Books read, early February

[mrissa]

John Barnes, The Merchants of Souls. I read this one accidentally out of order, and the fourth one is looking worse thereby: this is not the bridge I thought would have to happen between the second book and the fourth book. So there is no such bridge. So -- um. The fourth book is looking a lot more disjointed now.

Darryl Brock, If I Never Get Back. Baseball time travel novel. The main character doesn't think about anything but himself, ever, throughout the book. This never comes back to bite him in the butt. He tells people things that would prove untrue in their timeline, if not in his, and no one seems to notice or call him on it, even with ample opportunity to spot discrepancies between his story and reality. When they went to San Francisco, I thought, ah, here it all comes crashing down on his head, because he said he was from San Francisco and doesn't know anything he should about it and has no friends or acquaintances there. But no, what happened was misty angst and continuing tacked-on Fenians. Great. Also he thinks nothing of having unprotected sex with a woman in 1869, because tra la la, they really love each other. So when he disappears back into the future and may well have left her pregnant, with huge social and economic consequences, well, at least they really love each other! What a jerk. Books about jerks can be okay, I guess, but this was a book about a stupid jerk, plus a bunch of oblivious stupid people around him. Some of them also jerks. Harumph harumph harumph. (Worst of all, it wasn't bad enough for me to quit in the middle, and it wasn't good enough for me to actually enjoy it.)

Charles de Lint, Promises to Keep. This is a Jilly Coppercorn story, so you don't have to have the feeling that everyone in Newford does the same things and likes the same things, because it's not a new component of everyone, it's Jilly. It's filling in some backstory rather than going forward with her, and since the gaps in her back story are not that large, it ends up being rather slight for its length. Not an "it was only a dream" ending, but not far enough from it for my taste.

Diane Duane, The Door Into Shadow. Better than The Door Into Fire; clearly the work of a few more years of experience. I wanted more fire elemental, but what're ya gonna do.

Joe Haldeman, The Accidental Time Machine. This time traveler thinks about stuff other than himself. Which is good, because there's not much to the book but him thinking about stuff, really. Do you want a classic-style "snapshots of possible futures as the time traveler hops along" book? This is that. It's not more than that. It's also not less.

Sandra McDonald, The Outback Stars. When the central relationship in a book is a romantic one and you totally don't buy the romantic relationship in any way, it sort of cuts down on your enjoyment of a book.

Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: the Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia. Fascinating stuff about Central Asian history as influenced by Europeans; if you want the focus to be on what the people who actually lived there were doing, you need a different book. Moved right along, for all that it was a great big brick of a book. I was pleased and amused to see standard adventure novel tricks go badly awry in real life: did you know, for example, that a great big Englishman with brown dye on his skin does not actually look like your average Tibetan? That he might stand out somehow? That they might look at him and say, "Oh, look, it's some big white dude with walnut juice all over his face," rather than, "Hey, Lobsang, that must be your cousin Dorjee, who is totally from around here!"? I was just so pleased at that not working.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain. Okay, I give. I'm reading Kim Stanley Robinson again. I really, really, really didn't like The Years of Rice and Salt (I want to read about people, not types), and The Martians rubbed me completely the wrong way as well, and I was thinking I was done. And then rysmiel was talking about these, and they were out in paperback, so I got the first one. So. It wasn't Green Mars, but I think it was at least Red Mars level. It was the stuff I used to read Kim Stanley Robinson for in the first place: he is so very earnest, and you never have to stop and scowl and say, "No scientist ever said something like that." Or even, "No bureaucrat ever said something like that." Also he is very good with weather, and that's very very necessary in this book. So. I'll get the other two in this series, and if you liked the Mars trilogy but not as much his stuff since, maybe you should, too.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Sunspark is a major life influence on me.

I suspect he and Roger Zelazny's Black are the reasons I keep putting Sociopathic Ponies Of Dubious Provenance in things.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Sociopathic Ponies Of Dubious Provenance

Band name. *calls it*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Band name and debut album.

Sociopathic Ponies, Of Dubious Provenance

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*puts album on Amazon wish list*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Gotta be geek rock, with a title like that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Probably, but maybe some flavors of modern folkie too.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I feel the sudden urge to get out my guitar. :p

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Sociopathic Ponies Of Dubious Provenance

*teasplorch*

(as sartorias would say.)

[seabream.livejournal.com]

I like the way Sunspark, among other things to do with this series, shows up in queer fiction panels.

spoiler

"And then there's the marriage between two women, four men, a pregnant male dragon and a fire elemental who is sometimes a young man, young woman, stallion or plain ball of fire. Not only not heteronormative, but also not dualistic or speciesist, so it's definitely queer. ...apart from the fact that it is happening in a setting where none of this is looked upon as hugely weird and objectionable."

end spoiler

I still want to read Door into Starlight when she eventually finishes it. This is one of the few story settings with deities who I find sensible. Among non-utopian society building, this set is pretty much my favourite.

