Reasons I Have Quit Reading Books Since the Last Time I Did a Post Like This

[mrissa]

1. Already read Remains of the Day. Did not need to read another author's attempt at The Day: Now! With 33% More Remains ABSOLUTELY FREE!

2. Am bored stiff by tales revolving around infidelity of dumb people. If I can't tell why anyone would ever sleep with any of the parties at any time (including motivations like "fate of world depended upon it" or "last [person of preferred gender] on earth"), the intricacies of who did what to which are unlikely to enthrall me.

3. Just plain bored.

4. Tired of historical protagonists always having all the convenient modern virtues and all the picturesque historical ones.

5. The quotation mark: use it. Love it. It is your friend. I don't care if you use the single or the double. I can parse either way. But an entire novel of indirectly reported dialog makes me go like this:

I am not reading another one of those again. Why not, she said. Because they suck, I said. Oh. They do suck. Lots. I don't know who's saying which line any more, she said. Or what is in authorial voice. Or what is thought by one of the characters. Yes, I know.

6. Drugs may or may not make you interesting to yourself. They do not make you interesting to me. Something additional is required. I am really not as picky as I might be on this; an obsession with terns might do.

7. If you're going to retell a famous novel, pick one that didn't suck in its original incarnation, so that when I realize, "Oh, they're retelling X," I don't think, "That's why I don't like this book! I hated X!"

8. Animal narrators who sound like humans: bad. Animal narrators who don't sound like humans: upsetting when something bad happens to the animals and they totally don't understand why because they are just animals. See the catch-22 here?

9. "I have too much money and time on my hands," is a problem that requires extremely creative solutions to be interesting. Lying around the house all day and occasionally whining to shallow friends: not creative. (Psssst. Writing a booka bout lying around the house all day and occasionally whining to shallow friends: still not very creative.)

10. I am okay with children's/YA books featuring bad parents, abusive parents, or parents who Just Don't Understand. I am not okay with children's/YA books where the narrative seems confused about the line between abusive parents and parents who mildly frustrate their children. In either direction, this is not a good spot for confusion.

11. Cutesy wittle pwose style. Tonstant Weader wead somefing else.

12. Really well done, except that I found that it was making me sad without actually making me care who murdered whom, when, and why. So I stopped.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

7. If you're going to retell a famous novel, pick one that didn't suck in its original incarnation, so that when I realize, "Oh, they're retelling X," I don't think, "That's why I don't like this book! I hated X!"

I dunno. In certain respects, I don't see the point of retelling things that didn't suck; after all, we can always go read the original instead, and probably enjoy it more. So retellings either need to put an awesome new spin on something that was good to begin with, or salvage something unexpectedly good out of a work that was crappy to begin with. (Also known as the Ocean's 11 school of movie re-making.)

Uncritically retelling a sucky book, though -- yeah. Please don't.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

<3.

That is all.

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

I truly hope there exists, or will exist, an American heroin memoir, novel or falsified memoir whose protagonist is obsessed with terns. With those circumstances, the blue noddy would be just so evocative.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, for my money, the new Ocean's 11 was very shiny and slick...and pointed out to me that Sammy Davis Jr. had more talent in his little finger than anyone else in either movie had in their whole body. Possibly more than the entire casts minus him combined. I'd never seen him in anything before, and he just sparkled. So for me the win is the old Ocean's 11, because of Sammy playing Josh.

But yes, I see your point. It's sort of like the Lemonheads' "Mrs. Robinson": it wasn't offensive, but neither did it add anything, and we already had the Simon & Garfunkel version.

But that doesn't mean Eddie Vedder's remake of that car wreck song was any less excruciatingly bad.

I think there's room for equal awesomeness, especially if they're using an extremely loose version of the plot. But when you're not changing media (making a book of a ballad or a comic of an opera or dancing about architecture), the question of what you bring to the experience is a big one. It's just that some clouds, contrary to popular opinion, are entirely devoid of silver lining, no matter what talents or production values you bring to bear.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Crankiness gets me <3s? Gosh!

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Clever crankiness that makes me laugh? Absolutely.

