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Jul. 3rd, 2006 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatShould go to bed, instead I keep writing posts and deleting them as if I'm seeing through the eyes of some external critic and hearing their criticism. Can't quite decide if I'm projecting my own criticism onto the unseeable reader or I've read one too many critical posts on the internet lately and have somehow internalized them.
A while ago![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oursin posted a meme thingy on what it is in novels or books or writing that turns you off. Drew a complete blank at the time I read the meme, now coming up with all sorts of things.
I tend to be a fairly ecclectic reader. Read most everything with a few minor exceptions.
After counseling clients in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, I can't abide True Crime novels or novelizations of actual and somewhat gorey crimes. People believe these novels are true, they aren't. And I find them somewhat exploitative of the victims pain and sensationalistic of the violence - like having ring-side seats at a gladiators match. I didn't always feel this way. As a young adult, I scanned Helter Skelter and watched the film, and read quite a few court cases and newspaper articles. One that sticks in my memory and I even based a short story on - is about two boys, ages 16 and 17. Named Ralph and Lee or that's what I call them in my head. Ralph - the class valdictorian, persuaded Lee, a loner and sci-fi geek obsessed with Star Wars and Star Trek as well as a talented artist and writer, that he had a contact in Hollywood, specifically with George Lucas. They could write a script on the Clone Wars together. But he needed money to finance it. Over a two year period the two boys became friends, Lee believed best friends, and Ralph swindled Lee out of quite a bit of money. Around the time they were to graduate, Lee found out it was a hoax and Ralph was playing him. This sent Lee off the deep end and he convinced his mentally retarded brother, Jimmy to help him kill Ralph, which Jimmy did. I think he took an ax to him. All the gorey details of the crime were spread across the pages of the Kansas City Star - under a headline "Star Wars Crimes" or something to that effect. This took place in the 1980's, just a few years after Return of the Jedi came out. In the years that followed, Kansas City became a hotbed for True Crime writers - we had Jeffrey Dahlmer and the woman who murdered her husband and two children, plus a strangler. Much fun. The True Crime novel has lost a bit of its allure since the 1990's and OJ Simpson, people are fickle creatures and every trend runs its course.
The other two types of novels that bug me are The Memoir and The Dysfunctional Family Story. After Oprah and her book club, these two genres took off - to the extent that for a while it was the only novel getting published, with the possible exception of the tried and true best-selling authors, who are sure bets (eg. John Grishom, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel) and the thriller/mystery/suspense genre that will never go out of style (Patricia Cornwall, Sue Grafland, Scott Turow, etc.). If you weren't writing one or the other, forget about getting published. Because hey, we need to get Oprah's attention. I give Oprah credit for catching on and not only discontinuing the book club for a while, but when she picked it back up again picking classic novels that were out of print or in public domain. Nice way of sticking it to the marketing people in the publishing industry.
I think I may have read one too many of the latter (Dysfunctional Family) and my mother has read and told me about one too many of the former (The Memoir). Or others have. Both make me wonder if half the population's parents should have been neutered at birth or forced to give their kids to people who couldn't have children but were far more suited for it. Honestly, does everyone blame their parents for every problem life has visited upon them? Have they all had wonky childhoods? And if so, has it occurred to anyone that childhood is only 12 years out of your entire life? Granted they are formative years but also relatively short. 20 years? Equally short. Unless of course you plan on dying at thirty, then maybe not. And trust me, you do not stop learning, growing, changing and evolving when you leave your parents house. Nor are your parents the only people who influenced you while growing up - unless you were raised in a cave or shut in the house the whole time - you spent most of your time with people outside of the home who had some input in your education, possibly more than your parents did or were aware of. But hey, it's easier to blame one's parents than that kid next door who you used to hang out with or the teachers you spent eight hours a day with at school. At any rate, I'll be trooping along in a story and one of the characters is truly fucked up, aren't they always? So the writer explains why, you sort of have to, and it turns out, oops they were raped as a kid, beaten up, abused, neglected or their parents acted like they didn't exist. Something along those lines. Now, I've met kids raised by dysfunctional parents and they aren't that fucked up. They have husbands, wives, kids, jobs, a house, and seem to be doing pretty well. I've also met kids who are truly fucked up - and their parents are close to perfect. I'm not saying being fucked up may not be the result of bad parenting, I'm just saying that usually there's more to it than that. Also why is it that every kid who gets raped in these books turns out to be *really* promiscuous and experimental with sex? Almost as if the rape sort of took away any inhibitions they might have normally had? I wouldn't know if this is true in life, but it seems to be in these books.
