For all my griping about how ebooks just don’t match up to paper ones in my books (ha, ha), there’s one aspect I don’t think I’ve fully realized until more recently. And that’s their size. Or rather, the fact that outside of a number on the bottom of the screen telling you how many pages a particular book has and/or how long it thinks it’s going to take you to read said book, there is absolutely nothing differentiating a tiny little novella from some behemoth that has designs on all your free time for the next two weeks.
Now, I grant you, this has its perks. For one thing, if you’re the sort of person who might balk at some eight hundred plus page epic, if you don’t happen to notice just how long it is until you’ve been well and truly hooked, you might end up reading something wonderful that you otherwise would have assumed you didn’t have time for. That being said, if you’re the sort of person who is usually reading several books all at the same time, and you happen to pick up an ebook copy of some brick of a high fantasy novel that you assumed was something like four or five hundred pages long and is, instead, twice that length, you might have to adjust your schedule or accept that your library loan is going to run out before you finish.
At least with a paper book you’ll know what you’re getting into.
Now, don’t mind me, I have to go read another couple chapters of The Priory of the Orange Tree.
Generally speaking, my first impulse when choosing what book to read next is to go to the piles/lists of recommended fantasy or science fiction I have yet to read. Goodness knows there’s enough there to keep me busy for a long, long while, including several that I know I’m going to enjoy once I get to them. Yet for all the many, many offerings in the realm of speculative fiction, there are so many other books that are worth the time it takes to read them. Most of the time, they’re books I never would have thought to pick up if someone hadn’t told me about them in the first place.
Which, I think, is where libraries come in.
Because while I’m in just as much (or more?) prone to the dangers of browsing Thriftbooks as anyone else, the books I end up buying are usually more sci-fi and fantasy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I enjoy them. I love that half my personal bookshelves are filled with them. I have absolutely no intention of changing the ratio any time soon.
But when I can just put in a hold at the library for whatever book someone recommends to me, I don’t feel like I have to stick to “safe” choices. The worst that happens is that I return it early, unfinished. And the best is that I read and love a book I would never have touched otherwise.
When it comes to reading, I can count on one hand the books (fiction, specifically) that I’ve started and left unfinished. And one of those wasn’t so much abandoned intentionally as forgotten about when a new school semester started. There’s a part of me that is, admittedly, kinda proud of this. But that being said, I’ve been wondering lately if I might not be better served by being more willing to make the call that a book isn’t working for me and letting it go to the Did-Not-Finish pile.
Of course, a part of this is that I don’t generally start books I don’t have a good chance of liking. Fair enough– I don’t think there’s many people who would pick up a book to read with the assumption that they’ll hate it. And a large majority of my reading list is made up of books recommended to me by friends who generally have a good feeling for what I’ll like and what I probably won’t. Which, maybe, explains why the two books in recent memory that I was tempted to put down (but didn’t/haven’t) were both ones I picked up on the recommendation of strangers and stuck with on the Principle Of The Thing.
Or, in other words, because I was too stubborn to put them down and switch to something else.
And to some extent, I think that stubbornness serves me well. Sometimes a book takes a little while to get going, and then something click into place and you can’t put the darn thing down because you find that it’s the most engaging thing you’ve read in months. But sometimes it’s just not going to happen, no matter how much of the story you slog through. And that’s where I run into trouble, because I will force myself to finish a book for the sake of finishing it, when perhaps it would be wiser to put it down and, if I care enough, look up the ending on Wikipedia.
So, the next time I run into a book that I just don’t find myself enjoying, maybe I’ll try putting it down and accepting that it’s not for me.
Or, for an alternate title, Why ‘The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ Annoyed Me.
First off, apologies to anyone who particularly enjoyed the aforementioned book. I don’t at all mean to offend, I’m glad you found it wonderful, and more power to you. I also don’t mean to argue that it’s a bad book, just that I didn’t like it as much as some others and ended up spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out why that was. (And for those of you who have not read it, be warned that there are spoilers to follow.)
