Books read, early April, with digressions into awards ballots and protags and such

[mrissa]

I want my singing voice back. Whine whine whiiiiiine whine whine.

So anyway. Books read, early April:

Hanne Blank (hanne_blank), Virgin: The Untouched History. Cultural history. I've read some of Hanne's blogging on the publication of this book, which made me sad about a few things she had to leave out. But even with editorial omissions, it was still fascinating, well-done, and recommended.

Jared Brown, Zero Mostel. timprov and I had been talking about Zero and ended up coming upon a reference to his run-ins with the HUAC. That era fascinates me, so when T. ordered this biography, I decided to read it, too. From here it looks like the biographer did a good and thorough job, and Mostel was an extremely interesting fellow surrounded by other interesting people.

Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot. This was the first de Lint I ever bought, and I remember reading it in the Math Club van on the way to and from the Dakota State Math Contest one year -- my senior year, I think. I was captivated, and for years I listed Dreams Underfoot as one of my favorite single-author short story collections ever. (Others on the list include Nancy Kress's The Aliens of Earth, Samuel R. Delany's Driftglass, Charles Sheffield's Georgia on My Mind and Other Places, and Octavia Butler's Bloodchild.) And then I started to become disillusioned with de Lint's work -- the line between tropes and cliches started to blur -- and I had not reread Dreams Underfoot in years. But then he won me back with Widdershins, and so when I missed the last two days of Minicon, I decided to see how Dreams Underfoot held up in light of his more recent work. The answer was, pretty well. I would no longer rank it with the other collections I've listed, but that's pretty heady company. There are stories where the characters not only say that you don't have to be an artist to do magic, but they really appear to mean it. And some of the "requisite cameo" problems or "forty-third verse, same as the first" problems just aren't there. I can't read Dreams Underfoot with my sixteen-year-old brain any more, but I can still enjoy it, and I did.

Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection. For those of you who don't keep track of the numbers -- which should be everyone, because why would you? -- this is for the year 2004. I have some serious issues with declaring things the best in a given year. Don't get me wrong -- I don't mind that Dozois does it, and I don't mind if you do it, either. But present me with something and tell me that it is the best X of a given Y, and I am likely to scowl and dig my heels in and give it extremely skeptical looks. So I suppose it's not much of a surprise that I enjoyed but was not wowed by the stories in this collection: the very title prejudices me against wowing. This is not Dozois's fault or the authors' fault. It's just how I process things.

Incidentally, this is one reason you will hardly ever see me commenting on awards shortlists or ballots: even my favorite books will provoke folded arms and a skeptical, "The best? Really?" If I can't tell you which is The Best Book Published By A Member of the Scribblies in 1991 -- and heaven knows I can't, even with the copyright dates sitting in front of me -- how on earth could I tell you which was the best novel-in-general of that year? It's not how I work. So when people demand to know -- for example -- which other works by women ought to be on the 2006 Hugo ballot, elephino. I can tell you a bunch of works by women that I enjoyed in 2006. Some by men, too. But since my brain is not inclined to tell you whether Inda is a better book than Blood and Iron, I certainly can't make it total-order the rest.

Also, when I kept track of short fiction I enjoyed one year, I discovered that I enjoyed significantly fewer than five novellas in your average year. Even when I read the award nominees online, that did not add enough novellas-enjoyed to bring the category to five. I have enjoyed some novellas in the past, but in the average run of things, I do not enjoy very many novellas, and I refuse to go novella-hunting in hopes of finding the ones that do not suck in a given year so that I can contribute to discussions of that year in specific.

Perhaps I am shirking some responsibility or other here, but I am having a hard time bringing myself to care.

Ahem. Anyway.

Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing. Ohhhhh dear. Okay, so this is the book that prompted my theory about the two schools of big fat fantasy novel, the "Places to Go, People to Kill" school and the "What a Lovely Night for a Pleasure-Cruise Through Eel-Infested Waters." This was clearly a Pleasure-Cruise school of big fat fantasy. It is leisurely. It unfolds gently. This is not, in itself, a bad thing.

...except. Except, except. Except that the main character is a total stuffed-shirt, and while I am willing to read books whose character arc is "total stuffed-shirt becomes a genuine human being," 1) I am significantly less willing to read such character arcs that take three very long books to achieve the same result, especially in first-person narrative where you are stuck with Lieutenant Boring the whole way through, and 2) I have read Robin Hobb's books before, and I know that she is perfectly willing to leave him an unbearable stuffed-shirt throughout. And while I appreciate, to a certain extent, subversion of the trope where the main character's major flaws are all overcome or at least significantly improved by the close of narrative, I am not sure I'm up for nearly 2000 pages that result in the main character being promoted to Major Boring rather than Captain Interesting.

