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shadowkatI'm bored and frustrated. Today has been one of those...well days in which you've been given extra sand to put in your hourglass and somewhere along the way it just well fell through your fingers and your thinking, damn, should have carried it in my hat and not in my hands.
Anywho...thought a bit about books, what books really turned me on and what books really turned me off. And why I'm driven to write the things, regardless of whether anyone out there wants to publish me. I wonder sometimes if my tastes and what turns me on runs counter to the populace? Or maybe I just haven't tried hard enough to sell anything I've written? Possibly the latter. The novel I'm currently working on, I think may have a good chance. It's not as complicated as my other stories. More focused in the narrative. Closer to home and in some ways more real to me. But I'm unconvinced that it is something I'd necessarily want to pick up and read. Which is odd.
Books that turn me on and off:
1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt - turned me on. Could not put that baby down. Even read it while walking and almost got hit by a bus in the process. Yes, reading can get you killed if you aren't careful. Should come with a warning sign - "dangerous while walking". Story was fairly simplistic in nature - about a bunch of kids at a private, pricey college in New England who fiddle with the occult, kill someone, and try to cover it up and the toll that takes on each of them. I think it was how Tartt developed and wrote her characters that pulled me in, not just the story line which referenced the goddess mythology that I just happened to be obsessed with at the time.
2. Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond - specifically the latter ones, Checkmate, Pawn in Frankincense and The Russian...(book that I can't remember the name of but it will come to me eventually). Here it was not her style, which to be honest bugged me a bit with its density and dryness, but rather the characters themselves. I apparently have a weakness for misunderstood heroes, not anti-heroes necessarily, but the hero that everyone thinks is an anti-hero or thinks ill of, only to have him surprise them all in the end. Also have a weakness for impossible love stories or characters who are perfectly matched on one level but can't get together because of circumstance and personality conflicts. Also unlike most fans of Dunnett, I found the action sequences rather dull but adored the dialogue and political gamemanship/intrigue. Action sequences in books tend to bore me. This may explain why I was so enamored of Jane Austen - who spent more time on well, politics and less on action.
3. Arturo Perez-Reverte's "The Flander's Panel" and "The Seville Communion" I confess while I own most of his novels, the only two that turned me on and I fell in love with where the two listed above. Again, I'd say it was the characters and the plot, not the style, which while lovely, can feel at times distancing. Almost as if the writer is more in love with the writing than the story.
I've seen that a lot in literary novels - where the ebb and flow of words takes precedence over everything else. Reminds me of a Terence Malik film or Robert Altman - who are at times more interested in their visuals than in their story.
4. Maria Dora Russell's The Sparrow - haven't read anything else she's written, but it and its sequel, Children of God, The Sparrow is better. Children is a tad preachy in places. Here it is the characters, you fall a bit in love with them and are devastated by what she unflinchingly does to them. They compell you to keep tripping along. The science is a bit funky, drove a friend I'd loaned it to bonkers. But the characters and their journey, stick in the head long afterwards. It also says some interesting things about religion.
5. Guy Gaverial Kay's "The Summer Tree", "The Wandering Gyre", and "The Darkest Road" which while flawed, enthralled me. Again I think it may be for some of the reasons Secret History did, it hit my background in Celtic Mythology, which I'd been somewhat obsessed with in college. And was very close to a story I'd attempted to write in my own head. So here, not the characters so much, as the story itself. Also it had that prickly male/female relationship hinted at throughout which I mentioned previously. I'm a sucker for prickliy relationships.
Books that have turned me off:
1) The Da Vinici Code - I do not understand why so many people liked this book and the movie, including my parents, a friend, and my boss. It annoyed me. I think it was how it was written, the lack of interest the writer had in developing full-fledged characters. It felt when I read it, a sketch of a novel. More puzzle than story and the puzzel not that difficult to solve. Perhaps the fact that I had written a novel similar to it, but that had not worked or gotten picked up, added to my disdain? Don't know. This book felt underwritten and over-hyped.
