Weeks Three & Four in Reading

Book #2 – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

My library books were interrupted this week by the sudden want to read this book. Eric is using an Autistic POV character in the writing project he’s working on and I remembered this book as having something similar. I think I had dismissed this novel earlier because the use of such a character seemed a little gimmicky to me.  Also, I’m not a huge fan of non-genre or “literary” novels. I like what I read to have bigger stories than mundane life. I’m not saying there aren’t good literary novels; I’m not saying that real life doesn’t sometimes reap big stories. I’m just saying that I prefer to avoid angst-ridden (or even joyous) meanderings through some character’s life.

I had decided this time that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a mystery.

From Goodreads:

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

See, I don’t even care if it’s a big deal in the land of genre. The mystery of a dead dog is still a mystery, and a kid with autism or Asperger’s solving it could be an interesting story. Indeed, the first third of the book, Christopher’s investigation into Wellington’s death, is interesting and entertaining. And then the story has to get *serious*.  The rest of the book is a series of telegraphed bad things happening to Christopher. The reader can see these things coming, but of course, the character cannot. It was agonizing and frustrating and honestly not how I like to spend my reading time.

As for the character as an autism spectrum narrator, it works and it doesn’t. Mark Haddon has admitted that he wasn’t exactly shooting for a character with autism and doesn’t know much about autism, which means to me that he just wanted a quirky, ignorant character. I didn’t mind the narration skipping around, but occasionally Christopher’s explanations of his behaviors seemed forced and incredibly self-aware.  Everything was described in metaphors and similes and that got old after a while.  All in all, I’m glad this book was only 117 pages long.

Other Reading

I’ve been keeping up with A Clash of Kings and my short story/poetry reading. I feel I totally missed something in the story “Fidelity: A Primer” by Michael Blumlein. I didn’t quite see the speculative fiction aspect of it. Didn’t really like the story enough to want to reread it. Novel-wise, I going back to Elmore Leonard’s Gunsights.

Week Two in Reading

My reading of Good Night, Mr. Holmes was interrupted by returning my library books. I intended to only check out Moby Duck and a Western. I came back with those as well as a book on Allan Pinkerton, Janet Leigh’s reminiscence on Psycho, and book #1.

Book #1 – From Alien to the Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film by Roz Kaveney

Despite the rather cheesy title (Kaveney herself would have rather the work be called Walking into Dream), I checked out this book after flipping through and seeing an essay on Strange Days. As with Chicks Dig Time Lords, I was hoping for a scholarly work on “reading” science fiction films. Kaveney does present some interesting points about how our experience of science fiction films has changed with the innovation of the DVD. We can now experience SF movies and TV shows as “deep texts” when we take commentaries and alternate versions into account. With that in mind, many of the other articles take on franchises, especially the Terminator, Matrix, and Alien franchises. Unfortunately, much of this comes across more as musings on the subject without any real thesis on the subject.

There is also the problem of “reading” and “reading into.” As an author, I know that I have a certain glossary of details that I end up defaulting to. For example, I have on a couple of occasions used the detail of vines and leaves carved into wood. I have no particular reason for this; I didn’t even realize I had done it until later. Therefore, I’m not sure I can read much into both the Terminator in the first movie and Sarah Connor in the second movie wearing mirrored sunglasses. But Kaveney’s reading are full of this kind of thing. I suppose that is the purview of the “reader.”

A couple other things that bugged me: The commentary occasionally takes on a petty/snarky quality, which broke any illusion of academia (granted, it isn’t). The writing was occasionally a bit awkward, and there seemed to be a lack of understanding of actual movie making (CGI really isn’t a generic term for visual effects). I guess I was disappointed with this book because as a published, edited text, I expect it to be better than movie/literary criticism I find on the internet. Or maybe I’m spoiled because something like Press Play is just that good.

Other Reading Last Week:

A couple chapters of A Clash of Kings, a couple poems, a couple short stories including:

“The Dybbuk in Love” by Sonya Taaffe  It’s available at Tor’s site. It is lovely and suits my current mood so well. Reading it, I kept thinking, “Why don’t I write like this?” But then I am sort of happy I don’t. I write the way I write and, happily, Sonya Taaffe writes like she writes.

