Writing and Books
Not a great day, man. I was very tired and moderately crabby due to being crabby, and had a TON of work to do today. I spent my morning mostly listening to an audiobook and writing a story in my head (and sometimes on paper, scribbling down sentences every now and then), tangentially related to AEFB. I was excited about this story. I wanted to go home and write it. (Well, story. One of my vignetteish stories.)
Then came lunch (kind of boring and also loud as I was trying to read and couldn't always focus), and then a department meeting that was kind of a downer, and then the mad end-of-the-day-last-hour-and-a-half dash to finish all my work. (Didn't.)
So when I got home tonight I felt sleepy and grumpy and I knew I needed to clean my apartment tonight so that I can go play Lego Harry Potter 2 (holding out hope that Tonks will be an awesome playable character; otherwise I will have to fall back on my standbys of Sirius and Barty) tomorrow. I didn't feel like cleaning. I had some garlic bread and then for dinner I had leftover Thai chicken and I thought about watching a movie but instead got back into bed with my computer.
I planned to scribble something down and then go clean, or do the dishes, or watch TV or something. Instead, I started writing and I couldn't stop. Eventually, I realized I'd been working for a long time (I started sometime after 8:00, let's say it was 8:30, and stopped for good a little before 10:00, though I got up a few times to get water and noticed the time then), and that I'd written 4100 words without even thinking about it. It was completely new! It was compelling! It's kind of epistolary! (Does a journal count as epistolary? I think it does, although in my head the definition of an epistolary novel is a novel told through letters. It is my life-long dream to write an epistolary novel. I think they are so amazing; one of my very favorite books is The Beatrice Letters by Lemony Snicket and it's a really lovely epistolary story--not quite a novel, just a companion to the Series of Unfortunate Events.)
I'm pretty glad about that; it always feels really good to write that much in one sitting, and since I've been somewhat lax lately about writing (picking at AEFB, sometimes gritting my teeth and forcing myself to write in AIW), I feel renewed and rejuvenated. Or something.
Here are some book reviews:
A Clash of Kings (AB): George R. R. Martin has created a great world here, and he's filled it with a wide variety of interesting characters, but this book felt like a stepping stone. Also, there's incest all over the place, WTF. (I really liked Jaime Lannister--that's a good name--and Sansa and Arya Stark.)
Kill Me If You Can (AB): Pretty good. Irritating up until a reveal about halfway through, then was more engaging.
The Poisonwood Bible: Slow but good.
The Tale of the Body Thief: I read The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned and I barely remember them. I tend to shy away from things that everyone likes so I'm not the biggest Lestat fan. But I liked this book. I felt that it got off to a slow start (and had a moderately slow ending), but I really liked that it exposed a lot of failings about Lestat, his weaknesses and loves and stuff. He's a very powerful vampire, and he was basically crippled in this book. To me, that = good. (Also, I love bodyswitching stories. Sooooooo much. Every day I am sad that Heroes never did the cracky bodyswitching episode or arc that they were completely set up for in season three.)
Snuff: It was okay. Really slow. Some parts of it just made me smile or hug the book and go, "YES." I thought it would be a little more of Vimes out of his element (like Vimes in a Jane Austen book), and it was more Vimes is on vacation and just spreads his element on everything he sees. Some of it was really good, but I had a hard time keeping up with it. (Though I kept thinking back on the Vimes in Guards! Guards! and it still kind of blows my mind how much he’s changed since then.)
Currently reading:
Little Bee (AB): It's okay, not great. I think the cover art drew me in originally? I was kind of bored with it up until about halfway when it started exploring its characters in greater depth.
The Night Circus: It's lovely. It makes me think of The Prestige and The Illusionist and it's all in black and white and stripes and mystery and secret magic. It's slow, but it's not boring at all.
