I finished reading another novel yesterday. Today or tomorrow I will decide my next read. I feel utterly satisfied. One, because I am reading more, something that I consider essential for realizing my goal of improving my writing skills. Two, because while reading I get so much more inspiration for my own writing--the writing style, voice, scenes, elements for plot ideas (I don't simply take off someone else, but scenes inspired by those I am reading pop up in my mind naturally, and of course because my characters are different, they react differently to a similar situation, making the scene different altogether). Three, because I find so much richness and human connection in reading (at the emotional level). I hope I can write novels and stories that make others feel the same way
Just finished Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and despite it's lackluster title of blandness, it's actually a fantastic little novel. Okay, I mean it isn't Earth-shattering by any means, but this is another hundred and sixty year old novel that was hyper popular for some time afterwards. Tons of reprints and serializations for good reason. Like my book last week, it is part of the Sensational fiction genre that opened up in the tiny window of 1860 to 1890 in England, but it is one of the genre definers. Though the type of story is rather commonplace now, the detective fiction plot still wasn't on solid ground until books like this planted the seeds of mystery. Instead of being a collection of depositions as was previously done, there's an omniscient narrator who isn't heavy handed, mostly following one character who goes through some excellent character development from beginning to end. Seriously, I really hated him at first because of how much of a worthless ass he was, but he certainly more than came around. And the villain you come to understand, but really just hate because they're awful people. Again, as with this genre in general, characterization is a massive highlight. It takes the best aspects of character from the Realism genre and also some of the action and mystery, along wuth the dark aspects, of the Gothic genre which since slowed. While it did have a few minor issues, overall it was very clean and well-developed. The narrator sometimes monologues, which is half of the time great and the other half distracting. The plot has a few points that ate a little weak, especially one spot where the villain confesses partially just because they were basically overstressed. It was quite contrary to character and just felt too convenient. The beginning also has no likable characters, so it's a bit to get past. Otherwise, I had a great time. Recommend for both detective fiction history lovers, and for those who can tolerate older style literature.
Finished True Grit last night. At first it felt kind of flat because of the narrator's voice, which is rather limited. She seems to have a very one-track mind, and all her thoughts are simple and straightforward and framed in exactly the ways she speaks. Plus all the other characters are filtered through her mind, through her voice. In much the way of a Tarantino movie, every character speaks with her voice and uses her words. But around 3/4 of the way through I started to really love it. I was starting to 'see through' her flat delivery and get at the emotion and the intensity that she flattens out, partly because I remember how the same flat lines were delivered in the recent movie. This is the same problem I have with reading Shakespeare—all you get are the character's lines with no indication of how they're delivered, only very minimal stage directions like 'Night, ext. castle ramparts'. To get any sense of emotion or feeling you have to watch the movie versions. But I was starting to get emotion and feeling from the book toward the end. Also around the 3/4 mark it became clear that it was a story about Rooster Cogburn, and Mattie was beginning to appreciate him, not just for his true grit, or I should say maybe her idea of what his grit was deepened and at the same time her appreciation for people on something more than a useful level. At first all he was to her was a means of capturing and punishing her father's killer. She derided him for his slovenliness and drinking and coarse manner and chose him only because he was the meanest and most ruthless of all the federal marshals. She's got true grit herself, but at first that meant only that she pursued her goals single-mindedly and stood up to anyone and everyone. I think through her growing appreciation for Cogburn she expanded her idea of what people can be, even if they don't match her constrained ideas of proper living. She came to realize that under his gruff exterior Rooster was a deeply caring man who would sacrifice himself without a moment's hesitation for another person, and who often was considerate even of the outlaws he was bringing in for justice (or just killing, which was the more common outcome), and especially of people who fell in with outlaws but don't really belong with them. So it turns out to be a story about her own growth, though that's subtle and hard to see. During a drunken monologue that revealed a lot about his character (right at the 3/4 mark where I started to really like the story) he said he will never again work for a woman because all they care about is getting as much work from you as possible and paying as little as they can get away with. This revealed something about Mattie, who was doing exactly that. One thing the book explained far better than the remake (not sure in the original movie) is the scene where Cogburn kicks two children off a porch, for no apparent reason in the movie (unless I missed it). But it turns out they had tied a donkey up tightly around its neck with a wet cotton rope that had dried and shrunk in the sun and the donkey was choking and gasping while they laughed at it. He kicked them both off the porch as he went in, again as he came out, and warned them that if they were still up to their nefarious ways next time he returned he would make them regret it. Serving as a father figure they never had, which is to an extent what he was for Mattie as well.
