books and memes and memes and books

[jazzfish]

I no longer remember who I got this from.

1) Favourite genre

Oh, let's start off with the easy ones, shall we. This past year or two I guess it's "space opera," I can count four series offhand that I'm fond of (Bear's Jacob's Ladder, Leckie's Imperial Radch, Lee's Machineries of Empire, Williams's Dread Empire's Fall). All of those are doing something interesting with it beyond the basic tropes, though.

2) Currently reading

Halfway through Graydon Saunders's The Human Dress, which I've been working at off and on since last April. It is Slow Going and I'm not sure why; maybe the language. I'm reading Emily Wilson's lovely translation of the Odyssey to Erin some nights. And I'm still carting around Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History for when I need a print fix.

3) First book you remember loving

The Phantom Tollbooth, back in elementary school. Though I was in I think eighth grade when I read the bit where Milo doesn't want to swim back through the Sea of Knowledge from the Isle of Conclusions, to which he has jumped, and Canby says "Oh, I wouldn't worry, most people can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and come out dry as a bone," and blinked, and read it again, and burst out laughing.

4) Book/series you wish would be adapted to film

MURDERBOT MURDERBOT MURDERBOT. I dunno, this is honestly a weird question for me. I don't really visualise as I read. Murderbot's pretty great, though.

5) Favourite protagonist

James Cobham from Brust & Bull's Freedom And Necessity.

6) Favourite antagonist

Ayt Mada from Fonda Lee's Green Bones books. Utterly convinced of her rightness and may actually be right.

7) Do you write any stories?

Ha. Not lately, let's say.

8) A movie you think was better than the book

Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Everyone says The Godfather and lots of folks say The Princess Bride, and they're not wrong either.

9) Best book you've read this year

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose The Time War. Lesbian time-travel adventure and romance, told half in epistolary format.

10) A favourite author

John M. Ford (RIP).

11) Least favourite genre

I... don't know that I have one? I don't really read romances or westerns, but I've enjoyed when bits of those genres have snuck into other things I've read.

12) Book you'd recommend to a friend

This depends so very heavily on the friend's tastes that it's a useless question. I give away copies of The Dragon Waiting when I find them but it's even odds whether they'll actually go to someone who appreciates it.

13) Favourite film adaptation of a book

The Rankin-Bass Hobbit, for paring the essential story down to its barest bones and still having it be intelligible, and for the amazing voice-acting. John Huston will always be my Gandalf.

14) Book you've read the most times

Any given volume of the Belgariad. I'm pretty gentle with my books but I literally wore out my first copy of Pawn of Prophecy and had to replace it.

15) A book you didn't expect to like

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I hated Cryptonomicon SO MUCH for its unwillingness to engage with the zillion stray plot-threads it left lying around, and I'm told the Baroque Cycle was more of the same. But Anathem ... was great fun, and even had a pretty good ending. (Then REAMDE was just awful, and I've stayed away from Stephenson since.)

16) Favourite classic book

Is Catch-22 a classic? Mm, only I reread it a few years ago and the rampant misogyny kind of turned me off.

17) Book that's impacted you the most

Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny. I got to the end ("Jack wondered if he would arrive in time") and said "He can't do that!" and then thought about it and decided that yeah, he could.

18) If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?

The living one.

19) An author you think more people should know about

I mentioned Mike Ford above, so this time I'll go with Graydon Saunders. His Commonwealth novels are dense epic fantasy that are not at all what you think of when you read the words "epic fantasy." They explore the larger-scale consequences of having Evil Powers rise up and take over your world every so often, and of a society that's trying to get itself into the future in a way that doesn't allow for that.

20) Favourite book/series of all time

Ugh. The Dragon Waiting, I guess, if you held a gun to my head.

Comments

[davidgoldfarb]

I've read The Human Dress and I'm willing to say that it is objectively just not as good a book as any of the Commonwealth books. The prose isn't as fluent or well-constructed, and frankly the structure is kind of a mess. For whatever reason, he wanted to write a big sprawling multi-thread ensemble cast book: but there is one thread that is hugely stronger and more interesting than the others, and paring the rest away to focus on that one character...would have been a much more conventional choice, but you know, the conventions exist for reasons. (I'd be willing to bet that you know which character I mean.)

The book starts too early: it should start with the beginning of that character's story; and (mild spoiler alert, so I'll ROT-13) vg tbrf ba gbb ybat. Gurer'f bar vapvqrag gung vf gur raq bs gur punenpgre'f fgbel — lbh'yy xabj vg jura lbh trg gb vg — ohg gurer ner n qbmra puncgref nsgre gung, naq gurer vf abg bar jbeq va gurz gung V qba'g svaq fhcresyhbhf.