Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2010-08-30 11:11 pm
thefourthvine) wrote2010-08-30 11:11 pm
Rec me something. Please.
I am good at picking fan fiction. I am. I can look at a header and think, YAY or OMG NO or If I had world enough and time, and also someone had glued me to my chair. I can generally tell in a few paragraphs if this is back-button-it's-too-late-for-me-save-yourself territory. Ninety percent of the time, I know if I'm reading my way into trouble, or if I should check the ending first or just get someone who knows me to pre-read the story to see if my eyes might melt right off my face if I try it.
And I know when something is going to be in that sad grey area between "bad enough that you can laugh" and "mediocre but maybe worth your time if it hits your current narrative kinks and character needs."
Unfortunately, I have never had this ability with published fiction. (This is why I laugh when people say, "But published fiction doesn't have headers and notes and warnings and stuff!" No, it doesn't, and we are the poorer for it. Think of all the published work you wouldn't have read if it had had "part 1/???" in the title and "Summary: Stuff happens. People die. Life sucks. Girls can't hack it." in the header.) But the thing is, ten years ago I was more tolerant of published crap. I accepted that I would have to wade through it up to my knees to find great things to read; I thought it was my fate and duty as a reader. Now, I get to the midpoint of a book, realize it exists in the sad grey area, and I don't think, well, maybe the next book will be great. I just want to back button. Except, god damn it, I actually paid for this. Which means there can be no happy ending: either I finish the book and wish I had not, or I don't finish it and feel ripped off.
And lately - oh, man. Lately I have hit a really long run of sad grey area books. I had honestly forgotten there were so many ways to fuck up a book, you know? And Best Beloved has been recommending me stuff (good stuff!) from her recent reads, but she's run dry.
So I am asking you: please, please rec me something good to read. Ideally something available on the Kindle, because I'm doing all this extra reading because I've spent the past two months variously sick or injured, all in the ways where getting up to get another book is a serious investment of time and energy.
I like:
DEAR AUTHORS OF BOOKS TFV HAS RECENTLY PAID FOR AND READ WHY GOD WHY,
There is now a three-drink limit on fading to black. I'm talking specifically here about the kind of fading to black you do when your character is unconscious or near death. Because, okay, if your character is taking multiple head injuries and/or really serious injuries just generally - look. You can get away with that. Serial immortality! Just plain old immortality! Wolverine! But if your character has basically a normal human's stamina and healing factor and number of lives and so on - seriously. Please don't knock her unconscious or shoot her or have her nearly beaten to death at the end of every chapter. Especially if the entire book takes place over the course of a week. After a while, I start humming the Die Hard theme, you know? There are other ways to end a chapter! Like maybe your heroine could knock someone else unconscious!
Please remember to have an actual protagonist. Because, okay. If your entire plot summary can be written like this:
Please remember to have a protagonist. Seriously. I am not kidding. It's a good idea if you give the reader someone to like. Not someone, you know, perfect, or even close to perfect, but it's nice if at least one of your characters has a positive trait or two. Otherwise reading the book is kind of like being in an elevator with people you hate. With the doors open, so you can leave any time you want. I am looking at you, author of the book where in the first 10,000 words the only thing approximating a main character is completely nondescript except for his willingness to kill people for no very good reason. "Willing to kill monks if the plot demands it" is not the kind of thing that endears me to a protagonist, particularly if that appears to be his only characteristic.
There is a very good reason to have people of various genders and sexual preferences in your books. No, I am not going to talk here about accurately representing the world, although that's a great thing, too. But here's the advantage to you: you will not accidentally have all your main characters fall in love with one person. They can't! They won't all be interested in the same person. And obviously it gets really tempting after a while to make everyone fall in love with the character you love best. Look, I read fan fiction, so you don't need to tell me that it's tempting. I'm just saying that that it doesn't work. After a while we all secretly rename your main character Prince Sparkleshit Mesmerstare. And here's a way you can keep that from happening!
Try genderswapping sometime! Specifically, try swapping the genders of your book's characters. If you're looking at your now-male characters and going, "But that's totally unrealistic! They're all like cartoon villains!" and you're looking at your now-female characters and saying, "But this is entirely unrealistic! They have three dimensions and breast size is never once mentioned! I can't even describe them as bitches!" just - okay, look, I am not going to give you any advice. You won't take it anyway. But if you would be so good as to send me a note so that I can stop reading your books - which are obviously not written for girls anyway - that'd be aces.