All this by way of saying I'm not reading the next book in the series, and I may be done reading Robin Hobb books at all. I'm almost certainly not done reading Megan Lindholm books, and they're (at least theoretically) the same person.

There were also some worldbuilding things that might have eventually gotten to be more interesting or might have stayed horribly formulaic and boring, but I did not find myself willing to stick around and find out.

This is not the first time I have ranted publicly about Robin Hobb's main characters. An unnamed friend and I were complaining about how very whiny Fitz is when we were at World Fantasy Con, not realizing that Ms. Lindholm/Hobb/etc. was only a few feet away. That was not my most shining hour, and I do hope I didn't hurt her feelings. On the other hand, I really want to like this woman's books. I have invested time, money, and energy in attempts to like this woman's books. And if she made the main characters a titch less annoying? that would not be a bad outcome, in my book. I am not one who insists on liking every main character, but everyone has limits, and these books have found mine.

Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain. This was one of the most influential books of my adolescence. It gave me ideas about what modern SF is just at the time when I was first starting to see this work as mine, when I was 12 -- just when I had shifted from seeing myself as a writer to seeing myself as a writer with a particular genre or set of genres. And once again, it's something I hadn't reread it in years. Some parts of it hold up beautifully. Others...not so much. This one I could read with my 12-year-old brain, or substantial parts of it. I also could see structural bits of pointiness that did not jump out to my 12-year-old brain, ways in which I think it would have been different and better as a novel if it had started as a novel instead of as a novella. (Yah, I know, it's Rag On Novellas Day here, apparently.) But the later sections especially are still a good deal of fun for me to read. I still like this book. I do not draw back from my adolescent self in horror. So that's good then.

Noel Streatfeild, Gemma, Gemma Alone, Gemma and Sisters, and Good-bye, Gemma. These are children's books by the author of the Shoes books. Like the Shoes books, they concern British children involved with stage performance. I hadn't reread them in some time, either, and when I was having trouble braining while I was sick, they seemed like just the thing. And really they were. One thing I didn't notice when I read them as a child really upset me this time through, though: these books have been substantially translated. The maternal parent is "Mom" and "Mommy," not "Mum" and "Mummy" -- and I'm not convinced that "Mommy" and "Mummy" are the same exactly -- and there are dollars and cents and sweaters and trucks. This is particularly bad when Gemma's movie-star mother, who has been in America, returns: she refers to the season as "fall" and then corrects herself, that if she's going to be in Britain, she should say "autumn." Yarrrrrg. You cannot change bits of dialect in books where the dialect will become an important indicator of character. You particularly cannot half-assedly change bits of dialect. I have an entry coming on the profanity panel I missed out on participating in, but as a foretaste: this is one of the big problems with censorship on a purely artistic level: it alters character. Someone who says "gosh darn it" and someone who says "goddammit" are very different people -- and someone who says one in one context and the other in another is another different person yet. This is true of people who cry for their Mommies and their Mummies as well. Also, the late part of the series deals rather directly with the British university admissions system at the time (late 1960s), which is extremely different from the US system, so trying to make out that these characters are just like American kids of the same time, with the same concerns, falls utterly flat.

I still like these books. I just wish they hadn't been mangled on their way to me.

Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (1crowdedhour), Sorcery and Cecelia. This is yet another reread -- apparently being sick makes me want to reread things, these days -- but this was my "safe" one, because I had read it recently enough that I knew I would still enjoy it. And I did. Much fun.

And now I am off to make company chicken with no company. But one has to eat, and we make it for company because we like it, and so there you have that.

Comments

[gwynnega]

That Zero Mostel book sounds interesting. He was a friend of my dad's, though I don't think I ever met him. Speaking of the HUAC era, have you seen The Front? Zero was wonderful in that...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't, but after reading the biography, I'd like to.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

My friend akashiver (aka Von Carr, who's moving up in the publishing world with a recent sale to Realms) presented a really intersting paper at ICFA about the way Hobb plays around with systems of honor in Shaman's Crossing. I vaguely want to read the book just for that, but I suspect, from your comments and hers, that the honor systems and the way the main character learns to negotiate them would be the major thing I'd enjoy, which is not a good endorsement for the series.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

