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Mostly books
Jun. 29th, 2006 04:21 pmSometimes I listen to a song in isolation, and a few minutes later I realize that the tune now running through my head isn't that one, but the one that would come up next on the album. I like it when that happens. (Sometimes 'the album' is one of my mixes, or one of my friends', so then it's cooler still.)
I have been reading a lot. I read Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan, as recommended, and liked it much better than I was worried I might. I took a collected edition of The Fionavar Tapestry with me on my Maritimes trip last summer, and found it difficult to read; there was something about the writing style that I really collided with. I don't really have the memory of the experience, anymore, so much as the memory of my impression of the experience, but my recollection is that it seemed to be at the same time florid and perfunctory; like I was having someone relate to me the plot of their planned fantasy epic, instead of reading the finished product, so that I was constantly running into the gaps where they hadn't yet filled in the characterization, or the details of a scene.
I was still struggling with it when I got home, so I looked up some discussions on the internet in which people I respected had taken part, hoping to find a place where they said, "Yes, it does all of those things clumsily, but I think that it's worth it for this and this and this reason". I couldn't find anyone who'd said that; in fact, I couldn't find anyone who seemed to have had my experience at all, and the general consensus seemed to be that the prose and the characters were lovely and approachable. Daunted and bewildered, I gave up somewhere in the second volume, and since then I've been very hesitant to try any other Kay, though people keep recommending it, in case it turns out that this author in whom so many people easily find worth is totally lost on me.
So I am pretty relieved to have enjoyed and been engaged by The Lions of Al-Rassan, and felt like it was a complete thing with characters who were people, etc., not least because it means that I can go read and probably enjoy some of his other more recent books. Some of the prose still seemed mildly overwrought, but this didn't prevent it from keeping my interest. There was something about the style of presentation that was very familiar to me, not from anything I'd read recently but from vague memories of things I read when I was younger; a taste of pulp high fantasy, done well. I can't really explain what it was that gave it that feeling, though -- it certainly wasn't the content of the plot, which contained no magic and a lot of medieval politics. I suppose the best thing I could point to would be the manner of the sex and the death scenes.
Before that, I read Brust and Bull's Freedom and Necessity, which I also really liked; I suppose that everyone else on the internet knew about Steven Brust before I did (I haven't read any other Emma Bull, though maybe I should). After (after Lions), I spent a couple of days not quite starting either of the two other books I had out from the library and then suddenly picked up and read through Robin McKinley's Sunshine. I guess I needed a reread.
I have a pulled muscle in my ankle, and it hurts. Stop hurting! (So far, it holds resilient despite my admonishments.) I had a dream last night in which I did a whole bunch of things I've been meaning to do, including posting in my livejournal, like, three times, and it was very discouraging to wake up and realize that I still had to do those things after all. Hopefully this particular disjointed entry will assuage me somewhat. This has been a paragraph where I complain.
I think that a neat project would be to go through the Daily Dinosaur Comics archives and send the author (a Mister "North") one e-mail with the predefined subject line from each strip, making that subject line relevant. Now that I think of it, though, someone is probably already doing that.
I have been reading a lot. I read Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan, as recommended, and liked it much better than I was worried I might. I took a collected edition of The Fionavar Tapestry with me on my Maritimes trip last summer, and found it difficult to read; there was something about the writing style that I really collided with. I don't really have the memory of the experience, anymore, so much as the memory of my impression of the experience, but my recollection is that it seemed to be at the same time florid and perfunctory; like I was having someone relate to me the plot of their planned fantasy epic, instead of reading the finished product, so that I was constantly running into the gaps where they hadn't yet filled in the characterization, or the details of a scene.
I was still struggling with it when I got home, so I looked up some discussions on the internet in which people I respected had taken part, hoping to find a place where they said, "Yes, it does all of those things clumsily, but I think that it's worth it for this and this and this reason". I couldn't find anyone who'd said that; in fact, I couldn't find anyone who seemed to have had my experience at all, and the general consensus seemed to be that the prose and the characters were lovely and approachable. Daunted and bewildered, I gave up somewhere in the second volume, and since then I've been very hesitant to try any other Kay, though people keep recommending it, in case it turns out that this author in whom so many people easily find worth is totally lost on me.
So I am pretty relieved to have enjoyed and been engaged by The Lions of Al-Rassan, and felt like it was a complete thing with characters who were people, etc., not least because it means that I can go read and probably enjoy some of his other more recent books. Some of the prose still seemed mildly overwrought, but this didn't prevent it from keeping my interest. There was something about the style of presentation that was very familiar to me, not from anything I'd read recently but from vague memories of things I read when I was younger; a taste of pulp high fantasy, done well. I can't really explain what it was that gave it that feeling, though -- it certainly wasn't the content of the plot, which contained no magic and a lot of medieval politics. I suppose the best thing I could point to would be the manner of the sex and the death scenes.
Before that, I read Brust and Bull's Freedom and Necessity, which I also really liked; I suppose that everyone else on the internet knew about Steven Brust before I did (I haven't read any other Emma Bull, though maybe I should). After (after Lions), I spent a couple of days not quite starting either of the two other books I had out from the library and then suddenly picked up and read through Robin McKinley's Sunshine. I guess I needed a reread.
I have a pulled muscle in my ankle, and it hurts. Stop hurting! (So far, it holds resilient despite my admonishments.) I had a dream last night in which I did a whole bunch of things I've been meaning to do, including posting in my livejournal, like, three times, and it was very discouraging to wake up and realize that I still had to do those things after all. Hopefully this particular disjointed entry will assuage me somewhat. This has been a paragraph where I complain.
I think that a neat project would be to go through the Daily Dinosaur Comics archives and send the author (a Mister "North") one e-mail with the predefined subject line from each strip, making that subject line relevant. Now that I think of it, though, someone is probably already doing that.