Part of it is that I just didn’t like the narrator. Especially not at the beginning. For myself, there are a lot of mild annoyances and frustrations in a story that are easy to overlook if I enjoy the characters and the narrator. The flip side of that, though, is that I will struggle to enjoy a solid and interesting story if the characters annoy me or if I can’t relate to them. Having the narrator not know who he was definitely added to that as well; it is extraordinarily difficult to write a compelling character when they don’t know who they are. More so when who they are keeps changing.
And that, I think, leads into what annoyed me the most: there was nothing that I, as the reader, could latch onto as an accepted fact. The rules would change. I couldn’t trust what the characters saw or said, because the next go ’round would have me believe that the exact opposite was true. I realize this makes me sound petulant. Part of the whole appeal of a mystery story is the fact that everything isn’t what it seems, but this is where I keep getting stuck. Not only was nothing as it seemed, but I also didn’t have the information I needed to make educated guesses about what was going on. All while the Plague Doctor is lurking about here and there making ominous statements and being generally unhelpful.
It’s similar to the difference between the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries and Sherlock Holmes stories. Both are mysteries, certainly, but with Wimsey the clues are all carefully laid out one by one and while there are absolutely false leads and dead ends, the information you as the reader receive is enough to bring you to an educated guess. With Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales, the clues are all there, but they are often such that no one but Holmes himself could suss them out. And it’s probably why, as a whole, I prefer Dorothy Sayers’ gentleman sleuth to the legendary Mr. Holmes.
But back to Evelyn Hardcastle.
By the time I got to the end of the book, I found a story that felt like I should have enjoyed more than I did. The twists were interesting. And the characters’ final choices were the sort of thing that seemed like they should have landed with more of an emotional punch. And here I think the fact that there wasn’t a clear path leading to what was actually going on did the book a disservice. It felt less like the clues had been there but so cleverly disguised that I couldn’t see them except in retrospect, and more like they had been hidden altogether while I was deliberately led in the wrong direction.
So, maybe I’m just mad about getting tricked. I told you I was feeling a little petulant.
But the more I think about it, that’s it: I have no problem getting to the end of a book and admitting that I in no way saw the ending coming. Heck, that’s half the fun. The other half is looking back and seeing all the things that now seem like bright red flags marking what was actually going on and getting to see everything with the benefit of hindsight because it opens up an entirely new dimension that you couldn’t have seen before.
It’s just that that’s not how I felt when I got to the end of Evelyn Hardcastle. It wasn’t that there had been clues all along the way that I just hadn’t noticed, hadn’t picked up on, it was that there was no way I could have come to the correct conclusion with the facts I was given. Or even gotten to the general vicinity of the correct conclusion.
But maybe that’s just me. What about you? If you’ve read it, did you enjoy it? Were there really a whole bunch of hints and clues that I missed because I was too busy being annoyed? Let me know in the comments!
A couple of months ago, I listened to Delia Owens’ beautiful novel Where the Crawdads Sing. Aside from thoroughly enjoying it in its own right, it also reminded me of another novel: A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. This is not particularly surprising. Both stories follow a young girl with a strong attachment to the surrounding swamp/marsh, a knack for collecting remarkable specimens, and a less-than-ideal home life. So, once reminded of Limberlost and how much I’d enjoyed reading it as a kid, it seemed like a good idea to revisit it.
Now, I don’t actually remember how old I was when I read Limberlost. I was young. Possibly very young, but I really couldn’t say. The book was gifted to me by a dear friend who had also enjoyed reading it when she was a kid, and rightly figured that I would as well. I bring this up because upon picking it up again, I was a little surprised to find that it was not quite what I remembered. Blame it on my tastes maturing and me growing up. That’s not to say it’s bad, per se, but it certainly doesn’t carry the same nuance that the books I most appreciate now do.
Another point worth bringing up: I have absolutely nothing against rereading books. In fact, I’m of the opinion that the best books are the ones that you get more out of every time you read them. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit at least three times each, and probably more. I recently returned to the Touchstone trilogy by Andrea K. Höst and have every intention of doing it again. And there’s so many others. Like Frankenstein, which I didn’t particularly enjoy the first time but want to see if I get something more and different out of it now that I’m older. Or Fahrenheit 451 which I did enjoy both times I read it. Or a dozen others that come to mind without my having to think about it all that hard.
