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Most reviewers don't read their books
February 26, 2003 (5:24 PM) ( link ) An article entitled "Read Any Good Books Lately?" makes the following simple point: "[S]hocking as it may seem, the truth is that some reviewers skip some books. And there are a few who skip through all the books."
How do book reviewers do it? Sometimes they just describe the book to an eager readership; sometimes they write in generalities about the subject of the book; and, if all else fails, they praise the book, "for authors are more inclined to forgive errors when they come floating in a warm bath of praise than when they come coated in vitriol."
I imagine that being a professional book reviewer is a terrible job: you can't read the books you want, many of the books you do read are junk, and you feel like you're working when you should be enjoying yourself. Being an amateur book reviewer, on the other hand, is a lot more fun. And I can even guarantee that every review I write--whether positive or negative--is my honest opinion about a book that I actually read.
Given up on Gold Bug
February 25, 2003 (2:30 PM) ( link ) I've given up on Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations: too dense, too elliptical, too stilted for me, thank you very much.
In exchange, I've started reading Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee's novel about...well, I'm not sure yet. (I'm only about a dozen pages in.) It's written well, and, more importantly, simply. There hasn't been a real emotional hook yet, though, so we'll see if I actually grow to like the book.
In between giving up on Powers's novel and beginning Lee's novel, I managed to polish off another Connie Willis novella, Uncharted Territory. This is the worst of the three Willis novellas I've read (the other two are Remake and Bellwether). It's just too thin of a novel, padded by Willis's trademark chaos and research, but supported by too little else. Of course, this is Willis we're talking about, so the novella ain't bad. Just don't expect to be blown away.
I also read Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty, which is just stupid. Perhaps I should stop reading Miller's lesser known works and instead turn toward his much more celebrated writing in the Daredevil and Elektra series.
Top 5, Bottom 5 for Feb. 1-15, 2003
February 16, 2003 (5:12 PM) ( link ) And again, compiled from my statistics page, statistics for Feb. 1-15, 2003:
Total number of reviews accessed: 2219
Top 5 Reviews: - Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones [127]
- Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's [118]
- James Dickey's Deliverance [96]
- John Gardner's Grendel [74]
- Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy [71]
Bottom 5 Reviews:- Warren Ellis's Relentless [2]
- Tim Powers's Expiration Date [3]
- Warren Ellis's Under New Management [3]
- Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia [4]
- CJ Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur [4]
The Elements of Style
February 16, 2003 (1:52 AM) ( link ) I just noticed that one of my favorite books of all time, William Strunk's The Elements of Style, is now online.
This online edition doesn't seem to include E.B. White's revisions, nor White's wonderful chapter on style. It does, however, contain the following paragraph, one of the best examples of doing what you preach: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." And, most importantly, this book explains why I use apostrophes the way I do (e.g., "Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations).
I only wish I wrote as well as this book expects me to. Perhaps someday, I will.
Too dumb for The Gold Bug Variations
February 15, 2003 (3:03 PM) ( link ) I am clearly too stupid to understand Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations: about 60 pages in, I'm still almost completely lost amidst the bizarre, elliptical, article-shunning style that Powers adopts, not to mention the sentences filled with pretty words and little sense. One particularly choice selection: His peace turns to a sadness so overpowering that, before he can interpret it, tears seep out his eyes on underground springs. Avuncular defective lachrymal, until this moment happily masked, flushed by the deep voice, the simplicity of the tune, the hopeless hope of words in a world where the stadium colonnade declares itself a safe radiation haven, or just this absolute, still, summer night in a featureless town. Spontaneous twitch of gland for a race capable of grabbing the next rung while simultaneously leaping for the beloved brink. Or purely somatic epiphenomenon: Robeson hits a note, springs a chord sequence that triggers solute; everything else lies outside measure. (pp. 51-52) It's not that this passage (and others like it) doesn't make sense; it's just so damnably abstruse that reading through Powers's book is like slogging through molasses. And it also feels a little too self-consciously brilliant: watch me play with words, Powers seems to say, and see how I can make them do things you never thought possible with 26 letters, punctuation, and a space.