Tend to avoid Memoirs as a rule - mostly because they usually are about screwy childhoods and feel a tad over-the-top to be taken seriously. And the fact that people actually think everything in these books actually happened.
That said, I do read memoirs that are about writing or a profession - they feel a bit more honest and a tad less melodramatic. When it comes to non-fiction - I prefer to read about what people did for a living, how they did it, whether it be writing or uncovering contagious diseases in the Amazon jungle. I enjoyed for example - Stephen King's memoir "On Writing" and have dabbled in Reynolds Price's "On Learning a Trade". I also have "The Bone Lady" - about a woman who figures out crimes by studying bones and no its not the same person who writes the thrillers about Temperance. Can't remember the author's name, but it is somewhere on my packed bookshelf.
Other bug-a-bos include "the woman must have a baby" theme in romance novels. The damsel in distress.
The heroine whining about not finding a man, when five are into her. I hate the ugly/pretty girl genre or cinderella stories. Cinderella was not my favorite fairy tale, it always annoyed me. I was a Snow Queen girl. In my tales the girl saved the prince not the other way around. This may explain my fascination with Buffy - finally a story that fit my romantic fantasy. Most romance novels are the other way around - the gal is damsel, the guy saves her. Buffy flipped the dynamic. Even fanfic romances Buffy/Spike, Buffy/Angel, what have you fall into this trap. Which is odd, because you'd think women would crave the opposite. Why do so many women fantasize about being saved by men?
I'm not crazy about war stories or books taken up predominately by action/battle sequences. Fights tend to bore me. They don't offend. Just bore. Don't find boxing interesting. I like action movies, but well-edited ones and usually ones that are suspenseful. War movies? Not so much. The last of the three Lord of the Rings flicks bored me for the same reasons that the book did. Long drawn out battle sequences.
Pretentious writing turns me off. Books that feel the need to use about fifty obscure words within the same two paragraphs, so that you feel like you are reading an academic thesis as opposed to a novel. I don't mind learning new words. Tonight my vocabulary feels somewhat limited. But writing a novel is not the same as filling in the sunday cross-word puzzel. Impressing people with your ability to come up with obscure words that no one uses except the people who creat cross-word puzzles and write in academic journals is a tad annoying and well, pretentious. Johnathan Kazan is an example of someone who likes to do this. Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem are examples of writers who uses language well without coming across as pretentious.
Okay enough of this. I'm going to bed now. Shower first. Since sweaty. Will sleep in tomorrow and force self to work on novel. With any luck I'll be able to channel Chabon or someone like that.
My vocabularly feels somewhat lazy at the moment.
A while ago
oursin posted a meme thingy on what it is in novels or books or writing that turns you off. Drew a complete blank at the time I read the meme, now coming up with all sorts of things.I tend to be a fairly ecclectic reader. Read most everything with a few minor exceptions.
