So I spent the majority of the summer imitating a toddler going, "I DON'T WAAANNNAA". It was hot, the house was falling apart, everything sucked, and dammit I just didn't waaaannnaaa.
Now that it's cooled off and my garden has died back, I feel like an adult once more. I also started a new job in August that switched me back to day shift, consequently knocking me on my ass as far as my sleep schedule, so there's been a lot of residual crankiness in that department too. Suffice to say, I'm feeling a bit kinder towards the authors I'm reading at this time.
Here's some quick thoughts on books I read these last few months:
Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway
Nonfiction
I had this book recommended to me as part of the Writers in Paradise conference as a great reference text on crafting fiction. On the one hand, I do see how this kind of thing is helpful and contains a lot of good information. On the other? It's a slog, and while the info seems really good and helpful when you read it, for me it's not so easy to retain that information and apply it to my own works. It's one thing to think in the abstract and say, "A character needs contradictions to be three dimensional!" and another to apply that to creating your own characters. My own process often feels so nebulous and meandering, and things just kind of seem to happen or they don't. These are things that are, maybe, better applied during an editing phase than a first draft. I still firmly believe that the most important thing about a first draft is to just word vomit it all out and clean it up later, and that's worked ok for me so far. Now that I'm on, say, a third draft of a big project and it's morphed into a completely different beast from what it started as, these are things I want to keep in the back of my mind but not allow to take over. Good reference, I'll probably keep it around, but I'm conflicted on exactly how much it'll help.
Assholes: A Theory - Aaron James
Nonfiction
Another nonfiction book. I thought this would be a semi-humorous look at why assholes are assholes and strategies to manage their assholeness, but it falls far short of it's promised premise. This seems like an idea that started off really interesting, but would have benefited from handing the first draft to an actual writer. James is circular and monotonous, even when tongue-in-cheek, so that the whole thing just reads like a college freshman's philosophy text. It lacks general accessibility and readability, which I think would have benefited from someone who could make it more palatable to an average reader.
Voices in the Night - Steven Millhauser
Magical realism
A collection of short stories that was recommended to me by a writerly friend. It started off very interesting, but quickly fell into a rote pattern--Story is set in Small Town, where Something Weird is happening, but it's totally Normal, even as it is Weird. Relies heavily on American nostalgia and a sense of oddity, which I do like, but not as a pattern. The first half of the book just all felt vaguely similar, and then we got to a retelling of Rapunzel where we dive into the main characters' heads in a rotating turn, which just didn't grab me, and the same goes for a hyperbolic Paul Bunyan short that went on much, much too long. Short stories are difficult, I imagine, to not fall into these traps. Still, I enjoy the sense of magical realism and oddity in each setting, something I want to pull into my own work.
Glamour in Glass - Mary Robinette Kowal
Alternate history, fantasy
The second in Kowal's Glamourist Histories series, Glamour in Glass follows the now-married couple Jane and Mr. Vincent in Brussels. They develop some neat new glamour techniques, and then get caught up in the Napoleonic wars. At one point, Jane has to use all her wits and techniques at her disposal to rescue her husband. Again I like the worldbuilding and the magic system, which Kowal establishes very well. The relationship between the two isn't particularly compelling, with lots of misunderstandings and such that makes it seem like they don't really understand each other much at all, and doesn't make them seem like a particularly close couple. Just didn't work for me as well as it could have, but as a whole it works well enough that I'll continue to follow the series.
One Good Earl Deserves a Lover - Sarah MacLean
Romance
I've never given romance novels much stock, honestly, especially historical ones. I love historical novels, but historical romances seem to love to throw accuracy to the side in favor of bodice-ripping, and it irritates me to no end. I thought I'd give the genre another chance when MacLean was recommended to me, and this is the second in her Rule of Scoundrels series. They're not bad, if you set your expectations for accuracy low, though I have to say her tendency to make dramatically short sentences/paragraphs is rather grating. It's a style affectation, but I don't care for it. It sticks out like a sore thumb when reading, and I feel like writing styles should be subtler than that. If it trips up a reader, it's too much, girl. But overall, some fun and funny characters, even if the constant harping on their stock personality traits (We get it, Penny is a scientist. She doesn't understand love. She needs to study it and conduct experiments and gets herself into hilarious(!) situations because of it. Enough.) gets overwhelming. At least it's a fast read.
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Fantasy
It's hard for me to really make up my mind about this book. On the one hand, it plays in such stock fantasy tropes: beautiful elves! A half-breed prince suddenly thrust into a ruling position! Evil stepmothers! Pseudo-medieval speech patterns! Even the names are a bit over-syllabic. And the main character, despite being raised far from civilization and barely educated, manages to do nearly everything right without any realistic missteps. Yet for all that, it still wormed its way into my heart. It's a decent read, if not spectacular. I'm just rather burnt out on elves and royalty.
Texts from Jane Eyre - Mallory Ortberg
Humor
Simply brilliant. Enough said. Re-imagining classic stories through the medium of text (and a dark sense of humor), with references only book nerds will truly understand. Poe can't leave the house because a bird is looking at him, Emily Dickinson is concerned about the man who is definitely snakes, and Hamlet needs his mom to bring him a tuna fish sandwich WITHOUT THE LITTLE CRUNCHY THINGS. Read it and rejoice. Or weep. Whatever.
Raising the Stones - Sheri S. Tepper
Science fiction
This book has long been on my top list for science fiction. There's just something about it that really stuck to me, and, as a pretty avowed atheist, I find it's story of religion-gone-wrong and it's Hobbs Land Gods to be really compelling. A God that works, huh? A God that actually helps people get along, be happier, weeds out the bad seeds, helps them produce more (important on a farming planet!), and helps them communicate. And protects them from threats. This book is the second in a series, of which I have never read the first, but I'm told they aren't really related in story so much as taking place in the same universe, so it's an easy book to drop into the series with. This re-read proves no exception: Tepper is a thumbs-up.
The Magic Wars - Jo Clayton
Fantasy
I've previously talked about the book that got me into fantasy as a child, and how little it held up through the years. This is, finally, the third book in the series, that I found by accident at Half Price Books. I slogged through the others, but I gave up halfway through this book- once the magus falls through the dimensions and lands in Alice's Wonderland tea party, my disbelief is a little far stretched. The writing's not great anyway, and the formatting is annoying. Over it.
So that brings me up to the present time. I'll be trying to get back into the habit of posting about each book as I finish it to continue my dive into understanding what works and what doesn't.
What's coming up for October? Biggest of all: NerdCon Stories, of course. Helpfully based here in Minneapolis, many of my all-time favorite authors are coming to the Minneapolis Convention Center to tell some stories and talk about stories and sell some stories and sign some stories. People like the whole Nightvale podcast crew, John Green, John Scalzi, Maggie Stiefvater, Mara Wilson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Matt de la Pena, Nalo Hopkinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Patrick Rothfuss and more. I'm going to get so many books signed, you have no idea.