2012, Week One in Reading

Started the year off with “required” reading. Two chapters of A Clash of Kings, a short story, and a poem.

I set up a Google Doc for my short fiction reading. It’s embedded on my short story/poetry page. My aim is to read one each per week in addition to anything I might come across. “Geddarien” by Rose Lemberg was my intentional short story read. Lovely story. We authors often talk of using setting as an additional character, but how often does your setting dance?

The prologue to “The Golden Journey to Samarakand” (by James Elroy Flecker), the first selection from T.E. Lawrence’s Minorities book, was very apt for the beginning of a new year. “We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage/And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die,/…/What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales…”

Then I moved on to chipping away at my TBR list.

First up was Black Light by by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, & Stephen Romano. I won this book during the October read-a-thon. It was a book of my choosing, one of the few horror titles available. It’s been a while since I’ve read a good horror novel. It will be a while longer.

Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan are the screenwriters behind the last bunch of Saw movies. Personally, I like the Saw franchise. I find the movies to be clever and actually quite well written on a macro plot level. Stephen Romano is also a horror writer and screenwriter of some note. The main character of this book is billed as a private eye/exorcist, which intrigued me. Alas, I don’t think screenwriting translates to novel writing. Strike one was using first person present POV. Truly, I wish writers would move on from this gimmick. It’s exceedingly hard to do well. There are other ways to create forward drive in narrative. The second strike was a sort of vagueness of detail. There are a lot of  “it”s and “he”s. Bones pop. Which bones? Just the fingers that were being bent backward? An urn is put in a backpack, but is later retrieved from the ground.  During a conversation between two men in a bar,  I lost track, numerous times, of who was speaking. Thoughts and details were really non-intuitively dispersed. (I haven’t decided whether that’s a fault of the first, present POV. I’ll have to see how The Hunger Games does.) Strike three was the cliches. “The last time I went out there, I got somebody killed. Somebody innocent.” Such quotes were not unique in the 30 pages of Black Light that I read. I have too many books and too little time to put up with shenanigans.

Onward to the next thing on my TRB list, right? Not so much.

The BBC’s Sherlock premiered series two with “A Scandal in Belgravia” which led me to dig up Carole Nelson Douglas’s Good Night, Mr. Holmes, the first of her Irene Adler novels, and re-read “A Scandal in Bohemia.” I had acquired the novel back in 2010 during my Holmes-a-thon. If there is a book that is the near polar opposite in style to Black Light, it’s Good Night, Mr. Holmes. The POV is first person, but it’s a ruminating, describing first person (somewhat alternating between Watson and a young companion of Adler’s). Occasionally, I’ve wished that this book would just get on with it. I’m also a little wary about Douglas bringing Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker into this book, not to mention Charles Lewis Tiffany (as in “diamonds by”) and the Pinkertons*. Mixing real people and fictional characters leaves me uneasy.

*I keep meaning to read more about the Pinkertons. And maybe, incongruously, write about the Pinkertons.

2011 Summary & 2012 List

I finished a weeny 22 books and maybe two dozen short works. (I always mean to keep better track of my short stories and I never do. Maybe I’ll set up a Google doc or some such to track them in 2012. Who knows…)

I made a concerted effort to read more female authors in 2011. To that end, 10 of the 22 books were by female authors, which is a much higher percentage than many years in the past. I really can’t say it was a pleasant experience. I found that I forced myself to read some books that I didn’t enjoy for the sake of keeping to a list. Should every book be enjoyable? No, but don’t think reading should be arduous either. An annoyed reader/writer doesn’t enjoy the experience of reading and doesn’t learn much about writing.

Did I learn something about female authors? I’m not sure. I still need to give it some thought. I did read more urban fantasy and became familiar with some of its tropes.

Least Favorite Book: That I finished? Joe Hill’s Horns. It was just a mess of a book. That I didn’t finish? Farthing by Jo Walton. Apparently, I should avoid Jo/es.

Favorite Book: Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks with Sleight of Hand by Peter S. Beagle a close second with its perfect ghost story. I need to read more Bull, I suspect.

