Read 'Til You Drop

Thanks, everyone, who contributed to my "four out of five" poll yesterday.  I think that it's relatively safe to use - about 95% of you recognized the claim.

Writing Marathon continues apace.  I've now completed about 11,000 words, with a minimum of 5K on tap for today (two scenes, one of which is full of great introspection and character change, the other of which is mostly provided for comic distraction.)  The cats are thrilled with my decision to write this week.  Me, I'm just grateful that I invested in the ergonomic chair :-)

I realized as I got into bed last night that I have read almost nothing the past five days (travel to Charlottesville, then Marathon.)  I'm rereading a book right now, and I'm wondering if I should set it aside - after all, I already know everything that happens in it.  Then again, it's a low-demand read, which is about all my brain can handle at the moment.

Do you re-read books?  If so, what type?  Why?

Mindy, who feels driven to read new things, but hoards her old books for that mythical future-tense day when she has time to re-read

When I was in seventh grade, I discovered Katherine Kurtz.  I inhaled her first Deryni series (at the time, her *only* Deryni series), and Alaric Anthony Morgan became my dream man.  I read the books so many times that I had large portions of them memorized, and I spent long evenings on the phone with my then-best-friend debating minor points about Catholicism and magic.

When I finished writing the Trunked Novel (the one that first got me an agent, but which never sold, and boy aren't all of you grateful for that!), I rented a motel room on the Outer Banks, drove down with the manuscript pages, my coffee maker (for making pots of tea - I never made coffee with the thing), and that same trilogy.  I alternated editing, walks on the beach, and more Morgan/Kelson/Duncan adventures, and I hated my manuscript because I knew that it would never work as well as Kurtz's series.

I read the Camber of Culdi series, and then the new Kelson series, and then the new Camber series, and I became depressed and despairing, as it became clear - in KING JAVAN'S YEAR - that every single person in the Kurtz-world was destined for unbearable heartache and loss.  I read the Adam Sinclair non-Deryni series, and I loved the notion of a fantasy series working like a mystery series - open-ended adventures, without a concrete "trilogy" plot - even though Sinclair himself didn't completely grip me.  I read LAMMAS NIGHT and was intrigued by the Nazi/magic intersection, but I loaned my copy to the then-best-friend, who I have now not seen in more than 15 years, alas.

And then I read ST PATRICK'S GARGOYLE - a slight novel.  A disappointing novel.  A novel without the character depth and setting detail and plot construction that I had loved in so many others.  I decided that I had outgrown Katherine Kurtz.

Several months ago, I was working in San Francisco, and I visited with my now-best-friend, another Kurtz reader.  She had IN THE KING'S SERVICE and CHILDE MORGAN, which I borrowed from her.  I picked up KING'S SERVICE earlier this week, and I'm having a wonderful time.

I love meeting characters who are ancient in the Kelson books.  I love meeting characters who I can tell are parents or grandparents of characters in the Kelson books.  I love being reminded of the simple stolidity of Deryni powers, the confidence with which Kurtz defines who can do what.  I love the jolting familiarity of setting - of *course* there's a Transfer Portal in Rhemuth Cathedral; I know it well.

Yeah, there's a little too much focus on dynasties and succession law.  Yeah, the plot skips huge chunks of time.  Yeah, there isn't a "through-line" with a single character (or even multiple POV characters) building the plot.

But I am truly enjoying this return to my youth, to my writing roots, to my first total-escape fantasy world.

What about you?  What are your guilty return reads?

Mindy, dashing off to read a few more pages before work

First off:  thanks to people who posted bits of 70's slang.  LJ was broken yesterday, and it was hard for me to see your posts and comment for thanks, but thanks :-)

New question/topic, starting with confession time:  I have never read a graphic novel.  (Well, at least not since reading Tin-tin as a kid.)  I have seen them, of course, in almost every bookstore that I haunt, and I've glanced at the covers and even turned a few pages.  I've peered over the shoulder of people reading them next to me on planes.  I read the comments of people talking about them, all the time.  I haunt the blogs of certain graphic novelist authors (well one, at least - Mr. Gaiman...)  But I've never read one.

