SBTB is, kinda sorta via the NaNoWriMo guy, asking its readers to think about and articulate what they like and what they hate in a book.
It's a challenging thing for me to suss out of my brain. Especially with Cricket leaping around by my feet, meaning someone has to get up every few minutes and cuddle "Clicky." Mike's in bed, as are the other hamsters, so this just leaves me to kiss on the youngest girl. (At this point Edith moves in the shadows, up for a quick wee. How can Shermie and Edith be old hammies now?) As always, I love first world problems.
(And first world solutions. Reese, if you see this, I loved the email. Okay, after a moment I was totally distracted by the fact that hamsters shouldn't be allowed near paper with potential toxic ink and materials, but then I found my sense of humor again and forwarded it to everyone I know. Plus 10 points to you, madam! When will our presidential candidates see the untapped energy source that is small mammalia?)
Back to the issue. What do I like in books? Hrm.
Semi-sidebar: this is why I will never be a popular mommyblogger. Well, one, I'm not a mommy. (In fact, here we are in October and no student has called me "Mom" yet!) But, since most personal blogs seem to be written by mommies, perhaps the language will change. People will start saying it's a "mommyblog" as in "mah me blog," which translates from drawl to English as "my ME blog," which translates from English to Subtext as "my ME ME ME blog."
I am such a me-blogger, and this is mah me-blog. See? It works. But I still can't be a popular mommyblogger because I don't think about the topic then take some care in writing a response that conveys my thoughts in an easy-to-read manner. Instead, the fingers are just providing closed-captioning for whatever drool is greasing the noggin' neurons.
Things I Like to See in Books (Fiction)
(an incomplete, on-the-spot list, which is probably often contradicted by experience)
Small, fascinating facts used as throwaway description. I like to learn something when I read fiction. It doesn't have to be meaningful. It can be fashion facts from a chick lit novel or it can be science from Michael Crichton. I wish I had a log of what I've learned from which book. Like, how to get milk to a reluctant calf or how to twist hay (the Little House books). Or, entailments on estates (all Jane Austen?). Or, tax code ("Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption").
By "throwaway" I guess what I really mean is that the facts can be quite important to the storyline, but they need to be passing moments against a larger landscape of conflict.
Third person point of view, probably omniscient. Not exclusively. I still wet my pants a little when I think about The Virgin Suicides and its first person plural - omg! - point of view.
But I think I usually prefer that my fiction be told in the third person, and I seem to like getting into more than one character's head. Like the way Maeve Binchy puts together her "ensemble cast" novels. Exceptions are flying into my head left and right, but stories told in the first person run too much risk of me not liking the narrator.
Like I said, there are so many exceptions. Any mystery novel, for example, and lately I've been thinking that I need to rediscover that genre. And when it comes to non-fiction, oh my, I prefer first person hands-down. (Exhibit A: blogs. Exhibit B: travel literature. Exhibit C: memoirs, although I can't really recommend that Duran Duran one mentioned in the last post.)
Straightforward timelines. It's not that I can't handle jumping around. The odd flashback that doesn't overstay a page or three? No problem. The new point of view that retraces some period of time already covered with another character? Fine. But other than that, I prefer to start at A, not K, on my way to Z.
Cultural allusions. Anything from a Congreve quote (other than the old saw) to a metaphor-powered quip referencing the ex-girlfriend of the hairstylist for a one-hit wonder Belgian band. If it's obscure, even better, and if I have to work a little for it, that's terrific.
And yet I never could get into David Foster Wallace. That's a mystery. Perhaps I'm a bigger paragraph snob than I thought.
Zippiness. Well, it's true. I like dialogue. There, I said it. I love long passages about the many splendors of Rivendell as much as the next escapist nerd, and world-building is Super Hot, but often I need to feel the constant rhythm.
My aunt will probably then ask why I keep defending the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird. Dude. It's genealogy. It's above the rules!
Speaking of World-Building. It is super hot. Harry Potter. Say no more.
Things I Don't Like to See in Books (Fiction)
Artificial misunderstandings. If you've read at least half of Robert Jordan's (RIP) "Wheel of Time" series, you know my pain. I love the series but O-M-G! Ninety-four percent (I measured) of the conflict would disappear if people simply talked. There's being taciturn and inscrutable, and then there's just being emo. Worse, half of the characters have magic travel skills, so they can - literally - just pop in to people's living rooms or dreams for a quick word. Instead, it's an endless bus drive around Assumption City's largest roundabout.
