Book Reading Update
Oct. 7th, 2003 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Okay, so, finished with the Sixth (I think) book in the Wild Cards series. Entertaining as usual, and actually better than some of the previous books which occasionally drifted. This one stuck with one main plot, the Democratic National Convention. As usual, there were entertaining wild cards all around, but not too many new ones. Still, good book, have to buy the next one when I can find it.
Next up is: The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an Alternate History novel, where the Black Plague wiped out 99% of Europe's population, and so Muslim and Buddhism grow much more dominant much more quickly. Still having a little trouble getting into it... one reason is that the characters change quite frequently, at least so far, even though there's a common thread, it's still disorienting to have to not only adjust to a new world, but a new time in that world and new characters every so often. Another annoyance is an affected style, which seems to have toned down some as the book progresses. Most likely it was imitating the style of books of one of the dominant cultures, but it got on my nerves.. for example, most of the chapters in the first part ended with something along the lines of, "And for what happened next, you'll have to find out by reading the next chapter" in the narration. Well, duh. I think it's a subset of my pet peeve of people faking accents. If you're doing it for an acting role, or it's your natural accent, okay, but doing it just for fun annoys the hell out of me and I want to smack it, pretty much no matter what the accent is. Granted, if this were the only problem I should let it slide (the 'accent' in the writing is somewhat important to the book, I suppose), but one of my other pet peeves is style overwhelming story in a novel (or comic for that matter). Still, the more blatant aspects of this have been toned down in the last few chapters, so hopefully it'll continue.
Next up is: The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an Alternate History novel, where the Black Plague wiped out 99% of Europe's population, and so Muslim and Buddhism grow much more dominant much more quickly. Still having a little trouble getting into it... one reason is that the characters change quite frequently, at least so far, even though there's a common thread, it's still disorienting to have to not only adjust to a new world, but a new time in that world and new characters every so often. Another annoyance is an affected style, which seems to have toned down some as the book progresses. Most likely it was imitating the style of books of one of the dominant cultures, but it got on my nerves.. for example, most of the chapters in the first part ended with something along the lines of, "And for what happened next, you'll have to find out by reading the next chapter" in the narration. Well, duh. I think it's a subset of my pet peeve of people faking accents. If you're doing it for an acting role, or it's your natural accent, okay, but doing it just for fun annoys the hell out of me and I want to smack it, pretty much no matter what the accent is. Granted, if this were the only problem I should let it slide (the 'accent' in the writing is somewhat important to the book, I suppose), but one of my other pet peeves is style overwhelming story in a novel (or comic for that matter). Still, the more blatant aspects of this have been toned down in the last few chapters, so hopefully it'll continue.