Question time:  How *do* you read one?  Do people look at the pictures first, then read the text?  Do they read the text first, then the pictures?  Do they go back and forth - a word, a glance, a word, a glance?

I suspect that there's no easy answer.  I further suspect that graphic novels just aren't "for me" - I know that when I go to art museums, I have a truly annoying-to-me tendency to read the little write-ups on the wall before looking at the giant, reason-I'm-there, graphic material of paintings or drawings or photographs.

So?  Is there any hope for me?  Am I doomed?

Mindy, thankful for any insights people can share

I was surprised by the number of people who commented on yesterday's post, noting that they buy used books.  I'm not opposed to buying used, but I never destination-shop for used books.  (I very occasionally find them in the Library sale, or when I'm traveling and find a used book store on the Main Street of some town-let.) 

At the moment, I'm also somewhat ashamed to admit, I am not much of a Library user.  Part of that is time constraints - I'm traveling a lot on business - but part of it is also just having fallen out of the habit.

I was an avid Library user as a child - some of my fondest summer memories involve the Preston Royal branch of the Dallas Public Library.  My favorite Library finds there were the YA novels of E.L. Konigsberg, John Christopher's "boys'" science fiction (especially the Tripod series), and Ruth M. Arthur's YA gothics.  There was also an SF anthology edited by the recently-departed Roger Elwood called CHILDREN OF INFINITY that resonated loud and strong - I've always meant to acquire a copy!

First Book is doing a great promotion on "What Book Got You Hooked" - hooked on reading, that is.  What book got you hooked?

I have never read anything by Jodi Picoult or by Elizabeth Berg, and I feel like those are giant, gaping holes in contemporary (women's) literature.

Anyone have a favorite by either of these authors to suggest?

(I actually graduated with Jodi Picoult, but I don't know her personally...)

Mindy, obviously not satisfied with the FIVE new books she bought last night - but it was an anniversary celebration, so they don't count :-)

 I started out this year with towering piles of to-be-read material.  One huge stack of nonfiction.  Another of fantasy.  Another of chick-lit.  One of short stories (yeah, me, the one who doesn't really like to read short stories.)  Horizontal rows across the bottom of my bookshelves, lining up so-called literature. 

Some of you may recall that I tagged each book at the start of the year with a purple Post-It flag.  I intended to add a different color each month, so that I could track how long I'd kept the new books, on top of all the old books.

Well, I'm working through the to-be-reads.  I've handled approximately half of the books.  Many of them have been read.  Some have been started and discarded after an obligatory 50 pages.  Fewer have been discarded after a page or two.  And a very few have been donated to the library when I picked them up, realized I had absolutely no interest in reading them, and sent them to a better home.

I haven't tagged the new books I've bought this year, mostly because I've read them immediately upon receipt.  (I haven't bought very much - some YA dark fantasy, and a single mystery that is probably the next or the next-next thing that I'll be reading.)

With Book Expo America approaching, I know there will be an influx of new books.  My personal goal is to get all of last year's BEA books read or discarded by next week.  (I'm not going to make that goal, but it's good to have aspirations :-) )  And I'm going to remember this little post while I'm at BEA, contemplating whether I really need this ARC or that one...

Do you have a stack of to-be-read materials?  If so, do you manage it in any way?  Do you ever discard to-be-reads, just because they aren't "fresh" any more, they don't "spark" your interest in the way they once did?

Mindy, housekeeping before the long weekend

Shift.

That key that makes Capital Letters Possible.

The length of time that must be worked in order to receive a check on payday.

An exciting new novel from chrisdolley.

Yes.  Chris Dolley, of Kitten Wednesday and Nous Sommes Anglais fame.  Chris Dolley, who interviews authors across time and space, using the Astraldome.  Chris Dolley, who is just nuts enough to come up with a science fiction novel that weaves together a serial killer with multiple personalities, eleven-dimensional space, and a heroic astronaut who might -- just might -- save the day.  Or lose it altogether.