After counseling clients in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, I can't abide True Crime novels or novelizations of actual and somewhat gorey crimes. People believe these novels are true, they aren't. And I find them somewhat exploitative of the victims pain and sensationalistic of the violence - like having ring-side seats at a gladiators match. I didn't always feel this way. As a young adult, I scanned Helter Skelter and watched the film, and read quite a few court cases and newspaper articles. One that sticks in my memory and I even based a short story on - is about two boys, ages 16 and 17. Named Ralph and Lee or that's what I call them in my head. Ralph - the class valdictorian, persuaded Lee, a loner and sci-fi geek obsessed with Star Wars and Star Trek as well as a talented artist and writer, that he had a contact in Hollywood, specifically with George Lucas. They could write a script on the Clone Wars together. But he needed money to finance it. Over a two year period the two boys became friends, Lee believed best friends, and Ralph swindled Lee out of quite a bit of money. Around the time they were to graduate, Lee found out it was a hoax and Ralph was playing him. This sent Lee off the deep end and he convinced his mentally retarded brother, Jimmy to help him kill Ralph, which Jimmy did. I think he took an ax to him. All the gorey details of the crime were spread across the pages of the Kansas City Star - under a headline "Star Wars Crimes" or something to that effect. This took place in the 1980's, just a few years after Return of the Jedi came out. In the years that followed, Kansas City became a hotbed for True Crime writers - we had Jeffrey Dahlmer and the woman who murdered her husband and two children, plus a strangler. Much fun. The True Crime novel has lost a bit of its allure since the 1990's and OJ Simpson, people are fickle creatures and every trend runs its course.
The other two types of novels that bug me are The Memoir and The Dysfunctional Family Story. After Oprah and her book club, these two genres took off - to the extent that for a while it was the only novel getting published, with the possible exception of the tried and true best-selling authors, who are sure bets (eg. John Grishom, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel) and the thriller/mystery/suspense genre that will never go out of style (Patricia Cornwall, Sue Grafland, Scott Turow, etc.). If you weren't writing one or the other, forget about getting published. Because hey, we need to get Oprah's attention. I give Oprah credit for catching on and not only discontinuing the book club for a while, but when she picked it back up again picking classic novels that were out of print or in public domain. Nice way of sticking it to the marketing people in the publishing industry.
I think I may have read one too many of the latter (Dysfunctional Family) and my mother has read and told me about one too many of the former (The Memoir). Or others have. Both make me wonder if half the population's parents should have been neutered at birth or forced to give their kids to people who couldn't have children but were far more suited for it. Honestly, does everyone blame their parents for every problem life has visited upon them? Have they all had wonky childhoods? And if so, has it occurred to anyone that childhood is only 12 years out of your entire life? Granted they are formative years but also relatively short. 20 years? Equally short. Unless of course you plan on dying at thirty, then maybe not. And trust me, you do not stop learning, growing, changing and evolving when you leave your parents house. Nor are your parents the only people who influenced you while growing up - unless you were raised in a cave or shut in the house the whole time - you spent most of your time with people outside of the home who had some input in your education, possibly more than your parents did or were aware of. But hey, it's easier to blame one's parents than that kid next door who you used to hang out with or the teachers you spent eight hours a day with at school. At any rate, I'll be trooping along in a story and one of the characters is truly fucked up, aren't they always? So the writer explains why, you sort of have to, and it turns out, oops they were raped as a kid, beaten up, abused, neglected or their parents acted like they didn't exist. Something along those lines. Now, I've met kids raised by dysfunctional parents and they aren't that fucked up. They have husbands, wives, kids, jobs, a house, and seem to be doing pretty well. I've also met kids who are truly fucked up - and their parents are close to perfect. I'm not saying being fucked up may not be the result of bad parenting, I'm just saying that usually there's more to it than that. Also why is it that every kid who gets raped in these books turns out to be *really* promiscuous and experimental with sex? Almost as if the rape sort of took away any inhibitions they might have normally had? I wouldn't know if this is true in life, but it seems to be in these books.
Tend to avoid Memoirs as a rule - mostly because they usually are about screwy childhoods and feel a tad over-the-top to be taken seriously. And the fact that people actually think everything in these books actually happened.
