Reading review...

[elfs]

I just looked back at my schedule and realized that I have been mass-consuming books for February. So far this month I've read:

• A History of Medieval Europe, by Teo Ruiz
• On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
• The Honor of the Queen, by David Weber
• The Short, Victorious War, by David Weber
• Field of Dishonor, by David Weber
• Flag In Exile, by David Weber
• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
• Honor Among Enemies, by David Weber
• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• Nyssa's Guardian, by Reese Gabriel

Yeah, I finished that chunk o' gristle, and a bad swallow it was to the very end. The writing style tightened up somewhat but, oh!, the irresponsibility to the genre only got worse: along with cornucopia machines our heroine has access to particle-analogue teleportation devices and our hero has a direct neural interface. Both the hero and the heroine (this being a "romance", after all) are rendered completely inaccessible to the reader by dint of their genetic engineering, which makes them so utterly unlike you or me that reading about their antics loses all engagement. Yes, Nyssa learns to embrace her subby nature in the bedroom while in the "real world" Theron comes to accept that she is his "feisty equal whom he could never tame." The catalysts for the whole story are quickly dispatched and their motives quickly disposed, irrelevant really to the two extended sex scenes that make up the bulk of the book. Yawn.

Next up, The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks, In Enemy Hands by David Weber, and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

I tried, I really tried, to read Prince of Ayodhya, by Ashok Banker, but I ended up tossing the book in the first chapter. The book is supposedly "Hindu Fantasy," set in an alternity dominated by Hindi myths and terminology in much the same way that most "fantasy" books are dominated by European myths and terminology. But it was hard to swallow when the hero sweeps through is wing of the palace looking for an intruder: "Bedchamber, clear. Diwan-khaas, clear. Gymnasium, clear. Bathing chambers, clear. Enemy not sighted, repeat, not sighted." The scattershot intrusions of modern terminology and patterns of speech were so terribly distracting I just closed it and walked away.

Comments

[mo-hair.livejournal.com]

i have but one question.... where the hell do you come up with the kind of time to read anything? i only work part time, but between the two kids, house, and job, it's been forever since i could read more than a magazine article. lemme guess, you don't require much sleep?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I read the Stephen King way: I have an e-book reader and I never, ever go anywhere without it. Five minutes in line at the bank? Ten pages. Bus too crowded to pull out the laptop? Three chapters. I read while walking down the street; I fully expect to get hit by a car someday. The Webers were popcorn anyway: each took less than a day to read.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Also, to be fair: I started the History of Medieval Europe sometime in the third week of January; I only finished it in February. It was certainly the heaviest of the reads I've had recently.

[norman-hamer.livejournal.com]

So how was Freakonomics?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Interesting, mostly. His argument about abortion is compelling, and it's fascinating to see how many people have tried to take it down afterwards. His story about how so much economic data about drug dealing fell into his hands is great stuff-- if a bit terrifying for the parties involved-- and his explanation for how to analyze sport data for signs of cheating is actually useful.

Still, the most important lesson here is always the one about incentives: who gets them, what they mean to people, how to make them sound positive. It felt to me as if a point had been made about my own stories, transposing the moral obligation to support writing into a mere financial obligation by charging for the stories rather than asking for donations.