Books read and stuff

[mrissa]

So very tired. Oof. Am hoping that dinner will give me a second wind. A third wind? As long as it doesn't give me the wind, I suppose we should all be grateful and leave it at that.

Ista went outside to give the neighbor dogs their instructions, and she came in full of vinegar at the very least. We have already had our walk today. We are not having another. It is cold and dark and I am tired. I see Red Dot in my future.

I read some books lately.

John Barnes, A Million Open Doors. I had been deeply unimpressed by the first John Barnes novel I read, so deeply that I fully intended to never read another. (If you're going to model your book on a Heinlein juvenile, and you want me to like it, do not under any circumstances model it on Podkayne of Mars. With either ending. Blarg.) But rysmiel said this one was good, and rysmiel would not deliberately mislead me, so I went out and got it. And I liked it enough to put the sequels on my wishlist: the culture clash with no culture in the right, that was quite good enough to sell me on this series. And I will maybe give another of his books a look. Just in case.

Michael Chabon, The Final Solution. So if you have a book this short, in this flavor of litty, I think what you're going for is the sort of book people will describe in mineralogical terms. A perfect little jewel, lapidary, etc. This was not such a book. I had great difficulty caring about anything or anybody, and I don't feel Mr. Chabon did nearly as much as he could have to help me along. Refugee kid with a spy parrot: meh. Who would have thought meh? But meh it was. Also the illustrations seemed to go with a different style of book entirely, one by Norton Juster or Salman Rushdie, but maybe that's just me. (Also lumping Norton Juster and Salman Rushdie together as the same kind of thing is maybe just me. Dunno.)

Tamora Pierce, Beka Cooper: Terrier. Hmmm. Well, it got better -- the ostentatious description of getting barley water and getting sneered at for it made me think it was going to go even farther than the Trickster books in the direction of trying to undo any good the Alanna books may have done anybody ever. But it didn't go farther. It probably didn't even go as far. I'm provisionally willing to keep on in this series, in borrowed copies, but this book being set 200 years before the rest of the books kind of undermines the "portraying a social shift" justification for the way the Tortall books have gone after the Alanna series.

Geoff Ryman, Lust. And what a dear man he is, to have written such an unerotic book on such a porny topic. Wow. The geekage level was just amazing. If you've ever been the person picking apart what is supposed to be a hot love scene going, "Wait -- where is her foot? I don't think curtain rods are rated for that usage. And did they just happen to bring one of those with? Just in case they found someone similarly inclined? My land, what else must they have in that suitcase, to be prepared like that?", then this is a book for you. (It doesn't pick apart love scenes like that. But the approach is rather similar.)

(I have said many times that I could not go dreamy-eyed in high school watching "Ghost" because I couldn't forget that the body doing the hot love scene was Whoopi Goldberg's, not wossname's, even though they were showing wossname's. Also, wossname is So Not My Type anyway. As much as I hate hate HATE the explicit central thesis of "When Harry Met Sally," and as much as Billy Crystal is not, shall we say, my masculine ideal, at least his character had an inkling of sense of humor about himself. The things that pass off as romantic without any laughter or self-awareness at all...oof. But that is an unrelated rant for another day.)

Nick Sagan, Idlewild. First novel. Most things I could say to characterize it, other than that it has heavy use of virtual reality, would be spoilery. Suffice it to say that this is not a cheerful novel, and that the ending is rather abrupt. But winning the not a cheerful novel, ending rather abrupt sweepstakes for early November, conveniently appearing in order by authorial surname, is...

Adam Stemple, Singer of Souls. They tried to warn me about the ending. They did not convey the magnitude of it in their warnings. It was not that it was an unhappy ending -- I like ambiguous endings better than happy or unhappy ones, but a good happy or unhappy ending will do fine with me. But this specific one went clunkclunkSCREEEEEEECLUNK in my head. Not in a "my world is now different due to the undermining of genre conventions" way, either, I'm afraid, although I could see where it might hit some people that way. The rest of the book was really good, and I've liked his collabs with his mom. I will buy his next book. It's just the last few pages that...didn't do it for me, let's say.

Rex Stout, If Death Ever Slept, Might As Well Be Dead, and Three Witnesses. I liked several things in this segment of the series. I liked how Wolfe's introduction to a rather nice dog was handled -- the dog was beautifully characterized, the monkey not so badly either. But the one that's sticking out in my head is the way that Wolfe and Archie's status as famous detectives actually bites them in the butt. They don't get to have the advantages of Being Famous Detectives without actually having to be famous detectives. Good stuff.

Charlie Stross (autopope), Glasshouse. I was not as impressed with this book as I wanted to be. I still enjoyed it, but there were holes that kept poking at me. He played fair with character memory loss, as far as I remember, but sometimes the reactions to that memory loss were a little strange to me. Some character beliefs were not questioned soon enough, and at least one of them -- in the resolution -- never was. But I still had fun with it.

Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (1crowdedhour), The Mislaid Magician. Third in the series. Much fun. After my friend Ed's daughter was born, before we'd seen them with the kiddo, I wondered what Ed would be like with a baby. And the answer was, "Just exactly like Ed, but with a baby." Good enough, and this was like that: characters growing up and remaining themselves. And they've returned to epistolary format, which is good, I thought.

To-do list: move forward. Stop second-guessing self. Everything else as listed on extremely long to-do list here.

So okay, lots of you have gone over the 50 "most influential" works of SF/fantasy, and that's fine, but here's what interests me more: tell me about one work of SF or fantasy that has influenced you. Not the single most influential if you don't feel like it. Just tell me about one. How old were you, where did you find it, why was it important, do you think its importance to you is in line with how good it is or disproportionate for some reason, etc. etc.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I was in my mid teens when I read the Heechee series by Fred Pohl. I know I'd read a lot of SF before then, but for some reason, the sheer magnitude of the concepts, of people and other intelligent species doing thing that required planning and working in deep time, really hit me. I haven't read them since, because I'm afraid my memory of being totally awestruck might be ruined by rereading. :)

Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth series also hit me at that time - I was in prime emotional territory for becoming addicted to ornate prose and florid concepts, with a sense of deep history, happening over hundreds and thousands of years. She was at her best in them, in my mind, before she ended up going overboard and writing a bunch of books that read to me like a series of exquisitely described tableaus* with no action connecting them.

I still tend to get sucker-punched by things that deal with deep time or with layers upon layers of history.


* I wrote "plateaus" for this at first, which led to some interesting mental images.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

When I was in college, I read A Wizard of Earthsea and was radically disappointed. I hadn't read any Le Guin before, and I resolved not to read any more. I concluded that she might be all right for some people, but I didn't like her.

Then I read an essay of hers and was overwhelmed. I concluded that I only liked her nonfiction and bought Dancing at the Edge of the World and devoured it. Then my girlfriend read me "The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas," and I had to grudgingly acknowledge that maybe I liked some of her fiction, after all.

It wasn't until a couple years later that my partner read me The Dispossessed aloud on a long roadtrip. It changed me, not because it convinced me of something I had previously not believed or anything like that. It was the sensation of reading it - hearing it, and then taking it and reading it over immediately for myself. I can't remember any other book I'd read up to that point which had me saying, "Yes. YES. Yes, THAT." I didn't really expect books to do that for me. Books served other purposes; they were foundational in my life and I loved reading, but they didn't go around making me feel like someone smarter and sanee and older than me had already thought about and perfectly articulated all the most important things that were struggling around, half-shaped and urgent inside my chest.

I don't compare other books to The Dispossessed. There wouldn't be any useful function served by trying. It's not that other things haven't influenced me strongly; they have. And it's not that The Dispossessed influenced me more. It's not linear. It's a superlative of one thing. There are an infinite number of other ways other things can have an effect on me. That one's just itself, is all.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I will never forgive that book for depriving _The Mote In God's Eye_ of it's richly-deserved Hugo award. And, as I re-read it many years later, I find myself feeling manipulated and cheated by it. Not, at this point, one of my favorites!

_A Wizard of Earthsea_, on the other hand, I remember loving extremely.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock. I was maybe ten or so. I put down that book and said, "I want to tell a story." And I haven't stopped.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Also, the Trickster books really disappointed me on a craft level; Pierce seriously chickened out on one of the hard parts of her plot, making the bad guys take care of it so the good guys didn't have to, and overall, nothing actually went wrong at any point for the protagonists. Is Beka Cooper better enough to be worth picking up? I love Tortall, but haven't been enamored of the recent stuff.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I never did get into Tanith Lee -- maybe I found her at the wrong age.

[todfox.livejournal.com]

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, definitely influenced a lot of my thinking about relationships and social relations. I read it very young, maybe 10?

Alternately, Ray Bradbury's R is For Rocket, which my mom forced on me as soon as I was old enough to understand all the words. I thought it looked dumb. I've been reading SF and fantasy ever since.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

While I don't feel that way about The Dispossessed, most of the books that have influenced my strongly are not comparable to each other. They are themselves. That's what they're supposed to be.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Marylyn, one of my best teachers who is now a friend, had a Ray Bradbury unit for our seventh grade Communications (honors English) class. The Illustrated Man and R is for Rocket. I went and found F451 on my own after that and scared myself witless for awhile -- I have always been more frightened by human inhumanity to books other humans than by supernatural ghoulies.

