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My reading list
Mar. 17th, 2005 12:50 pmI plowed through The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, and The Well of Lost Plots, and wow. They're so good on so many levels. Hilarious in places, sweet in places, convoluted in wonderful ways in lots of places. As a writer, I'm writhing with envy over the niftiness and complexity of the world Fforde has created. Everyone should read these books right now!
Reread The Princess Bride, and was amused by how Goldman's style is so distinctive that I doubt anyone believed in Morgenstern for a second.
Now I'm working on Lunatics, by Bradley Denton, and I may have to give it up. I started it a long time ago, but had a printing where one of the sigs was a repeat of the one before it, so it went something like 81-112, 81-112, 143-174. Oopsie. I really want to read the thing since I went to the trouble of getting a good copy, but argh! Does he really have to tell us every single little thought process of every character? Especially when most of those thought processes are speculation about why someone is sleeping with someone else, how good someone might be in bed, whether someone would go to bed with the current POV character, and so on ad nauseam? Or, failing that, every step a character follows to make potato salad, arrive at a cabin after a long drive, or whatever. I am not kidding. For a book that's supposed to be sexy, it's kinda dry and boring. Try a little subtlety, dude! Try trusting your readers to pick up on implication. Write SHOW, DON'T TELL on your hand with a Sharpie or something. This is one of those narrative quirks that I can't stop being bothered by once I've noticed it. *sigh*
Or, as the Robot Devil said, "Your lyrics lack subtlety. You can't just have characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!"
Reread The Princess Bride, and was amused by how Goldman's style is so distinctive that I doubt anyone believed in Morgenstern for a second.
Now I'm working on Lunatics, by Bradley Denton, and I may have to give it up. I started it a long time ago, but had a printing where one of the sigs was a repeat of the one before it, so it went something like 81-112, 81-112, 143-174. Oopsie. I really want to read the thing since I went to the trouble of getting a good copy, but argh! Does he really have to tell us every single little thought process of every character? Especially when most of those thought processes are speculation about why someone is sleeping with someone else, how good someone might be in bed, whether someone would go to bed with the current POV character, and so on ad nauseam? Or, failing that, every step a character follows to make potato salad, arrive at a cabin after a long drive, or whatever. I am not kidding. For a book that's supposed to be sexy, it's kinda dry and boring. Try a little subtlety, dude! Try trusting your readers to pick up on implication. Write SHOW, DON'T TELL on your hand with a Sharpie or something. This is one of those narrative quirks that I can't stop being bothered by once I've noticed it. *sigh*
Or, as the Robot Devil said, "Your lyrics lack subtlety. You can't just have characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry!"
