I try and make myself read through any highly acclaimed novel I start, especially those within fantasy and science fantasy. And The Kingkiller Chronicle is on many of top fantasy book/series list. It's also worth mentioning that I've learned quite a lot about about storytelling (at least my own story preferences) by reflecting on books that soundly missed the mark for me.
I agree wholeheartedly. I always finish. As writers, we can learn as much from a bad book as we can from a good book, as excruciating as a bad one might be. They're infinitely easier to finish in audiobook format though. It's less of a chore to keep listening than it is to stay on task with text, at least for me. Speaking of audiobooks, I'm three quarters of the way through Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline and read by Wil Wheaton (Westley Crusher from Star Trek TNG.) It's not quite as good as the first so far, but what ever is? It's still great geek fodder, and I highly recommend both books to anyone who thinks they might get any of the seventies and eighties pop culture and nerd culture references. In other words, if you enjoy sci-fi, fantasy, anime, DnD, video games or eighties pop music, check it out. It's worth it.
It's a literary theory kind of month. And a couple of novels. I'll be burning through Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, which has a unique construction method of introducing and an expanding upon current theories over the last century through their major authors and the writer's organization of points to understand, but then driving them all through F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. That gives the reader a clear example for looking at differences in how theorists would view specific works. Naturally, that means I'll also be reading Gatsby again as I should have a refresher before taking this theory study on. I'm also reading Joh Steinbeck's Cannery Row for the first time this month. I plan on doing my own comparison of theories in that novel in a mid-range essay which I will post up in the articles section by the end of the month. It's just for good practice in critically applying these theories I'm either learning or, in some cases, revisiting. Anyways, good to get back into the swing of study now that I had a little vacation. Happy reading!
Just decided to knock this out today just so I didn't have to bounce around trying to remember the book while doing my theory study. It's about as good as I remember, but with a little extra now. I think it took me some years to actually appreciate Gatsby, but it seems to aged well for me. Initially when I read it in high school I thought it was boring and dry, then later in college I looked far more closely at the technical aspects, which are impeccable. But it wasn't until this recent read that I really paid such close attention to the design of all the characters. It took me this long, unfortunately, to see that Daisy and Tom Buchanan are the perfect match of disastrous personalities for one another, and that they absolutely destroy everything around them only to whisk off into yet another disaster somewhere else. Fitzgerald did a lot of short works with the same sorts of people, which is a lot of upper-middle class to high class Mid-Westerners, and it resonates with me more now that I'm a transplanted middle-American like these characters are. There are no clear-cut alignments and most everyone seems to be out for personal gain at high costs no matter the trajectory of their aims. It reminds me of the self-righteousness and blissful ignorance of the people I grew up around in the lakeshore suburbs of Minnesota. In Gatsby, Fitzgerald transplants these people to Long Island, but they are very much the same uppity problem causers and ignorant socialites that I've personally lived around, maybe even at some points been a part of. They resonate with me and even though I can clearly hate people like Daisy and Tom, even Jordan sometimes, I do understand them and feel their motives. What's funny, however, is how I really had come to dislike Gatsby himself. The thing with Fitzgerald is that his massive injections of symbolism are seamless. He'll quite literally tell you the symbol in the text, as with Daisy being the equivalent of money and the "have's," yet, it all feels so natural. He gets a little heavy-handed with the "eyes of T. J. Eckleburg" watching from the billboard being the eyes of God, but honestly it's very forgivable considering the rest of the novel. I liked reading it again. So much so, that I took it in a single sitting (minus lunch). I wonder how I'll feel in another decade about it.
Mind you, you MUST admit that Kvothe is the best Mary Sue character ever written. Ever. Have you ever witnessed a character getting into more dreadful, problematic scrapes, and just wafting his way out of them? Seriously. Nothing stops this dude from being perfect. I highly recommend that you give Book Two a miss. Things get even more ridiculous, if possible. And Rothfuss has never given us Book Three. I think even he may have realised his mistakes are not fixable—at least not without a complete rewrite of both existing books. The terribleness of these unintentionally nonsensical stories is mitigated by Rothfuss's ability to think up interesting and absorbing details and settings. A pity he didn't quite know what to do with them, once he created them. He's great at leading the reader on; not so great at getting the reader to somewhere worthwhile, in a believable manner. I kept reading because I kept thinking, SURELY there is more to the story, that these events are actually leading us somewhere. In an odd way, the books weren't difficult to read or stick with, at least for me, because of the lively detail. But my hopes that the basic story and character of Kvothe would improve were sadly ...slowly ...shredded.
