I just bought the Kindle edition of The Best of Cordwainer Smith. That should be a good start. Thanks. I love discovering new (to me) authors.
Enjoy. My suggest reading order would be The Game of Rat and Dragon -- happens before Underpeople are developed Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons -- can be read anytime, really, but a great story. The Dead Lady of Clown Town -- lays a foundation for who C'mel is The Ballad of Lost C'mell -- one of my favorite stories And then the rest in any order. Scanners Live in Vain happens so much earlier than the other stories, it's barely in the same universe. The rest are roughly contemporaneous with Norstrillia, "15,000 years after the bombs went up and the boom came down on Old Earth." [Edit: actually, Lady Who Sailed the Soul isn't contemporaneous with N. My bad.]
Thanks again for that. I took a look at the Table of Contents, but I'll keep your list in mind when I start reading. I fell in love with Kage Baker's stories after first reading a 'short novella' of hers which was included in a collection of several different authors. The story was 'Mother Aegypt.' It was a hilarious piece (still one of my favourite stories) and introduced me to her world of The Company, without letting on. Now that I know who Mother Aegypt actually is, the story is even funnier to read. So starting in 'the middle' of a series isn't always a bad thing.
It's kind of weird for someone to love writing but be adverse to written works. The finished product for all of us are stories that are meant to be read. I don't know if people who don't read just think they can do it better and that all these stories have nothing to show us. Why would you not want to know how the experts are doing it? How could you not love the finished products done by others of the same thing you are trying to create? I think its sad, more than anything, when people say they don't like reading. And I think it's quite a strange call when it comes from an aspiring writer. Honestly, boasting about not reading just makes someone seem like they're not really in it and don't care. I don't understand how someone can hope for readers, knowing they would never be one of them. And I do think this does play a role in how useful a beta reader (who admits to not reading) would be for a writer. People aren't brilliant by accident. Reading is how you really learn how this is done more than anything else. There are no famous writers, bragging about how they don't read. It's just sad that some see a point defending their stance as a non-reader on a WRITING forum.
It pops up fairly regularly on the forum. You just gotta go with it, and let the fellow breeze past...who said it? Was it @jannert? She hates reading. She loves TV and gaming. She's always gaming and gambling, and middle of the night-time when she's drunk like a drunk terrorist she terrorises the WF at 4am. She posts her Dostoevsky/Mark Twain was better thread and cackles on, and on her FIFA/gameballs.
While I don't agree with some of your post, I do agree with the above. I can't help feeling an aspiring fiction writer who doesn't enjoy reading fiction is strange. For me, it's like trying to imagine a magician who only admires his or her own tricks. I understand it's possible, but it's difficult to wrap my head around.
Because 90% of it is crap? Or do you think Theodore Sturgeon was wrong? No one did that. That's your opinion. Other people believe after you've read enough to acquire sufficient mastery of the language, it's not very helpful to continue reading. There's no proof either way. Someone who doesn't enjoy reading should feel free not to, IMO, if they like writing better. I'll defend anyone's right to write by whatever process they choose, as long as it harms no one else. If that makes you sad, then so be it.
@deadrats for most of my life I thought I didn’t like to read. Really, I just didn’t put enough work into finding things I do like. I don’t like beautiful prose unless it doesn’t slow me down, or friction in the prose at all, or characters that cause their own inciting incident, or bleak worlds, rape, incest, or dramatic tension caused by banal mental problems, or long descriptions of torture or cruelty, or slice of life, or the machines of god, or tedious opening combat, or repetition for its humorous quality... which doesn’t leave me with much to read. I read books in spurts as a kid, but never anything assigned in school, and I was an adult before I figured out what it was I did like.
@John Calligan -- There is always stuff to read. We all have our tastes and preferences, but there is never a shortage of reading material.
"almost"? Sounds like you're projecting. Why do you seem so offended by it? It does you no harm. Nothing to be ashamed of either.
Maybe, but that's okay, isn't it? You don't really have to understand. I bet you've known people who write romance but only read nonfiction (or some other combo.) The immediate answer is, "but they're both still books." Sure, but they're as different in technique and delivery as a movie and a book might be. For years, I didn't enjoy reading all that much, but I always enjoyed telling stories. After attempting one movie script, I discovered that literary form came more naturally to me and was more enjoyable to write. That doesn't have to make sense to anyone to be true. There are people who love to paint, but don't spend much time staring at Van Gough. As I said before, I know there's great value in examining the techniques of other writers. In my case, the answer was audiobooks. I'm still not reading to learn as much as I'm reading to enjoy, but I'm also learning a great deal. I missed out for a lot of years. I knew I was missing out, but I didn't have the patience, and I'd grown tired of reading the first half of books many years ago. I finished ninety books (mostly audio) in 2018, and at my current rate, I'm on pace to finish a hundred and twenty in 2019. I'll get distracted and end the year under a hundred, I'm sure. These are ridiculous numbers though, especially considering the amount of time I spend reading articles on line, and I don't expect everyone to match me in any of it. I could easily ask though, how can the people on this forum who only read a few books a year say they want to be writers? If they want to be writers they should love reading enough to finish a few a month. That would be an incredibly unfair assessment though.
If it's true, why do you care what I'm basing it on? If it's not true, say so, and provide your source or counter-example. I'm not going to bother defending an opinion you won't even commit to disagreeing with. Because it seems to me you're just trying to start another pissing match, and over nothing.
