The Nita

Bold - read completely
Italic - read partially
Roman - have not read

( Read more... )

Things you need to know, in case you don't.

1. I have no patience at the best of times.


2. I'm a bibliophile.


3. I read roughly 1.5 books per week - down in recent years from 3 due to real life


4. Many of the books I read are series

Over the past 12-18 months, I've seen several blog posts by various authors, responding to fan mail, explaining that, as Neil Gaiman recently put it, "[AUTHOR] is not your bitch."

Over and over, I see writers addressing the demands of fans who ask, bitch, moan, whine and otherwise complain that said author, or another author, isn't putting out the story they want to read at the speed or direction they wanted it to be available.

Um.

Maybe I'm dumb. Maybe I just don't get humanity - gods know, that's been a pretty common theme in my whole life.

It's a book. You paid for a book. Not their life. Not the future. You enjoyed the book. GRAND - I'm sure the author, their agent & publisher are all delighted.

What the hell convinces someone that means they are entitled to anything else???

You don't like subsequent novels because you think the author started phoning it in? Don't buy them.

You don't like the speed the novels are coming out? Really, either put on your big kid pants and wait or stop buying books by that author.

Simple market economics here, folks. If you don't like the way a producer provides their product, don't give that producer your business any more.

Now one of the things that has been pointed out to me as a possible explaination (at least for the ones where the fans address the author in question directly) is a "hey - I want to keep giving you my money, but you're making it hard, as you don't have more product out". Which is reasonable, to a point. There's a world of difference between "I'm waiting for your next book and I'm very eager for it to come out." and "Why haven't you given me my next book yet? You owe me, because I'm a fan." Those fans who address other authors looking for that other author to back them up on their sense of entitlement to the works of [AUTHOR_THEY'RE_COMPLAINING_ABOUT] fall in the "oh grow the hell up" bucket.

Authors don't owe you jack, [FAN]. They work for the publisher, not you, regardless of how it might seem otherwise. Trust me, if the publisher thinks the author isn't profitable, they won't publish them any more.

I cannot comprehend the thought process that would allow an adult to demand a book from an author based solely on the fact that the reader liked the book.

Anyone care to explain this to me in a rational manner? I'd love to know, beyond the apparent whiny, grabby, small child mentality that lets a grown adult act like a producer of art they like (be it a book, TV, movie, paint, dance, theatre, pick your art here) somehow belongs to them.

They're up again, and here is Part the last of MGK versus his adolescent reading habits - aka, the hilarious photoshops of old SF&F titles.

Item the first:

The nutbars good people at PETA have decided that fish are discriminated against because of their name.

What do they want to do?

Rename them - cause who would ever want to put a hook through a sea kitten's head.

Item the second:

It appears that Piers Anthony has started his own vanity press, complete with some doozies for authors (you have to read the bios).

And with that, he's finally come on the scene of official soft core porn writing.

Mundania Press and his gift to bookworms everywhere, Pornucopia and the sequel, The Magic Fart.

I wish I was making this up. I'd make a mint as a comic.

If you're interested in any of the following, let me know. Otherwise, next weekend, they go to the library, if they'll take them or chez VV. If you want them, I would really like them to go sooner than later.

( Read more... )

Cause my brain's starting to freeze.

I started working my way through the Library o Doom again...catching up on my old books.

Finished a (very dilapidated) copy of "The World of Null-A" by A.E. Van Vogt.

Good book, a touch simplistic in places (granted, take into account that it was published in 1948). Hero has no idea who he is, as he learns that what his memory tells him is true is empircally proven wrong. Turns out to have functional superpower.

Only problem I had is trying to wrap my head around the principal (stated) philosophy - non-Aristotlian, non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian approach to the universe.

Currently reading The Player of Null-A (originally released as The Pawns of Null-A).

1. Do you read for recreation?

Hells yes. I read for recreation, peace & quiet, escape, bathtime, cooking, walking, you name it.

2. What sorts of things do you read? Fiction? Nonfiction? What category or genre? Long pieces? Short? Books? Magazines? Web pages?

Mostly fiction, some non - depends on the writing style more than anything for non (I really respond poorly to what I perceive of as "being preached at" in non-fiction (or fiction, but my tolerance is higher there, because they're not real people)). SF/F/Mystery covers most of my reading, plus plays tossed in for good measure. Long, short, matters not. I've got half a dozen magazines that I've got subscriptions to that I love being able to pick up, read for 10 minutes when I have them, and walk away again (then again, I do the same thing with heftier books as well)

3. Does your mood (day-to-day), circumstance (week-to-week or month-to-month) or lifestyle (year-to-year) influence the reading choices you make?

Not overly - unless it's a "must read this for reference learning", I read because I compulsively read. Why I cannot have someone in the passenger seat of my car with a magazine/book/whatever when I'm driving - I compulsively read...

4. What function does reading hold for you? Escape? Learning? Companionship? Imaginative voyage? Other?

Yes.

5. What, if anything, that you've read in the last year or so stands out as particularly excellent reading?

I've been really enjoying Steven Erikson's Malazan series. Last few Brookemeyer mysteries have been fun. Been re-reading the Musketeers stories which are good romp. Really excellent short story about the socio-economics of robotic life in the latest SF&F that I cannot remember the name of right now...

Yes, I'm a geek. And and SF&F book geek at that.

This just brought me to tears.

I think the one for "Prince of Dogs" is when I well & truly lost it. My co-worker wants to know what's so funny.

My lunch date had to bail on me - understood, but grumpy making.

I didn't bring a book to read at lunch.

I hate eating with no one to talk to and nothing to read.

I forgot my textbook at home. Can't even read that.

I finally get a lunch that I can actually do something with, as opposed to schlep LB around and it's entirely likely that I'll just ignore it.

Grr.

"When I started teaching, at University College, Dublin many years ago, I urged students to believe that the merit of reading a great poem, play, or novel consisted in the pleasure of gaining access to deeply imagined lives other than their own. Over the years, that appeal, still cogent to me, seems to have lost much of its persuasive force. Students seem to be convinced that their own lives are the primary and sufficient incentive. They report that reading literature is mainly a burden. Those students who think of themselves as writers and take classes in "creative writing" to define themselves as poets or fiction writers evidently write more than they read, and regard reading as a gross expenditure of time and energy. They are not open to the notion that one learns to write by reading good writers."

- Dennis Donoghue, from Defeating the poem, printed in the New Criterion, April 1, 2006.