My plan for 2012 is to avoid set reading lists. You would have thought I had learned my lesson after trying to read nothing but non-Arthur-Conan-Doyle Sherlock Holmes fiction for three months in 2010. On the other hand, I really want to clear this list and OWN a few reading challenges in 2012. Considering my challenges, this is my TBR list in no particular order.

Heidegger’s Glasses by Thaisa Frank
Black Light by Patrick Melton, et. al.
Decent by Jeff Long
To Reign in Hell by Steven Burst
Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea… by Donovan Hohn
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death by David Malki
A Place of Execution by Val McDermid
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
I See by My Outfit by Peter S. Beagle
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Chocolate & Vicod​in: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn’t Go Away by Jennette Fulda
Heaven (The Afterlife Series, Book I) by Mur Lafferty

52 short stories, maybe including:
People of the Book, edited by Rachael Swirsky & Sean Wallace
The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser

52 poems, maybe including:
Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud
Minorities by T. E. Lawrence

Also:
A duck book.
A Western, probably Elmore Leonard.
Two re-reads.

And maybe:
The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Brooks

So, that’s 24-27 books plus some poems and short stories. Doable, right? Right.

Book #22

Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea

I’ll begin with my version of what this book contains:

I’m a second generation female science fiction fan. That means Mom was the fan; Dad patiently endured taking my mother to Star Trek movies for their anniversary dates. (In much the same way, Eric humors my love of X-Men movies…) From my perspective, science fiction fandom was of course the prevue of women. Still, there was a gap between my mom’s sci-fi and mine. She preferred Star Trek. I preferred Star War (and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica). I like the daring-do and Princess Leia (and Colonel Deering). Yes, fine, Spock was dreamy and all in his alien aloofness, but Leia rescued Luke, Han, and Chewie as they were trying to, er, rescue her. It was with Doctor Who that we finally found sci-fi common ground.

Doctor Who was shown on our local PBS channel in the late 80s at 6:30 in the evening.  It was followed by Star Hustler, a five minute astronomy show.  Mom and I watched while making or eating dinner. The show had the character interations that my mom treasured and the action that I enjoyed. Plus, great girl characters! Sure, sometimes they were just there to ask questions, but it was better than opening hailing frequencies all day. The episodes were shown maybe roughly in order from the Tom Baker years on, but it’s Peter Davison that is “my” Doctor. He was tall, a bit handsome in a befuddled way, and a little more down to earth than some other Doctor incarnations, but still with a dash of goofy. And it was during this Doctor’s tenure that I learned a very important lesson of story-telling: characters die. Sometimes they die after you’ve come to love them (instead of in the first episode to build pathos). They don’t have a twin, and it wasn’t part of a dream (common “soap” tropes). If they’re not the Doctor, they don’t regenerate.

When PBS stopped running the show, I lost touch with it. Nebraska, pre-internet, was fairly cut off from the fandom. (I knew nothing of the novels and audio dramas until after the 2005 relaunch. Heck, I didn’t even know about the 2005 series until about halfway through the season!) My mom and I moved on to Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Whatever our PBS station, and later the satellite dish, could give us. When the TV movie came out, I was in college, living in a house in Lincoln with housemates that were not Who fans. Luckily, I still owned one of the bigger television sets in my circle of friends, and Mary (a fan of all SF) insisted we make an event of it. Of course none of of friends “got it” and that was okay.

Two things stuck me about the essays in Chicks Dig Time Lords. First, the fandom is a fandom within fandom. Most of my friends in college liked Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Files, but Doctor Who? Not as much. In the meantime, it was the overlapping interest for my mom and me. Second, Doctor Who is one of the longest running fandoms. Longer than Star Wars, longer than Star Trek. Thus, like the legacy of sports teams, it can encompass the entire lifetime of its fans. I became friends with my mom in late grade school and high school as we watched the show together. When I watched the movie, we had become a bit estranged. I’m not sure I’ve even talked to my mom about Paul McGann’s Doctor.  In 2006, I remember mentioning that I’d found new Doctor Who to my mom over the phone. The Sci-Fi channel hadn’t picked it up yet, but it was there (if an American knew where to look). “What? New Doctor Who?” my mom asked. “Yep,” I said, “and it’s good. I’ll hook you up.” I can’t say that Doctor Who has mended my relationship with my mom, but it’s given us common ground again.