On Nevare the Appallingly Passive: yes. Oh, yes. I kept reading, and kept realizing that I wanted him to do something, anything, but be perfect. It hit me in the first book, too, but the second was... eek. She's written herself out of a possible fix, too-- I'm willing to forgive a lot if, sometime, the underdog Shows Them All, but there's no one left to Show! All the adversaries are dead, and he has done exactly as he was told every step of the way!
Reluctant main characters are well and good, as long as they do something reluctantly rather than not doing anything.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Robin Hobb:
I used to think I really liked the first half of Robin Hobb's trilogies. I didn't think they were extraordinarily *good*, but I liked them a lot. The first book would be sentimental and angsty and depressing, yet somehow exciting and a horrible cliffhanger. Then the second book would resolve the cliffhanger and go on to be even more depressing...and it would be great for hundreds of pages of mysterious worldbuilding excitement, until it didn't end in a cliffhanger (at the end of the book) but rather went off the deep end (in an incoherent muddle shortly before the end.) I decided I just didn't like her notion of an ending, and the sensible thing for me to do was read the first 2 books of all her trilogies. Or maybe the first book and a half.

Then I tried _Shaman's Crossing_. Oh my goodness. No sentiment there, not for character nor world. I looked at _Forest Mage_, to see if it got any better, and it was actually quite a bit worse, and in a way that wasn't at all good for me psychologically.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Ah, Shaman's Crossing. I actually kind of enjoyed that book, despite the main characters stuffiness, because it seemed like Hobb was doing something interesting with the colonialism arc by challenging the cliche that the Native American-equivalents were morally pristine noble savages and showing that they, y'know, hated each other, and were willing to commit atrocities just as awful as those perpetrated by the colonial power. It seemed like that realm of moral ambiguity was one which could be mined for a great deal of pathos.

Then I read Forest Mage, in which lieutenant stuffyshirt becomes bloated and fat (I'm not kidding) with magical power, and suffers through the typical Robin Hobb shitstorm of everything-that-can-go-wrong-does (because everyone hates a fat man), and the moral ambiguity doesn't even go anywhere interesting. And I'm sorry, I'll put up with a certain amount of gratuitous depression if the protagonist actually engages in some kind of agon, but I've got a limit, and Forest Mage exceeded it by a mile. I like dramatic anguish more than most people I know (I enjoyed the Assassin and Fool books quite a bit, despite Fitz's excesses of self-pity), but there's a point at which causing your protagonist pain just becomes tedious.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Too angsty for Alec" is not a blurb they should put on the front of books.

I enjoyed the Assassin and Fool books as well. I just wanted to beat Fitz to death with his own shoe most of the way.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Beating Fitz to death with his own shoe would have been rather satisfying, especially after the events of Royal Assassin.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

-glum- It's his uncle. I really liked Verity... and how THAT ended.

Oh, it wasn't as bad as Elric really truly being doomed after all. But almost. I had got to liking Elric so much that I actually returned the second Elric trilogy to SFBC. [Hey, I was an angsty teen. -grin- I overreacted.] Now, if I could've sent Stormbringer after Fitz...

That's a thought. Heh.

- Chica

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I didn't make it past chapter two of Shaman's Crossing, and I very much liked the Farseer trilogy, even with Fitz being a whiny git.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Shaman's Crossing, though I have a hard time with Book 2 of Hobbs' trilogies. There's just so much suffering involved. I find I very often have to skip portions of book two and get on to book three, which is why I'm waiting for Book 3 to come out so I can read, or skim, book 2.

[skwirly.livejournal.com]

I was about to ask you for your company chicken recipe, and then I thought that perhaps, you being you, you might have already harnessed the power of the intarweb for good and put it up. And lo! You have. Can the dill be dried dill?

Also, I heart Sorcery and Cecilia. And regency fantasy in general, which there is just not enough of. I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Dried dill is just fine. I use dried dill most of the time.

There is not enough regency fantasy, but there's more than there was just a minute ago, so that's good. I tend to skew slightly earlier or slightly later than Regency-esque periods myself, but I do appreciate them in others.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I think there should be more Georgian fantasy, myself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have something that would nearly qualify.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

And maybe more early-Victorian, just because I don't know very much about that time compared to the Rengency or the full-blown mid-late Victorian period.