But not every book needs to be reread. And not every book needs to be reread by everyone who read it once. Especially not when we’ve all got more books we want to read for the first time than we can reasonably expect to get through in one lifetime. With more written every day.
With this in mind, it’s reasonable to ask why I’m bothering to finish this read-through. With so many things I want to read that I haven’t touched yet, why spend the time to reread something when I’m already not finding the same wonderment between its pages that I did the first time? There’s several reasons, of course. And fortunately, this isn’t one of those questions with a right or wrong answer.
In this case, the easiest answer is that it’s a mix of curiosity and nostalgia. Curiosity because I want to see if reading through to the end again lets me find now what I found then. Nostalgia because while I don’t remember many of the finer details of the story, I very much remember how it made me feel. And, I suppose, I want to spend a little while with the person I was when I was a kid, and maybe to . The slightly more cynical answer is that I want to poke at the story to figure out why I feel differently about it now. Both answers have at least a grain or two of truth.
As of the writing of this post, I’m about halfway through my read of Limberlost. It’s going relatively quickly, and the fact that it isn’t a terrible slog certainly helps. Whatever else it is, it’s not a difficult read. It’s also proving more enjoyable than I was afraid it would, though whether that’s because of my own revised expectations or the story itself gaining its feet I couldn’t say. Possibly, too, finding out when it was written helped shift my view as well; the book is more than a hundred years old, and reading it almost more as a piece of history than with the critical eye I might turn on a piece of contemporary fiction has its merits.
At this point I really have no idea how I’ll feel about it by the time I finish. Certainly right now I don’t regret picking it up again. Just as certainly, though, the experience is entirely different than the one I was expecting. But then, I’m tempted to say that’s one of the best reasons to reread something at all.
Several of the books I’ve read most recently have reminded me of something that I already knew– namely that I really enjoy stories with an interesting, creative setting. You know. In case my preoccupation with science fiction and fantasy hadn’t already given it away. I also can’t remember if I’ve written about this in the blog already or not, so please bear with me if it starts sounding like I’m just rewriting an earlier post.
Anyway! Consider this another entry in my continuing quest to figure out why certain stories grab me and refuse to let go. Because I’m pretty sure this is part of it.
To some extent, I suspect this is why most fans of sci-fi and fantasy enjoy it the way we do. There’s a reason those of us who grew up with it spent so many hours daydreaming of ways to get ourselves to Narnia. And also why we have discussions about which Hogwarts House we would belong to, and why those “who would you be in X fictional world” quizzes are so popular.
I imagine it also helps that when something is well-known, the fact that we can talk about them (giddily) with other like-minded fans only feeds our enjoyment. But then there’s the stories that are not as widely known, or with a less rabid fanbase, that– for me– result in the same level of borderline-obsessive focus.
Like, for instance, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The books are definitely fun, particularly the earlier ones, and though I know he’s written more in the same setting beyond the ones that focus around the titular character, I haven’t gotten to them yet. Unlike some of the other stories I’ll mention in this post, Weber does enjoy a pretty decent following. Probably because there’s a lot of us who think that “female Horatio Hornblower in space” is a whole lot of fun. That being said, the books, fun as they are, also aren’t the masterpieces that, say, The Lord of the Rings or Red Rising are. The stories and the characters are fun, but there’s a reason this little gem makes so many of Mr. Weber’s fans laughing.
Then you’ve got stories like Andrea K. Höst‘s brilliant Touchstone series, which I just reread and got a forcible reminder of why I should really look up more of her work. The writing is lovely, and while I know some people don’t particularly like the journal format that the books use, I think it works very well for the nerdy, comforting story she’s telling.
And for all these two series are very different, I found that they have something in common. They captured my imagination. Completely. It’s stuck. Not going anywhere. In Weber’s case, it means that I will happily read for hours on end about the technological advances of the Royal Manticoran Navy’s missiles, and how it changes the way their massive space battles play out. In Touchstone, it means I will read everything about Cassandra Devlin and the Setari and the spaces that I can get my hands on.