Chicks Dig Time Lords is a collection of personal histories of Who fandom by female fans, as well as a few interviews with women involved with the show (and books and audio adventures) and a few pieces of feminist academia concerning Who. I had assumed there would be more of the latter, but I appreciate the histories. Especially since I have one of my own. Not a book for non-fans. Not a book for casual fans. Honestly, I still haven’t gotten around to the novels and audios, so some of that is lost on me. It was a quick read and a nice way to finish off my year of “reading women.”

Book #21

When the Women Come Out to Dance by Elmore Leonard

To my knowledge, I had never read Elmore Leonard previously. I’m familiar with movies based on his works, notably Get Shorty,  Jackie Brown, and 3:10 to Yuma. There’s also The Big Bounce and  Be Cool, both of which I haven’t cared for. It was the TV series Justified that lead me to this anthology. The book will be re-released in January as Fire in Hole, named after the short story of the same name that is the basis for the series.  It was a search for Justified on Amazon that led me to the anthology and I picked it up from my library’s digital collection under its original name.

I’m pretty firmly in the love/hate category with Leonard. His characters are all very slick. The talk a certain way, act a certain way. Sometimes, I buy it. Sometimes, I don’t. His female characters sometimes feel like a cut-out noir femme fatale. At other times, as with the story “Karen Makes Out,” the female protagonist is tough, vulnerable, and admirably drawn. All in all, Leonard’s fiction dwells in a sort of heightened reality, one that’s sort of Hollywood. But the stories are also subtle. Not many end with a big bang. That’s one of the things I like about his writing. I’d like to read one of his novels in the near future, possibly one of his Westerns.

Getting back to the name of this blog, what follows are notes I took while I read:

Fall Into Reading Wrap-Up

Tomorrow will have 3 seconds more daylight than today. What does that mean? Among other things, that Fall Into Reading is at an end. Where did autumn go? I don’t know, but luckily it will be back in nine months. ;)

I have to thank Katrina at Callapidder Days for the challenge, the weekly questions (which I didn’t participate in nearly often enough), and the wrap-up questions below!

Fall Into Reading 2011 Summary: Finished 5-ish Books! (I counted the comics and graphic novel as one book.) 5 short stories.

Did you finish reading all the books on your fall reading list? If not, why not? I didn’t finish everything on my original list. I knew I wouldn’t!  I’m a slow reader and I play too much EverQuest 2. And also…

Did you stick to your original goals or did you change your list as you went along? I’m a magpie when it comes to books. The next shiny one that comes along gets all my attention. I ended up reading two books that were not on my original list.

What was your favorite book that you read this fall? Least favorite? Why? I’m going to have to go with A Game of Thrones as my favorite. Despite his faults, Martin creates a compelling world and I appreciate that he’s an author that wants to tell a story without being nice about it. Least favorite would have to be Farthing. It bored the heck out of me.

Did you discover a new author or genre this fall? Did you love them? Not love them? Both Erin Morgenstern and Randsom Riggs were new to me. I liked the books well enough, but I probably won’t go out of my way to read more of their works.

Did you learn something new because of Fall Into Reading 2011 – something about reading, about yourself, or about a topic you read about? Not sure I learned anything new, but it reiterated that I’m really bad at sticking with a reading list! It does make me really *want* to stick to a challenge, though. Maybe in 2012.

What was your favorite thing about the challenge? I like breaking up experiences into smaller pieces. It will be nice to remember Fall 2011 for the moody, fantastical books I read. Having demarcation points is important to me. (And ultimately, that *is* something I’ve learned about myself .)

2011 TBR Moratorium

It’s time to call a moratorium on 2011′s To-Be-Reads and wipe the slate semi-clean.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin – This was February’s Women of Science Fiction pick. I believe I didn’t get to it until my plane ride to Omaha in late April. I didn’t hold my interest for more than a few pages. This is probably a re-list on Paperback Swap.

Indigo Springs by A. M. Dellamonica  – This was August’s Women of Fantasy pick. Started this book. It wasn’t bad, but I got distracted by other things. It’s been too long, so I’m going to pull the bookmark on this one and shelf it.