2. Atonement by Ian M. (can't remember the last name and too lazy to google it) Here it was the characters. The book is actually well written. But the story made me crazy. I despised the protagonist. I could not read the novel without screaming at the characters in my head.
3. The House of Sand and Fog - same problem as Atonment, although I think Atonment is written better and the story in Atonment is in some ways more palatable and realistic. Atonment has more to say than House and on a deeper level. It talks about how writing can't change the past even though we wish it. While House is discussing how people destroy one another for property.
4. American Psycho - can't decide if it was Bret Easton Ellis' pretentious style or the deep-seated misogyny that leapt from the page. One of the few books I considered burning. Didn't. Instead I gave it to a friend to do with as they wished. It has a scene in that book that involves a woman's gentitila, blue cheese and a starving rat that will give you nightmares for weeks. And right there I've probably said too much.
5. Don Quixote - I tried. I really did. I may try again...but the writing is so dense and so egotistically humorous that I find it off-putting. Cervantes appears to be showing off. Also in some ways it reminds me of A Confederacy of Dunces which every guy I've met whose read the thing loves and swears by, but for some odd reason made me cringe up until maybe the last 100 pages, when I did laugh a few times. Nearly killed me reading it.
Can't think of any more at the moment. Sometimes it is not the writing that puts me off a book, so much as the subject matter or the characters.
I am a moody reader - that much I do know. What might drive me bonkers one day, I might adore the next and vice versa. Changable and adaptable. Like my birth sign. Although I think I've jotted these books down one too many times already. I've read other books. Lots of them. Just can't remember them at the moment.
Writing - what I write best is reality or fictional reality. Stories that fit within the genre or category of "contemporary lit" or what Ann Tyler, Ian what'shislastname, and others of that ilk writes. And they tend to be a bit noir in tone.
What I've tried to write but cannot pull off is fantasy and sci-fantasy, don't have the patience for building up the worlds and inserting all the tiny details. Tend to skip over it when I read fantasy/science fiction novels, so this is not surprising. I am good at building characters, description, dialogue, action sequences - not so much. Struggle a bit with those. Don't like to read them so not surprising that I'm not great at writing them. Also suck at love scenes. Write action much better than love scenes. They are similar actually - require some of the same writing muscels. You have to have some understanding of human anatomy - what a body can conceivably do and what it can't. (I've read some sex scenes that make me wonder about people. I mean, the human body just can't bend in that direction.) And no, I don't believe you have to have had sex to write a love scene, any more than you have to have had a background in fencing or karate or boxing to write an action sequence. Nor is it necessary to write either. Most published books don't have explicit sex, believe it or not.
And quite a few don't have explicit battle sequences. You can imply both without graphic detail, sometimes it is better to imply it - the reader often has a better imagination that whatever the writer chooses to come up with. I know I do. I've read some sex scenes from published writers that have bored me or left me cold, while writers who have just implied the sex, with a few words here and there, turned me on. (Example - Dorothy Dunnett who tends to imply it.) At any rate whatever it is - sex scene, battle scene, what-not, it must fit the flow of the story and the characters in it, give it depth, further the plot. It should not be inserted in there after the fact to liven things up, or make the work longer. If it stops the action cold and you're unable to move past it, you have screwed up. I speak from experience - this is how I screwed up my last novel, and ahem the one before it. Hey, at least I learn from my mistakes, right?
Have thought of doing a sci-fantasy novel writing experiment in my livejournal. But everything time I get close to doing it, I chicken out. Writing is easy. Sharing it? Hard. Whenever I think about someone reading my work, the writer's block descends like the dagger of damocles. They say those who critical of others are the most critical of themselves, quite true.
