Planning my 2011 Reading

One of the things I've been thinking lately is that I'm not as well read as I want to be--or even used to be. That's not to say I don't read a lot (anyone who knows me knows better), like the guys over at Unshelved say, I read irresponsibly and encourage that in others. But I think I need a tad more responsibility in my reading.

I read a lot, and I mean a lot of detective/mystery fiction, urban fantasies, etc. Many people would disdainfully refer to it as, "genre fiction" (totally ignoring the nagging detail that everything fits in at least one genre). Don't get me wrong--I don't plan on stopping, maybe just cutting back a little to make some time for more mainstream fiction, "serious" literature and some classics.

Back in college, I read a lot more along those lines -- and not just for class ('tho certainly that was a part of it), but after graduation, I shifted my reading focus and only read fiction as entertainment and escape. Before I knew it, I got lazy, and only occasionally did any heavy lifting. It's time for me to try to fix that.

So in addition to new books by the likes of Michael Connelly, Patricia Briggs, Carrie Vaughn, Jim Butcher, Robert B. Parker, Jim C. Hines, Anton Strout, Seanan McGuire and knocking out back lists of Zoë Sharp, Lee Child, James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, Patricia Briggs (that looks like a lot of Briggs), and others I haven't stumbled across yet; I need to add some more serious reads. I'm thinking about some Austen, Franzen, Updike, Salinger, maybe even Dickens (if I get desperate)...but I'm looking for some more ideas.

So, friends, readers, countrymen...lend me your reads. The comment section is wide open--fill 'er up.

Valediction

Robert B. Parker, author of almost 70 books, died yesterday morning. When I read the news this morning, I was stunned. I knew he was getting up in years, but I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea. A few moments later I was hit by a powerful sense of loss -- it was like I'd lost a friend.

Many others have -- and will -- detail the impact Parker had on American publishing, the development of detective fiction in this country (particularly through the authors he inspired), the relative merits of his work. I just want to talk a little about what he meant to me, haphazardly thrown together.

Since the summer of 1987 (or maybe 1988, I'm not sure) I've spent hundreds--probably thousands--of hours with Parker. With the exception of the last two years of work, I've read nearly all of his books multiple times--many countless times. Each year in college (while I was single, anyway), after my last class on Friday before President's Day weekend I'd say goodbye to the world and read through the Spenser series in order--this was back before he branched out to other detectives--and many other times throughout the year I'd turn to Parker and Spenser if I needed a good read. And then he brought us Sunny and Jesse (and the Westerns, the baseball book, and the YA novels)--even more sources of enjoyment.

There's really only one other fiction writer I've spent more time with--and I bet it's a close race. More than once when I needed sanctuary from the world, I'd retreat to Parker. When I needed a comfort read, a quick read, something to break me out of a slump, or when there was a new volume published--and many other times, Parker's world and words were there. In between those covers was a home away from home, members of my extended family and friends.

Sure, in recent years, I've been disappointed, even annoyed by some of his work -- but I'm always back for the next go 'round, eager to forgive and forget and move on. Usually, I've been rewarded for that--even in his most problematic output, he could bring a smile to my face with a turn of a phrase. I'm so looking forward to the last three (I think) books coming out this year (even if I'm really sick and tired of the Cole/Hitch series, I'll eagerly snap it up)--but I can't imagine a year where more of my bookshelves aren't occupied with 3+ new volumes with his name on them.

I owe Dr. Parker a deep debt of gratitude for the impact he's made on my life, my thinking, for some great stories, essentially for some great times.

But perhaps what Parker was best at creating were characters that were well-rounded, flawed (but not irredeemably so), basically, human (not that all of his characters fit this, many were more thinly drawn than a stick figure). So for all the characters great and small, like Virgil Cole, Everett Hitch, Martin Quirk, Frank Belson, Rita Fiore, Chollo, Henry Cimoli, Joe Broz, Tony Marcus, The Grey Man, Spike, even Sunny and her family, Rosie, Pearl (both of them), Suitcase, Molly, Jesse, Paul Giacomin, Susan, Hawk (naturally), and most of all, for Spenser, I want to thank you, Dr. Parker.

You will be missed.

Dan Brown's Worst (well Amongst them)

No secret that I hate Dan Brown--I'd rather read...um...just about anything than push myself through another one of his books. It's been hard for me lately wandering through bookstores/book aisles in dept. stores--all that evasive maneuvering to avoid The Lost Symbol takes a toll.

So I rather enjoyed this article that bluewoad sent me today, listing the 20 worst sentences from Brown.