I think that I feel an icon coming.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So I was spending some time trying to figure out why the assumption of apparently-universal bisexuality in the Door books doesn't bother me, because in real life the "we're all bisexual really" people just drive me bazoo. ("Many more people are bisexual than one knows about": sure. "It's okay to be bisexual": yep. "Everybody is bisexual deep down": no. I don't second-guess other people's sexual orientation, and I would appreciate it if they didn't second-guess mine.) But with these books, I was fine with it.

And I think the deities are exactly it. I think that Duane has done a good enough job making the humans in this book the children of their gods that there are all sorts of things I don't have to consider a general opinion of human nature in this world. The human relationship with the gods in this book affects everything including sexuality (which makes sense with gods who make no secret of actually showing up in people's lives), and it can be part of the speculative conceit successfully.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

You're really bisexual deep down. We just haven't discovered the second gender you're interested in yet.

[stevenagy.livejournal.com]

You read so much faster than I do. :-(

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"It's a gift. And a curse."

[aedifica]

That prompts a question. I deal with reading fast by doing lots of re-reading (well, that and it's comforting to read a story I know and like already). Do you re-read, and just don't post about the books you re-read, or do you usually read all new?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do reread, but not as much as a lot of people I know -- markgritter or timprov or dd_b or apparently you. And I post about the books that are rereads, and I normally note it as such. But we haven't been on each other's friendslist for that long, so you might well have come in since I was doing any serious rereading.

[stevenagy.livejournal.com]

Heh. :-)

I think my problem is that my mind goes off on associational tracks, whether for writing or life. I think if someone told me I could live forever ("Steve, you just won the Superbowl. What are you going to do?") I'd say I was glad because then I could read everything.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

'It's that bloody Richard Burton in disguise again - humour him'.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

oh

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Tournament of Shadows sounds interesting.

Re: oh

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's big and chewy and leaves you wanting to know a dozen more things.

[takrann.livejournal.com]

How the hell do you read so many books so quickly?! Just the cares of life preclude me from getting through them...and I review them!

Just how deeply and closely does one read? Is what one reads really worth reading deeply and closely? Maybe that's it!

When I read sentences like:

'Everything went well at first - so well that it lulled them. At nine different locations around the house - nine is three cubed and hence a very powerful number in white magic -'

The crudity of such info dumping maddens me so much: that it got past an agent and an editor like that to publication, I fume my way through the rest of a chapter and it takes an aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage.

Perhaps I'm just to OCD to read swiftly and thoroughly enough!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Obviously different people have different triggers. I quit several of the books in my World Fantasy freebie bag a few pages in because I just couldn't imagine suffering through that kind of prose or that character voice or whatever for 400 pages. So because I'm not assigned to review these books for any particular reason, for the most part I quit if I'm maddened by the prose. They may have suffered for their art, but I certainly don't have to!

But I think people just have different processing speeds as well. My natural reading speed is very fast -- I don't skim or do any of the other tricks they teach in speed reading courses. I also type fast and think fast, comparatively speaking.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

I'm currently reading Forty Signs of Rain (checked out from the library). I'm about halfway through and I'm not sure what to think of it: There are Characters. There is Setting. Oh are there ever Infodumps. But so far there seems to be a shortage of Story. Maybe this will be remedied as things go on. Or maybe I'm just looking for a book that isn't this one.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Did you read the Mars trilogy? Taking awhile to get things stacked up so that the setting, the character, and the infodumps cascade into story is kind of how he works. But they do start triggering event, and the event does build into story. Whether it's soon enough for your taste is another question.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

the event does build into story.

Having read a number of Tom Clancy's book (back when he was still writing his own books), I'm familiar with this style of writing, and so long as I feel confident that events eventually will build into a story, I'm content to wait, especially since I'm enjoying the setting and the characters and the infodumps.

I haven't read the Mars trilogy, though it's been on my mental "to read" list for years. If I like this trilogy, that will probably push it further up the list.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That seems like a good judgment to me. Not all of his books are good indicators of whether you'd like the Mars books, but so far I think this series is.

[takrann.livejournal.com]

ToO OCD!

It does seem a tad silly to review books when writing. So much white noise, for one thing.

There are books which may be called novels and there are books which are story machines. And in story machines there is info-dumping galore. I'm not sure I could write a story machine if I tried. That must be where I am going wrong! And I do read them from time to time.

I think I just try too hard to make every sentence count! It is clear to me that in some of the books out there, even those published by the big publishing houses, this is simply not so.

