Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

 

“Writing is writing, and stories are stories.  Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction.  And even there, who can be sure?”

—Tanith Lee, interview, Tabula Rasa, #4, October 1994

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I've always got several books going at once. Generally, one (maybe two) fiction books, and a trail of nonfiction. Some nonfiction I read for the pure pleasure of it—so no note-taking is required. Those books I can usually work my way through in a decent amount of time. But not always. I'm a flibbertigibbet, I guess. Mind. Makes. Many. Jumps.

Most of the nonfiction books I read, though, are working for their supper: I'm doing research for something I'm writing, or something I'm doing, or something I'm in the process of becoming. In those cases, I have to stop several times a page and jot things down. I still jot things down rather than key them directly into the laptop because otherwise (I've learned through painful experience) the note-taking gets totally out of hand. If I have to write it out, I'm much more circumspect and concise. Still, it's not uncommon for me to wind up with forty or fifty pages of notes for a 400-500 page book. In my own defense, some of those notes also include story ideas that the book has generated, or other kinds of ideas generated, and yes, I will admit it, the occasional snarky comment. Example:

p. 45 - Dreams of headless horsemen riding through pumpkin patches are not uncommon.
     [a good story here: a headless horseman who replaces his head with a Jack o'Lantern]*
     [though perhaps my dreams of pumpkin-headed men have more meaning than I thought: what is the deeper significance of pumpkin-headedness?]
     [pumpkin-headed horseman reminds me a lot of X's last boyfriend]

Go ahead, laugh. I laugh at myself all the time.

And if I'm honest, a great deal of these notes are just hyperactive, nervous energy note-taking. Still, the act of writing things down has always made ideas penetrate deeper into my unconscious. Years later when I need to refresh my memory about what I learned while reading these books they're invaluable. Much easier to read forty pages of notes than to reread a 400 page book, and sometimes I don't get around to actually using this stuff in my writing for a long, long time.

I've read a great deal of nonfiction this month. That kind of month. I've been working my way alternately through The Philosopher's Secret Fire by Patrick Harpur (for general interest, research, and enlightenment all three—though I have some problems with it. But that's another post.); Meeting with the Other Crowd by Eddie Lenihan (mostly research, but a fun read nonetheless); Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes (enlightenment, mostly, but it's generating a hell of a lot of story ideas and deeper insights into characters, so ftw all the way around); and Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman (just because I'm interested and Colette had an amazing life).

I didn't get through much fiction this month. Nor did I finish any of that nonfiction. I finished one book then started reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon. Dudes, I read over 400 pages and still wasn't halfway through, so it's gone on hiatus for awhile. Good, but I needed a rest.

( Here are October's grim totals for those with a grim fascination. )

*Yeah, I know this has been done before. It's a seasonal hypothetical, dude.

I should be doing something productive, I'm sure, but I'm wrung out by the week just passed. So instead of being productive, I thought I'd do a review of what I've been reading over the last couple of months (well, the high points). Since it's been busy, I've puttered around with this post on and off for a week, adding to it here and there when I needed a break in the action. I've mostly been reading junk because I have to squeeze it in just before bed when my brain can't absorb much. But I've found that reading is as vital to me as writing and that even if it bears no relation to what I'm writing, it feeds my head in important ways. Keeps me fluid in a way I'm not quite sure I can define, except to say that when I went through a phase of reading nothing but nonfiction for three or four years, I found my imagination dessicating. Fiction opens up channels that otherwise suffer from drought. And I actually have read a few amazing books in the last couple of months.

Whatever. Always with the preambles, me. Let's do the lighterweight stuff first. I haven't bothered to review the really junky stuff because I would probably not want to admit to those publicly.

So, I just finished Nobody Loves A Centurion by John Maddox Roberts, number 6 in his SPQR series centering around an Ancient Roman detective (they seem to be proliferating these days). Although Roberts' stuff isn't as creamy-dreamy and evocative as Steven Saylor's Sub Rosa series, his Decius Caecilius Metellus is still enjoyable. Saylor manages to put you right into Old Rome, really transcends the detective genre and makes something rich and profound of it. Roberts is more workmanlike, easy to follow, no big surprises, perfect for when you want to turn your brain off and drift. But his character, Decius, is fun (so sue me, I love rebellious bad boys) and what I really enjoy about Roberts' books are the parallels he draws between Rome at the end days of the Republic and America at the end days of . . . Nothing heavy-handed about it, though, which is fun.