Shift.  Buy it.  Read it.  And drop by chrisdolley's amusing LiveJournal while you're at it!

Mindy, eager to read the book herself...

I'm having a hard time with books - making myself set them aside, even when they're clearly not working for me.  I set myself a 50-page "tasting" limit, and I tell myself that if the book hasn't gripped me by 50 pages, I'm giving it up.  (I have a *huge* TBR stack, and I have essentially sworn off on buying new books until the TBR is under control - with special exceptions for emergencies.  Yes, book emergencies.  Like, I'm shopping, and the book I've been waiting to come out in paper is finally out, and it leaps into my hands before I know what I'm doing.  Or, I'm trapped in an airport with a bad book and need to buy a new one.  Emergencies.  Work with me here.)

Yet, there's still this niggling fear, at the 50-page point, that I'm not being fair.  That the book will get (in my very subjective opinion) better.  That I owe it to the author (the editor, the agent, the world) to finish reading it.

In general, I set it aside anyway.  If I'm still nagged a few days later, I tell myself, I can go back and pick it up for another try.  So far, I never have, but I *can*.

Do you finish everything that you start reading?  If not, what percentage of your reads do you finish?  And how do you choose to be done?

Mindy, consigning another book to the not-finished stack...

Yesterday, Mark and I went to see Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater.  This was at least the fourth production of the play I've seen (not counting the play-within-a-movie of The Goodbye Girl, which saved my butt in a college class, when I hadn't done my reading.)  As with all Shakespeare Theater shows, the production values were *incredible* - the set was grimy and dark and industrial and canted at a 30 degree angle that made my eyes question everything else that I saw onstage.  The costumes were close-to-medieval - kirtles and furs that were intended to warm people in drafty castles and leather that was pretty close to a once-living animal.

Alas, the production itself was grim - long (3.25 hours), sometimes preachy, sometimes winding and political, very physically dark so that they eye had few things to relieve it.  The actor playing Richard was an understudy (as was the actor playing Edward IV), resulting in a cascade of cast  replacements, so that a total of six roles were changed.  I was actually pretty impressed that *any* understudy could master all of the lines and all of the blocking - Richard is in the vast majority of the scenes.  This understudy did a great job - he stumbled over a couple of lines, but recovered, and in character.

Oh - and he looked like Hugh Laurie.  A *lot* like Hugh Laurie.  Enough that three out of five of our party remarked on it first thing, and the other two don't watch House.  So, even if he'd flubbed every line,  I would not have been completely discontent :-)

This morning, Mark (my home clipping service) read to me an article in the New York Times about all the outcry and hoopla that this year's Newbery Award winner has the word SCROTUM on the first page.  I was going to write a brilliant little essay about how absurd the entire discussion is, and I was going to explain that most librarians are in the business of expanding kids' minds, rather than contracting them.  But then, Naomi Kritzer wrote the essay for me.  I can't add to anything she said, so I'll just advise you to read her words.

Discontent, indeed.

Mindy, watching the sky go from flurries to sunshine, repeatedly

There.  I think I've used up all the "J" tiles on the Scrabble board in my brain...

This morning, I finished reading JADE TIGER, the first published novel by LJ's own jennreese.  It's the story of a kickass kungfu master's search to find the sacred jade carvings that harbor the power sof her martial artist teachers.  It's also an incredible amount of fun, with lots of well-choreographed fight scenes, a villain worthy of a James Bond movie, and - my personal favorite - dialog so witty that I wish I had written it!

You can read a chapter over at Jenn's website - www.jennreese.com.  And then, you can buy the book through Amazon.

Mindy, searching for the next book to read...