Anywho...thought a bit about books, what books really turned me on and what books really turned me off. And why I'm driven to write the things, regardless of whether anyone out there wants to publish me. I wonder sometimes if my tastes and what turns me on runs counter to the populace? Or maybe I just haven't tried hard enough to sell anything I've written? Possibly the latter. The novel I'm currently working on, I think may have a good chance. It's not as complicated as my other stories. More focused in the narrative. Closer to home and in some ways more real to me. But I'm unconvinced that it is something I'd necessarily want to pick up and read. Which is odd.
Books that turn me on and off:
1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt - turned me on. Could not put that baby down. Even read it while walking and almost got hit by a bus in the process. Yes, reading can get you killed if you aren't careful. Should come with a warning sign - "dangerous while walking". Story was fairly simplistic in nature - about a bunch of kids at a private, pricey college in New England who fiddle with the occult, kill someone, and try to cover it up and the toll that takes on each of them. I think it was how Tartt developed and wrote her characters that pulled me in, not just the story line which referenced the goddess mythology that I just happened to be obsessed with at the time.
2. Dorothy Dunnett's Chronicles of Lymond - specifically the latter ones, Checkmate, Pawn in Frankincense and The Russian...(book that I can't remember the name of but it will come to me eventually). Here it was not her style, which to be honest bugged me a bit with its density and dryness, but rather the characters themselves. I apparently have a weakness for misunderstood heroes, not anti-heroes necessarily, but the hero that everyone thinks is an anti-hero or thinks ill of, only to have him surprise them all in the end. Also have a weakness for impossible love stories or characters who are perfectly matched on one level but can't get together because of circumstance and personality conflicts. Also unlike most fans of Dunnett, I found the action sequences rather dull but adored the dialogue and political gamemanship/intrigue. Action sequences in books tend to bore me. This may explain why I was so enamored of Jane Austen - who spent more time on well, politics and less on action.
3. Arturo Perez-Reverte's "The Flander's Panel" and "The Seville Communion" I confess while I own most of his novels, the only two that turned me on and I fell in love with where the two listed above. Again, I'd say it was the characters and the plot, not the style, which while lovely, can feel at times distancing. Almost as if the writer is more in love with the writing than the story.
I've seen that a lot in literary novels - where the ebb and flow of words takes precedence over everything else. Reminds me of a Terence Malik film or Robert Altman - who are at times more interested in their visuals than in their story.
4. Maria Dora Russell's The Sparrow - haven't read anything else she's written, but it and its sequel, Children of God, The Sparrow is better. Children is a tad preachy in places. Here it is the characters, you fall a bit in love with them and are devastated by what she unflinchingly does to them. They compell you to keep tripping along. The science is a bit funky, drove a friend I'd loaned it to bonkers. But the characters and their journey, stick in the head long afterwards. It also says some interesting things about religion.
5. Guy Gaverial Kay's "The Summer Tree", "The Wandering Gyre", and "The Darkest Road" which while flawed, enthralled me. Again I think it may be for some of the reasons Secret History did, it hit my background in Celtic Mythology, which I'd been somewhat obsessed with in college. And was very close to a story I'd attempted to write in my own head. So here, not the characters so much, as the story itself. Also it had that prickly male/female relationship hinted at throughout which I mentioned previously. I'm a sucker for prickliy relationships.
Books that have turned me off:
1) The Da Vinici Code - I do not understand why so many people liked this book and the movie, including my parents, a friend, and my boss. It annoyed me. I think it was how it was written, the lack of interest the writer had in developing full-fledged characters. It felt when I read it, a sketch of a novel. More puzzle than story and the puzzel not that difficult to solve. Perhaps the fact that I had written a novel similar to it, but that had not worked or gotten picked up, added to my disdain? Don't know. This book felt underwritten and over-hyped.
2. Atonement by Ian M. (can't remember the last name and too lazy to google it) Here it was the characters. The book is actually well written. But the story made me crazy. I despised the protagonist. I could not read the novel without screaming at the characters in my head.
3. The House of Sand and Fog - same problem as Atonment, although I think Atonment is written better and the story in Atonment is in some ways more palatable and realistic. Atonment has more to say than House and on a deeper level. It talks about how writing can't change the past even though we wish it. While House is discussing how people destroy one another for property.