Melting Stones: Meh. It has a lot of Tamora Pierce elements in it that I don't like, but I love that in her Circle series she makes her mages elemental-based and/or nature-based, and I also like her hardcore use of science. (I am starting to daydream about writing some kind of astronomy-based fantasy...) (Astronomy + epistolary? That would be interesting...) Why am I reading it? I make it a point to read all of Pierce's books, and at the time I checked this out, this was the only published work of hers I hadn't read. (Now Mastiff is out and I want to read that too.)
Still to read:
Leaving Springfield
The Machine in the Garden
The Princess and the Goblin
The Devil in the White City (I am supposed to have this audio book on order at the library, but it's been a suspiciously long time)
The Demon's Surrender
Pegasus (this is the latest Robin McKinley--I forgot about it for a long time)
And after that, Mastiff, Across the Great Barrier, Chime, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland etc., Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Breadcrumbs, and of course the list goes on. (It always goes on.) I am supposed to work more on the books I already have that I haven't read yet, but there are so many new and lovely books in the world!
Also, I hate the term "high fantasy" because it sounds really stupid (but I hate the term "fantasy" in general as well too, because it can be applied to a lot of different things, whereas the genre name "science fiction" only means one thing...I guess "romance" has the same problem...), but it is more or less my favorite genre. I mean, if we're picking genres. I love me some historical fantasy, but high fantasy will always hold my heart. It was my first love. Recently I've noticed that YA fantasy isn't going so much into high fantasy; it's mostly about vampires and demons and fairies and angels and whatnot.
So naturally I started compiling a list (I also love lists) and then I realized that YA high fantasy is not a very big subgenre regardless of what time period we're looking at. It seemed more popular in the 90s, what with Tamora Pierce and Garth Nix and Diana Wynne Jones and such, but there's really not a lot to it nowadays.
Of course I want to research this. Let's add it to the list of things I should be researching (AEFB, AIW, the transportation project...)
I thought that was strange and interesting, since it's always been a love of mine and I guess I never really noticed the lack until now. It's predominantly what I write (AEFB is high fantasy, Missing Pieces is modern) and many of my favorite authors (Shannon Hale, Pierce, Jones, Wrede) write or have written in this genre--why is there no representation? Weird.
Then came lunch (kind of boring and also loud as I was trying to read and couldn't always focus), and then a department meeting that was kind of a downer, and then the mad end-of-the-day-last-hour-and-a-half dash to finish all my work. (Didn't.)
So when I got home tonight I felt sleepy and grumpy and I knew I needed to clean my apartment tonight so that I can go play Lego Harry Potter 2 (holding out hope that Tonks will be an awesome playable character; otherwise I will have to fall back on my standbys of Sirius and Barty) tomorrow. I didn't feel like cleaning. I had some garlic bread and then for dinner I had leftover Thai chicken and I thought about watching a movie but instead got back into bed with my computer.
I planned to scribble something down and then go clean, or do the dishes, or watch TV or something. Instead, I started writing and I couldn't stop. Eventually, I realized I'd been working for a long time (I started sometime after 8:00, let's say it was 8:30, and stopped for good a little before 10:00, though I got up a few times to get water and noticed the time then), and that I'd written 4100 words without even thinking about it. It was completely new! It was compelling! It's kind of epistolary! (Does a journal count as epistolary? I think it does, although in my head the definition of an epistolary novel is a novel told through letters. It is my life-long dream to write an epistolary novel. I think they are so amazing; one of my very favorite books is The Beatrice Letters by Lemony Snicket and it's a really lovely epistolary story--not quite a novel, just a companion to the Series of Unfortunate Events.)
I'm pretty glad about that; it always feels really good to write that much in one sitting, and since I've been somewhat lax lately about writing (picking at AEFB, sometimes gritting my teeth and forcing myself to write in AIW), I feel renewed and rejuvenated. Or something.