This is probably why I don't do romance novels. Yes, many are well-written; I'm giving the much-recommended Julia Quinn a try right now and she seems to have a light, fun touch. But because it's such a popular genre, plenty of formulaic crud floats in, too. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy are great because their bad communication makes sense. Characters who don't let each other finish (important) sentences or who forget what started the whole conversation because they get sidetracked into petty stuff? No bueno.
Bad sex. Book sex has to move the plot, not the earth. Okay, I'm lying a little. If the sex includes character-enhancing dialogue and (as a bonus) world-building, the story itself can stand still. Ditto anything instructive. (I'm thinking historical/cultural erotic trivia, but specific dance moves are fine, sure, okay.) But generic quivering and smoldering? Meh. See criticism of (the bad) romance novels above.
Mary Sues. As I've mentioned before, I stopped reading the Outlander series when I decided that its narrator had become Too Perfect and Beloved for This World. I don't mind a hero who is an expert, but know-it-alls turn me off.
Maybe sometimes it's a girl thing. I know I recently tossed aside a novel that sounded pretty good - soldier goes to Iraq, becomes a vampire, and comes back to the US to work as a sort of top secret government operative. By page 15 I was so sick of this guy's posturing and jadedness that I began to miss Anne Rice's vampires. Even the ones who found religion. Even the ones that are just character beards for Rice's textile novels. ("The green velvet drapes hung like crushed posies wilted in a Baccarat vase. Lestat had ordered them from the Pottery Barn spring catalog, page 73. The fabric made a satisfying whisper in the breeze, its reedy color matching the watered silk cushions that lay on the floor. For coordinating rug and lampshade, see insert.")
Nothing funny. Not even a villain with the parting bon mot. C'mon. Even Jane Eyre has its flicker of rueful mirth. Look at Shakespeare's tragedies - is Romeo and Juliet not pound-for-pound funnier than Twelfth Night?
Which reminds me: anything in disguise. It's too tense. I can't say it never works for me, but I don't like waiting for the inevitable.
Which also reminds me: inevitabilities that take too long to happen. I'm not one of those people who can read the ending of a book first. I don't want to know what's coming. If I do figure it out, either confirm it and move on, or distract me with some hocus-pocus until I'm not sure what I believe. I love having to change positions on what will happen next.
Manipulative pet deaths. I was sure something bad was going to happen to Rex, the pet hamster in the Stephanie Plum novels. That he was still kicking (and wheeling) at least through book 12 is a testament to author Janet Evanovich's authorly wisdom. (Although she does need to read a pet forum or two. Poor Rex seems to live entirely on Stephanie's leftovers, and I don't think I've ever seen him play. It's a Habitrail, people. Not an aquarium.)
I'm not saying that people can die in books but pets can't. But if you're going to kill the pet, remember that it's the pet. It doesn't get half a paragraph of "Oh no! What happened?" then, a few chapters later, "The pain would never be gone, but Joanie didn't have time for tears now. The yacht was sailing in 30 minutes, and Doug would not be happy if she showed up late again."
It's just bad territory for an author, I think. The pet is usually helpless. The pet's memory is not going to honored throughout the rest of the book. (Unlike, say, a slain colleague or ill family member.) The pet couldn't speak, so there are frustrating gaps of information. If murdered, the pet's killer is never going to come to enough justice.
The obvious exceptions are those where the pet is central to the story. This comes to mind.
Oh dear. I shouldn't have read that. I got through most of the summary thinking, "I know I loved this story as a kid, but I'd probably not enjoy all that hunting now."
And then I made it to the end and, damnit, now I have itchy eyes. From rubbing them. From when I was trying to make the water stop.
Now to stop thinking about reading and actually do it. In addition to Quinn's Regency romance and a stack of Phryne Fishers, I'm trying out Craig Ferguson's novel.
You know, after university and the first few years of teaching, I thought I had lost my ability to read more than a few fiction books per year. But in the last six months or so, it's like I'm eleven again. Trips to the library! Reading under the covers with a flashlight! Okay, not the last, but sprawling on the sofa til all hours - on a school night! - because I don't want to put the book down is just as illicit. At this rate, I'll eventually remember why I became an English teacher.
Hey.... I still think of Little House whenever it snows and wonder if maple syrup candy on snow is really THAT GOOD.
And then there's coloring butter with carrots....
Posted by: heather in pa | 06 October 2008 at 10:35 AM