Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Tales of the non-caught up
I had high hopes for today being a good email catch-up day, even though I had to go to Mike's IEP meeting at school. After which I took him out and had him shot! Ha-ha, and me too! FLU shots! Arr-arr!
But, while I did get quite a bit of things done that needed doing, I never did get to sit down and just answer email. And I have to say tomorrow is not looking that good for it either. Thursday might be okay, if the blizzard we are under watch for doesn't knock our power out....
On the plus side, I have remembered ON TIME that it is Tune Tuesday. Here is a classic you may remember, Jim Stafford singing "Cow Patti".
http://download.yousendit.com/CB4598E115C55B23
Finally, for those who are interested in Lois McMaster Bujold's writing, my thoughts on her latest book. (If you aren't interested, you can consider the post done now. :} )
First off, I should say that expecting each new book to be better than the last is unfair to authors. I don't see how any writer could keep doing that forever. It's just not humanly possible.
I don't even think it's reasonable to expect that a writer capable of producing great books do so every time. For one thing, the reader's personal taste is going to come into play, and one fan's GREAT! is another fan's Meh.
Having said that, however, I think that whoever decided to issue Lois Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Beguilement as a stand-alone book did it a great disservice, and Lois too. Because, in my opinion, the sequel/second book is going to have to be another outstanding one to justify the lukewarm first half.
I can best explain what I mean by comparing SK Part 1 to another book of Lois's that got the same treatment. As you probably know, her first book accepted for publication was considered too big, so they turned the first half into Shards of Honor. (And the rest is /future/ history) Later on she worked up the second half into its own novel, Barrayar.
The reason it worked fine for Shards and not so fine for SK1 is that Shards was, well, ABOUT something. In Shards, Aral and Cordelia are on opposite sides of a war. Even though being thrown together makes them fall in love, they canNOT do what their hearts want without tossing loyalty to their own people right out the window. (A theme Lois comes back to quite often in other books.) The fact neither of them would do such a thing gets the reader involved and rooting for them, hoping the author can pull it off to get them together in the end without letting either of them compromise their moral values.
Warning! Spoiler Alert!
On the other hand, Dag and Fawn from SK1 (though very likable characters in their own right) are from cultures that...rub along together tolerably in their universe, despite a tendency towards prejudice on both sides. The only thing keeping the two new characters apart other than 's/he's Not Our Kind, dear ' is that Dag reacted to losing a hand and a wife by becoming a workaholic and shutting himself off from anything at all in life beyond mild friendship. And that lasts, what, a week, week and a half?, before he and Dawn (18, with self-esteem issues) yield to the inevitable.
After that, the main problem to be solved (in THIS book) seems to be to get Dawn's bucolic yahoo family to agree to let her marry Dag. And all that that entails is told very well, with sexy bits and exciting bits and funny bits--Lois is too good a writer for it not to be a good read. But...maybe it's me -- I can't find much meat on the bone of the underlying theme here. There's no great cause (yet) and except for a confrontation between Sunny (Fawn's mean and nasty former crush object) and Dag, no big crisis. The book is pure, plain and simple about two people falling in love. (Anyone reading this far who thinks I've totally missed the Theme is genuinely begged to point it out to me, so I can smack myself in the head and say "OH!")
I'm hoping book 2 will be the one with the theme and then some; that it will be as powerful as Curse of Chalion or Paladin of Souls or any of Lois's other top-drawer novels. If not, I will still have bought it, and no doubt I will enjoy it. But I have to be honest here...if The Sharing Knife Part 1 was fanfic, it would go in the category labeled Fluff.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Unless you were expecting Another Great Novel instead.
But, while I did get quite a bit of things done that needed doing, I never did get to sit down and just answer email. And I have to say tomorrow is not looking that good for it either. Thursday might be okay, if the blizzard we are under watch for doesn't knock our power out....
On the plus side, I have remembered ON TIME that it is Tune Tuesday. Here is a classic you may remember, Jim Stafford singing "Cow Patti".
http://download.yousendit.com/CB4598E115C55B23
Finally, for those who are interested in Lois McMaster Bujold's writing, my thoughts on her latest book. (If you aren't interested, you can consider the post done now. :} )
First off, I should say that expecting each new book to be better than the last is unfair to authors. I don't see how any writer could keep doing that forever. It's just not humanly possible.
I don't even think it's reasonable to expect that a writer capable of producing great books do so every time. For one thing, the reader's personal taste is going to come into play, and one fan's GREAT! is another fan's Meh.
Having said that, however, I think that whoever decided to issue Lois Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Beguilement as a stand-alone book did it a great disservice, and Lois too. Because, in my opinion, the sequel/second book is going to have to be another outstanding one to justify the lukewarm first half.
I can best explain what I mean by comparing SK Part 1 to another book of Lois's that got the same treatment. As you probably know, her first book accepted for publication was considered too big, so they turned the first half into Shards of Honor. (And the rest is /future/ history) Later on she worked up the second half into its own novel, Barrayar.
The reason it worked fine for Shards and not so fine for SK1 is that Shards was, well, ABOUT something. In Shards, Aral and Cordelia are on opposite sides of a war. Even though being thrown together makes them fall in love, they canNOT do what their hearts want without tossing loyalty to their own people right out the window. (A theme Lois comes back to quite often in other books.) The fact neither of them would do such a thing gets the reader involved and rooting for them, hoping the author can pull it off to get them together in the end without letting either of them compromise their moral values.
Warning! Spoiler Alert!
On the other hand, Dag and Fawn from SK1 (though very likable characters in their own right) are from cultures that...rub along together tolerably in their universe, despite a tendency towards prejudice on both sides. The only thing keeping the two new characters apart other than 's/he's Not Our Kind, dear ' is that Dag reacted to losing a hand and a wife by becoming a workaholic and shutting himself off from anything at all in life beyond mild friendship. And that lasts, what, a week, week and a half?, before he and Dawn (18, with self-esteem issues) yield to the inevitable.
After that, the main problem to be solved (in THIS book) seems to be to get Dawn's bucolic yahoo family to agree to let her marry Dag. And all that that entails is told very well, with sexy bits and exciting bits and funny bits--Lois is too good a writer for it not to be a good read. But...maybe it's me -- I can't find much meat on the bone of the underlying theme here. There's no great cause (yet) and except for a confrontation between Sunny (Fawn's mean and nasty former crush object) and Dag, no big crisis. The book is pure, plain and simple about two people falling in love. (Anyone reading this far who thinks I've totally missed the Theme is genuinely begged to point it out to me, so I can smack myself in the head and say "OH!")
I'm hoping book 2 will be the one with the theme and then some; that it will be as powerful as Curse of Chalion or Paladin of Souls or any of Lois's other top-drawer novels. If not, I will still have bought it, and no doubt I will enjoy it. But I have to be honest here...if The Sharing Knife Part 1 was fanfic, it would go in the category labeled Fluff.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Unless you were expecting Another Great Novel instead.
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