Love and kisses!
TFV
And I know when something is going to be in that sad grey area between "bad enough that you can laugh" and "mediocre but maybe worth your time if it hits your current narrative kinks and character needs."
Unfortunately, I have never had this ability with published fiction. (This is why I laugh when people say, "But published fiction doesn't have headers and notes and warnings and stuff!" No, it doesn't, and we are the poorer for it. Think of all the published work you wouldn't have read if it had had "part 1/???" in the title and "Summary: Stuff happens. People die. Life sucks. Girls can't hack it." in the header.) But the thing is, ten years ago I was more tolerant of published crap. I accepted that I would have to wade through it up to my knees to find great things to read; I thought it was my fate and duty as a reader. Now, I get to the midpoint of a book, realize it exists in the sad grey area, and I don't think, well, maybe the next book will be great. I just want to back button. Except, god damn it, I actually paid for this. Which means there can be no happy ending: either I finish the book and wish I had not, or I don't finish it and feel ripped off.
And lately - oh, man. Lately I have hit a really long run of sad grey area books. I had honestly forgotten there were so many ways to fuck up a book, you know? And Best Beloved has been recommending me stuff (good stuff!) from her recent reads, but she's run dry.
So I am asking you: please, please rec me something good to read. Ideally something available on the Kindle, because I'm doing all this extra reading because I've spent the past two months variously sick or injured, all in the ways where getting up to get another book is a serious investment of time and energy.
I like:
- Non-fiction, particularly memoirs, detailed histories of unlikely things (chopsticks, a single typeface, the compass rose), and anything funny or told in an engaging narrative voice. (I am also always looking for really good books on WWI pilots, planes, and the war in the air.)
- Speculative fiction. I generally prefer robots to elves, but frankly I will take either. Robots and elves also 100% welcome.
- YA books of almost any stripe, provided there is something else going on besides A and B kissing or not kissing.
- Anything amazingly awesome. I will read the best book in any genre!
- Child or animal harm or death. (If you're not sure about this with what you're recommending, let me know and I will have it pre-read.)
- Stories that are entirely about whether or not A and B will kiss. Or, alternatively, stories where saving the world is the B plot, and the A plot is whether or not A and B will kiss. (Saving the world comes first. Or there will be nowhere comfortable to fuck.)
- Torture porn, rape-o-matic plotting (Can't figure out what happens next? Rape someone!), authors who think that gore is somehow a substitute for characterization or plot.
DEAR AUTHORS OF BOOKS TFV HAS RECENTLY PAID FOR AND READ WHY GOD WHY,
There is now a three-drink limit on fading to black. I'm talking specifically here about the kind of fading to black you do when your character is unconscious or near death. Because, okay, if your character is taking multiple head injuries and/or really serious injuries just generally - look. You can get away with that. Serial immortality! Just plain old immortality! Wolverine! But if your character has basically a normal human's stamina and healing factor and number of lives and so on - seriously. Please don't knock her unconscious or shoot her or have her nearly beaten to death at the end of every chapter. Especially if the entire book takes place over the course of a week. After a while, I start humming the Die Hard theme, you know? There are other ways to end a chapter! Like maybe your heroine could knock someone else unconscious!
Please remember to have an actual protagonist. Because, okay. If your entire plot summary can be written like this:
- Something random happens to X!
- Something else random happens to X!
- A third random thing happens to X!
- You don't actually have a plot.
- X is not actually your protagonist.
Please remember to have a protagonist. Seriously. I am not kidding. It's a good idea if you give the reader someone to like. Not someone, you know, perfect, or even close to perfect, but it's nice if at least one of your characters has a positive trait or two. Otherwise reading the book is kind of like being in an elevator with people you hate. With the doors open, so you can leave any time you want. I am looking at you, author of the book where in the first 10,000 words the only thing approximating a main character is completely nondescript except for his willingness to kill people for no very good reason. "Willing to kill monks if the plot demands it" is not the kind of thing that endears me to a protagonist, particularly if that appears to be his only characteristic.
