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booooooks
Things are dead on lj as usual, so let's talk about BOOKS. BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS.
I just recently read Tana French's In the Woods and The Likeness and I have to say that I'm completely obsessed. Everything she writes is so completely psychologically beautiful and dark and painful and her characters are amazing and her prose is beautiful without being showy or purple and I wish I could write just like her. Just like her.
ANYWAY. I liked The Likeness best, but let me just say: it's completely unbelievable. The entire premise is absolutely implausible and yet I just don't care. It doesn't matter. It reminds me of my favorite Roger Ebert quote: "It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it." The book solidified my belief that any story can be beautiful, no matter what it's about as long as the author knows how to approach it, as long as the writer is a good writer.
Do you have any favorite books that are completely implausible but that you love anyway? Bel Canto comes to mind. That book would never have been written post-9/11, and pretty much every page has you going, "Yeah, okay, whatever," in the most sarcastic way possible, but Patchett (WHO I HAVE MET AND WHO SAID SHE LIKED MY DRESS) pulls it off in the sense that while you're inside it, the story works.
I actually love when writers take stupid or ridiculous premises and make them work. Nothing makes me happier than a cracky premise treated with seriousness. Does anyone else have any stories like that? Not really talking about fantasy/sci-fi necessarily, but things that are treated realistically. (fics count too!)
I just recently read Tana French's In the Woods and The Likeness and I have to say that I'm completely obsessed. Everything she writes is so completely psychologically beautiful and dark and painful and her characters are amazing and her prose is beautiful without being showy or purple and I wish I could write just like her. Just like her.
ANYWAY. I liked The Likeness best, but let me just say: it's completely unbelievable. The entire premise is absolutely implausible and yet I just don't care. It doesn't matter. It reminds me of my favorite Roger Ebert quote: "It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it." The book solidified my belief that any story can be beautiful, no matter what it's about as long as the author knows how to approach it, as long as the writer is a good writer.
Do you have any favorite books that are completely implausible but that you love anyway? Bel Canto comes to mind. That book would never have been written post-9/11, and pretty much every page has you going, "Yeah, okay, whatever," in the most sarcastic way possible, but Patchett (WHO I HAVE MET AND WHO SAID SHE LIKED MY DRESS) pulls it off in the sense that while you're inside it, the story works.
I actually love when writers take stupid or ridiculous premises and make them work. Nothing makes me happier than a cracky premise treated with seriousness. Does anyone else have any stories like that? Not really talking about fantasy/sci-fi necessarily, but things that are treated realistically. (fics count too!)
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(It helps me overlook the not-as-bad-as-it-might-have-been-but-still-there reactionary macho posturing of the story too.)
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OH. Okay, here's one, and it's fantasy but bear with me: China Mieviell's latest, Railsea. It's about how the ground is... radioactive (?), anyway it can't be walked on, and so people "sail" the open dirt plains by rail. And there somehow enough rails laid over thousands of square miles that activities like hunting giant moles is a possible activity. And no one knows where the rails came from! It's generally believed that they were laid by the gods!
It's a premise approximately as plausible as, say, Cars, and I was skeptical, but Mieville totally sells it. He has me believing in mole trains (analogous to whaling ships).
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I might have to look into that one....
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YES. I agree. It was a bit too neat. I can buy the mixed-up letters and the John Foster thing doesn't make me headdesk too much but the purple pills is too much.
And there somehow enough rails laid over thousands of square miles that activities like hunting giant moles is a possible activity. And no one knows where the rails came from! It's generally believed that they were laid by the gods!
This is totally silly but I kind of love it. I really do need to read more of him but for some reason I find it hard to get into his stuff.
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1632 is fun, if hardly a masterpiece (and the sequels are reportedly very uneven, partly because Flint loves fanfic and will canonize just about anything). There are bits where it's really clever - like how our heroes are afraid to use their shotguns because they think the "medieval" peasants will think they're witches, and instead the 17th century folks just go "Wow, improved muskets! Where can I get one?" Or a Jewish doctor feeling sorry for the Americans because they only speak one language, whereas he speaks a dozen...
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Haha! That's adorable!
That does sound fun. I think I'd especially enjoy the whole 'people from back then being way smarter and more worldly than you'd think' aspect.
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I forget, what of his have you read?
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Do you have a Goodreads account? I love that site so much. I've found SO MANY books to read through there and I love being able to keep track of everything i read and want to read so nicely.
And yes! I know exactly what you mean about implausible books that you love, though I can't seem to think of any right now. But I have several. Fics especially :P
Lately I've been re-reading Tamora Pierce's books and they're just so comforting and awesome and I love them so much. SO FEMINIST AND AWESOME.
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I think all of his books require a huge suspension of disbelief on one level but on another they are so real and human that they linger with you. Of course they are all Satirical in nature and do a lot of discussion of "human beings are kind of insane" but do it in a sort of..affectionately exasperated kind of way.
For example in the book I'm reading now, he says something kind of profound I thought. This is a world where weaponry does not include firearms and the antagonist of the book gets his hands on a gun, (a gonne as it is spelled in the book) and he says that the character, once having the gonne continued existing but was no longer really that person because of having laid hands on the gonne. I should go find the quote, because to me that resonated. I do think something does seem to happen to some people when they get a gun irl, where they are not the person they were beforehand.
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It is, however, one of the most misanthropic books I've ever read.
I am both in awe of and kind of scared of the author, TBH.
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Yep! I was just impressed that she made it horrifying in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY than how you think it will be horrifying from the events that kick off the story at the beginning of the book.
Heh, it's a tough book to talk about without spoilers!
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