Fantasy author Robert Jordan has died. I wasn’t a fan, but lots of readers are. Condolences to family, friends, and fans.
A publishing-type question
Save the Books!
Yesterday was my favorite quarterly event: the Book Sale at my local public library. I adore this sale! And as usual, my haul amounted to under ten bucks. Here is just the stuff I got for myself:
I’m not sure how much, if anything, of today’s haul represents a find that I can hawk on eBay. I was able to sell two of the volumes I picked up at the last book sale for more than twice what I paid for that entire haul, which was nice. We’ll see. Those O. Henry collections may go nicely, as may that TPB edition of Antartica (which turns out to be a British printing). I don’t know if I’ll sell that Tolkien volume; I already have both of those tales in another volume, but that paperback is in outstanding condition, save for the original owner’s signature inside the front cover. We’ll see.
What’s always kind of bittersweet at these kinds of sales is reading the cover copy on the books themselves, with blurbs along the lines of “Another breathtaking classic from one of our very finest authors!” or “Certain to be read for many years to come!” These kinds of notices adorn books that no one much remembers at all today. How many stories have come and gone, almost completely vanishing, their only hopes at revival being on the shelves of a library sale where the paperbacks go at the rate of five for a buck? When I see so many volumes whose contents will almost certainly be gone forever in just a few more decades, I wonder how true it is that the cream rises to the top. Far more likely, it seems to me, that authors who rival the finest still read — the Jane Austens, the Henry Jameses, the Eudora Weltys — have come and gone without ever being realized. No, the cream doesn’t always rise to the top. Sometimes it just gets washed away, right down the sluice drain.
OK, that got a little depressing, didn’t it? Anyway, if you like to read, there’s really no reason to not frequent your local library’s book sale. They need the money, and the books need to be read.
Share This Post
Book Quiz!
I don’t think I’ve seen this quiz before I ran across it at Sheila’s place, which seems odd, because surely by now I’ve seen (and done) every blog quiz that exists, right?
Anyway, it’s about books:
What are you reading right now?
The Star King by Jack Vance; Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint Exupery; The Discovery of Poetry by Francis Mayes; The Forgetting Room by Nick Bantock.
Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?
Yes. And no.
I’ve fallen hard for personal travel narratives, so I have a few of those out of the library right now. I also have three books by Anais Nin out — a collection of essays, a general-purpose reader, and what appears to be a later portion of her unexpurgated diary — but after dipping into these, I think I’d rather start at the beginning and track down Volume One of that diary for myself.
I also need to do some dipping into the various Year’s Best anthologies of SF and fantasy.
What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?
Our bathroom isn’t big enough to keep many magazines; usually there’s just the most recent issue of Time in there. I do read magazines in there; it’s just that I bring them back out when I’m done. You know how it is. (That said, Cooking Light is a good magazine for in there.)
What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?
I loathed The Yearling, and I loathed the teacher who assigned it, especially when she gave me a low grade on my report because I dared admit that I thought the book was boring dreck.
A close second would be Ordinary People, the dysfunctional-family novel that had me rooting for the characters to reach for the full bottle of sleeping pills.
What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?
I tend to be very gun-shy about recommending books. The ones I’d most tend to recommend are deeply personal to me on some level, to the point that I’d likely have a difficult time reconciling it if I recommended it to a close friend only to receive a “Meh” response.
That being the case, I have a very dear friend to whom I have gifted copies of, among others, GGK’s Lions of Al-Rassan, Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine series, and Joel ben Izzy’s The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness. I have no idea if she’s read any of them. In a way, it doesn’t matter.
Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?
I don’t know if they do or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me. We visit weekly. I’m always nonplussed when I meet voracious readers who don’t use their libraries; way I see it, why should I limit my reading to only those books I can afford to buy?
Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?
See above, really. I do wish I knew more people who loved the kinds of books I do, though. My reading soulmate is out there, somewhere!
Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?
In order: only if dining alone; no, since I shower, although I did read books while soaking in my parents’ hot tub before I moved out; if others in the clan are watching something I don’t much care about; yes; I used to, in order to pass time while waiting for downloads in my dial-up days; I can’t read with my eyes closed (wow, did I just reveal too much information about myself); Lord, NO! Bad things happen that way, like you can die in a fiery wreck, and then you’re just a burnt crisp who doesn’t even get to find out who did it or if Prince Flatulent manages to save the Realm.
When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?
Not really. In early grade school, I gave them other material to work with, by virtue of being the fat kid with no fashion sense at all and no athletic ability to speak of (save swimming, which I was apparently no slouch at). Later on, in high school, classmates would voice their befuddlement at the mere idea of reading for pleasure, but this was never teasing or ridiculing, just “Wow, I don’t know how you do that.”
What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?
I’m actually pretty good at putting books aside to get some sleep, since eventually I actually do fall asleep, which I always take as a sign that it’s time to reach for the bookmark. I did plow through the second half of Harry Potter Episode VII in a single afternoon. And yes, I distracted The Daughter by having her play computer games for…well, let’s just say it was longer than I should have, OK?
And there you go.
Share This Post
Quite contrary….
We are now making our way through the Little House books with The Daughter, reading a bit of them to her each night at bedtime. I’m missing large portions of the story, though, because she continues reading after we do our requisite fifteen minutes or so, which means that each night I’m picking up quite a ways after the place I’d left off. The books seem really disjointed that way.
But one thing I notice is that each time in the books that little Laura gets into some bit of trouble, no matter how small, Our Narrator (grown-up Laura, obviously) solemnly informs us just how good older sister Mary is, and how Mary never gets in trouble because she’s just so good. And sure enough, Mary in the books seems to be a few diddlies away from leaving the Ingallses and becoming a Flanders.