There is a very good reason to have people of various genders and sexual preferences in your books. No, I am not going to talk here about accurately representing the world, although that's a great thing, too. But here's the advantage to you: you will not accidentally have all your main characters fall in love with one person. They can't! They won't all be interested in the same person. And obviously it gets really tempting after a while to make everyone fall in love with the character you love best. Look, I read fan fiction, so you don't need to tell me that it's tempting. I'm just saying that that it doesn't work. After a while we all secretly rename your main character Prince Sparkleshit Mesmerstare. And here's a way you can keep that from happening!
Try genderswapping sometime! Specifically, try swapping the genders of your book's characters. If you're looking at your now-male characters and going, "But that's totally unrealistic! They're all like cartoon villains!" and you're looking at your now-female characters and saying, "But this is entirely unrealistic! They have three dimensions and breast size is never once mentioned! I can't even describe them as bitches!" just - okay, look, I am not going to give you any advice. You won't take it anyway. But if you would be so good as to send me a note so that I can stop reading your books - which are obviously not written for girls anyway - that'd be aces.
Love and kisses!
TFV
no subject
Sarah Caudwell, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is great fun and has a fabulous cultured English narrative voice, very Oxford IYKWIM. But as I said there, it's always the gay character whodunnit (or who is the corpse). So if you can deal with that, and don't feel that I've spoiled you by saying so, I do recommend them. I re-read those roughly annually, and there are only four of them.
Just about anything by Michael Chabon. I've read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (1930s-1950s golden age comic books, canon gay characters, New York City, Jewish mythology), "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" (alternate history, in which Alaska is a Jewish state), and "Gentlemen of the Road" (Jews with swords! Historical!). Basically we're talking about Jewish American fiction, generally good yarns.
Ellis Peters, the Brother Cadfael mysteries. Light, easy-to-read medieval murder mysteries, set around Shrewsbury and the Welsh border in the 11th? 12th? century CE. Easily obtainable at public libraries etc... I wouldn't recommend you buy them for real money, but they're enjoyable reading if you borrow them or find them secondhand or whatever.
Sharan Newman's "Catherine le Vendeur" mysteries. Contemporaneous with Brother Cadfael, but set in France. The detective is a woman, who is friends with Heloise (of Abelard and...) and whose father (a Parisian merchant) is secretly Jewish. These books have longer character arcs, so read them in order. Newman also has a series of Arthurian novels, focused on Guinevere, that I quite liked. Very Roman Britain in feel, not too woo-woo.
You've read Mary Renault, right? Ancient Greece, gayness, similar to Sutcliff in narrative style. "The Persian Boy" is her most famous, the protagonist being Alexander the Great's eunuch lover, Bagoas. But she has heaps of other stuff. Apparently she was also friends/penpals with Patrick O'Brian? I love this idea of the 20th century slashy historical fiction writers' penpal club, to be honest.
Oh, speaking of Sutcliff... have you read her one and only Napoleonic novel? "Blood and Sand" (no relationship to "Spartacus: Blood and Sand") is a true story of an English soldier who winds up befriending a North African soldier and converting to Islam. Slashtastic.
Gay history (non fiction): I like Rictor Norton's "Mother Clap's Molly House" (Georgian London) and Graham Robb's "Strangers" (late 19th century London with forays into Europe and other places). Strangers in particular is a good read in a narrative way, and is kind of cosy and nice and not too many people hanged. His premise is basically, "Being gay in the 19th century: not as bad as you think!"
D. K. Broster, "Flight of the Heron". Insanely slashy English/Scottish adventure story set during the Jacobean rebellion (of '45 IIRC), written in the 1920s by a female author. I dare you to read the prison scene without actually, non-jokingly, expecting blowjobs at any moment. It is AMAZING and you MUST READ IT, no shit. But don't bother with the sequels.
Miriam Estensen's biographies of Matthew Flinders and George Bass (both have the names of the biographees as the titles). English naval explorers of Australia, ca. 1800... an officer/surgeon pair whose exploits may sound interestingly familiar to you. There are wombats! Adorable journal entries about wombats!
Robert Hughes "The Fatal Shore" and Henry Reynolds "The Other Side of the Frontier" (read these together, ideally). Convict-era Australia, from the British and Aboriginal perspectives. The Hughes is something that everyone's parents read when I was a kid, and is available for pennies used. The Reynolds book is part of the "history wars" that I've mentioned in my DW recently, regarding how white Australia perceives its history wrt black Australia.
