Not Matching Up
Mar. 19th, 2012 11:51 pmLately I've been feeling the pull and push of time and what should I be doing, what am I not doing? ( Job worries, feel free to skip )
Now the hopefully more fun part of this post which is about books and what happens when a book doesn't quite work for me, yet it feels like it should. The main examples I've been thinking about are The Hunger Games and the books of Cat Valente, which caused me to go, parts are good but overall slightly meh.
The Hunger Games, I read in 2009 when I was doing my children's media course when it was starting to get more notice in the press. I found it a good book, interesting plot and worldbuilding but it didn't catch me. It struck me as sort of dystopian-lite, which make it quite accessible but left me wanting to read books that I felt did things better.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_croupier has been reading it and has already started the sequel as it clearly caught him, which I find fascinating. I love the Hunger Games' cast that there is in Milliways but its a book that left me feeling that I'd rather reread something by Garth Nix or Tomorrow When the War Began or Cinda Williams Chima.
Cat Valente's books leave me with this same feeling of I can see what's being done well but I'd rather read it from another author. At this point I've read Deathless and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and I read them through quite quickly as her writing just like Collins pulled me in and I wanted to find out what happened next. Valente seems like she should be an author that works perfectly for me as she plays with fairytales and magic that's not fully obvious, but instead integrated with the created world. Her prose is amazing and what first got me into her writing was a brilliant short story she wrote in a steampunk anthology where she added anarchists and women using their sexuality to fight back which made me cheer. Too much of the anthology was full of stories that used tropes from the Victorian era without a lot of thoughtfulness and it was nice to see someone say, this is seriously messed up set up.
I read about Deathless before it came out on Tor and was quite curious. When I got it I ended up going through it quickly but when I finished, felt kind of empty. I lent it to a friend and she also went huh at the end. Part of it was that I didn't feel invested in the characters because I was aware that I was reading a finely crafted book. Valente is concerned with stories and playing with how stories fit together, which I admire and find interesting yet it can get distracting. In Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, it felt even more pronounced as the main character was even more aware of being in a story. This was true in Deathless as well but it was slightly more subtle because the fairytale aspect was under a stronger layer of Russian myths and sensuality.
I'm a storyteller myself and one of the trickiest part of telling a story is deciding what voice you use to tell your story. In my time I've told stories as a nameless minstrel who plays a critical part, a girl telling her tale and general storyteller, only the first one was clearly part of the story. In that story, the act of telling the story was important and thus I needed to take a role. For Valente, the act or telling is something that all of her main characters have clearly internalized, which means there's always this sense of what is the greater story? That's a tricky thing to do and as Valente knows how to write and various tricks of writing, for me at least it ends up getting in the way because even the characters seem to be pointing out, look what the story is doing. I'd much rather read Diana Wynne Jones and a book like Howl's Moving Castle, where the story aspect is just an accepted part of the world. That means it gets mentioned sometimes but the main focus is on the characters.
If I can't make a connection to a character then I won't care that much about a book and revisit it. I've yet to revisit any of Cat Valente's books because while I remembered plot moments, secondary characters, I didn't feel any connection to the characters. I think this all makes sense and I'd be curious about everyone else's thoughts.
Now the hopefully more fun part of this post which is about books and what happens when a book doesn't quite work for me, yet it feels like it should. The main examples I've been thinking about are The Hunger Games and the books of Cat Valente, which caused me to go, parts are good but overall slightly meh.
The Hunger Games, I read in 2009 when I was doing my children's media course when it was starting to get more notice in the press. I found it a good book, interesting plot and worldbuilding but it didn't catch me. It struck me as sort of dystopian-lite, which make it quite accessible but left me wanting to read books that I felt did things better.
the_croupier has been reading it and has already started the sequel as it clearly caught him, which I find fascinating. I love the Hunger Games' cast that there is in Milliways but its a book that left me feeling that I'd rather reread something by Garth Nix or Tomorrow When the War Began or Cinda Williams Chima.Cat Valente's books leave me with this same feeling of I can see what's being done well but I'd rather read it from another author. At this point I've read Deathless and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and I read them through quite quickly as her writing just like Collins pulled me in and I wanted to find out what happened next. Valente seems like she should be an author that works perfectly for me as she plays with fairytales and magic that's not fully obvious, but instead integrated with the created world. Her prose is amazing and what first got me into her writing was a brilliant short story she wrote in a steampunk anthology where she added anarchists and women using their sexuality to fight back which made me cheer. Too much of the anthology was full of stories that used tropes from the Victorian era without a lot of thoughtfulness and it was nice to see someone say, this is seriously messed up set up.
I read about Deathless before it came out on Tor and was quite curious. When I got it I ended up going through it quickly but when I finished, felt kind of empty. I lent it to a friend and she also went huh at the end. Part of it was that I didn't feel invested in the characters because I was aware that I was reading a finely crafted book. Valente is concerned with stories and playing with how stories fit together, which I admire and find interesting yet it can get distracting. In Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, it felt even more pronounced as the main character was even more aware of being in a story. This was true in Deathless as well but it was slightly more subtle because the fairytale aspect was under a stronger layer of Russian myths and sensuality.
I'm a storyteller myself and one of the trickiest part of telling a story is deciding what voice you use to tell your story. In my time I've told stories as a nameless minstrel who plays a critical part, a girl telling her tale and general storyteller, only the first one was clearly part of the story. In that story, the act of telling the story was important and thus I needed to take a role. For Valente, the act or telling is something that all of her main characters have clearly internalized, which means there's always this sense of what is the greater story? That's a tricky thing to do and as Valente knows how to write and various tricks of writing, for me at least it ends up getting in the way because even the characters seem to be pointing out, look what the story is doing. I'd much rather read Diana Wynne Jones and a book like Howl's Moving Castle, where the story aspect is just an accepted part of the world. That means it gets mentioned sometimes but the main focus is on the characters.
If I can't make a connection to a character then I won't care that much about a book and revisit it. I've yet to revisit any of Cat Valente's books because while I remembered plot moments, secondary characters, I didn't feel any connection to the characters. I think this all makes sense and I'd be curious about everyone else's thoughts.