4. American Psycho - can't decide if it was Bret Easton Ellis' pretentious style or the deep-seated misogyny that leapt from the page. One of the few books I considered burning. Didn't. Instead I gave it to a friend to do with as they wished. It has a scene in that book that involves a woman's gentitila, blue cheese and a starving rat that will give you nightmares for weeks. And right there I've probably said too much.
5. Don Quixote - I tried. I really did. I may try again...but the writing is so dense and so egotistically humorous that I find it off-putting. Cervantes appears to be showing off. Also in some ways it reminds me of A Confederacy of Dunces which every guy I've met whose read the thing loves and swears by, but for some odd reason made me cringe up until maybe the last 100 pages, when I did laugh a few times. Nearly killed me reading it.
Can't think of any more at the moment. Sometimes it is not the writing that puts me off a book, so much as the subject matter or the characters.
I am a moody reader - that much I do know. What might drive me bonkers one day, I might adore the next and vice versa. Changable and adaptable. Like my birth sign. Although I think I've jotted these books down one too many times already. I've read other books. Lots of them. Just can't remember them at the moment.
Writing - what I write best is reality or fictional reality. Stories that fit within the genre or category of "contemporary lit" or what Ann Tyler, Ian what'shislastname, and others of that ilk writes. And they tend to be a bit noir in tone.
What I've tried to write but cannot pull off is fantasy and sci-fantasy, don't have the patience for building up the worlds and inserting all the tiny details. Tend to skip over it when I read fantasy/science fiction novels, so this is not surprising. I am good at building characters, description, dialogue, action sequences - not so much. Struggle a bit with those. Don't like to read them so not surprising that I'm not great at writing them. Also suck at love scenes. Write action much better than love scenes. They are similar actually - require some of the same writing muscels. You have to have some understanding of human anatomy - what a body can conceivably do and what it can't. (I've read some sex scenes that make me wonder about people. I mean, the human body just can't bend in that direction.) And no, I don't believe you have to have had sex to write a love scene, any more than you have to have had a background in fencing or karate or boxing to write an action sequence. Nor is it necessary to write either. Most published books don't have explicit sex, believe it or not.
And quite a few don't have explicit battle sequences. You can imply both without graphic detail, sometimes it is better to imply it - the reader often has a better imagination that whatever the writer chooses to come up with. I know I do. I've read some sex scenes from published writers that have bored me or left me cold, while writers who have just implied the sex, with a few words here and there, turned me on. (Example - Dorothy Dunnett who tends to imply it.) At any rate whatever it is - sex scene, battle scene, what-not, it must fit the flow of the story and the characters in it, give it depth, further the plot. It should not be inserted in there after the fact to liven things up, or make the work longer. If it stops the action cold and you're unable to move past it, you have screwed up. I speak from experience - this is how I screwed up my last novel, and ahem the one before it. Hey, at least I learn from my mistakes, right?
Have thought of doing a sci-fantasy novel writing experiment in my livejournal. But everything time I get close to doing it, I chicken out. Writing is easy. Sharing it? Hard. Whenever I think about someone reading my work, the writer's block descends like the dagger of damocles. They say those who critical of others are the most critical of themselves, quite true.
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Date: 2006-07-05 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-05 11:15 pm (UTC)Satire is hard to pull off, I think.
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Date: 2006-07-05 11:21 pm (UTC)Completely Agree
Date: 2006-07-06 02:32 am (UTC)I enjoyed the film version and consider it to be a cult classic and a perfect satire of New York in the mid-1990s. The book on the other hand was like you stated above, close to unreadable.
The prose was mindnumbingly repetitive in its style. I enjoyed the first twenty-thirty pages, but could not read it after a certain point.
American Psycho is one of those rare instances in which you recommend people rent the movie and skip the book.
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Date: 2006-07-06 07:37 am (UTC)