In which I am a cranky reader
Apr. 15th, 2012 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerWho has gotten out of the habit of writing regularly, and getting back into shape hurts.
Anyway. I've also just been having trouble finding books and movies that interest me enough to write about. Grimdarkness seems popular these days, but just the summaries of those books bore me. So they swear a bit more and have a few more overt jerks, and otherwise everything is exactly the same? Same Ye Olde McEuropean setting, same band of mostly-white-men, same epic battle scenes, same characters getting utterly ignored, same everything. (Also, the whole schtick is "realism," but there's a lot of hints that they totally aren't, they're just the same recycled fantasies putting the same people in the center of the universe as always. Plus, in freaking fantasy and science fiction, upper body strength doesn't have to be such a deciding factor in social relations! Ranged weapons and magic could shake things up a bit, you know.) But then, I thought A Song of Ice and Fire was a decently-written example of its type which gave slightly more page time to people who weren't guys named Jack or John, not the super-original masterpiece the rest of the internet told me it was. And it was problematic from the start, and now seems to be collapsing under its own weight instead of progressing.
Classic sf/f? See the Jack and John link again, or this. Amazing new works which subvert the genre? Not that I saw. YA? A whole lot of shit like this, and the few books that I did love, I loved because of content and what they would have meant to me when I was 10, not their amazing prose style or convincing worldbuilding. (Graceling, I love you, but there would be someone on that Council who wasn't primarily motivated by noble ideals. Sorry.) Series like The Last Apprentice appear to be slowly undermining your expectations and subverting gender tropes, but I no longer hold out hope that this is actually the case; probably it will turn out to be an accident, the Spook will get a Dumbledorish ending where everyone agrees he was a great guy even if he did make the occasional mistake like drugging his girlfriend and locking her in the basement, and Alice will settle down to name her babies after Tom's relatives. (I still love the illustrations and the version of story in my head, though.) Fantasy set in places other than McEurope? Hooray, except for the stereotypes and bad writing. I take back my original hope that having more of these will eventually produce more good stuff set elsewhere than McEurope. Not unless some other things change, anyway. As it is, we'll probably just get a lot of bad books with bad stereotypes.
Even overall really good books have background issues that bother me the entire time I'm reading, like a pebble in my shoe, and make me wish I were reading a different book where those issues were addressed and made things more awesome. And series? I enjoyed Acacia: The War with the Mein and was so looking forward to Acacia: The Other Lands, only to feel nothing but "meh" about it. (Wait, I take it back. The repeated use of the phrase "plant a child in her" made me want to throw things. Hi, Aristotle! I did not want to run into you here. It wasn't necessary.) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had bits I liked quite a lot (Kinneth's backstory and the sociopolitical worldbuilding parts, eg), but the angsty dangerous supernatural boyfriend just did nothing for me. It's an id vortex thing, I suspect, and that isn't my id. So I haven't read The Broken Kingdoms yet. Especially since I know it features another angsty immortal boyfriend. Yes, I'm oversimplifying. I just don't care enough to tease out how these angsty immortal dudes' romantic subplots are different from all the others.
And I had the misfortune to re-read the trial scene of To Kill a Mockingbird a few months ago. In 8th grade, I liked this book. Now? FUCK YOU, ATTICUS FINCH. He's talked to Tom plenty preparing for the trial, and so must have already heard the part of Tom's story where Mayella mentions how it wasn't like with her father. One of the linchpins of his case is that her father beat the crap out of her, not Tom. And another linchpin is that you shouldn't judge people based on a stereotype. So... why doesn't his summation exhort the jury not to let Bob Ewell get away with not only accusing an innocent man, but beating his terrified daughter into backing his story? No, instead he says - and he's never met Mayella before this day, mind - that Mayella lied because that's what white women do when they get caught breaking a taboo. Way not to buy into stereotypes! And ignore, you know, blatantly obvious evidence that she's terrified of her father and what the hell does Atticus think is going to happen to her if she contradicts Bob in public? Has Atticus stepped in to offer her and the kids protection from Bob? Has it even occurred to him that it might be necessary even though he knows Bob is abusive? Pfff. Mayella was lying about the identity of the perpetrator, but dollars to doughnuts she was telling the truth about one thing: she was raped. By her father. And Atticus not only has no clue, but essentially calls her a lying tramp, and a childish one at that. As I said before, FUCK YOU, ATTICUS FINCH.