That’s that, I guess. It sounded more interesting before I wrote it.
Share This Post
Stop it, Ken. You’re freaking me out.
I bet [J.K. ] Rowling’s first post-Harry Potter book -– talk about a hard act to follow -– will be a classic mystery of some kind. I don’t know if it’ll be a hard-boiled gumshoe case, a true-crime police procedural, a classic manor-house throwback, or what, but it’ll be a mystery novel. She’s been writing them all along, after all. It’s just that no one’s noticed.
J.K. Rowling has been spotted at cafes in Scotland working on a detective novel, a British newspaper reported Saturday.
The Sunday Times newspaper quoted Ian Rankin, a fellow author and neighbor of Rowling’s, as saying the creator of the “Harry Potter” books is turning to crime fiction.
Hey Ken, if you could e-mail me confidentially with the winners of the next ten Super Bowls, World Series, Stanley Cups, NCAA Men’s Basketball tournaments, and Kentucky Derbies, I’d be highly appreciative. Thanks!
Share This Post
Brief Bleg
For various reasons, I suddenly find myself keenly interested in the writings of Anais Nin. Problem is, I’m a bit confused by the titles that exist out there, between diaries and unexpurgated diaries and books that are extracts from her diaries and so on. Can anyone tell me where a good starting point for Anais Nin might be?
Share This Post
Why I am a horrible father, part XLVI
This week, we’ve started reading Little House in the Big Woods to The Daughter at bedtime. Keeping that in mind, here’s a portion of tonight’s dinner-table conversation:
ME: So, are you still reading Little House?
THE DAUGHTER: Yup.
ME: Ah. Did you get to the attack on the Indian village yet?
THE DAUGHTER: What?
ME: Yeah, the raid on the Indian village. Did you get to that part yet?
THE DAUGHTER: Dad, don’t tell me the end!
ME: Oh, but that’s not the end! It’s in the middle of the book…Pa takes a poisoned arrow and nearly dies, though. Later on, Mary becomes addicted to peyote.
THE DAUGHTER: (shakes head sadly) You make no sense.
I was bummed that the conversation trailed off there…I had something percolating in the back of my mind involving Mr. Edwards being Laura’s real father, owing to his illicit tryst with Caroline Ingalls some years before, and maybe also being a deserter from the Union army on the run from a pair of bounty hunters named Wilder, one of whom would later fall in love with Laura, who would have to choose between her love for the strapping young lad named Almanzo and the beloved Mr. Edwards. Yeah, that would have made those books more fun!
Share This Post
Hallowing Deathly
There’s a really fun free-for-all, spoilerific Harry Potter thread going on over at Making Light, and I just want to highlight this comment, which is as good a summation of the book’s central theme as I’m likely to see. Kudos to Leah Miller, author of the comment.
Share This Post
Deathly Hallowing
Time for some first impressions on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I finished reading about an hour ago. I’ll color-obscure the text here, so you’ll have to highlight to read it.
Oh, and for the purposes of the comments thread for this post, I grant full spoiler power, seeing as how I’m writing spoilers in the post itself. So if you don’t want spoilers, don’t highlight the text below, and don’t read the comments, either!
These are all just random thoughts, which I’m plopping out there as they come to me.
:: I love that Rowling had it come down to Harry versus Voldemort, for all the marbles, in front of everybody. That was a masterstroke.
:: There’s a little too much deus ex machina in the front half of the book. Too many times Harry and company seem to get the key bit of information by sheer luck, with one particular instance — when they just happen to be huddling somewhere in the countryside under the Invisible Cloak when a group of people who happen to know an awful lot about what’s going on just happen to pick that exact spot to sit down and have a long conversation — standing out.
:: Hey, David Weber! This is how you stop your final battle in order to have an infodump. JK Rowling has her stylistic faults, but she is the simple best writer on the planet at conveying plot information without grinding everything to a halt while she does so.
:: The single best thing in the book, and maybe the best moment in the entire series, is the moment of Severus Snape’s death. He expires as he gazes one last time in Lily Potter’s eyes (since we’ve been told many times that Harry has Lily’s eyes).
:: Snape was a good guy after all. I always thought so. Except for when I didn’t. However, it didn’t play out the way I thought it might: turns out that Dumbledore didn’t need to swear Snape to an unbreakable vow in order to commit Snape to killing him. (Of course, the interesting question there is, what if Dumbledore had not been already doomed to die?)
:: At times, the Death Eaters seem like Imperial Storm Troopers, don’t they?
:: Well, a Weasley had to die sooner or later, right? I’m surprised Rowling didn’t mine that for one last bit about everyone’s inability to tell them apart.
:: I knew Neville would have some big role to play! Yay!
:: I was completely wrong about the Dursleys! Boo! I thought for sure there’d be some small way in which they turned out to be important in the end, but not so much. Just a bit of character growth for Dudley. (But I do think Rowling missed an opportunity here. In the Epilogue, it would have been cool if another of the new students heading to Hogwarts had been Dudley’s, yes? Another Muggle-born?)
:: I liked that the events of Dumbledore’s life as depicted in the tell-all book are true, and that it’s all left up to interpretation.
:: What’s next for JK Rowling? Hogwarts: The Next Generation? Something else entirely? Or will she just put down her pen and bask in the fact that she’s made Harold Bloom’s life miserable? No idea, here — but for my part, thanks, Ms. Rowling. You told a hell of a tale here.
And there it is. So long, Harry. It’s been fun.