Annamarie Jagose, "Slow Water". She's best known as a queer theorist, but this is a novel about a real historical incident involving a convict ship heading to Australia, a chaplain, a sailor, and a love affair. The narrative style is a little offputting at first, but nothing that a fanfic reader can't push through for the first couple of chapters and get used to ;)
Emma Bull and Stephen Brust, "Freedom and Necessity". Epistolary novel, mid 19th century England, conspiracies and Corn Laws and secret societies and Friedrich Engels and a female protagonist who dresses in men's clothes to infiltrate lectures at Oxford University and find out what men say about women when women aren't there. My copy falls open to a certain page which I won't spoil for you, but let's just say, it's as good as fanfic in places ;)
Geraldine Brooks, "March". Retelling of "Little Women" from the POV of the father. Lots of good stuff about the Civil War. Pulitzer Prize winner.
Kerry Greenwood's "Phryne Fisher" series of mysteries. Australian author, might be a little tricky to find (but the Internet has everything!) Phryne grew up poor in the working class bits of Melbourne, til WW1 killed off a whole bunch of her relatives and somehow her dad ended up inheriting a title and they all moved back to England. Phryne wants independence, though, so she comes back to Australia, sets up as a private investigator, and gets herself a fast car, a lesbian daredevil pilot friend, some communist dock-worker minions, and a series of improbable lovers. Yeah, so, basically it's your 1920s awesome female detective fic. A bit mary-sueish with occasional moments of wtf, but generally fabulous.
Evelyn Waugh, "Brideshead Revisited". Lyrical and romantic and slashy and wistful and aaaauugh. Also, a whole bunch of stuff about Catholicism. I feel about this a bit like I do about Name of the Rose ... you can skip the religious stuff and still enjoy it, but if you're into the religious stuff, you'll get more from it ;)
Jo Walton, "Farthing" et sequelae. British alternate history in which England makes peace with Nazi Germany. Whodunnits, and has some interesting twists on the gay-character-dunnit trope in the first book, which I liked overall. If it feels like it's becoming too dark and horrible around book two, I can say that it's somewhat more hopeful in book three, so stick with it.
Sarah Waters, "Night Watch". She wrote "Tipping the Velvet", but this story of lesbian ambulance drivers during ww2 is my favourite of hers. I love that she did a lot of oral history work, hearing first-hand accounts, to write it... the research really makes it feel like it has depth, IMHO. I'm overdue for a re-read.
Non-fiction rec: any of Mark Girouard's books about the social history of architecture. I'm particularly fond of "The English Country House: A Social and Architectural History" but his "The English Town" and "Cities and People" are also good.
Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". What's wrong with late-20th-century urban design in the US. Written in 1960ish, but you'll read it and find yourself nodding and recognising everything she talks about.
Christopher Alexander, "A Pattern Language". How to make homes and communities suck less. A good read alongside Jacobs.
Darrell Huff, "How to Lie With Statistics". What it says on the cover. Funny, has cartoons.
Edward Tufte, "Visual Explanations" and "Envisioning Information". How NOT to lie with statistics. If you like the cool kind of infographics they sometimes have in the NYT, or on some websites lately, you will drool over these.
no subject
I like her Corinna Chapman novels better than the Phryne books. Phryne's wonderful, but she does get a bit much. Kerry Greenwood's background shows more in the Corinna books: the social justice thing, and how strongly plugged into Melbourne fandom she is (her partner's a wizard in the SCA.) The Corinna books are set in present-day Melbourne. The main character has three cats, and the worst that ever happens to them is that Corinna steps on Horatio's tail, and Jeckyll fights a snake and wins. There are some teenagers addicted to drugs - I don't know if that trips your child harm thing or not. There's a wonderful storyline in the first book about a fifteen-year-old boy kicking heroin and finding friends and stability.
If you want, I can hook you up with the first four Corinna books too. I only have a few of the Phryne books, which I tend to borrow from the library over and over.
Mary Renault: skip The Friendly Young Ladies. It has a horrible ending, plus an endnote by the author in which she decries Pride parades. And yes, she was a lesbian herself.
no subject
I quite enjoyed the Corinna books but I don't own them. I think I have the reverse tastes compared to you, vass. But then, you know me and historical fiction.