Here are some book reviews:
A Clash of Kings (AB): George R. R. Martin has created a great world here, and he's filled it with a wide variety of interesting characters, but this book felt like a stepping stone. Also, there's incest all over the place, WTF. (I really liked Jaime Lannister--that's a good name--and Sansa and Arya Stark.)
Kill Me If You Can (AB): Pretty good. Irritating up until a reveal about halfway through, then was more engaging.
The Poisonwood Bible: Slow but good.
The Tale of the Body Thief: I read The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned and I barely remember them. I tend to shy away from things that everyone likes so I'm not the biggest Lestat fan. But I liked this book. I felt that it got off to a slow start (and had a moderately slow ending), but I really liked that it exposed a lot of failings about Lestat, his weaknesses and loves and stuff. He's a very powerful vampire, and he was basically crippled in this book. To me, that = good. (Also, I love bodyswitching stories. Sooooooo much. Every day I am sad that Heroes never did the cracky bodyswitching episode or arc that they were completely set up for in season three.)
Snuff: It was okay. Really slow. Some parts of it just made me smile or hug the book and go, "YES." I thought it would be a little more of Vimes out of his element (like Vimes in a Jane Austen book), and it was more Vimes is on vacation and just spreads his element on everything he sees. Some of it was really good, but I had a hard time keeping up with it. (Though I kept thinking back on the Vimes in Guards! Guards! and it still kind of blows my mind how much he’s changed since then.)
Currently reading:
Little Bee (AB): It's okay, not great. I think the cover art drew me in originally? I was kind of bored with it up until about halfway when it started exploring its characters in greater depth.
The Night Circus: It's lovely. It makes me think of The Prestige and The Illusionist and it's all in black and white and stripes and mystery and secret magic. It's slow, but it's not boring at all.
Melting Stones: Meh. It has a lot of Tamora Pierce elements in it that I don't like, but I love that in her Circle series she makes her mages elemental-based and/or nature-based, and I also like her hardcore use of science. (I am starting to daydream about writing some kind of astronomy-based fantasy...) (Astronomy + epistolary? That would be interesting...) Why am I reading it? I make it a point to read all of Pierce's books, and at the time I checked this out, this was the only published work of hers I hadn't read. (Now Mastiff is out and I want to read that too.)
Still to read:
Leaving Springfield
The Machine in the Garden
The Princess and the Goblin
The Devil in the White City (I am supposed to have this audio book on order at the library, but it's been a suspiciously long time)
The Demon's Surrender
Pegasus (this is the latest Robin McKinley--I forgot about it for a long time)
And after that, Mastiff, Across the Great Barrier, Chime, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland etc., Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Breadcrumbs, and of course the list goes on. (It always goes on.) I am supposed to work more on the books I already have that I haven't read yet, but there are so many new and lovely books in the world!
Also, I hate the term "high fantasy" because it sounds really stupid (but I hate the term "fantasy" in general as well too, because it can be applied to a lot of different things, whereas the genre name "science fiction" only means one thing...I guess "romance" has the same problem...), but it is more or less my favorite genre. I mean, if we're picking genres. I love me some historical fantasy, but high fantasy will always hold my heart. It was my first love. Recently I've noticed that YA fantasy isn't going so much into high fantasy; it's mostly about vampires and demons and fairies and angels and whatnot.
So naturally I started compiling a list (I also love lists) and then I realized that YA high fantasy is not a very big subgenre regardless of what time period we're looking at. It seemed more popular in the 90s, what with Tamora Pierce and Garth Nix and Diana Wynne Jones and such, but there's really not a lot to it nowadays.
Of course I want to research this. Let's add it to the list of things I should be researching (AEFB, AIW, the transportation project...)
I thought that was strange and interesting, since it's always been a love of mine and I guess I never really noticed the lack until now. It's predominantly what I write (AEFB is high fantasy, Missing Pieces is modern) and many of my favorite authors (Shannon Hale, Pierce, Jones, Wrede) write or have written in this genre--why is there no representation? Weird.