How they limited themselves to 20 must've been difficult. I imagine the process started off a lot like The Spanish Inquisition skit from Monty Python, "Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons..." Buncha writers sitting around brainstorming the "Top 3 worst Dan Brown sentences." Which quickly becomes 5, then 10, then they had to stop at 20 because they only have so much print space.

Actually, the piece's writer, Tom Chivers, states:

It’s not a definitive list. It couldn’t be: he has published five novels, each around 500 pages long, and the arguments over which are the worst bits will go on for a while.

It was quite the list, and one that had me literally LOLing.

Earlier in the article, Chivers quotes one critic of Brown:

Geoffrey Pullum says "Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad."

Now that's how you write a sentence--clever, 100% accurate and intelligent use of vocabulary.

Couple of Things I'm Not Funny Enough to Write

...as much as I wish I was:

• Fantasy author Jim C. Hines list of 20 Neil Gaiman Facts--eat your heart out Chuck Norris
  

  1. Neil Gaiman once wrote a Nebula-winning story using only the middle row of his keyboard.
  2. Harper Collins has taken out a 2.5 million dollar insurance policy on Neil Gaiman’s accent.
  3. If you write 1000 words and Neil Gaiman writes 1000 words, Neil Gaiman has written more than you.
  read the rest



• Music Reviewer/Author Chuck Klosterman reviews the remastered works of The Beatles

  Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI's decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old music? ...
  
  It is not easy to categorize the Beatles' music; more than any other group, their sound can be described as "Beatlesque." It's akin to a combination of Badfinger, Oasis, Corner Shop, and everyother rock band that's ever existed.
  read the rest

Hey, you sass that hoopy Douglas Adams? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams
(1952 - 2001)

What's Towel Day? Wired has a handy article.



(thanks to Travis Avery for the banner)

Belgium, Belgium, Belgium! (sorry for the profanity)

Not sure why I've let this layer of dust accumulate over things lately, meant to post a thing or two last week, but things got away from me I guess.

Nothing personal, I assure you--well, most of you anyway.

So what got me riled up enough to break my silence?

This monstrosity:

That's right, author Eoin Colfer has been commissioned to write the sixth volume of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy.

SciFi Wire reports:

And Another Thing..., which will be released Oct. 12 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series by the late Douglas Adams, is a sequel commissioned by the publisher from Eoin Colfer. Colfer is the author of the best-selling Artemis Fowl series.

While Penguin will publish the latest book, Pan Macmillan, which was Adams' paperback publisher, will repackage his backlist, adding new introductions to the books, which will be released monthly leading up to the release of the new title.

Why, oh why, is this being done? Was the world begging for a follow-up to Mostly Harmless? Did another story just need to be told? NO!

Did Adams' leave notes, instructions for another? No.

Does Arthur Dent really need to get kicked around some more? No.

Wouldn't it be easier to insult the Douglas Adams' memory by digging up his bones and throwing rocks at them? Or you could just put out the recent movie on Blu-Ray, that'd do it, too.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. A travesty. A disgrace. A literary crime.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'll be there on 10/21, cash in hand, just waiting for the book--probably with baited breath. Just hope it'll be slightly better than a collection of poetry by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England.

Exactly what I'd Write if I was Erudite

Terry Teachout's blogpost today, "Forty years with Nero Wolfe" is one of those posts I really wish I could've written.

Give it a read, hopefully Teachout can convince you to pick up Wolfe. Outside The Bible, a handful of Reformed and Puritan writers, Stout's the only author I'd recommend to every person I know w/o a disclaimer or a second thought.

Thought for the Lord's Day #30

Postscript

Was playing around on Chabon's website and read his essay, "Our Nabokov" I would give just about anything (short of my kids) to be able to write a sentence like this (much less like the writer he's describing):

It's a conundrum that for me approaches the absurd opacity of a Zen koan to try to imagine how English written by a Russian sounds to Russians reading in English, but to our ears, Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of shmaltz or soggy language.

This, btw, is probably the best description of what draws me to Nabokov,

"He has an amazing feeling for the syntactic tensility of an English sentence, the way an ironic aside or parenthesis can be tucked into a fold with devastating effect or a metaphor can be worked until it is as thin as gold leaf."

I can distinctly remember telling my friends (engineering, educatation and architecture students) around the dorm's dining room table about Lolita, and the joy and wonder I was experiencing. They all (without exception) reacted with horror and revulsion to the premise of the novel and couldn't understand what was wrong with me. Maybe if I could've expressed myself like Chabon just did, they'd have not written me off as insane. At least not that day.