Some of you may be familiar with fantasy author Jim C. Hines (jimhines here on LJ), the creator of Goblin Extraordinaire, Jig.  Jig's, er, I mean, Jim's first fantasy novel, GOBLIN QUEST comes out from Daw this month.  Jim has honored me by copying me - he is engaging in his very own Virtual Book Tour.  Today, he's stopping by this blog.  You can read more about Jim and Jig here:

Now, off to Jim's answers to my questions!

I've been reading a lot of the debates back and forth about the relative merits and, er, demerits about chick-lit.  This discussion has come to a head on certain listservs I frequent because of the release this month of two books:  THIS IS CHICK-LIT, edited by Lauren Baratz-Logsted and THIS IS NOT CHICK-LIT, edited by Elizabeth Merrick.  NOT was announced in the publishing world, and IS is a response to it.  (I have purchased both but not yet read either; I'll write more about them specifically in the future.) 

I read relatively broadly (even if I read slowly!)  About one quarter of my reading is non-fiction.  About one third is chick-lit.  About (doing quick math here) five twelfths is so-called literature (by which I mean all fiction that isn't marketed or store-placed as genre.)

I've read good, bad, and in-between in each of those categories.  I've read non-fiction so dry that I can't muster the strength to turn the page.  I've read chick-lit so derivative that I don't need to bother reading after fifty pages (and probably wasted forty of those fifty.)  I've read so-called literature so self-absorbed, or so self-indulgent, or so intent-on-showing-me-that-the-author-is-smarter-than-I-am that I purposely abandoned the book in an airport waiting lounge.

And I've read brilliant books in all three major categories.

Chick-lit is a marketing label.  It's a way for readers to find like books, when they've enjoyed one in the sub-genre.  It's a tool for corporations to brand their products.  It isn't monolithic.  I'm hard-pressed to say that THE NEW LU (about a 50-year-old woman who discovers that she's pregnant after one last fling with her about-to-be-former husband, after she has a successful career, grown children, and a settled life) is "the same book as" THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (about a 20-something girl who works in the cut-throat world of high fashion and learns the joys of designer footwear and handbags).  Certainly, there's less range in chick-lit than in some other genres (e.g., mystery), but I'd argue that it has a greater range than, say, westerns.  And it definitely has a similar range to sub-genres of established genres (e.g., English cozies, or private eye novels.)

While there are authors in the NOT anthology whom I've read, enjoyed, and appreciated for their literary merit, I *am* troubled by the aggressive note of the anthology's title.  Reading is a dying field.  We're losing readers every single day, to movies, iPods, video games, reality television.  No one gains by vitriolic finger-pointing.

Any thoughts on genre boundaries and genre-bashing?

Mindy, looking forward to reading the anthologies for more specific comments

I just finished my second British chick-lit book in as many months that features primary characters who have adulterous affairs without consequences.  In neither book do the adulterers confess to their spouses.  In neither book do the adulterers suffer any social-, economic- or other-harm.

I haven't seen this trope in US chick-lit (although I'm certain that it's there.)  I find it really distasteful.  I understand that adultery happens, and I can readily see it happening in a chick-lit book about relationships, friendship, etc.  But I believe that there should be *costs*.  There should be *lessons learned*.  There should be *consequences*.

By contrast, I recently read MARCH, by Geraldine Brooks, an imagining of what happened to the father in LITTLE WOMEN while he was off fighting the Civil War.  March is a character who finds himself in bad circumstances.  Sometimes, he makes bad choices.  Always, he has to live with what happens around him.  He faces consequences - some expected, some surprising.  His character is sculpted by those consequences.

And the story is so much more satisfying...

By nature, I'm a read-one-book-at-a-time person.  I do most of my reading on the subway, at lunch, or just before I fall asleep.  I tend to read for plot and - to a somewhat lesser extent - character development (although I also love a fine turn of language...)

By happenstance, I am now reading two books.  One is IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN, Sarah Dunant's newest book.  (Yes, I'm loving it.  Yes, I'll likely write more about it once I've finished it.)  The other is a manuscript sent to me by my agent, with a request to read it and write a blurb for it, if I find it blurbworthy.