I've never liked beautiful writing for its own sake. Flashy prose, even with something to back it up, is a distraction, a waste of time that could be better spent on authors who lavished more effort on the substance than the style. That's why I've always preferred Hemingway to Faulkner, Carver to Brodkey, Dubliners to Ulysses. As yet, nothing in Powers's book promises that it will evolve into anything more meaningful than a clever play on words and ideas, but I'll probably persevere until the end nonetheless.
Another book finished
February 12, 2003 (2:41 PM) ( link ) In less than 24 hours, I've finished reading Tracy Chevalier's excellent Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's hard to explain why it's good; as I'll probably say in my review, it's a simple tale, but exceedingly well told.
Next on my list is Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations, which, unlike Chevalier's novel, is a big, beefy book, and supposedly dazzling for its brilliance. Well, we'll see about that. I have the good fortune of starting it without any idea what it's about. I don't even know what genre it is, though I get the feeling it's not quite an ordinary book.
As for my usual fare of speculative fiction, I have, easily accessible, the first two volumes of Robin Hobb's latest trilogy, the Tawny Man. But I cannot, cannot start those two now; I need to wait for her to finish the final book in the trilogy. Fortunately, unlike George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan, Hobb seems pretty good about writing on schedule, so her last book should be coming out by next year at the latest. (The second book came out just a month ago.)
Three books finished, reviews pending
February 11, 2003 (1:24 PM) ( link ) Despite my overwhelming class schedule I've somehow managed to finish three novels recently, all of them fairly far afield from my usual fare of speculative fiction: Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, Robertson Davies's The Fifth Business (the first book in his Deptford Trilogy), and Robert Cormier's very bizarre I Am the Cheese. All of them were quite good; I'll be posting reviews of them soon, I hope, once my class schedule settles down and I can figure out how much time I have to devote to this hobby.
Because the New Haven Public Library's speculative fiction offerings are slim, and poorly organized (their science fiction and fantasy section mostly contains pulp novels, while the real stuff is hidden in the fiction stacks), I'm focusing more on ordinary fiction nowadays. Because I was impressed by The Fifth Business, I'm proceeding to the second book in the trilogy, The Manticore. I haven't even opened it yet, but I'm curious about the connections between the two books since the first book follows almost the entire life of a single protagonist, and it would be boring indeed for the next two books to be about that protagonist's increasingly sedentary elderly life. The other book I'm reading, on the basis of a great discussion on reading that I had a few weeks ago, is Tracy Chevalier's The Girl with the Pearl Earring. It's a very slight book--less than 250 pages, I think--so it shouldn't detain me for long.
Waiting in the wings (or, more accurately, piled on my couch) are Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations (as recommended by a friend in mostly rapturous love with Powers's books), Nick Hornby's About a Boy (though I may try High Fidelity first), and Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker.
Another anniversary
February 2, 2003 (11:25 PM) ( link ) Another month has gone by, which means yet another summary of the past month, and another ranking of the Top 5 and Bottom 5 accessed book reviews (as well as a number for the total number of reviews accessed) during the last half month.
In the last month I've read 3 books and written 3 reviews, for a total of 91 books read and 120 reviews writte since September 2001.
And here we go for other statistics:
Total # of Reviews Accessed: 2818
Top 5 Reviews: - Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's [106]
- Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones [96]
- Stephen King's Dreamcatcher [95]
- James Dickey's Deliverance [91]
- Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy [88]
Bottom 5 Reviews:- Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana [3]
- Vernor Vinge's True Names [5]
- Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar [5]
- Connie Willis's Remake [5]
- David Brin's Startide Rising [5]
- Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward [5]
I'm still progressing nicely through The Great Train Robbery and Fifth Business, but unfortunately I also have to read such fascinating tomes as Conflict of Laws, Criminal Law and Its Processes, and Perspectives on Property Law for my classes.
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