And in both cases, that is in large part thanks to the worldbuilding. These authors succeeded in creating worlds so compelling that I am happy to visit them again and again and that I think about them randomly even when I’m not reading their stories. J.S. Morin does a bit of the same, especially with the way magic works in his various Black Ocean series. Fringe does it in the way it creates a world so similar to our own, just with weird science causing all manner of mayhem.
Perhaps all of this is just outing me as an escapist, though even that’s hardly as damning a truth as some people make it out to be. But whatever way you want to slice it, the fact remains that some authors do a remarkably good job at creating strange, new worlds, and it’s a particular pleasure of mine to go exploring them for a while.
As I write this, there’s right around sixty-three hours remaining in the Year of our Lord 2021. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but here we are. For me, as for so many others, it has been A Year, and I’ll admit to being tired (though that’s also partially due to plain old sleepiness), though hopeful and a bit excited for the year to come and its changes and challenges both known and unknown.
To send out the year here on my blog, I want to share a few of my favorites from the past twelve months. Books, movies, songs, whatever it was that I enjoyed or that struck a chord with me and burrowed deep.
Favorite Book (fiction): Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian Why? Because reading it was like taking a break from the twenty-first century to go hang out on a British navy ship. And sometimes that’s just what you need.
Favorite Book (non-fiction):Being Mortal by Atul Gawande Why? Because it’s an incredibly important and intelligent take on something that we desperately need to be talking about. It’s a difficult read in places due to the nature of the beast (death, mortality, aging, etc.) but I can’t recommend it enough. Go read it.
Favorite Song: The Light Will Stay On by The Walkabouts Why? Just click on the link and listen! Oh, more specifically? Well I found this song while hunting for musical inspiration for NaNo, and this one slotted in like it was written for my main character. But beyond that, the entire mood of it– the almost wistful, almost resigned yet still pushing on just resonated with me.
Favorite New Music Group: The Hound + The Fox Why? There’s a ton of amazing cover-original-independent-whathaveyou musical artists on YouTube, but these two have to be my favorite. Their stuff is gorgeous, and they’ve got a great mix of originals, folk songs, and nerdy covers. I can (and have!) listen to them all day.
Favorite Video Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Why? Because the storylines are ALL MAKING ME CRY. This game is unabashedly over the top epic in places, and I love it, in part because it’s driven by a huge cast of well developed characters to whom you will get thoroughly attached.
What about you guys? Any new favorites from the past year? Anything exciting coming up for you in 2022?
It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a difficult year for a lot of us, which often makes it easier to dwell on the bad than the good. And while ignoring the things that made it hard is ultimately unhealthy and unhelpful, ignoring the bright spots is hardly any better. But instead of looking back at all the things I can’t wait to get rid of and forget, I’d like to take a couple minutes to remember some of the things I enjoyed this year. Particularly, as this is a shamelessly nerdy and story-obsessed blog, I’d like to share a few of the books, TV shows, etc. that I enjoyed the most.
So! In no particular order, here are some of my favorites from 2020.
Favorite game: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Yes, I’m aware that Black Flag has been out for years. And yes, this is the first time I’ve played it. I’ve wanted to play it since I first found out about it, but this year was the first time I got the chance. And I loved it just as much as I thought I would. I mean, really. What’s not to love about sailing all around the Caribbean with your own ship, firing epic broadsides at any who get in your way? And then running like heck when, inevitably, you tick off the pirate hunters and they come after you with MUCH BIGGER SHIPS. Blame it on years of roleplaying as a wildcat pirate on a Redwall fansite or whatever else. This game was just as much fun as I hoped, and probably even more.
Favorite book (first-time read): Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
I was introduced to the Oxford Time Travel books several years ago via the utterly fantastic and hysterically funny To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I can and do heartily recommend. Set alternately during the Black Death and the near future, Doomsday Book is just as well written, but has a very different and understandably grimmer tone. That being said, Willis does a fantastic job of balancing that sometimes difficult subject matter with some wonderful humor, and this is easily one of the best books I’ve read in some time. This is definitely one for the re-read stack.