But ten percent is still a HUGE number of books. I'm setting aside the question of whether you have to keep up your US RDA of reading in order to write something worthwhile. I think you'll be a better writer if you do, but once you've read that few hundred books, then I think there's a whole lot of...prior art?....sloshing around in your brain, which to me is the main reason you need to read, so I can accept the possibility that you don't have to keep adding to it. I do--I get a fresh energy when I read something new--but maybe you don't. But I'm puzzled as to why you think that everything (sorry--most of everything) new is bad. I totally agree that the average highly-advertised book given a prominent product placement in a bookstore or Amazon's front page is moderately likely to be mediocre--just as (I'm a perfume freak) the average highly-promoted perfume on a department store counter is moderately likely to be mediocre. Things that are supposed to appeal to EVERYBODY tend to have limited appeal to each individual, and especially limited appeal to a person who's experienced enough variety to get picky. That's why my perfume interest is in the products of tiny niche houses and the very few people who sell those houses. Books have the equivalent of niche. And it seems unlikely that you've read all of the good older books. Now, if you absolutely don't want to read, if you're done with that desire for a lifetime, that's a different issue. But I have trouble with the idea that there's nothing good that you haven't already read.
Wildly, emphatically disagree. I can't imagine thinking that. I bet you're missing out on a lot of books you would love. I'll agree with that though.
I suspect there are very few people who love to paint and only admire their own paintings. Combine 'very few' with difficult to comprehend, and it can justifiably be considered strange.
Settle down. I'm asking for the source of your opinion because it's the source of your opinion I'm interested in. As it happens, I agree with your opinion. And I base my agreement on my extensive reading of things currently being published. If I wasn't reading a lot of what's currently being published, I think I'd be much less likely to understand the market. So that's why I asked where you got your understanding of the market from. Is your opinion based on someone else's reporting of what they've been reading? Or have you based your opinions on your own reading of books currently being published?
The question was: That 90% of it was crap was provided as an answer to that question. It is a mistake to infer anything more from it that, such as that "nothing new is good." Now, do you know the term "search cost" from economics? Posit as axioms for a thought experiment: 90% of everything is crap, 90% of the remainder is in genres I don't read, and 90% of that will not be to my taste (I don't like space opera or science fantasy, for example). Even allowing that I can use the library to access books for free, what's the search cost, in time, for me to find a book I'll enjoy? Even if evaluating each book only takes, on average, 6 minutes (which seems short), it's 100 hours. Just to find one book I might enjoy, that I may not love, and that has a low chance of teaching me anything about writing. I have tried this. Most books I started, I never finished. The few I did, my reaction was "meh, it didn't suck." None of them taught me anything about writing. 100 hours, by the way, is several thousands of dollars of my time, if I were to work during that time instead. So rather than looking for literary gold in a publishing cesspool where, for example, 50 Shades is a best-seller, I'd rather work, and use the money for a vacation to somewhere exotic, getting first hand experiences rather than reading about stuff in a book. YMMV. Not everyone has my options.
My opinion on the publish-ability of Dickens in the current market is based on Donald Maass's teachings on the subject. Probably from Writing 21st Century Fiction, but it's not worth my time to check through all the books of his I've read.
This thread is well into 6 pages because one and only one person thinks there might be a downside to reading for writers. What is the purpose in this debate? It seems like all the good reasons to read have been roundly discussed and the reasons not to thoroughly debunked. I like debate, but I can't see where this is going, other than to rehash what has been said already and let people further state their outrage. Writing (and speaking) are not like painting, because looking at a painting isn't anything like the act of painting. But language is a skill that is learned almost entirely by aping what we are exposed to, much like behavior and emotional expression. When we write, we are using exactly the same parts of the mind that comprehend language, and simply playing the tape back by writing down our paraphrased version of a series of discrete linguistic units to form sentences that are also learned patterns from previous exposure. And just like learning Spanish, the value of gritting your teeth over a textbook teaching you Spanish is like trying to learn to write by just writing; it can be done, but the fastest way to learn is immersion - which is pretty much what reading is.
Well, I can't honestly argue against that argument, since (aside from the work-during-that-time and maybe other nuances) that's the same argument that I use for why I don't even try self-published books. There are probably some gems there, and I'm not interested in spending the time to find out. My kind of picky seems to be one that isn't too hard to satisfy--I demand a good writing voice, and good characters, and a plot that goes somewhere, and I like murder mysteries, which means that there are a ton of series writers, and when I find someone who fulfills the voice and characters requirement, I'm set for a while. For me, the time cost of finding a book that I'll enjoy enough for it to be a pleasant companion to my daily activities (I read while doing many things, up to and including brushing my teeth and occasionally in the shower.) is usually well under an hour. It's rare for a book to delight me--at least nineteen out of twenty end up being sold to the used bookstore within a year after reading, and even more are gone a few years after that--but enjoyment is enough for me.
One can always re-read a book previously enjoyed. Our memory of a good book doesn't really contain the details or the beauty of the prose, so re-experiencing it isn't much less valuable than reading something new if you are looking to immerse yourself in a righteous use of language. I buy certain books because I know I'll reread them many times, and buy unread books by trusted authors because they are reliable. Of course, there is value in giving a random book a try and not liking it - there is so much to be learned by thinking about why you don't like a piece of writing. But whatever is wrong can be learned in less than 50 pages, and then you move on.