Yep, that's basically how he struck me. And I lost track of the number of times the author reminded us that Kvothe's love interest is a breathtakingly beautiful, unobtainable free-spirit. The very embodiment of nearly every adolescent boy's romantic fantasy. If she had been depicted with more subtlety and depth she might have worked for me. But I'm not sure Rothfuss is capable of that. On the thread topic: I've just started Dune. Despite it being a sci-fi classic, I've never read it. I'm also currently reading a couple of Black Library novels (I'm firmly back in my favorite fictional stomping ground ), all of which I plan to review here.
I really like Dune. It has its inherent problems and it breaks a lot of rules by its persistence on internalized thoughts, but I still find it a treat to read. A quick and easy novel, I found.
Yeah, I definitely don't recommend cramming found omniscient thought quotes from four different characters into every paragraph, haha. Works just fine for Herbert, though. Go big or go home with the omni thing, I guess.
When will I learn my lesson and stop reading collections of short stories? This week I made it through The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which included one great story (Benjamin Button,) one mediocre story with cringe-worthy racial elements (A Diamond as Big as the Ritz) and three I wish I hadn't read at all. I immediately followed this up with The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is my favorite short story I've ever read. I've read or audiobooked it at least a half a dozen times, so I was excited to read her other work. There are eleven other stories in that book, and I couldn't bring myself to care about any of them. Well, a couple were okay actually, but still. I couldn't even tell you what the rest were about, I was so bored.
I've finished The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks (of World War Z fame.) I thought it was just a name, that there would be a story, but no. As advertised, it's a fictional survival guide. I'm not sure what propelled me on through the end, because this really was a boring book for the most part. The section on the history of zombie attacks was enjoyable, but the rest was just like (I assume, because I've never actually read one) a paranoid survivalist's handbook to the end of the world. For a zombie book, it was incredibly tame. There was no action, no drama, no comedy, just fictional facts about zombies and TEotWaWKI survival tactics. Real world fun fact: Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. If he inherited the funny gene from his dad, he certainly didn't exorcise it here.
The survival guide is the theory, World War Z is the application. The latter is awesome by the way. Did a conference once with Max Brooks. Dude is hilarious.
And I absolutely loved World War Z. That one's probably in my top twenty. Both books stem from very unique ideas. One is just far superior in entertainment value, in my opinion. I'm very interested in reading his Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre.
I've just started reading Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast," the second book in his Titus trilogy. The first book, "Titus Groan," blew my freakin' mind with its sheer awesomeness (and, incidentally, headhopped every bit as wildly and nimbly as "Dune"). I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next. (he said, eying @Steerpike suspiciously)
World War Z was a brilliantly unique take on the zombie genre. And then the movie had to and throw away everything interesting about it.
Gormenghast is great. To me, the first two books stand together as a story, and then Titus Alone functions as a separate story (and quite a strange departure from the other two). When you read that one, make sure you get the complete version. When Titus Alone was first published, it was heavily edited and large portions of the text were left out. That was corrected many years later.
I have a nice fat all-in-one volume from 1995 that includes all three books, Peake's notes for the fourth, and some critical essays, so I think I'm set. Off to read some now before bed!
I have just read 'The New Me' by Halle Butler (2019). It is a diabolically observed slice of life, about a young woman who has a temping job as a receptionist, but the main receptionist who employed her takes a dislike to her and tries to get her out; she doesn't fit her perception of the ideal corporate employee who should be sniffing out every opportunity for advancement up the career ladder and sucking up to the higher powers. It was daring in its point of view: mostly the protagonist's first-person perspective ('Millie'), but deviating now and then into another person's point of view in third-person. It was also daring in dealing with 'the shadow side of life' - to apply a Jungian perspective; that is, those qualities and experiences no one wants and inevitably projects onto others: inadequate, inept, inferior, inappropriate for age, misfit, oddball, non-belonging, someone no one wants on their team, excluded, left out, clueless, unaware, unable to read the room, oblivious, not in on the game, not getting the system, blind to the bigger picture as well as to the minute nuances upon which everything teeters; blind to the non-stop evaluation, measuring and sizing-up going on all around; taking far too long to pick up on hints and cues; unaware of others' perceptions; unaware of the cultural meaning of certain actions and omissions. To me, this fits that genre of book whose tension rests on the distinction between neurotypical and neurodiverse ways of being but without thus naming them. Other books I can think of that do this (write about Asperger's without labelling it) include: Philip Larkin's 'Jill', Janet Malcolm's 'The Crime of Sheila McGough', Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. Does anyone know any others?