Favorite book (re-read): Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers
The Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers have always been some of my favorites, in part because of growing up watching various TV adaptations, particularly the BBC version with Edward Petherbridge, but it’s been several years since I’ve read them. And they’re even better than I remembered, probably in part because I’ve matured enough to have a greater appreciation for their brilliance. My choice for favorite re-read was between Have His Carcase and Murder Must Advertise, but ultimately Carcase won out because it was the one with both Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, and the banter and the back-and-forth between the two is unmatched.
Honorable mentions:
The Many Deaths of the Black Company – Glen Cook
The Temeraire series – Naomi Novik
The Country Clubs Murders (series) – Julie Mulhern
The Honor Harrington series – David Weber
Favorite TV show (new): The Mandalorian
I mean, really… was it even a question? Baby Yoda, Western-feel, Star Wars at its best. I’m wary of over-hyping things to their detriment, but for me, Mandalorian absolutely lives up to the hype.
Honorable Mention: The Witcher
Okay. So maybe it was a question. Deadpan monster slayer Geralt of Rivia can give even Mando a run for his money.
Favorite TV show (re-watch): Fringe
Ah, Fringe. One of my favorite shows ever, thanks to the characters and the fantastic actors who portray them. Peter and Olivia forever. (For more thoughtful discussion of why I like the series so much, check out this post from earlier this year!)
What about you all? What were your favorite books, movies, and shows from this year? Any I missed?
Pierce Brown’s Dark Age to be exact, and if you haven’t heard of/read the Red Rising series before, I would highly recommend it. And if you have, please let me know. I’m desperately in need of people to geek out about it with!
The first book is basically what I had hoped to find in The Hunger Games, but I liked it so much better, and the setting and the tales have just gotten bigger and more epic from there. The series as a whole has made me laugh and cry in equal measure, and Dark Age was no exception, even if it was darker than the previous installments. (But with a title like that, how could it not be?)
I’m still very much in the throes of a good book high, so I apologize for my currently one-track mind. But it’s so rare to find a book that immerses you so completely, that when you do, you just have to revel in it. So, revel I will. The characters are complex and human. The setting is huge and epic and so, so fascinating. The story is engaging and never lets go, and its handling of themes like revolution, rebuilding, friendship, betrayal, and morality kept me thoroughly hooked. If you happen to be the sort of person who would enjoy it and somehow hasn’t heard of it, go look it up. I may be in full fangirl mode, but this is the sort of story that deserves it.
I’ve talked a bit in the past about the stories– books, movie, video games, et al– that have helped develop who I am today, but I haven’t said a lot about the books I’m currently reading. And in the hope that some of you might find it interesting (and also to give some well deserved plugs), I’d like to talk about the ones I’ve been enjoying recently!
Oddly enough, there’s been a bit of a Napoleonic Wars theme, between Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle and the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. Sharpe’s Eagle is the first (by publication order) of a series of historical novels that follow the adventures of Richard Sharpe, a British soldier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With apologies to any history buffs reading this, I don’t know a whole lot about that era and the Napoleonic Wars, but my understanding is that the books are well researched and accurate to actual events. I’m about halfway through Eagle at the moment, and so far it’s been highly entertaining, if not the sort of thing I’ve read a whole lot of in the past. Given the snark and the audacity of the main character, I may well have to fix that in the future.
As for Temeraire, the series bears some similarities to the Sharpe series, in that it’s also well researched, follows the adventures of a soldier in the British military, and takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, with one addition. The fact that the addition is dragons just makes it even more fun. I’ve currently read the first four books of the nine book series, and I’ve enjoyed each new book more than the last and definitely plan to read the rest.
I’ve also been reading Luke R. Mitchell‘s The Harvesters Series. Starting with Red Gambit, these are post-apocalyptic high adventure, complete with monsters, mech suits, and magic, and they’re an absolute hoot. If you’re looking for something that’s full of action and just a whole lot of fun, I’d definitely recommend checking them out.
What about everyone else? Any books you’ve been enjoying lately?
F.A. Hakimian 