I read Piercy not that long ago, after I'd already read Joanna Russ and Tiptree and LeGuin and a bunch of other feminist SF. So it probably felt a lot more like part of a thing than it would have if I'd found it early and by itself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read it when we first lived here, three years ago or so. Maybe two years ago. But it's still really awesome.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I liked it better than the Trickster books, but it made me want to go reread the Alanna books to remember what they were actually like rather than because it made me excited about Tortall again.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if it may be at all like with discovering MZB as a teen. :>

Tanith Lee's Flat Earth is very much like Arabian Nights. (She was doing marvelous until Delusions and Delirium. =grin= Really was a plateau at that point!) I still grab every collection I can find of Arabian Nights. I'm pretty sure I haven't read every Night of the 1001.

I noticed that some of Tanith's very brief stories remind me of certain stories written by Jane Yolen. Definite kinship.

This isn't good for the reader who dislikes horror, though. I am thinking of Jane's "Angelica." One of the very best stories I've ever read.

- Chica

[callunav.livejournal.com]

The only Tanith Lee I ever got into was Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine. Really different from the rest of her stuff. If you haven't read them and get a chance - they're now published in one volume titled Biting the Sun - you might want to take a look and see what you think.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I have always been more frightened by human inhumanity to...other humans than by supernatural ghoulies.

(First of all, your strikethrough made me laugh.)

What's your feeling about Shirley Jackson?

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Anne McCaffrey's _Dragonsinger_. I chose that over _Dragonsong_ because it was thicker. :D

My seventh-grade science teacher made everyone choose an sf book for one homework assignment... Thus I discovered science fiction as a passion.

Also reread Andre Norton's _The Year of the Unicorn_ and _WitchWorld_, which I'd read about a year previous. Then began reading everything else sf/f that caught my eye. A lot did.

I've always felt lucky that so many authors have written. -does the happy dance-

- Chica

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! _Drinking Sapphire Wine_ is one of my all-time favorites of hers. Another book that I re-read to death as a teen.

T'others would be _The Silver Metal Lover_... and really _Cyrion_, drat him.

- Chica

[guipago.livejournal.com]

Dragon Prince Melanie Rawn

I found it when I was 13 years old, picked it up based on the cover, read the back blurb and fell in love with the book. I'm the first to admit that the first hundred pages or so are slow, but it picks up. It was the characters that drew me in and kept me reading and re-reading the book. It was important because the main characters were human but didn't let their powers corrupt them. It taught me that you can be both powerful and humane. Playful and wise. It was good for a young girl who wasn't quite sure about who and what to trust in the world thanks to a procreating bastard of a father who'd tried to kidnap her that summer.

It did a lot for me, and I still re-read it yearly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I discovered MZB as a preteen and have a few spots of lingering fondness in what I think are the obvious places but others may not (Forbidden Tower and Thendara House, mostly).

I am not generally fond of horror, but there are exceptions. They're not common, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Meh.

I was exposed to her at just the wrong point or maybe the right one, depending on your feeling about Shirley Jackson. "The Lottery" as a high school freshman/sophomore play was laughable melodrama, not stunning human insight. And it sort of leaked on the rest of Shirley Jackson for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Those are good lessons indeed.

I read that series at about the same age, and I liked them enough to send away for the fan club newsletter (through the mail, so now everybody can marvel at how old I am) and get pen-pals through it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read Blue Moon Rising and cannot dredge up how it was. I keep trying. It's on the tip of my brain. I should just reread it and have done.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord. I was assistant director for our high school's production, which I can't help believing *must* have been worse than most. Only the fact that I'd already been thoroughly exposed to Jackson saved me.

The play is...just not Shirley Jackson.

If you'll accept recommendations, I really would point you toward her again. For one thing, she's got two very funny semi-auto-biographical/semi-fictional accounts of raising her children in rural Vermont which aren't horror at all. But she really is queen of psychological horror. Almost any collection of short stories will yield some gems, or if you want novels, take a look at We Have Always Lived in the Castle first, and The Haunting of Hill House second. (The latter is, I think, stronger, but also more...I don't know. I would go in that order, anyhow.)

In fact, given the slightest whiff of encouragement I'm likely to reproduce without permission a one-page story called "Janice" and e-mail it at to you.

That woman could write.

On the other hand, I *can* resist the urge to proselytize, as seems indicated.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I read Harris, too. I think they stuck so vividly in my mind partly because of how they ended. It's a plot-coupon story in a lot of ways, as I recall, but then she yanks the rug out from under you at the end.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The idea of The Lottery as a play kind of bemuses me. Mind you, I liked it as a short story, but in a limited kind of way. I think the way people have Obsessed Over It is a tad... much.

I enjoy many of her other short stories, though. Not, I admit, in life changing ways.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

RAH's Starship Troopers did a lot to crystalize my move from so called "Christian" morals to finding and building a set of ethics of my own. Then MiaHM came and really pushed what I was (A "good" southern boy) into what I needed to be to live.