Sometimes it's entertaining to break these kinds of books down and figure out where they went wrong for me... but a lot of the time, it's so much the same that it gets repetitive.
I have started some interesting non-fiction, at least. I just got to a chapter in Buffalo Bill's America about Bill's connections with Bram Stoker and his influence on the portrayal of both the Texan character and Dracula himself. Who would have guessed! Arming America is also a very interesting mythbusting book so far. The early colonists all had guns and loved them and were amazing shots, right. Never mind that no one was an amazing shot because guns back then sucked, or that there weren't any gunmakers on the entire continent and Europe wasn't about to ship its entire stock of guns and powder over, or all the letters about how nobody in the Wherever Militia had guns or knew how to use them, or the testimony of George Washington that almost none of the Continental soldiers had or knew how to use guns either. (He could not tell a lie. American men sucked at shooting each other and the army was lucky to be 3/4 armed after great effort to acquire more arms.) Also, I re-read The Orphan's Tales and remembered what it's like to read amazing fiction which doesn't sucker-punch you as soon as you let your guard down and start to like it.
So. Any suggestions on what I should write about? Even ranting about bad books is a lot more people when others join in. Or if you really want to know about witchcraft and gender issues in The Last Apprentice, or to join me in analyzing the Stars in The Orphan's Tales (there's a lot about memory and being women - even when they technically aren't - and being lost and wanting to be a kid again and wanting your mommy), or to find out why Baby Sunny didn't like old-fashioned chivalry in fiction any better than grimdarkness, or a comparison of early female separatist utopia stories Herland and Sultana's Dream (with or without modern descendants). I just need some motivation.
Anyway. I've also just been having trouble finding books and movies that interest me enough to write about. Grimdarkness seems popular these days, but just the summaries of those books bore me. So they swear a bit more and have a few more overt jerks, and otherwise everything is exactly the same? Same Ye Olde McEuropean setting, same band of mostly-white-men, same epic battle scenes, same characters getting utterly ignored, same everything. (Also, the whole schtick is "realism," but there's a lot of hints that they totally aren't, they're just the same recycled fantasies putting the same people in the center of the universe as always. Plus, in freaking fantasy and science fiction, upper body strength doesn't have to be such a deciding factor in social relations! Ranged weapons and magic could shake things up a bit, you know.) But then, I thought A Song of Ice and Fire was a decently-written example of its type which gave slightly more page time to people who weren't guys named Jack or John, not the super-original masterpiece the rest of the internet told me it was. And it was problematic from the start, and now seems to be collapsing under its own weight instead of progressing.
Classic sf/f? See the Jack and John link again, or this. Amazing new works which subvert the genre? Not that I saw. YA? A whole lot of shit like this, and the few books that I did love, I loved because of content and what they would have meant to me when I was 10, not their amazing prose style or convincing worldbuilding. (Graceling, I love you, but there would be someone on that Council who wasn't primarily motivated by noble ideals. Sorry.) Series like The Last Apprentice appear to be slowly undermining your expectations and subverting gender tropes, but I no longer hold out hope that this is actually the case; probably it will turn out to be an accident, the Spook will get a Dumbledorish ending where everyone agrees he was a great guy even if he did make the occasional mistake like drugging his girlfriend and locking her in the basement, and Alice will settle down to name her babies after Tom's relatives. (I still love the illustrations and the version of story in my head, though.) Fantasy set in places other than McEurope? Hooray, except for the stereotypes and bad writing. I take back my original hope that having more of these will eventually produce more good stuff set elsewhere than McEurope. Not unless some other things change, anyway. As it is, we'll probably just get a lot of bad books with bad stereotypes.
Even overall really good books have background issues that bother me the entire time I'm reading, like a pebble in my shoe, and make me wish I were reading a different book where those issues were addressed and made things more awesome. And series? I enjoyed Acacia: The War with the Mein and was so looking forward to Acacia: The Other Lands, only to feel nothing but "meh" about it. (Wait, I take it back. The repeated use of the phrase "plant a child in her" made me want to throw things. Hi, Aristotle! I did not want to run into you here. It wasn't necessary.) The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms had bits I liked quite a lot (Kinneth's backstory and the sociopolitical worldbuilding parts, eg), but the angsty dangerous supernatural boyfriend just did nothing for me. It's an id vortex thing, I suspect, and that isn't my id. So I haven't read The Broken Kingdoms yet. Especially since I know it features another angsty immortal boyfriend. Yes, I'm oversimplifying. I just don't care enough to tease out how these angsty immortal dudes' romantic subplots are different from all the others.
