Without Missionary Fervor

[mrissa]

So let's see. I still have important-to-me books to talk about, and I wanted to write a fairy tales entry for copperwise and porphyrin, and skylarker wanted to hear about fantasies in which magic was a positive thing and not one of those bite-you-in-the-butt things. And also I should tell you all what some of you already know: that markgritter and I are going to London on the 2nd of July with my folks and my grands, returning on the 9th, and for the two of you to whom it matters directly, the flight times are on my calendar here in the office. So there's that. And then -- ah! I know. My conflicty feelings about speculative fiction conversion packs.

Some of you -- checking the friendslist, I can find yhlee inspired by vonnielake, but I believe I'm missing someone -- have been putting together "SF conversion lists." Stuff to convert people to reading speculative fiction if they don't already. I'm a little weird about this: I don't want to drive people off, but I also don't want people who don't want to read SF to feel like they "ought" to. Books are not medicine. My grandmother enjoys Christian historical romances for sound reasons. They aren't my reasons for reading anything, but they work well for her. When she used to try to get me to read Christian historical romances, it annoyed me, because I tried them when I was in junior high, and they weren't my thing. But it's okay that they're her thing. We can have different things.

So I don't want to convert people, certainly not to my exact tastes. I'm willing to educate, and to welcome. But I have a hard time doing any of those things generally. They all seem personal to me. One person reads romances for one thing and another for another. Catherine Asaro would be ideal for one and appalling for another. I think part of the problem I have here is that I've seen too many people decide on what a genre is like by reading one volume of it.* In my fiction studio in college, one of the guys was trying to critique "In the Gardens and the Graves," my Asimov Award story, and he said, "I think this really hearkens back to more traditional sci-fi. It's a lot more like old stuff than new stuff. I like that better." Interested, I asked him what "old stuff" he thought it was like, and he said, "Well, I read Asimov and Heinlein for the old stuff, and then I read David Eddings and Terry Brooks, and it seemed like they were trying to do something entirely different with the new stuff. And I liked how you were kind of going back to what the old guys were doing and not getting caught up in, y'know, quests."

....

Yeah. I am terrified of people's sample size. If someone is already moderately interested on their own hook, I will sort out the people who should start with John Crowley from the people who should start with Terry Pratchett. Happily. But I don't want to be responsible for the entire genre because I was the one who said, "No, now, I know you don't want to, but here's a fantasy you'll really like," and then they didn't, and they didn't want to read fantasy in the first place.

(This is why I only provided the opportunity for gaaldine and the_overqual to meet and did not set them up: this way I get the credit; the other way I could have ended up with blame. So far I'm like this literarily, socially/romantically, and religiously, at least. Hmm.)

Also, I'm often wrong. I would never have predicted that timprov's mother's book club would universally like Tooth and Claw. I would have predicted that several of them would, probably most, but universally? no. I'd have guessed that someone would have balked at the funeral un-baked meats. This may be an example of where open-mindedness will get people that no amount of coaxing could.

*Oh, side note here: here are the rules for when you can sneer at what I'm reading:
1) You read it and didn't like it.
2) You read other things by the same author and didn't like them.
There is no three. There is especially no three if you don't read much at all but have appointed yourself Lord High Muckety Muck Of Appropriate Reading Material. If you believe that nothing interesting about the human condition, nothing entertaining, nothing thought-provoking, nothing, in short, worthwhile, appears in a book with oozy green lizard aliens, naked women, cowboys and covered wagons, or any other general category of image on the cover, you are wrong, and also possibly stupid, depending on how much you cling to your wrongness. Ignorant, at the very least. Uncurl your lip, bother to educate yourself, and move on.

Also I will say that even if you have read the book and didn't like it, your face might freeze that way, or, to quote one of my charming relatives, "Birdie gonna poop on your lip." (Pithy, no? I think of it every time I see a picture of the Sex Pistols.) So maybe there are better ways of expressing your disdain anyway.

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I also did a conversion kit for vonnielake. The important point for me is that Vonnie requested it (she described her attitude as "inexperienced but willing"). It's one thing to provide a resource when it's requested; it's another thing to love something so much that you want to tell the whole world how good it is; and it's a third thing to attempt to force your tastes upon someone else. I see the conversion kit that I put together as #1 or #2, not #3.

I've been on the receiving end of recs, both solicited and unsolicited, in all genres; as always, some have hit and some have missed. Amd my reading life has been so enriched by the fact that people I know are enthusiastic about what they love, whether it's Victorian dragons or Napoleonic era naval warfare. I can take the misses.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. I don't read vonnielake, so I didn't entirely get that she was asking from the perspective of willing/interested person looking for resources. I wouldn't have labeled that conversion in the first place.

I do love to tell the world about things I love to read; I think you've been around here long enough to know that. But I also know that the things I love to read will not be similarly wonderful for everyone. (I'm not saying you don't. I'm just describing why I get wibbly.)

To me, recommendation and conversion are different things entirely. I have a page where I talk about books people have recommended to me. Recommendations good. But conversions? Eh. Much less obviously good, at least.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Yup, we're definitely working with different definitions here. To me, conversion simply connotes an interest in how the recipient reacts to the attempt. The converter cares if they succeed; the recommender isn't necessarily as interested. So for me all converters are recommenders, but not all recommenders are converters. For example, I have recced things to friends knowing they might like it even though I didn't.

That's why I see conversion attempts as something that can be both solicited and unsolicited, and why I don't think even all unsolicited attempts are bad (though some definitely are!). For example, vonnielake semi-recently did a series of posts pimping Veronica Mars. I didn't ask for them, but they intrigued me enough that I checked out the tv show. I loved it, and I'd definitely describe myself as a convert. But if I hadn't loved it, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Vonnie may have been attempting to convert her flist into liking what she liked--she hoped we would try it and like it--but that hope didn't mean she wasn't cognizant of the fact that it wouldn't be for everyone in the end. So I didn't find the attempt intrusive or annoying, and in the end I'm very grateful for it.