Jo’s Girls ed. by Christian McEwen – Got maybe 1/3 through this anthology. I’ll probably write a blog post about the nature of tomboys in literature at some point, but I’m not sure I’ll finish this book. Too many other better things to read at the moment. Leaving the bookmark, but shelving it.

Last Call by Tim Powers – I’m currently reading this and plan on finishing it by the end of the year.

The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow – Started it, but kept getting sidetracked by Women of… lists and trips to the library. Pulling the bookmark (I’m on page 3 or so) and keeping it around.

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert – *sigh* I still haven’t gotten to the fourth Dune book. Keeping it around.

People of the Book, edited by Rachael Swirsky & Sean Wallace – I read the first two stories in this anthology as a pallet cleanser between Farthing & Miss Peregrine’s and whatever I chose to read next. I’ll probably dip into this anthology from time to time as I read short stories in the new year.

Haven’t gotten around to the following and am going to re-shelve them. All would have been re-reads.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The Call of Stories by Robert Coles
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

In 2011, I learned that I’m not very good or very happy with set reading lists. Again I marvel that I made it though 7 semesters of English lit classes. Of course, it was my habit in college to revert to Star Trek novels during dead/finals week. Call it my rebellion against Clarissa and Victorian poetry.

Farthing by Jo Walton

Farthing is another book that was part of the Women in Science Fiction book club and, uh, the third from that club that I didn’t make it through. I decided to call it quits at page 264. Why then and not before? I wanted to give it, one of the few alternative histories I’ve tried, a fair shot.

I’m not sure I really understand alternative histories. Historical fiction, sure.  Historical fiction are simply stories set in a “historic” setting and might involve a famous personage. Alternative history? That’s tricky. There are so many factors that go into and result from events that I’m not convinced that alternative history can be done convincingly. I suppose, in a way, it’s the same as science fiction. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone does science fiction really well either when it relies on prognostication. On the other hand, history is so rich and *it’s already there.* Why not use that instead of changing it? Weirdly, when all is said and done, I might be more of a history buff than a science fiction fan.

On the writing end, I didn’t find anything particularly compelling about the story or the writing. I understand that much of a mystery/investigation ends up being related instead of shown, but the telling was boring. At pg. 264, I had long since stopped caring about the characters and the book had become a chore.

Book # 20

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.

I’ve been seeing this book around. Blog posts, reviews. This and that, here and there. While trolling deals on Amazon, I wondered if this would be a good book to buy my niece for Christmas. Since I was unsure, I figured I’d give it a read.

The first third of the book intrigued me. After the death of his grandfather, Jake is left searching for the truth about his grandfather’s flight from Poland during WWII and the wild fairy tales that Jake was told as a kid. Were monsters just his grandfather’s replacements for the Nazis? How literal are the stories of the ever-sunny orphanage? What is the bird in the loop? I could see some interesting possibilities and, considering the dark tone of the first third of the book, I hoped that the story would continue down that path.

Unfortunately, this book can be carved into thirds, likewise: interesting potential, utterly predictable, shoe-horned conclusion that will lead to sequels.

Spoilers, perhaps, follow.

If you think about the title, Miss Peregin’s Home for Peculiar Children, you will find that it bears a striking resemblance to a phrase from another genre. In the middle third of this book we are treated to the expected hi-jinx when Jake meets the peculiar children. There’s Budding Romance, and the wheels of Impending Doom are set in motion. Of course in the last third, things must go wrong. My main contention is that the bad guys, wraith and hollows, are vaguely fleshed out in a way that lends itself to ease of if-needed revision in potential sequels. Add to that the concluding action is unnecessarily cinematic. If we’re dealing with fantastic elements in a real setting, it’s important to be *real* in reality. Pistols have an effective range. Large objects displace water. I’m just sayin’.

Aside from the story potential shown in the first portion of the novel, the best thing about Miss Peregrin’s is its main character. Yes, Jake is the semi-cliched “not special” kid that is integral, but that’s a pretty basic trope of the genre. Rigg’s gives Jake enough vulnerability that he’s not arrogant, but enough teenage devil-may-care that he’s not a putz. Alas, he’s not compelling enough to get me to read any potential sequels.