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Five things before Dinner.
Sep. 12th, 2010 07:55 pm1. Aunts are head over the heels in love with Big Love - so decided to give it the old college try, once again. And after watching seven episodes, I have no idea what they see in it. ( Read more... )
2. Saw a brief interview this morning with award winning play-write Edward Albee. ( Read more... )
3. Rainy day. ( personal stuff )
4. Got home and watched a rather brilliant episode of The Closer. Best I have seen in quite some time. It was entitled "Last Woman Standing" - and juxtaposed a murder of an actress who had created a one woman act about her trials and tribulations as an actress in Hollywood struggling to obtain her dreams when her friends have given up theirs for men, with Deputy Cheif Brenda Lee Johnson who is struggling with her love of her job and the pressure to achieve a position of power for women. ( spoilers for the episode )
5. George RR Martin's Storm of Swords continues to impress. I'm not sure how he is doing it. He switches pov every five-ten pages, yet manages to leave you on a cliff-hanger and engrossed in each character, and wanting more, regardless. Normally this approach can be rather irritating. I've read books that did this and I wanted to scream - go back, go back to the other guy, please. But here, that screaming lasts maybe less then a second before I'm completely engrossed with the new character. Also he's juggling a cast of literally thousands.
This book has chapters from the pov's of at least ten different characters, who are vastly different from each other. POV from villains as well as heroes, and when you are in the villain's pov, you see them as the hero and the hero as the villain and vice versa, so it's not really black and white at all. This is hard to do, people. Really hard. I've seen authors attempt it and fail miserably. You risk losing the reader each time you change, and you have to have a clear idea of your plot and what everyone is doing at all times.
It's like knitting gloves, you can't drop a thread or the whole thing unravels. I suck at knitting gloves, because I have no sense of proportion and can't count. I gave up on it finally.
Martin knits and weaves a story like few can. Terry Brooks totally sucked at this, his characters are fairly two dimensional and plots, cheesy! (I've read or tried to read a lot of crappy fantasy novels in my lifetime, many I can't remember the names or authors. They blur together. And genre for some reason attracts more crappy writers than non-genre does, hence the bad rep. It's not fair - there are some genre novels that do things a literary novelist would envy. And I adore genre, all genres (not particular) obviously. Also unlike literary, genre novelists have to juggle character, plot and worldbuilding - not easy to do. Literary - you basically just have to have interesting characters. Historical literary is more taxing of course. (ie. literary that takes place in a time other than yours and requires, ugh, research. )
2. Saw a brief interview this morning with award winning play-write Edward Albee. ( Read more... )
3. Rainy day. ( personal stuff )
4. Got home and watched a rather brilliant episode of The Closer. Best I have seen in quite some time. It was entitled "Last Woman Standing" - and juxtaposed a murder of an actress who had created a one woman act about her trials and tribulations as an actress in Hollywood struggling to obtain her dreams when her friends have given up theirs for men, with Deputy Cheif Brenda Lee Johnson who is struggling with her love of her job and the pressure to achieve a position of power for women. ( spoilers for the episode )
5. George RR Martin's Storm of Swords continues to impress. I'm not sure how he is doing it. He switches pov every five-ten pages, yet manages to leave you on a cliff-hanger and engrossed in each character, and wanting more, regardless. Normally this approach can be rather irritating. I've read books that did this and I wanted to scream - go back, go back to the other guy, please. But here, that screaming lasts maybe less then a second before I'm completely engrossed with the new character. Also he's juggling a cast of literally thousands.
This book has chapters from the pov's of at least ten different characters, who are vastly different from each other. POV from villains as well as heroes, and when you are in the villain's pov, you see them as the hero and the hero as the villain and vice versa, so it's not really black and white at all. This is hard to do, people. Really hard. I've seen authors attempt it and fail miserably. You risk losing the reader each time you change, and you have to have a clear idea of your plot and what everyone is doing at all times.
It's like knitting gloves, you can't drop a thread or the whole thing unravels. I suck at knitting gloves, because I have no sense of proportion and can't count. I gave up on it finally.
Martin knits and weaves a story like few can. Terry Brooks totally sucked at this, his characters are fairly two dimensional and plots, cheesy! (I've read or tried to read a lot of crappy fantasy novels in my lifetime, many I can't remember the names or authors. They blur together. And genre for some reason attracts more crappy writers than non-genre does, hence the bad rep. It's not fair - there are some genre novels that do things a literary novelist would envy. And I adore genre, all genres (not particular) obviously. Also unlike literary, genre novelists have to juggle character, plot and worldbuilding - not easy to do. Literary - you basically just have to have interesting characters. Historical literary is more taxing of course. (ie. literary that takes place in a time other than yours and requires, ugh, research. )