Shuffling around, muttering to myself

[itsallovernow]

Um, so I kind of need another victim, volunteer. I've finished the next draft of Blue Eyes, and I need a reader or two. I'm directing this to searose partly (if she has time. I lost the e-mail address for sending the monster files:), and partly to anyone out there with a little time on their hands. It's a lot to ask, and I can see all of my previous betas hiding in the corners, but don't worry, I love you all:) I've just added some things that I need an opinion on, and and overall view of what's still missing.

I'd be eternally grateful.

Sara Donati is talking about books, one's that have gotten recognition, whether deservedly or not, one's that haven't, and has made a list, not of books, but of book categories, so I'm liberating a few of her categories because I keep thinking about them. I've read so many things over the past year that I never would have read, never would have heard of outside of fandom, that I want to explore my reading patterns a little. She was going to do lists of 15, but I'm not sure how many I'll come up with.

My reading habits are kind of goat like. As a kid, and a teenager, I'd read anything you gave me, sucking them up like pixie sticks, as an adult, with more limited time, I tend to avoid the should reads, and the book club reads, and get really pissed off when I find book club questions at the back. I feel like I've been suckered. The end result of this is that I've read a slew of books, and am mostly drawing a blank at these categories, so I'd be interested in hearing other people's responses.

So, throwing some of these categories out there:



Books you'd be glad to have with you on a long plane ride

Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin (I know, this goes on all of my lists)
Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters, because I've read it so many times it's like revisiting, not rereading
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen, for similar reasons
Good Omens, T. Pratchett and N. Gaiman
Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Stand, Stephen King
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

are good to read when you need to laugh
Hmm. I keep thinking Pratchett, or Douglas Adams, but I know there are other authors who make me giggle.

true classics (IMO)
Pride and Prejudice
As I Lay Dying
Beloved
The Awakening
House of Mirth
Dubliners
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Great Gatsby
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner

I read because I had to and liked
Invisible Man
To the Lighthouse
House of Mirth
The Country Girls
The Last September
The Octopus
Jazz


I read because I had to and didn't like
1984, George Orwell
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Sister Carrie
The Jungle
Beowulf!!!


I tried to like, but couldn't
Possession, A.S. Byatt (this is only partly true. She writes beautifully, but I just didn't like the characters).
Wuthering Heights
The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Made me think harder than I wanted to
I know there are shelves of books that should go here.

Helped me understand the way men think, and are different from women.
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
Anything by Robert Parker

Comments

books and beta

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

I have read Into the Wilderness on any number of long plane rides. Also, it occurs to me after reading those last books you recommended to me (whose name has escaped me already), that you should read the non-fiction "A Midwife's Tale" by Lauren Thatcher Ulrich. Reading those books, I wondered if the author had been inspired by A Midwife's Tale.

I can always beta. I have lashings of time. I'm tempted to save my voluntary re-read of Blue Eyes until you're really, really done with it, because I'm honestly better at dealing with commas and logic than I am with big-picture questions of plot and character. So, it's up to you. I'll sign up to read it again either now or right before you post it.

Re: books and beta

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee, it's up to you:) If you're willing to give it another read through, i'd be grateful. However, I'm also pretty intent on saving your goodwill for the final draft, and I need the big picture, character/plot stuff for this one:)

But thanks so much!

I'll take a look at The Midwive's Tale. It sounds interesting.

There are so many books that I know I love and don't talk about, but I get stuck on repeat, the same things springing to mind. I need to sit down and just sweep through my books, put 'em all back in my head:)

Since I know you really love Into the Wilderness, give me a few more of your favorite fiction books.

[kernezelda]

I'll do a readthrough if you like. Don't know how effective I'll be for big picture.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thanks honey!

It's much appreciated!

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

Okay, please tell me about Winter's Tale? By all accounts it's the Best Book Ever Written -- every copy I've had (and I've had several) has six or seven pages of RAVE review excerpts in the front.

I think I've tried to start the book a number of times and never could, but I WANT to read it, so, sell me, would you? And I'll have to go find myself another copy. But tell me, like, what it's about? And why it's good? And what you love about it?

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

All right - selling points.

The first chapter is visual, and beautiful, and loses people. Because it's about the heart of the book, but you haven't read it yet, so how can you know that?

Start with the white horse, breaking free and heading into Manhattan, knowing that something fundamental has changed inside him, that he's leaving a life of labor and drudgery behind.

And then there's Peter Lake, gentleman thief, orphan, hero, blond and balding, and hiding out from the Short Tails, living in the electric stars over on of Manhattan's tall buildings.

Beverly, young, beautiful, dying, and sleeping on the roof of her fathers house, looking out across the city, seeing all of the other tuberculosis patients doing the same thing. And she's young and beautiful, but she needs glasses.
And Virginia, and Hardesty, and the Sun and the Whale - competing newspapers, and rich, visceral, beautiful language.

Memory and loss, and the millenium and the perfect city and snow, a whole modern metropolis shut down by snow because the mayor has been given a title that defines his leadership.

A place in upstate New York that doesn't exist, but does. It really really does.


What do I love about it? I love the language, the absurdities and the idealism, being swept into it. I love that it's about two different times in the same city, neither of them real, but both of them vivid. That's it's about people who love words. And that Helprin makes up whole words and a whole world. I love that I cry at the end, even though it's not sad exactly, and it builds to a perfect point.

Also, honestly, I love that it's hard, that it's work to read because there's so much to take in and so much to balance, but if you can give yourself a huge block of time to fall into it, it surrounds you. It's a terrible read a few pages a night book. It looses to much in the spaces when you're not reading it. And the trade version has that gorgeous picture of sun streaming into Grand Central Station, and my dilapidated, page missing copy has a blue background with stars and snow and a horse hanging out in the air:)

I read it at 18, feeling alone in the world, snowed in at Bennington, curled into my little dorm roombed in the green and white farmhouse while snowflakes tumbled around outside. I didn't leave the room for six hours, and then came back, staying up all night to finish the book:)

Do I think it's the best book ever written? Hmm. That's an awfully big responsability for any book. I know it changed my idea of what you could do with fiction, what rules you were supposed to follow. How idealism could shape text, and how diction shaped character, and how you could convey sensory details without ever talking about the details themselves.

[searose.livejournal.com]

Syrangely enough, you've asked at the right time. Sure, send ahead to me.

mrose1 AT charter dot Net (no spaces)

You really need to get this baby bird flying off and away, don't you?

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I do, I do, otherwise I'm going to grow to attached and never let it out of the nest.

I'm pretending that once I feel like it's done, that all of the formatting issues will just disappear:)

Thanks dear!!

[barkley.livejournal.com]

I read "The Stand" last summer on a long plane ride (and a long weekend) and I was just thinking to myself that I have to start thinking about what this summer's plane ride book will be. It's rather convenient that I've been toting around Lonesome Dove for ten years now without actually reading it.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oh, read it.

It's really one of the finest novels written in the last 20 years. I'm a huge fan of McMurtry. His characterization is so rich and fine and funny and deep and it's long, sprawling, languid and so very good!!