The Sword of Destiny, second in the Witcher series, and I'm incredibly bored. I'm not sure what it is about the author's writing style, but it is so dry. Except in fight scenes. Then it's fantastic.
Just finished reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Recommended to me by @Teladan Thank you for that. It was a nice story. The house is beautiful.
This just arrived. It seems I'm on a roll with obscure and darkly Weird fiction. One of the best covers I've ever seen. Excellent artist.
I'm reading Jane Austen this month. Four books. Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. I don't particularly care for Jane Austen, and I sure as shit don't know why I would take this class other than it progressing my degree faster, but I did take it. I'm going to probably suffer, but oh well. Most of these are on "100 books you need to read before you die" lists, so I guess I can just spend the month knocking them out so I don't have to go back. Then I'll only have Emma and Mansfield Park left to slog through eventually. So it begins tomorrow. I'll put reviews in as always. Please help me through this dangerous and troublesome time...
You'll be fine. I think I haven't read Northanger Abbey, yet and if I have read Persuasion, I can't remember it (which probably isn't a good sign) but I loved Sense and Sensibility and liked Pride and Prejudice very much. Jane Austen has a very fine and dry sense of humour which always starts to show when it comes to her characters. So even if you don't like the plot, this should keep you entertained. I'm excited for your review. Enjoy!
Water Ship Down by Richard Adams First impressions, a lovely story but you may certainly have seen better writing. Still, this is one book where creativity wins out over writing craft. A rarity and gives hope to all beginners .
Did you finish it? There's quite a bit of craft involved in this novel, most especially in the allusions to its own mythology. Characterization and existential dread are also powerfully well-done elements throughout the text.
ah, but they're so much fun. Growing up with the women in my extended family it was learn to like Jane Austen or commit ritual suicide. I chose the former option.
I'm curious what exactly you think is subpar about the writing. For me it was a very well-written book, but of course taste differs.
I completed my first of the Austen's novels a couple of days ago: Northanger Abbey. I have to say I actually quite liked it. But it is for a very very specific audience, one I happen to fall under and understand, which is likely why it went unpublished during her lifetime. Northanger Abbey has the very interesting attribute of being almost anti-Gothic. The story's main character, Catherine, is a devoted reader to all the Gothic tales of fiction and horror stories of the day. Austen gives this character to the reader in the throws of thinking all the aspects of the prospective Northanger Abbey, of which she is travelling to for some time with her somewhat intended match to0 meet his family and make her impressions as a possible candidate for Henry's wife. She imagines it as a splendidly horrific place of her dreams, where she can be the heroine of one of the many horrific tales she has read, but nothing in it turns out to be. By matching the reader with the character of Catherine, she becomes their surrogate for attitudes towards Gothic tales. The reader expects certain aspects, of which Austen naturally breaks with a confident snap back to reality, embarrassing the audience and Catherine with wild fantasies made silly. Austen makes a considerable attempt to comment on the silliness of the Gothic audience of impressionable young women, and I think she succeeds rather admirably. The remainder of the tale is quite funny actually. Catherine isn't artful in any way at embellishing or aggrandizing speech, so she cuts a lot of characters in grand gestures short, or questions their boastful proclamations with their own words. Proves a whole lot of them to be rather dense or moronic without ever saying so. I tend to side with Virginia Woolf's perception of Austen, in that she is incredibly subtle in what she is telling the audience. Her commentaries of the society of her day are grounded so close in reality that they feel like non-fiction tales. Though she gets very much into family economics, which can be a bit of a drag (especially in the beginning of Sense and Sensibility which I'm currently reading), the whole development of everything going on is astoundingly natural compared to most works I've read of the time. The author doesn't dramatize, she makes the characters do that with their own melodramatic attitudes and differing perspectives. I have to say, I'm quite impressed. Sense and Sensibility is proving to be quite good as well, though I'm only a quarter through it and will wait to review later. But Northanger Abbey is a simple, yet charming little novel. I wouldn't recommend it for the average reader, but for anyone familiar with the Gothic era and all the original literature of that genre it will be almost laugh-out-loud funny. At least I got a kick out of Catherine being a bit of a whimsical girl, and her naivety was more entertaining than irritating.