[todfox.livejournal.com]

I love it when you read bad books, because you make it so funny for your journal readers. In fact, I wish you'd read nothing but bad books from now on, for our entertainment.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

What Kit said. We've just been discussing here how much we enjoy it when you read bad books. In fact, maybe I could send you a bunch of real stinkers. Even better, a donation drive. "Bad Books for M'ris!"

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

My morning had been spent smoking black tar with a pipe my father bought during the war. Terrible things were in Harbin, he'd said, but pain relief was cheap. My fingers were sticky and dark with opium. It was awful stuff, cooked up in an electric range that was an antique when I was born and made from art store dried seeds. I couldn't make a steady diet of the stuff, but these little improv sessions got me through the hard times.

The threshold hit was seven. I set the creme brule torch on the nightstand, stained with black fingerprints. Fingerprints, as black as murder. A maze I could be come lost in if not for the butane hiss, reminding me of the sea and the yellow beaks that drifted through my dreams in vast, hungry clouds.

My mouth tasted bad from the cheap thrill, but hiding in the bitter and stink was sunlight on California hills. Just a sliver of that wildflower calm. A stormlight piercing the wool banks, piled on a sea the color of hematite. The sliver vanished and I could only imagine the circling birds. Carpet-knife crescents in the sky, circling again and again.

I had to find another supplier.

[epj.livejournal.com]

So true. Especially the no quotation marks! I hate that!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Either Pearl Jam or Eddie Vedder by himself, not sure which, redid "Last Kiss." You know, "Where oh where can my baaaaaby be? The Lord took her awaaaay from meeee AUUUUUUGHHHHH THE AWFUL IT BURNS IT BURNS." Ahem. Sorry.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It turns out I don't love you that much.

I hope this does not crush your psyche too horribly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You know how above I said I didn't love Kit that much?

It turns out I don't love you that much either. And, and! You and Kit together? Still not that much.

See also: notes about fragile psyches and hopes for same.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Many punctuation marks exist for a reason, I find.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

It's true. During one round of line edits on my stuff, kirizal had to invent punctuation just to beat the comma-splices out of me. True story!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*tea splorp*

[todfox.livejournal.com]

*weeps bitter tears of bitterness, bitterly*

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with #5, but somehow Cormac McCarthy gets away with it. But then he's a genius, which is unfair.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Yabut, what if we add Reesa? Huh? Huh? What then?

[eposia.livejournal.com]

Hey, don't drag ME into this. I, of course, enjoy when Mris writes reviews about bad books, but I *also* enjoy her reviews about good books. So I'll continue to take both, thank you.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

This is great.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

a) I love your brain.
b) This post is making me realize that I don't stop reading books nearly often enough.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

6. Drugs may or may not make you interesting to yourself. They do not make you interesting to me. Something additional is required. I am really not as picky as I might be on this; an obsession with terns might do.

I doubt that I've read this book, and yet, I have totally read this book.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

In fact the reviews of good books are doubly virtuous, because then you get to go (re)read the book.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But think of how many geniuses have used the quotation mark! Really the odds still favor it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a very liberating thing, refusing to continue reading bad books.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Obviously that author doesn't have any friends or family (or editors) who love them.

No "quotation" marks!

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= [Wiggles fingers in air at strategic words.]

Those cutting-edge historical protagonists!

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=4= I have an aversion to future protagonists who lack modern virtues. This is admittedly unreasonable, especially for e.g. sexist junk written in the 1950s, but there you have it.

Re: Those cutting-edge historical protagonists!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The ones that frustrate me are not the ones written in the 1950s but the ones written in the 1970s or 1980s that were the equivalent of the authors sticking their fingers in their ears and singing, "La la la, we can't hear you, 1960s! La la la, all an aberration, all an aberration! And good girls will nevereverever use birth control, we don't care what you say, la la! Women will go back to being purely ornamental any minute now! La la, I say! La!"

I don't just mean Niven and Pournelle here. But I do mean Niven and Pournelle.

Re: Those cutting-edge historical protagonists!

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= Agreed. Though I feel I'm being more reasonable about objecting to them. :^)