And I *am* finding it blurbworthy.  So much so, that it's distracting me from my "real" book.  I hope to finish it in the next couple of days, but there are logistical, um, challenges - Book Expo America and a houseguest, most notably.

How do you folks do it, the ones who read multiple books at a time?  Or are most of you like me, one-book-people?

Mindy, practicing her juggling like one of the characters in COURTESAN (which is better than practicing the skills of some of the other characters in COURTESAN...)

I finished reading Tracy Chevalier's THE LADY AND THE UNICORN night before last. I truly enjoyed this historical novel (positing the characters behind the creation of the Unicorn tapestries.) Mark and I heard Chevalier speak last year, at a series of historical fiction writers, sponsored by the Smithsonian. Chevalier laughed self-deprecatingly when asked about LADY; she said that she seems to have a passion for writing about women in artwork. (Yes, you know her name because she wrote GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING.)

Her novel THE VIRGIN BLUE was - in some odd ways that have nothing to do with anything direct or linear - the basis of my short story "The Darkbeast", which was published in the anthology FANTASTIC COMPANIONS (edited by Julie Czerneda.)

While all of her novels take place in different time periods, and all have separate and unique story arcs, they all have a similarity of tone and nature of story-telling. Her narrative is deceptively "on the surface" - she uses few images to create her story. Her characters (who narrate in the first person) say precisely what they're thinking as they're thinking it - even when those thoughts do not reflect well on them. Some characters lie to themselves, but they're not aware of the lies.

All in all, a brisk, exhilirating read that stimulated lots of thoughts about writing in my own little mind.

And here's the list for the year:



And no, I don't intend to comment on every book I read. Just the ones that stand out for some reason.

Mindy, off to get some writing done

I'm not a big fan of reading short fiction - I generally prefer my stories meatier, with more characterization. Not surprisingly, then, I'm *really* not a big fan of flash fiction. I think that it is often a gimmick, with little true "heft".

Exception to the rule: jennreese's Tales of the Chinese Zodiac, now available in an illustrated chapbook. Twelve of these tales were originally published at Strange Horizons; the chapbook includes three never-before-read stories.

Sure, you can read them online. But you can own them, in a beautiful print edition, all for $6. And you can support cool publishing models at the same time.

Check out the collection and place your order: http://www.tropismpress.com/zodiac.html

Mindy, off to send a check, since PayPal never seems to cooperate...

When I sold GIRL'S GUIDE to Red Dress Ink, I had (I'm ashamed to say) never read a single book in that line. Upon learning of the sale, I immediately went to the bookstore about bought three of their books. And then I went back and bought every one that I could find, from authors whose names began with A-M. And then I went back and got N-Z. And then, I made a couple of clean-up sweeps of new books (or older ones that were new to me.)

So, I've read a few dozen Red Dress books now.

My rules have been that I read each book in its entirety. It's important to me to learn how the authors handle their characters, how they handle their plots, whether the girl gets the guy in the end, whether the girl *wants* the guy in the end. I've been studying the ages of characters and the locales of stories, the professions of our heroines, the range of supporting characters. I've focused on all the characters' arcs.

A few months ago, I started a book that I found virtually unreadable. It was one of the earliest in the line, and it read as so stereotyped, so common, so boring, so mundane, that I just couldn't suffer through 300 pages. I skimmed the book, still tracking the endpoints. I decided that at least part of the book's problem was that the genre had evolved in the five years since it had written - some of the tropes were still fresh when it was written, but the book had been surpassed.

I just set aside my second book; I'm not even going to bother with skimming. It's an anomaly for the line. It's set in England (only a small handful of the books I've read have been.) It's written in the third person. While it has what could be an amusing hook, it is clunky, unimaginative and -- most damning of all -- it's not funny. The jokes, which *are* in the text, just don't make me laugh.

I got to the point, in reading fantasy, that I instituted a strict 50-page rule. If the book hadn't grabbed me in 50 pages for some reason - world-building, character, plot, written by a friend :-) - it was set aside.

