annafdd

I have lost the battle with my willpower and turned frantically the pages of Devices and Desires to find out how it ended. I know that this is a self-defeating behaviour, but perhaps that is why I can only read non-fiction: fiction either bores me or engages me too much to resist go and peek at the end.

Anyway, I now need to go buy the other two books to find out how they all end. Dammit. Will I be able then to read the book page by page and actually enjoy them? Only time will tell.

And, well, thank you Amazon for spoiling the second book for me.

I liked (like) this book a lot, but I am also less impressed that I was at the beginning with it. I agree with the guy on Amazon who says that it could stand to lose 25%. I also regret the occasional dip into smart-ass 21st century dialogue - good smartass 21st century dialogue, but still.

"The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic. A bit of literary history may clarify matters. Unlike Charles Dickens's other novels, Little Dorrit was in fact written by The Faerie Queene. It is fortunate that Jane Austen's reputation does not rest on Northanger Abbey, for the author of that admirable satire was Paradise Regained in a frivolous mood. The twentieth century offers abundant examples, from The Pilgrim's Progress cranking out Atlas Shrtigged, to Les Miserables composing The Jungle, to The Memoirs of Casanova penning Portnoy's Complaint.
Occasionally, of course, the alchemy proves so potent that the appropriated author never produces a single original word. Some compelling facts have accrued to this phenomenon. Every desert romance novel bearing the name E. M. Hull was actually written by Madame Bovary on a lark; Mein Kampf can claim credit for most of the Hallmark greetings cards printed between 1956 and 1967; Richard Nixon's entire oeuvre can be traced to a collective effort by the science fiction slush pile at Ace Books. Now, as you might imagine, upon finding a large readership through one particular work, the average book aspires to repeat its success. Once The Waste Land and Other Poems generated its first Republican Party platform, it couldn't resist creating all the others. After Waiting for Godot acquired a taste for writing Windows sofiware documentation, there was no stopping it."


The Last Witchfinder, James Morrow

Light gets put aside.

I'm reading Light. I am feeling very inadequate. It's one of those "oh, why do I bother writing?" moments.

On the other hand, I am very proud of my photos, and I think I am starting to glimpse what Alpha channels are. Sorta.

I just finished Jo Walton's Farthing after having spent three days waiting eagerly for the tube commute so that I would get time to read. It's been far too long since I have been so thoroughly sucked into a book, and as I finished it (stealing precious time from my sleep, which I deserve after an 11 hours uninterrupted workday) I was reminded of what intense, satisfying pleasure reading was for me. Why don't I get the same rush from most books? I used to. Maybe my standards are higher now, or maybe something in my mind became more restless, I don't know.

However it goes, it is a wonderful book. I have to be honest now - I never managed to get into The King's Peace. Something about it made me bounce off, maybe the narrator, I don't know. Or maybe Jo just became better and better with time. I can say that I loved both Tooth and Claw and Farthing immensely, and can't wait for the next Jo Walton book to come out (you hear me, Tor?). They now go on the buy-on-publication-in-hardcover-at-whatever-price list, moving there from buy-cos-it's-a-friend list. Well ok, that happened with Tooth and Claw.

When I started Farthing I thought that as much as I liked it, I was just a little disappointed that Jo had written another "book in the voice of". I no longer am. I couldn't tell with TAC, but Farthing is both homage and satire of the the English classical mystery, and it uses its conventions brilliantly, mirroring in its gentle mocking of them the genteel resistance of the characters to the snobbishness and substantial class problems of the society they sprung from.

I stopped reading Agatha Christie when I read the novel where the culprit is the adoptive child, but where it is stated outright that the victim was asking for it, what adopting all those children who are god knows whose sons. This books vindicates me.

The weird combination of first person and close third person, which I found uneasy at first, reflects very cleverly and effectively the different personalities and voices of the narrators, the candid, frank, open voice of an English girl we at first took for a bit of a babe, so bubbly and happy that we don't realize her strength and intelligence for a long while, and the reserved, guarded, detached view of the police inspector, who has his own reasons not to let his guard down.

In a way, it's not an easy book to read, especially in these days. I mean, it's supremely easy, but leaves you with a deep sadness, a sense of impotence and anger.

(Yesterday I had a wonderful brief chat with my landlady, who I liked already but whom I found to be a nice, progressive, resolutely down-to-earth no-nonsense Old Labour lady. I was for some reason immensely glad. Maybe in these days of legalizing torture and privatizing health we need all the fellow feeling we can get).

pnh, tnh, will you hate me forever and ever if I tell you that I picked up Spin and I am not liking it one little bit? That I have had several throw the book against the wall moments, and I'm just on page 15?

In a way, I think there's more wrong with me than with the book. I have such a miserable low attention span right now that it's very easy for me to be thrown out of the narrative, and very hard to get sucked back. Also, while the main pleasure I take out of a book is connected with its theme and how it develops it, I can't get over clunky prose, and I find the prose here extremely clumsy. I am however especially puzzled by how everybody praised the characterization - so far, the characters are to me annoying or bland and generally unconvincing. I am also a bit puzzled by the book following a bit too closely stereotyped gender roles. Not to the point of sexism, but uncomfortably unchallenging, so far as I'm concerned.

But, well, it's very early on. I do hope it wins me back.

P.S. On the other hand, in the same package I got Farthing. Now there I have no complaints.