I feel the need. The need...to read.
Ugh, lately I have been caught in such a cycle of mostly re-reading books I already own, over and over. And there's nothing wrong with a good re-read, but it's getting a little claustrophobic in here, and I hate to dilute the effectiveness of a Very Favorite Book with too much overuse.
And yet...for some reason I don't even know what to try next. What do I want to read? I DO NOT KNOW.
I did recently finish Jo Graham's Black Ships, which overall I enjoyed. It did the thing that I absolutely loooooove in historical novels when I can get it, where it posits a dimly-remembered and embroidered reality behind a tale or myth, and tells the story of 'how it really happened'. So she links the fall of Troy (and the flight of the refugees that would become the story of The Aeneid) to the historical Bronze Age Collapse. Really interesting! But sadly, while the background/history was enjoyable, I couldn't really get into the main characters. They all felt weirdly modern to me, for one thing.
I also randomly read a John le Carré novel I hadn't read before, The Looking Glass War. Oh god, depressing--but I enjoyed it. It's just so perfect at creating this kind of...indirect, fly-specked, middle-aged, Cold War, nostalgic-for-WWII, bureaucratic atmosphere that slides down to the sad and muddy thump you know is coming. (That's what makes me think it must be a realistic picture of the trade, is how muddled and bureaucratic and sloppy things are, mostly serving people's ambitions and self-images.) It proves that I don't require a character I like or identify with in order to enjoy a book, because lord knows, I didn't like anyone in this book in the least (Smiley excepted).
And it doesn't provide the competence-kink pleasures of a novel that actually focuses on a skillful/knowledgeable spy--for instance, on George Smiley. Smiley is that Columbo type, who looks completely unprepossessing on the outside but on the inside is sharp as a boxload of tacks fresh out of the tack factory (I mean, other than in his emotional/love life), while never letting on. Smiley appears just a few brief times in Looking Glass War, and every appearance shows him seeing the parts of this operation and helplessly making these concerned faces, because he knows just how it's all going to go. (One word: wrong.)
But now I am just adrift and do not know what to read. I feel peevish and restless, book-wise, and all I can think of are things I don't want. I don't want heteronormativity, or het romance and babies (sorry, Black Ships, it's not you it's me). I don't want wives/girlfriends stepping onstage to harangue dude characters for doing their jobs (sorry, Looking Glass War). I don't want quippy ungrounded dialogue skating along in the belief that it is witty. (I'm sorry, John Scalzi, I WANT to like your work. I'll try something else sometime, maybe the military series.) I don't want politics, corporations, or bureaucracy (historical, modern, fantastical or science-fictional).
I need to figure out what I do want, post-haste. Maybe I want a nice vacation smack in the middle of the competence kink. Competence and emotions. I do not know.
In the meantime, while I'm trying to figure that out, I'll probably do what I often do in cases like this: nonfiction. I read a ton more nonfiction than fiction, possibly because I'm not as hard to please in that regard? I have access to many infinities of library books, so there must be something in there to ease my crumpled mind while I look for the next set of things to read. I'm considering taking a look at a book I saw a copy of on the Vividcon swap table, "My Queer War," a memoir of a young gay man's time in the military in WWII. We shall see!
And yet...for some reason I don't even know what to try next. What do I want to read? I DO NOT KNOW.
I did recently finish Jo Graham's Black Ships, which overall I enjoyed. It did the thing that I absolutely loooooove in historical novels when I can get it, where it posits a dimly-remembered and embroidered reality behind a tale or myth, and tells the story of 'how it really happened'. So she links the fall of Troy (and the flight of the refugees that would become the story of The Aeneid) to the historical Bronze Age Collapse. Really interesting! But sadly, while the background/history was enjoyable, I couldn't really get into the main characters. They all felt weirdly modern to me, for one thing.
I also randomly read a John le Carré novel I hadn't read before, The Looking Glass War. Oh god, depressing--but I enjoyed it. It's just so perfect at creating this kind of...indirect, fly-specked, middle-aged, Cold War, nostalgic-for-WWII, bureaucratic atmosphere that slides down to the sad and muddy thump you know is coming. (That's what makes me think it must be a realistic picture of the trade, is how muddled and bureaucratic and sloppy things are, mostly serving people's ambitions and self-images.) It proves that I don't require a character I like or identify with in order to enjoy a book, because lord knows, I didn't like anyone in this book in the least (Smiley excepted).
And it doesn't provide the competence-kink pleasures of a novel that actually focuses on a skillful/knowledgeable spy--for instance, on George Smiley. Smiley is that Columbo type, who looks completely unprepossessing on the outside but on the inside is sharp as a boxload of tacks fresh out of the tack factory (I mean, other than in his emotional/love life), while never letting on. Smiley appears just a few brief times in Looking Glass War, and every appearance shows him seeing the parts of this operation and helplessly making these concerned faces, because he knows just how it's all going to go. (One word: wrong.)
But now I am just adrift and do not know what to read. I feel peevish and restless, book-wise, and all I can think of are things I don't want. I don't want heteronormativity, or het romance and babies (sorry, Black Ships, it's not you it's me). I don't want wives/girlfriends stepping onstage to harangue dude characters for doing their jobs (sorry, Looking Glass War). I don't want quippy ungrounded dialogue skating along in the belief that it is witty. (I'm sorry, John Scalzi, I WANT to like your work. I'll try something else sometime, maybe the military series.) I don't want politics, corporations, or bureaucracy (historical, modern, fantastical or science-fictional).
I need to figure out what I do want, post-haste. Maybe I want a nice vacation smack in the middle of the competence kink. Competence and emotions. I do not know.
In the meantime, while I'm trying to figure that out, I'll probably do what I often do in cases like this: nonfiction. I read a ton more nonfiction than fiction, possibly because I'm not as hard to please in that regard? I have access to many infinities of library books, so there must be something in there to ease my crumpled mind while I look for the next set of things to read. I'm considering taking a look at a book I saw a copy of on the Vividcon swap table, "My Queer War," a memoir of a young gay man's time in the military in WWII. We shall see!