Before that I read The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters. Her Amelia Peabody series is hilarious, good fun. Peters got her Ph.D. in Egyptology from U of Chi so she knows her stuff and uses it to recreate the golden age of Egyptology, the days of Flinders Petrie and Wallis Budge, usually combining "digs" with a loving parody of books in the H. Rider Haggard/She school of adventure writing. (In fact, in one of these books, she even had a character named Leo Vincey.) Her MC, Amelia Peabody Emerson, is reliable in many things, but amusingly unreliable in other areas, and the reader (and usually everyone else in the story) is in on the joke even when Amelia hasn't a clue. The books are peopled by funny, eccentric characters, including her bombastic archaeologist husband, Emerson, and their hyper-precocious son, Ramses. The dialogue tends to be fast and funny. The first book in the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank, wasn't quite as enthralling as the others—not bad, enjoyable, but she didn't have Amelia's world in place that make the other books such fun. By the second book, The Curse of the Pharaohs, she really hits her stride.

Before that, I actually read something sff: Shadow by K.J. Parker. Hmmm. What to say about that? I admired Parker's narrative. He used a simple, spare narrative voice to tell a very complex story. His MC wakes up on the page with amnesia at the same time that the reader "wakes up" on the page. He's in a war-torn world full of rapacious factions and has no idea which he belongs to and whether he's a good guy or a bad. And there's this crazy con woman who convinces him to pose as an apocalyptic god named Poldarn so they can travel the countryside bilking the peasantry. The character (who comes to call himself Poldarn for lack of a better name) and the reader stumble through a pastiche of surreal experience; dreams which may or may not belong to Poldarn and may or may not be relevant to Poldarn's own life; flashes of memory; and disorienting, brief shifts into the POV of another character, an assassin monk. The gradual build up of sense and detail from seemingly random experience and maybe-life history, and the ever-shifting realities in this book were handled impressively, I thought. Unfortunately, this is the first book of one of those chunkin' trilogies. It just ends. There's some resolution, but not enough, so it cheesed me off to have invested nearly 600 pages and still be left with important questions unresolved. So much so that I haven't gotten around to buying the second book yet. I hate that feeling of manipulation. But I probably will buy the second book, Pattern, eventually.

Okay, and I even read something sort of litficky, although one was sff litficky and one was erotickish litficky--but the sentences were real purdy.

The erotickish litficky book was The Pillow Boy of Lady Onogoro by Alison Fell. Really beautiful writing and captivating, fanciful story. It's set in 11th century Japan and centers around a young woman poet at the Imperial court. She's befriended by the great woman poet Izumi Shikibu and many lovely translations of the short Japanese poetry of Izumi are scattered throughout, as well as the poems of our heroine, the Lady Onogoro. Back in the day, there were many respected women poets in the Japanese court. But the heart of the story revolves around the fact that Lady O can't have orgasms with her current lover, General Motosuke, who has taken her on as his official mistress (a respectable position in this society). In polite Japanese society of the day, it was considered improper for a man to take his gratification before he'd seen to the gratification of his partner. Hurray for propriety! But this does present a problem for Lady O and makes the general wonder if she really likes him. So the stable boy, Oyu, renowned for his storytelling, hides behind the bed screen near Lady O's head and secretly whispers erotic tales to her while the general is occupied lower down on her body. There isn't anything turgid and throbbing going on, but it is sexy. And there's some court intrigue and meditations not only on love but on happiness and the meaning of life and etc., etc. And plenty of fabulist elements, too, incorporating a lot of Japanese folk tales and the like. Just a lovely book.

Then there was Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy. It bears no relation to that horrid movie that was out a year or so ago (although they may have stolen the concept from Joyce). Basically, Joyce's novel is a coming of age story told through the prism of darkly fantastic, hallucinogenic experience. A boy named Sam loses a tooth and leaves it under his pillow but when the tooth fairy comes to fetch it, he wakes up, catching her in the act. Once he's seen her he can't unsee her and that begins a years-long mutual obsession, often dark and disquieting. Sam's fermenting adolescence only makes things hotter and stranger—and there are so many layers of strange in this novel, so much fantastically rich experience going, all within the confines of a tiny Northern English town that it's rather like spending too much time in a hothouse. It's claustrophobic but I loved it. The language is gorgeous, and I buzzed through the first half as obsessively as the characters buzz through their lives. But I had to take a break about midway through to catch my breath. Once I picked it up again, I was once more caught up in the spell and blazed my way through the second half.

Oh right, I also read Charlaine Harris's latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead to the World. You know, I loved the first two of these books. They were funny, with great characters, setting, and worldbuilding—just goofy and wacky enough but not too much. The third book was pretty good, but not as good for some reason. I guess it was because the narrative seemed to wander a bit, but the characters were just as strong, I thought. This fourth one—some things I liked a lot, some just didn't work at all for me. The narrative really wanders in this one and there's a climactic fight scene that reads more like a rushed first draft to me. Harris has got two series going at once (and a third on hiatus) and she's pumping out a book every six months and I'm wondering if that's the problem. Whatever, I highly recommend the first two, and the entire series is worth a read to watch the characters evolve.

So those are all the books I'll admit to. Now I'll try to move on to something productive. Maybe.