That said, I do read memoirs that are about writing or a profession - they feel a bit more honest and a tad less melodramatic. When it comes to non-fiction - I prefer to read about what people did for a living, how they did it, whether it be writing or uncovering contagious diseases in the Amazon jungle. I enjoyed for example - Stephen King's memoir "On Writing" and have dabbled in Reynolds Price's "On Learning a Trade". I also have "The Bone Lady" - about a woman who figures out crimes by studying bones and no its not the same person who writes the thrillers about Temperance. Can't remember the author's name, but it is somewhere on my packed bookshelf.
Other bug-a-bos include "the woman must have a baby" theme in romance novels. The damsel in distress.
The heroine whining about not finding a man, when five are into her. I hate the ugly/pretty girl genre or cinderella stories. Cinderella was not my favorite fairy tale, it always annoyed me. I was a Snow Queen girl. In my tales the girl saved the prince not the other way around. This may explain my fascination with Buffy - finally a story that fit my romantic fantasy. Most romance novels are the other way around - the gal is damsel, the guy saves her. Buffy flipped the dynamic. Even fanfic romances Buffy/Spike, Buffy/Angel, what have you fall into this trap. Which is odd, because you'd think women would crave the opposite. Why do so many women fantasize about being saved by men?
I'm not crazy about war stories or books taken up predominately by action/battle sequences. Fights tend to bore me. They don't offend. Just bore. Don't find boxing interesting. I like action movies, but well-edited ones and usually ones that are suspenseful. War movies? Not so much. The last of the three Lord of the Rings flicks bored me for the same reasons that the book did. Long drawn out battle sequences.
Pretentious writing turns me off. Books that feel the need to use about fifty obscure words within the same two paragraphs, so that you feel like you are reading an academic thesis as opposed to a novel. I don't mind learning new words. Tonight my vocabulary feels somewhat limited. But writing a novel is not the same as filling in the sunday cross-word puzzel. Impressing people with your ability to come up with obscure words that no one uses except the people who creat cross-word puzzles and write in academic journals is a tad annoying and well, pretentious. Johnathan Kazan is an example of someone who likes to do this. Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem are examples of writers who uses language well without coming across as pretentious.
Okay enough of this. I'm going to bed now. Shower first. Since sweaty. Will sleep in tomorrow and force self to work on novel. With any luck I'll be able to channel Chabon or someone like that.
My vocabularly feels somewhat lazy at the moment.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 05:06 pm (UTC)I virtually always read 'genre' books (sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery...never horror) and a lot of my friends think that that is kind of light-weight. But there are some amazing writers in the world who are creating some really interesting worlds which I find so deeply fulfilling. I just feel tempted to read all the boring 'real' stuff.
I hope you have a good 4th, I have no plans my own self (well, Ross is having a sale and I thought I'd buy some new kitchen knives), but it doesn't seem like that important of a holiday to me.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 08:34 pm (UTC)Having a quiet fourth. Was going to take a long walk but the air is gross. Sticky and heavy.
And hot. Hopefully the thunderstorm that is currently rattling through our area will take care of it.
Been quite the summer for thunderstorms.
Also been working on my novel, which has more in common with the mystery/detective genre than any of the others. Sort of chick-lit meets literary noir. Or rather my attempt at it. Next up, once I finish flitting about here, is to watch a DVD and go through my business papers. Having gotten stuck yet again on the novel. Good news though - made it through those pages I'd lost. I'm now on the over side of where I was in the book when I got robbed. Finally.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-04 09:03 pm (UTC)And yes, I have felt that way too...I don't like stories that are told from the criminals POV or that dwell on the crime. Most detective novels begin with a crime which isn't dwelt on in any detail, and then moves all the story forward from the detective's POV and if I like the detective and the writer tells their story well (Dorothy L. Sayers was so wonderful, funny and interesting) I will always read all that author's books.
It has been cold and foggy here in Pacifica (which I have been enjoying) today is still cool but at least it is sunny for all the picnicers...and should be clear enough for fireworks. I'll be staying in tonight but right now I should go out and take a walk and enjoy the sunshine (I guess during the Summer sunshine is pretty rare here, but of course I can always drive over to where it is really hot if I really miss it).
Stay cool and enjoy your day!