I read once that British food used to be excellent, some of the best in the world. The claim was that it reached its current (well, recent - I think it's improved these last few decades) state of stodginess because of the style for ladies who could afford it to become delicate flowers who did no work whatever, and so the cooks and servants weren't properly supervised and the knowledge of how to cook well was lost. I have no way of knowing if it's true (and plenty of reason to doubt it, starting with there being no particular reason to assume poorer women, who had to work, were any less knowledgeable, and with the number of great foods that have evolved as a response to poverty.) But it would still be interesting to see that transition.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I wish I thought Hobbs was doing something cool with the fatness of the protagonist, but I hate it. I feel like she's equating fat with passive. Plus she is a huge proponent of hurt/comfort scenarios so I'm pretty sure the series will just keep getting grimmer and grimmer. And it doesn't even make sense! Everyone's just dying and Nevare is getting huger, and the colonial stuff is sort of interesting but you know, the dying gets in the way.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Naah, he was passive before, but now people aren't going along with it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, having a fat protagonist everybody wants to beat to death with a shoe is not really a blow for respect for fat people.

[ellarien]

Have you come across the M. John Harrison quote about worldbuilding being a bad thing? Shaman's Crossing almost makes me believe it. I still bought and read the next book, because it tends to take a while for her series to really grab me, and it's worse.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have come across that, and I think Mr. Harrison has gone and defined worldbuilding as stuff he doesn't like and then -- lo and behold -- it looks like a bad thing.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

the line between tropes and cliches started to blur

This is the best statement of the de Lint Problem I've seen yet.

I have a *whole stack* of books now, courtesy of Amazon UK, that I can read as soon as I've plugged them in Readerware and finished Diane Duane's Wizards at War. That's another series that's starting to get a bit repetitve, but one thing about this one is it's got me giggling all the way through, which I don't remember from previous members of the series. The best line so far is one that's funniest if you know some of Duane's other work: "Sker, I'm a wizard, not an engineer!"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of the Wizards books. I think she has them largely back on track at the moment, but she's got a fairly big thing she's going to have to address if I am to continue to be satisfied with them. We'll see.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I can't tell if you don't want to talk about it or you're hoping someone will ask, but I'm entering the last third of the book (spoilers don't bother me: I keep peeking ahead anyway) and itching to talk about it, so I'm asking.

Biggest problem I see: she's been kind of hinting at something Really Big coming up - but how do you do Really Big when you've already saved the world, the Solar System and the universe multiple times, and also introduced Something Entirely New under the Suns (that will make a difference in the balance of good and evil) multiple times? I do want to see how she resolves the Roshaun thing, though, so I'll keep reading.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, yah, and related thereto, once you're talking about saving the universe, what can people be off doing that's bigger than that and isn't the personal-importance kind of bigger like being there for a grieving friend?

We'll see, I guess.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, if I were grieving and a friend had a choice between comforting me and saving the universe, I think I'd just as soon she chose option B.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But certain characters are choosing C, none of the above.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I must have missed that, or not gotten to it yet. I can think of a few characters who chose to save just a certain *part* of the universe, but then it was more like "Well, this is what I can do best and others are handling the rest." I don't see characters who completely abdicated responsibilities - at least not yet. (At least, not in the cases where they had a choice.) Maybe I'd better finish the book then come back to this comment.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have got the Gemma books in old original Armada Lions British editions, which I'd be happy to lend to you. They're not in very good condition, because they have been read rather a lot. I could also look out for more copies of them for you when I'm in Britain, they're not terribly common but you do see them sometimes.

Are there any other Streatfeild you're looking for British editions of? It's something I'd be checking shelves for anyway, as there are one or two I don't have, and when found tend to be cheap.

The Americanization makes me want to jump up and down and scream. Spelling is one thing, words are different.

Wouldn't it have been just lovely if they'd changed "Marmee" in Little Women to "Mummy" so I'd have understood it? Or to "Mommy" so you would? How stupid do they think kids are? Morons.

Have you read Pamela Brown's The Swish of the Curtain (and impossible to find sequels that I read from the library in the 1970s)? If you like the Gemma books, you might like it. Even if you only like re-reading them when you're sick. Goodness knows, that's when I read them. That's what they're for.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for the offer; I will look through the ones I have and see which ones are mangled and which not.

And no, I haven't read that Brown book. Will look for it at libraries etc.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

An end note might've helped there, because apparently some of us are that stupid. It took me (at about age 9) nanoseconds to realize that "Marmee" was what the March girls called their Mom; it took *years* to realize it was just "Mommy" with a Boston accent.

[carbonel]

Are you reading American printings of the Gemma books? I do have British editions if you'd like to borrow those. I haven't reread them in a long time, but a quick glance shows "Mum" and "Mummy" generally used.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I'm unlikely to want to reread them again so soon.