[redbird]

Tangential to that, I think there's a difference between someone posting, in their journal or Usenet or some other broadcast forum, "Here's this really cool thing, people might want to check it out, because $coolness/if they like $other_thing" and someone saying to a specific friend "you ought to check it out."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. And I tend to note the latter -- for example with a Bill Holm book, I noted that misia had recommended it to me specifically, because my usual notation would merely indicate that she'd said something interesting about it.

My library list goes "[author] -- [title] ([recommender name]) -- [library location]" usually. The recommender name goes in all caps if it was something someone specifically took time to recommend to me instead of just saying "this is good" or "this is interesting" or "this sucked in the following way" (that I then found intriguing). If no one recommended it, I try to have some indication of why I wanted it, if I don't trust myself to remember. This is especially useful when it's one of those nonfiction books with an opaque title and a subtitle so long I can't be bothered to write it on my library list.

Yes, I do spell anal-retentive with a hyphen. I prefer to think of it as information-dense.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Here's the list for when people can sneer at what I'm reading:
-
-
-
-
.
.
.

....they are, however, welcome to tell me that they didn't like the book and why, or even, given a reasonable knowledge of both me and the book, to tell me why they think I won't like it. But not sneeringly.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

There are only a very few books/authors that will actually earn you my condescending contempt if I hear you raving about how good they are. There are good, even brilliant books, in pretty much every genre. Even some generally crappy authors have written some good stuff.

That being said you will now probably tell me that ____________ is your favorite author of all time, and I will go weep in a corner for what might have been...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The sneering applies even when I'm not saying how good the books are. If you walk into my kitchen and I've set a book on the counter, I don't want you to sneer at it even if I don't say a word about how marvelous it is. Ask about it, sure. Volunteer an opinion, if applicable. But look at the cover and sneer? Not so charming.

I love _______! ________ is a genius!

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's just it though. I shan't sneer. Just sigh to myself, and never trust your opinion on books again. *grin*

Sneering is unneccessary and rude.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I don't accept your second rule. I highly recommend Terry Bisson's Talking Man, and like his short story "Almost Home" -- but I don't care for most of his work. I recommend Harry Turtledove's short story "In the Bottomlands" -- but I would recommend against most of his novels. I recommend Phil Dick's The World Jones Made and The Man in the High Castle -- but not his late novels.

One I would add: If you've read that author's collaboration(s) with someone else, you have not read anything by that author. You don't know what he/she/___ writes solo.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure, authors have anomalous works, sometimes even anomalously good works in an otherwise wretched career. But I don't insist that you must slog through everything, everything! an author produces before you can decide you don't like their work.

This is particularly a problem with something like Mary Gentle's Grunts!, which so thoroughly turns people off that I can quite understand their reluctance to read her other stuff, even though it's very different and quite good. I regret their unwillingness -- but I entirely understand it. Authors do not get infinite credit with readers.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

How's this for messed up:

I don't really like Mary Gentle's work. Except for Grunts!, which I love. *grin*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. I knew there had to be people out there for whom Grunts! was the thing and everything else a disappointment. (Actually, 1610 was a disappointment for me, too, but in different ways.) Have you read all the others, or which of them?

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I liked Rats and Gargoyles, but then I couldn't get into the next book...The Architecture something? And then I disliked Golden Witchbreed quite a lot.

Then I ran across Grunts! and the cover blurb made me laugh, so I bought it, and loved it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The Architecture of Desire? Oh. That was my first Mary Gentle. Casaubon!

Loff the Casaubon with buymeaclue-ish loffings.

What she's doing with that series is, um, maddening, because with each book there is more of their story left untold, not less. But the Casaubon: loff.

[redbird]

Actually, that sort of makes sense, because the underlying point is that Grunts! is very different from most of her other works, so whether you like that has nothing to do with whether you'll like the others.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

Ha. I suspect that you also would not have/did not set us up 'cause you wouldn't have imagined that we'd get together. I don't think it was an initially obvious pairing to you (am I wrong here?).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Initially obvious, no. Considering your attitude towards alcohol at the time, and the fact that the_overqual had been part of the GAC Geology Dept.....no.

But I realio trulio don't set people up, even if it looks obvious to me (example: matastas should move here and marry Amber, who should also move here, and then I would be The Happy M'ris). I may invite people to the same place at the same time, but I try to make sure it's not a one-on-one thing. Pressure is not good.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

What is wrong with the Geology dept.?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suspect that is a question your spousal unit should answer and not I.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

My spousal unit needs to come with more accessories.

I suspect that I need to pester you about this over email.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

the_overqual the flamethrower! (The kids love this one.)

I was saying on e-mail today that I do enough stuff and you do enough stuff that it feels like I haven't talked to you in ages within two days of talking to you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

On e-mail, that is, to someone else. But about you, in that regard. On the topic of "phone calls with friends," not "stuff about gaaldine."

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

*laugh* I knew what you meant. My default for mrissas does not happen to be "oh, she spouted off nasty things about me to other people again." I think it perfectly reasonable to have me come up in an email conversation with someone else.

Silly mrissas.

But yes, I quite agree. Enough stuff happens that it *does* feel like ages.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, but I could have been talking at length about you in non-nasty ways. I wasn't, but I reserve the later right.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

What what? Should I be horrified by this? Is there a reason I *should* be concerned about what you might say about me?

I tend to trust you enough not to be concerned, dearie.

Say what you like. I can look into libel and slander charges later. *grin*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, dear, seek counsel whenever you feel it necessary.