And I had the misfortune to re-read the trial scene of To Kill a Mockingbird a few months ago. In 8th grade, I liked this book. Now? FUCK YOU, ATTICUS FINCH. He's talked to Tom plenty preparing for the trial, and so must have already heard the part of Tom's story where Mayella mentions how it wasn't like with her father. One of the linchpins of his case is that her father beat the crap out of her, not Tom. And another linchpin is that you shouldn't judge people based on a stereotype. So... why doesn't his summation exhort the jury not to let Bob Ewell get away with not only accusing an innocent man, but beating his terrified daughter into backing his story? No, instead he says - and he's never met Mayella before this day, mind - that Mayella lied because that's what white women do when they get caught breaking a taboo. Way not to buy into stereotypes! And ignore, you know, blatantly obvious evidence that she's terrified of her father and what the hell does Atticus think is going to happen to her if she contradicts Bob in public? Has Atticus stepped in to offer her and the kids protection from Bob? Has it even occurred to him that it might be necessary even though he knows Bob is abusive? Pfff. Mayella was lying about the identity of the perpetrator, but dollars to doughnuts she was telling the truth about one thing: she was raped. By her father. And Atticus not only has no clue, but essentially calls her a lying tramp, and a childish one at that. As I said before, FUCK YOU, ATTICUS FINCH.
Sometimes it's entertaining to break these kinds of books down and figure out where they went wrong for me... but a lot of the time, it's so much the same that it gets repetitive.
I have started some interesting non-fiction, at least. I just got to a chapter in Buffalo Bill's America about Bill's connections with Bram Stoker and his influence on the portrayal of both the Texan character and Dracula himself. Who would have guessed! Arming America is also a very interesting mythbusting book so far. The early colonists all had guns and loved them and were amazing shots, right. Never mind that no one was an amazing shot because guns back then sucked, or that there weren't any gunmakers on the entire continent and Europe wasn't about to ship its entire stock of guns and powder over, or all the letters about how nobody in the Wherever Militia had guns or knew how to use them, or the testimony of George Washington that almost none of the Continental soldiers had or knew how to use guns either. (He could not tell a lie. American men sucked at shooting each other and the army was lucky to be 3/4 armed after great effort to acquire more arms.) Also, I re-read The Orphan's Tales and remembered what it's like to read amazing fiction which doesn't sucker-punch you as soon as you let your guard down and start to like it.
So. Any suggestions on what I should write about? Even ranting about bad books is a lot more people when others join in. Or if you really want to know about witchcraft and gender issues in The Last Apprentice, or to join me in analyzing the Stars in The Orphan's Tales (there's a lot about memory and being women - even when they technically aren't - and being lost and wanting to be a kid again and wanting your mommy), or to find out why Baby Sunny didn't like old-fashioned chivalry in fiction any better than grimdarkness, or a comparison of early female separatist utopia stories Herland and Sultana's Dream (with or without modern descendants). I just need some motivation.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-19 09:18 am (UTC)Buffalo Bill's America about Bill's connections with Bram Stoker and his influence on the portrayal of both the Texan character and Dracula himself.
Oooh! This is very interesting. I've just re-read Dracula, and I adore Quincy Morris (pretty much the only competent character in the book. When there is a rabid wolf loose he patrols with a rifle, he never complains being dragged of to go vamp-hunting and is basically chummy with everyone. Van Helsing on the other hand is always disappear at the worst moments and withholds information like he has grudge or something. It's always "No, I cannot tell you now!" "Ooops, Lucy died. I sort of guessed she would, but I could not be assed to tel anyone about it" etc. etc. Morris just shoots things. Much simpler.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-19 06:29 pm (UTC)It's a very interesting book! I thought of you, actually, since it's all about the construction of the "Wild West" image in the media (dime novels, the Wild West exposition, etc.) and Buffalo Bill's creation of his image, and the back-and-forth between the people back east knowing it's a construct and enjoying teasing out what's real and what's a tall tale on the one hand and kind of believing it on the other.