Reading slump
Jul. 18th, 2018 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIn a reading slump. But on the bright side, I've written over 400 pages of my new novel in long hand, and 336 typed. Mainly because I like the novel I'm writing better than anything I've tried to read lately.
1. Flirted with and chose, eh, not going there...
a. Joss Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12 - Final Season - The Reckoning #1 and Issue #2 (the second review is a video review and I despise video reviews but it was the only one I could find and it gave me a synopsis, I prefer written reviews...I can skim). The comics look horrific. (Of course it's probably worth mentioning that I don't buy the Xander/Dawn pairing, and why they keep breaking up Spike and Buffy off-screen I don't even know, it's lazy short hand writing and urks me, plus my least favorite character in the series next to Andrew is Harmony. I'm not a fan of ditzy dumb fictional characters who get away with hurting people and are treated as lovable clowns. Add to that -- I despised the Fray series, do not like how Whedon continues write Buffy as if she's fifteen, and Jeanty's art does nothing for me.) Making me wonder if I want to bother with anything else Whedon does? Hmmm. Maybe not?
2. This weird book with a great title is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon, will not buy
It's called..."The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic" and the synposis on the book is..
Uhm...okay.
Tempting but, I think it would irritate me.
2. Currently trying to read:
A) "The Secret Swan by Shannon Abe" which is dragging. It's a Medieval historical romance, where the hero has been kept prisoner in France for 8 years, he returns home to find that his bride (who he married when she was 15 and he was 18) is now dead, and her cousin is living at his deserted estate in Safere, which is somewhat barren. In reality she's alive, everyone thinks he's dead, and she pretended to die and took her dead cousin's place, because she thinks he just abandoned her. Most of the book is the two characters angsting over each other as they attempt to survive in a plague ridden in England.
Gave up and now attempting..
B) The Hating Game which came highly recommended, and is about two personal/executive assistants to the publisher's in chief at a merged publishing company. The two assistants sit across from each other and hate one another. One is female, one is male. One is five foot (Why are the women always five foot in these books? Oh that's right because 65% of the women in the US are between the heights of 4'5 -5'6. I am Viking who lives with midgets. My father got in trouble with his editor because all the women in his books were tall with long legs. Mainly because all the women he knew were tall with long legs. We're Vikings. Seriously I tower over everyone - well not quite everyone, D is 5'9, MD is 6 foot, and CH is 6'1. Also cubicle mate, a guy is 6'2. Life is good.). Plucky. Prissy. Big Smile. Basically a girly girl. (In contemporary romance novels and chick lit they are all girly. It's annoying. Not all women are into makeup, wearing heels, dresses, and perky.) The guy is of course drop dead goregous, she wishes he was a troll. In reality, he would not be drop-dead goregous. I've seen male assistants to publishers, they look like book nerds. The model types are either actors, bartenders, entertainers, or on Wall Street. Come on, publishing is a low-paying glamour job.
If you are pretty, you can do better.
It's very tropy and somewhat cliche...and I've only made it 10% of the way in. Also the writing is...third grade reading level. The writer has no sense of syntax, and makes weird mistakes.
I don't know why people rated it so highly.
Hmmm.
It is fun in places -- they come up with games to annoy each other -- the two assistants.
C) No Other Gods by Ana Levy Lyons...eh, too frigging preachy. It's basically a Modern Ultra-Liberal Jewish Environmental Activist's take on the Ten Commandments. What's weird -- to me at any rate -- is she's a Unitarian Unversalist Minister at my church, so why all the frigging Judaism? Ugh.
D.) The Theif -- which is okay, but I can't get into it for some reason. I think it is a mood thing.
Oh, bought on sale the latest Illona Andrews novella in the Kate Daniels series -- this one focuses on a villain or former villian, Hugh D'Ambrey, who the writer has decided to attempt to redeem for some reason. I'm curious to see if she can pull it off. He was admittedly the most interesting of her villains. They self-published this one. That's what writers do now, because the publishing industry is far too marketing driven for it's own good.
1. Flirted with and chose, eh, not going there...
a. Joss Whedon Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12 - Final Season - The Reckoning #1 and Issue #2 (the second review is a video review and I despise video reviews but it was the only one I could find and it gave me a synopsis, I prefer written reviews...I can skim). The comics look horrific. (Of course it's probably worth mentioning that I don't buy the Xander/Dawn pairing, and why they keep breaking up Spike and Buffy off-screen I don't even know, it's lazy short hand writing and urks me, plus my least favorite character in the series next to Andrew is Harmony. I'm not a fan of ditzy dumb fictional characters who get away with hurting people and are treated as lovable clowns. Add to that -- I despised the Fray series, do not like how Whedon continues write Buffy as if she's fifteen, and Jeanty's art does nothing for me.) Making me wonder if I want to bother with anything else Whedon does? Hmmm. Maybe not?