Surely every sentence ought to count, even in a novel? And to do things in certain ways, like the above example of info-dumping, is an aberration that should not be allowed to stand, to convey information in that way. It's a novel, not a cornflake packet. The author ought not to allow it to stand in the first place, surely?! Never mind another pair of eyes getting to look at it. I am calm...I am calm...!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I say, people have different triggers. There is prose that strikes its ideal audience as lush and gorgeous and strikes me as overblown and ridiculous. I certainly don't want you to upset yourself by reading things that grate on you. But I also would suggest that when you are ruling huge chunks of work out of their category because you don't like them, maybe a little perspective is called for. A bad novel is still a novel. And I'm afraid you're in the wrong place for sympathy about books that relentlessly tell stories: I consider myself a storyteller first and foremost, and so do a lot of people around here. Some of them have written books that have sold rather well -- because these writers are terrible sell-out hacks who pander to inferior tastes and don't care about the details of their art? No. Because they have learned to do something people enjoy and do it well. When I'm hosting space, whether it's in my home or on my journal, I prefer that my other guests do not sneer at them for their successes either.

There is plenty of room for taste to vary. I don't expect you to enjoy everything all of my friends have written -- I certainly don't. But when you decide that the problem is that other people are not trying as hard with as superior a set of standards as you are, maybe it's time to go back and do the math again.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I hated KSR's "Rice and Salt", and feel somewhat defensive about that because so many discerning people adored it. Still, I liked the "40-50-60" series a lot more. And if you haven't read "Antarctica", you may want to try it- it completely entranced me. Several times. It's almost like a shorter version of the "Mars" trilogy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have read Antarctica, and I did enjoy it at the time. Haven't reread it since it was new, though!

[takrann.livejournal.com]

Ah, you do me an injustice, Marissa! I am certainly not sneering. I have hugely eclectic tastes in fiction as in everything else. I remember Steven Spielberg saying once that he could admire 'Die Hard' as a film machine and there are books that I think fall into this category. And there is an art to it. But be it a story telling machine of a book - and all the very greatest novels tell great stories and that's foremost what they should do, as a species we have a need to make for ourselves coherent, time contingent meaning out of an existence that just might not have one - or a novel that aspires to the condition of art (and that aspiration must never be apologised for because we just might not have any left if it is - fiction is like life but it is not life, it is text and a whole world of its own with its own malleable laws) every sentence should count.

If the reader takes the time to read it the writer ought to take the time to write it. Palpably a load of dross gets through. Every time someone gets into a car in The Da Vinci Code the car is 'gunned' across the road. It just isn't good enough, not for that, not for a Pulitzer contender, or whatever it may be.

When somebody has to stop in the middle of a narrative to dump some information it's just bad art, whoever does it.

There is too much out there with too little care in it. I am not suggesting it is any of your friends! With the explosion of the Net and e-zines this has increased exponentially.

It isn't all relative and great fiction is not merely down to what you or I like or gain purely recreational enjoyment from. That is the death of culture and of a developing canon. As is relativism. There is a common sense informed consensus of criteria that can be reached on judging what is good or bad writing, whatever its intention.

I am invested in genre, in fantasy, passionately, and it is my perception and ongoing informed observation that it is too easy on itself, too easy by far. I am of course not the standard bearer or saviour of it, no more than are you.

You have a diamond-bright intellect, I have observed it, but I will not offend you by observing it any more! You have no requirement to host me on your space, either virtually or otherwise. There was no intention to offend.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

You're just digging yourself a bigger hole here. Might I gently suggest giving it up, or possibly having the discussion with willshetterly instead?

[seabream.livejournal.com]

*sputter*laugh*

I know, not entirely in good taste.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't mean this part to be snotty, but if you look at the bottom of someone's comment, you will see a link reading "reply to this." If you click on it, you can reply to the things you're actually replying to rather than to the thread at large, so your future comments won't be interspersed with other people's comments on different topics.

Talking to someone you have "met" via the net -- and whose bibliography includes a great many e-zine publications -- about the evils of the net and e-zines allowing people who don't meet your standards to speak is really extremely silly. The only kinds of canon that are threatened by diverse voices are the kind that need threatening. Silence is not the answer, and there is a huge difference between saying, "This book is no good and I can't recommend that you read it," and, "This book is no good and no one should have ever permitted it to be published."

I couldn't read past the prologue of The DaVinci Code because of the prose, but I still think it has things to teach us -- and not just that the masses will accept crap, either.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

A quibble on "When somebody has to stop in the middle of a narrative to dump some information it's just bad art, whoever does it."

Not every reader is you. Not every reader picks up on the same things you do. Not every reader reads with the same genre expectations and assumptions as you do.

Not every reader thinks it's an infodump. Some think the information is presented logically, as part of the story. Some think it's out of place and horribly done.

Not every reader thinks the information is seamlessly integrated into the story. Some don't realized it's there and feel like the author is tricking them, pointing and laughing. Some think it's presented perfectly, so it doesn't kick them out of the narrative.

Any or all of these may apply to the same sentence, depending on the reader at that moment.

Most of the time, if someone says, "Here is Art! And here is crap!" they are being rude. More so if they are speaking to someone who may dabble in what is pointed to as the second, and even more so if they do it in said someone's living room.