And now, I've added the 50 page rule to chick-lit.

That's progress. Of a sort.

Mindy, turning to the next book on the to-be-read shelf

So, I watched the Oscars last night. (OK, I watched and I needlepointed, and I worked on Samurai Sudoku, but you know what I mean...)

And each time Memoirs of a Geisha won an award, I listened to the winners stand at the lectern and gush about Rob Marshall and how the movie was all his vision, and he was brave and courageous to create a woman's movie, and he captured the reality of a different time and place so completely....

And I waited for someone - anyone! - to mention Arthur Golden.

You know, the author of the book. The author who created his novel three times, to make it what it was (rewriting it completely, each time he realized that he'd started at the wrong place, from the wrong perspective.) The author who sold millions of copies of his books, feeding the then-burgeoning book group craze. The author who *spoke* to millions of American women (and quite a few men) through his tale about the Other, the geishas of his story.

(For the record, I don't think that MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA was a perfect book, or even close to so. I do think that it is one of the best examples of world-building that I have ever read.)

And not one of the winners, not one of the gushing speakers, not one of the people who devoted months of his or her professional life to crafting a major Hollywood motion picture, thought to give thanks to the author who wrote the novel that was the basis for the work.

I heard Golden speak last year, and he had some mixed feelings about the movie. He seemed accepting of the screenplay (and the necessary changes from his book) but he was a bit put out by the silly changes (e.g., substituting one traditional hairstyle for another that Marshall thought was more visually striking.) Maybe Golden made enemies on the set. Maybe he didn't fit into the story of "a woman's movie." Maybe it was just a strange oversight.

Did anyone else notice? Does anyone else care?

Mindy, who wouldn't choose this as a banner issue but could not help but be struck by the difference in the adulation for Proulx and the overlooking of Golden

This is my first post about Octavia Butler because I've been gathering my thoughts.

I never met Ms. Butler. I never had the pleasure of attending her Clarion sessions, and we never crossed over at cons.

The first book of hers that I read was KINDRED; I borrowed it from a speculative-fiction-loving roommate, in my first year in D.C. I sought out other books and read them ravenously, then waited, impatiently between the PARABLES. I only read "Bloodchild" recently (and was blown away by it), and I haven't read FLEDGLING yet.

Octavia Butler has been on my short-list of spec-fic writers for just about as long as I've had a list. Even when I was reading almost no spec-fic, I'd read a new Butler. The questions that she asked were real and hard. Her characters were clear, motivated, earnest.

When a realtor showed me my townhouse for the first time, I remember looking at the parking lot and thinking that it could be barricaded, that my home could be secured, if we ever entered the bad times of PARABLE OF THE SOWER. After September 11, I put together a home emergency kit, and I thought of Lauren and her escape pack. Just two weeks ago, I was thinking about Doro and WILD SEED and eternal life.

It seems odd, to miss a person that I never met. But I do miss her. And I'll be re-reading her books. Soon.

Mindy, saddened

So, yesterday afternoon, I received email from Laura Caldwell. Who is Laura Caldwell, you might ask? She's a Red Dress author, my favorite of all the ones I've read (and let's face it, that's been dozens.) Her books include THE NIGHT I GOT LUCKY (which has a fantasy twist, similar to GIRL'S GUIDE), and THE YEAR OF LIVING FAMOUSLY (which has the most realistic characters I've read in a Red Dress book.) Laura had found my website, where I'd commented on her books, and she was dropping me a line. I guess even *I* am not immune to a bit of fangirl glee :-)

And then, yesterday evening, I received email from my editor. She has read my outline for the Yet To Be Named Sequel, and she's quite pleased with it. She had a couple of tweaks (excellent ones, I might add), but all in all, we're in good shape. I start the full outline today (for my purposes, not for the editor), and I'll start writing next week.

All in all, a wonderful day for the inbox. And for the reader-me. And for the writer-me.

Mindy, off to create a spreadsheet-outline