2. This weird book with a great title is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon, will not buy
It involved a modern day woman who accidentally travels to another world during a walk. She goes up a hill and there is… a cemetery? a garden? She meets a super elegant lady who turns out to be a fairy who mind controls her so that she’ll marry and breed with the fairy’s son. The son is an asshole and also turns into a dragon sometimes I think.
She gets pregnant but miscarries when the son (who is maybe a fairy prince?)… throws her down the stairs during a fight or something?
Anyway then there is a crotchety wizard who rescues her and then grudgingly teaches her magic while feeling tortured feelings. At the end, she goes back to her own time, assures her family that she is not dead, and is convinced by her sister that she should go back to the sexily withholding wizard because it’s just like Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. At this point I literally yelled, “Oh my god stop taking romantic advice from 13 year olds and have a talk with your sister about how she should be treated by others!”
But it turns out I am actually a sucker for maladjusted crotchety awkward grumpsters who need you to teach them how to love, so now I really want to read the sequel.
It's called..."The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic" and the synposis on the book is..
Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman. During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty. Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.
Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her “real life” against the dangerous power of love and magic.
Uhm...okay.
Tempting but, I think it would irritate me.
2. Currently trying to read:
A) "The Secret Swan by Shannon Abe" which is dragging. It's a Medieval historical romance, where the hero has been kept prisoner in France for 8 years, he returns home to find that his bride (who he married when she was 15 and he was 18) is now dead, and her cousin is living at his deserted estate in Safere, which is somewhat barren. In reality she's alive, everyone thinks he's dead, and she pretended to die and took her dead cousin's place, because she thinks he just abandoned her. Most of the book is the two characters angsting over each other as they attempt to survive in a plague ridden in England.
Gave up and now attempting..
B) The Hating Game which came highly recommended, and is about two personal/executive assistants to the publisher's in chief at a merged publishing company. The two assistants sit across from each other and hate one another. One is female, one is male. One is five foot (Why are the women always five foot in these books? Oh that's right because 65% of the women in the US are between the heights of 4'5 -5'6. I am Viking who lives with midgets. My father got in trouble with his editor because all the women in his books were tall with long legs. Mainly because all the women he knew were tall with long legs. We're Vikings. Seriously I tower over everyone - well not quite everyone, D is 5'9, MD is 6 foot, and CH is 6'1. Also cubicle mate, a guy is 6'2. Life is good.). Plucky. Prissy. Big Smile. Basically a girly girl. (In contemporary romance novels and chick lit they are all girly. It's annoying. Not all women are into makeup, wearing heels, dresses, and perky.) The guy is of course drop dead goregous, she wishes he was a troll. In reality, he would not be drop-dead goregous. I've seen male assistants to publishers, they look like book nerds. The model types are either actors, bartenders, entertainers, or on Wall Street. Come on, publishing is a low-paying glamour job.
If you are pretty, you can do better.
It's very tropy and somewhat cliche...and I've only made it 10% of the way in. Also the writing is...third grade reading level. The writer has no sense of syntax, and makes weird mistakes.
I don't know why people rated it so highly.
Hmmm.
It is fun in places -- they come up with games to annoy each other -- the two assistants.
C) No Other Gods by Ana Levy Lyons...eh, too frigging preachy. It's basically a Modern Ultra-Liberal Jewish Environmental Activist's take on the Ten Commandments. What's weird -- to me at any rate -- is she's a Unitarian Unversalist Minister at my church, so why all the frigging Judaism? Ugh.
D.) The Theif -- which is okay, but I can't get into it for some reason. I think it is a mood thing.
Oh, bought on sale the latest Illona Andrews novella in the Kate Daniels series -- this one focuses on a villain or former villian, Hugh D'Ambrey, who the writer has decided to attempt to redeem for some reason. I'm curious to see if she can pull it off. He was admittedly the most interesting of her villains. They self-published this one. That's what writers do now, because the publishing industry is far too marketing driven for it's own good.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 05:54 am (UTC)Have you ever read what I believe were regarded as her two greatest works, the novels "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Dispossessed"?
Just wondering. And to be fair, the last time I read either of these was sometime back in my mid-teens, but I remember being just blown away by them, and her writing in general.
