Wednesday reading
Here is a recent roundup, which pretty much covers what I've finished and in the middle of, except for some ongoing histories.
There were also some try-and-abandons.
First was Sara Rees Brennan's Unspoken. I love Rees's snarky style, and I think she's a terrific writer, but early on the Gothic part of the plot begins with animals being tortured to death. There are a few real life horrors that I have no interest in reading about in fiction, serial killers being one (especially the so-called "brilliant" ones, blech), and animal torture is another. Something has to be stunningly involving in other ways to get me past that--but lo and behold there appeared the newest iteration of Draco Malfoy, and I knew exactly where this story was going. And that it would be no fun for me to get there, because I'm tired of angsty Draco Malfoy instead of actual relationships, and . . . animal torture.
I have this theory that Rees and her friend Cassie Clair, both smart and talented, have so imprinted on Joss Whedon's snark (and substitution of random death and mega-angst for actual relationship) and made themselves so famous for imbuing J.K. Rowling's rather flat Draco with snarky, sexy angst, that they have reached a plateau of best-seller success combining these two skillfully for a young readership who grew up on Buffy and Harry P and want exactly that. But from this end of life I want more, I don't want to see exactly how the story is going to go, and in Cassie's case, with emotional nexuses (nexi?) all marked by "somethings." ("Something deep in his eyes shifted, and I knew . . ." "Something crept into his voice, and chills ran up my spine . . ."), and very slapdash historical research (which again her readership doesn't give a fig about). They are both young, and hit the big time straight off the bat. I don't believe either of them will settle for writing the same books over and over, in spite of their really admirable success--and so I'm going to wait for the ones they do when they leave this plateau.
The next try-and-fail was the venerable old Nine Princes in Amber, by Zelazny. I know, I know, I'm a tasteless Philistine. Believe me, I got many appalled looks over the decades when I'd admit that I found it boring, and I always assumed that it was because I, the visual reader, wouldn't know good writing if it bit me in the butt. But now I've a pretty fair grasp on the manifold problems inherent in defining "Good writing" and there were patches of it here and there--he'd slip into Shakespearean pastiche and out again fairly deftly, and some of his setting descriptions were right up there with Mary Stewart and Kipling--but whew, it was just as boring as my first read half a century ago. No interesting women. No intelligent women--the narrator makes it clear that the women are all brainless and as easily dismissed. And the villain Eric was just plain dull. Most of all, I could not believe these guys were thousands of years old. They thought and acted exactly like the Hussars of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, making a virtue of "Fight, F*** and die before you're thirty"--violent everything, outwitting each other for what? I think if it were funnier, I could get with the program, but. There it is.
Third abandon was Iain Banks' The Crow Road. I'd been promised good writing, and hoo boy was that true. Right from the first line, "It was the day my grandmother exploded." I had been promised village life and I got that--so many fine passages of a brilliance I will never attain, though he was half my age when he wrote it. Howsoever, two things made me too weary to continue through it. One, the best character in the book, Prentice's dad Hammond, was a proselytizing atheist, which heavy hammer I've already read in far too many books, and as for Prentice, he was heading into that tired, tired territory of falling in love with a girl's face and form, while the "right" girl waits patiently by his side . . . until either tragedy, or she doesn't wait anymore. I was too impatient to see which, because obviously he wasn't going to get any happy ending, and I didn't care if he got it or not. The fine writing and the evocative setting was not enough to make me trudge through two tropes I have seen too much of.
There were also some try-and-abandons.
First was Sara Rees Brennan's Unspoken. I love Rees's snarky style, and I think she's a terrific writer, but early on the Gothic part of the plot begins with animals being tortured to death. There are a few real life horrors that I have no interest in reading about in fiction, serial killers being one (especially the so-called "brilliant" ones, blech), and animal torture is another. Something has to be stunningly involving in other ways to get me past that--but lo and behold there appeared the newest iteration of Draco Malfoy, and I knew exactly where this story was going. And that it would be no fun for me to get there, because I'm tired of angsty Draco Malfoy instead of actual relationships, and . . . animal torture.
I have this theory that Rees and her friend Cassie Clair, both smart and talented, have so imprinted on Joss Whedon's snark (and substitution of random death and mega-angst for actual relationship) and made themselves so famous for imbuing J.K. Rowling's rather flat Draco with snarky, sexy angst, that they have reached a plateau of best-seller success combining these two skillfully for a young readership who grew up on Buffy and Harry P and want exactly that. But from this end of life I want more, I don't want to see exactly how the story is going to go, and in Cassie's case, with emotional nexuses (nexi?) all marked by "somethings." ("Something deep in his eyes shifted, and I knew . . ." "Something crept into his voice, and chills ran up my spine . . ."), and very slapdash historical research (which again her readership doesn't give a fig about). They are both young, and hit the big time straight off the bat. I don't believe either of them will settle for writing the same books over and over, in spite of their really admirable success--and so I'm going to wait for the ones they do when they leave this plateau.
The next try-and-fail was the venerable old Nine Princes in Amber, by Zelazny. I know, I know, I'm a tasteless Philistine. Believe me, I got many appalled looks over the decades when I'd admit that I found it boring, and I always assumed that it was because I, the visual reader, wouldn't know good writing if it bit me in the butt. But now I've a pretty fair grasp on the manifold problems inherent in defining "Good writing" and there were patches of it here and there--he'd slip into Shakespearean pastiche and out again fairly deftly, and some of his setting descriptions were right up there with Mary Stewart and Kipling--but whew, it was just as boring as my first read half a century ago. No interesting women. No intelligent women--the narrator makes it clear that the women are all brainless and as easily dismissed. And the villain Eric was just plain dull. Most of all, I could not believe these guys were thousands of years old. They thought and acted exactly like the Hussars of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, making a virtue of "Fight, F*** and die before you're thirty"--violent everything, outwitting each other for what? I think if it were funnier, I could get with the program, but. There it is.
Third abandon was Iain Banks' The Crow Road. I'd been promised good writing, and hoo boy was that true. Right from the first line, "It was the day my grandmother exploded." I had been promised village life and I got that--so many fine passages of a brilliance I will never attain, though he was half my age when he wrote it. Howsoever, two things made me too weary to continue through it. One, the best character in the book, Prentice's dad Hammond, was a proselytizing atheist, which heavy hammer I've already read in far too many books, and as for Prentice, he was heading into that tired, tired territory of falling in love with a girl's face and form, while the "right" girl waits patiently by his side . . . until either tragedy, or she doesn't wait anymore. I was too impatient to see which, because obviously he wasn't going to get any happy ending, and I didn't care if he got it or not. The fine writing and the evocative setting was not enough to make me trudge through two tropes I have seen too much of.