Book Reports · 7:58pm Aug 28th, 2013
First:
Book II of my mini-epic, The Laughter and the Night, is up. I hope to have the conclusion, Book III, ready to go in two weeks. But we'll see.
Second, I thought I had written about this here, but not seeing it, I guess I must've posted it somewhere else. But several things coincided two weekends ago, and I found myself for the third time in the past three decades trying to read Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen is one of my father's favorite authors, for one thing; this year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the book's publication for another; and bookplayer had just posted a blog entry about how she was reading the book for the first time and couldn't put it down even though she knew that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy were gonna get together at the end.
I knew the novel's larger story, having heard most of the BBC mini-series version of it when I was in the computer room putting my comics together and Dad was in the front room watching it on TV. So I figured what the heck? Fourth time's the charm!
Well, turns out it wasn't. I got further in this time than I ever have before, but a technical difficulty stopped me cold right in the middle of chapter eight. It's a scene with six characters in it, and over the course of several pages, Austen threw me completely for a loop three times: she would give one character a line of dialogue, give a second character a line, then a third character would speak, and finally, she'd have a fourth line of dialogue sitting there unattributed--and each time this happened, I was completely unable to figure out which character was supposed to have spoken the unattributed line. And by the time I'd gone back and figured out who was speaking, I'd forgotten what they were all talking about...
So back the book went onto Dad's bookshelf. Maybe in another 10 years, I'll have clevered up enough to try again.
But being in the mood to try stuff I'd failed at before, I requested that the Big Library send me down a copy of Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic, the first book in his Discworld series. I'd tried random books in the series before--Going Postal was one of them, I think, and Monstrous Regiment another--but I hadn't been able to finish any of them. They just didn't "grab me," that elusive feeling I get when my brain latches onto a piece of writing and will not let it go. If a piece doesn't "grab me" in some way--the story or the characters or the quality of the writing or hopefully a combination of these--then I put the piece down and go find another that will "grab me." I'm fickle that way.
The Color of Magic did indeed grab me in several ways, though mostly in the quality of the writing and in the lovely narrative voice Pratchett uses to tell the story--so very Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that I could hear the late Peter Jones reading those parts aloud. And before I was even done with the thing, I was already hearing that narrative voice telling a story about Rarity becoming a reluctant jewel thief....
So, once I'm done with the poem, it'll be the next "Clandestine Corps" story Piefall, then Philosophy: A Romance Expanded, the next of the "Biology" series, then this Rarity story--a short one, I'm thinking, called "Doing Well by Doing Good."
Ah, so many plans!
Mike
My favorite book on self editing had a comment to the effect of many professional editors seeking out dialogue as the first port of call to judge a manuscript by. Dialogue mechanics are so fundamental to a well told story that a few dodgy lines can bar it from publishing as quickly as wearing a clown costume to a job interview.
My go-to for lightweight, crystal-clear dialogue is James Lee Burke's Dixie City Jam (though I assume the other books in the Robicheax series are likewise). Minimal attribution, barely an adverb in sight, rarely a non-standard attribution, and always executed perfectly. Really gave me a solid baseline for how good dialogue should look. Helped me a lot.
-Scott
Weird: Going Postal is one of my favourites by Pratchett and The Colour of Magic one of my least. Subjectivity is so... so.
I share the grabbing thing, which Fimfiction's gradually honed into a "If I don't get the impression you know how to string a sentence together within three paragraphs, I'm outta here." I switch off for characters and plot much less rarely, yet I always find that a story that's good right up until it commits some irredeemable sin in terms of either of those hurts more, as if I've been betrayed or something. Bad grammar or use of language makes me want to stop reading; bad characterisation or plot after an up-till-then winning streak feels like a knife to the heart.
It's good to see more Laughter and the Night, and I'm glad it's being sent off to EqD. It's a story in need of more attention than it has if I've ever seen one.
1314482
Y'know:
I'd never actually heard that song? I couldn't hear it here, either--YouTube tells me this video isn't available in my country. But I dug up a version that works in the U.S., so happily ever afters all around!
I think it was while I was working on the first "Clandestine Corps" story that I realized the last James Bond film I'd seen was "Moonraker" during its initial theatrical release and that I was writing Blueblood and Dash much more as Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel from the old British TV series "The Avengers" anyway...
1314595
The equivalent for me, I guess, would've been the point decades ago in college when I realized that both my prose and my dialogue was way too purple and turned to Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe" novels as a cure. Can't go wrong with good detective fiction even though I'm the kinda person who can never figure out "whodunnit" until the detective has explained the whole thing.
1314616
When it comes to "books in series," I'm the kinda guy who hasta start at the beginning. The only exception to that so far has been C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" books where I still haven't read the first one, and she's on the 16th or 17th at this point.
Still, I had a few problems with Color of Magic--mine was a U.S. edition with all the spelling dumbed down for us Yanks--most especially with how mean his universe is. I mean, Douglas Adams at his most cynical was absolutely sunny compared to Pratchett! Even with the way things keep turning out relatively well for Our Heroes, there's a constant rumbling undertone of unpleasantness that had me putting the book down every ten pages or so to think. Of course, thinking's a good thing, so, again, happily ever afters for all!
Thanks, folks!
Mike
I couldn't cop Pride and Prejudice either, for much the same reason. I frequently can't tell who's talking. It works okay enough when there's only two characters, but frequently there's more. Even the audiobook didn't help, my complete lack of interest in the story certainly didn't either, although a full-cast production could have tipped the balance. But at least I have a stellar example of really bad dialogue handling.
1314914
I'm generally the same way as far as book series, but I've never had a problem with Discworld. I find Pratchett seems to be pretty good about explaining everything you need to know in the book, so you can get by quite well without having to have read the others. Or maybe that's just a side effect of Discworld, and almost literally every second thing needs to be explained that way so he's just gotten good at it and/or I haven't noticed.
The Rincewind books--that is, the first four books in the series--seem to be an exception, though. They work much better if they're all read as a set.
1314616
Shameless promotion department: Can I interest you in checking out the group Buried Treasures?
(Also: I see what you did there
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