I know there are long books that people love. Maybe I just haven't found them yet...
ETA: So, I realized something (and I KNEW one had to exist). I love The Pickwick Papers, and that might be at least that long. So not all long books are terrible. Just a lot of them.