If you haven't read either, I'd personally go with The Dispossessed first, and you might also look up her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", which was the germ of the idea that grew into The Dispossessed.
Another favorite author of mine would be Robert Silverberg. Again, it's been decades since I read any of his major works, but IMO he's right up there with Harlan Ellison, Le Guin, Philip Jose Farmer (The Riverworld novels) and Isaac Asimov. Here's a link to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89960.Best_of_Robert_Silverberg
Good goin' on your new novel, BTW, keep at it!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 12:25 pm (UTC)Tried to get into Left Hand of Darkness and gave up. Just not in the mood for speculative sci-fi right now. ;-) Thanks for the recs though.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:36 pm (UTC)Since her middle name is Levy, maybe she's Jewish? I attended a UU church back in the eighties, except they didn't call themselves a church, they were a "society." Many members were exiles from other organized religions, with Judaism and Catholicism leading the pack. The Ten Commandments are considered central tenets of Christianity and way, way back in the day, both Unitarianism and Universalism were branches off the Christian tree. Anyway, it makes sense to me.
Also, she's a minister. "Too friggin' preachy" comes with the territory, I would think? Maybe she wasn't ordained when she wrote the book?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 05:01 pm (UTC)No, you've got it about right in some respects and not in others.. She's Jewish, but wasn't raised Jewish. The church has decided to change it's name to a society. It was a church when I joined and rather Christian, but the new group took over and changed it from pastoral to program church and from church to society. Unitarian and Universalism are still both branches of the Christian tree, but since it is "Congregational" -- the individual churches or societies get to interpret it however they please. One is a Cultural Humanist, One more Christian, etc.
Her interpretation of the Ten Commandments is more Judaic than Christian -- she references the original Jewish text, and Torah, not the Christian Bible. The two interpretations are different, believe it or not. Not that I had any issues with that -- actually agree with interpreting it via the Torah, more accurate.
She took a three month sabbatical from her ministerial duties at our church to write it and then did a book launching party at the church, on FB, and has taught a class at church with it.
Should amend, stridently preachy. I agree with her more or less, and she's alienating me. LOL!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-20 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-20 11:59 pm (UTC)S12 -- one year later, Buffy and Spike have broken up off page (we aren't told why, just boredom, I guess?), Xander and Dawn are married, living in a house and have a kid (yes, seriously - no explanation), Willow has found a new purpose, and Angel is with Illyria (I kid you not). Also Harmony is the Queen of Vampires (yep - and we get an explanation for that, a lengthy one, because the writers think it's hilarious). Oh and Harmony is the only one who gets to make it to the Frayverse intact and powerful. (sigh). I got this all from synopsis. (I do not read or buy the dang things, unless I know I'll like them. I learned my lesson from the S8 comics. And S12 looks like a return to the crap-a-loosa that was S8.)
S10 is actually really good and delves deeply into the characters and their relationships. Also the art isn't bad. Not consistent, but not bad. The last half of S9 is also pretty good. And parts of S11 are good, a lot of it is rather cliche and bogged down by a plot that they've sort of done before.
Plotting they suck at. (They plot worse than daytime soaps and superhero comics, and that's saying something.) When they focus on the individual lives of the characters and their internal demons and issues - the comics are great, when they get into these big-picture thematic plot arcs, the characters get lost and weighted down by the plot and the plot has holes a plenty. In short they can't plot worth shit.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 07:09 am (UTC)Thank you for the re-cap, there are things that... well. At least they amuse me, unlike S8 which left me in a permanent state of wtf? before making me want to light the whole thing on fire.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 02:37 pm (UTC)Christos Gage and Rebekka Issacs in S10 do finally address the Buffy/Spike relationship in a way that I'd been dying to see and never had. They also explore Spike's relationships with Dawn and Xander a bit more. But in S10 -- Buffy and Spike have an actual conversation about what happened in Season Six and why it happened.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 02:44 pm (UTC)Ayyye. Everyone's talking about it. I've no objections, but I'd be more likely to be interested if he wasn't involved.
But in S10 -- Buffy and Spike have an actual conversation about what happened in Season Six and why it happened.
Yeah, I've heard good things. Not enough to make me go look for it, but it's nice that someone bothered to actually address it. (And hey, as beer-good pointed out - if they do this new show properly, it might kick the comics to the kerb, canon-wise. *g* Not that I ever thought of them as canon, but it annoyed me that Joss said they were.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 07:23 pm (UTC)I'll be surprised if it gets picked up.
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Date: 2018-07-21 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-26 11:15 am (UTC)