I must say I'm glad to see that you're coming around. Actually thanks to your post I busted out The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, after I found that my local book dealer has no Michael Crichton in stock (which pisses me the hell off; I read Sphere and it was really good. Now I'm hooked. Also they were out of Dan Simmons. I need to finish the Hyperion series one of these days. Hyperion was so good, it's inexcusable that I haven't already). I think I'll read Persuasion. Pride and Prejudice is great, you'll probably like it. I would have chosen it but I've already read it once or twice, and do you know how many times I've suffered through various screen adaptations of it (both the 5 1/2 hour miniseries and the Kiera Knightley film)? Too many. I can quote you so many lines off the top of my head it's not even funny. God help me. Anyway, I still like it so that should tell you something. The only other film I've seen a comparable number of times is White Christmas and that still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, even though I haven't seen it for years. "Sisters, sisters..." just kill me now, my God.
I am reading The Unreal and the Real by Ursula K. Le Guin, it is a short story collection I have been hearing a lot about, especially about the short story the collection includes "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". I was imagining something like the famous short story The Lottery by Jackson, because the dystopian element on which the story centers and wraps around into a self contained story--while reading The Lottery there is never the need to question why there is a lottery (not like how the Hunger Games needs to elaborate because a novel), and similarly while reading la-la-la-from-Omelas there is never the need to question why there is a child suffering for everyone to be happy, not even the feasibility of transferring everyone's pain onto one individual matters while reading the story. I feel that is what makes these stories powerful. In the Omelas I liked the concept of the story and while I wasn't as drawn into the story as I expected, at the same time as my reading progressed towards the end, I was beginning to feel the pull, especially in her long description of the people physically leaving the place. She went on and on, it was redundant but at the same time it wasn't. I need to look at it again. In general, I love the unexpected ways she chooses to develop her stories. For instance in "The Flyers of Gy" she tells the story of people developing wings like birds, but she describes them as anomalies that need to be pitied for not being normal, like in describing the problems with developing wings. But half-way through she then introduces one characters and his love for flying (embracing his nature/identity) in an interview that ends the story. At first, you get the feeling that there should be more, a third part in which the story retakes its original structure to end the story. But then realize it is superfluous, because the character saying he chooses to fly makes sense to be the ending. The split and the unexpected direction of the second portion are unconventional--maybe it isn't, but after reading so much about story structure, that surely feels that way. Another story, "The Wife's Story" seems cliche until I reached the end, with an obvious-yet-unsuspecting twist I was pleasantly surprised. The story seems to find a way to subvert conventions of the common stories written around changelings, although I am still not fully sure how. But as a new writer this is a collection where there are a lot of things I can learn. Occasionally a story was boring or seemed just a snippet or scene rather than a whole story. I still don't know how to feel about that. I have more reading to do to place those within the collection. So far, I like the collection and recommend it.
Michael Crichton is a lot of fun. I've been able to find a lot of his books at thrift stores. Those places are great for popular thriller writers like John Grisham, Michael Connelly, etc.
Michael Crichton has a lot of crap, but definitely some absolute gold. Congo, The Andromeda Strain, the Jurassic Park series are his best I think. The Lost World (part two of the series) is just awesome, though Jurassic Park itself is a non-stop action book. Way different than the films and far and away more brutal. The man can do intensity if he has his heart set on it.
