book #1

[realthog]

Everyone in the world, plus their auntie, seems to be posting about their plans to read at least 50 books in 2008. My first reaction to this was: "Only 50?"

However, in the small hours of this morning, cursing my recurrent insomnia, I for the first time in 2008 finished reading a book. And, I dunno, the bug came along and bit me, or something. If I keep up the habit of making a public record of my reading -- something by no means guaranteed, especially if I find myself perusing Swedish Nurses Do Dallas or whatever (purely for, er, research purposes, you understand) -- I'm not planning to write reviews or even reviewettes of them all, as other folk seem to be doing.

Further, I've become much more ruthless recently about abandoning books if, after the first 100 pages or so, I'm finding them unrewarding. I suppose I should have a policy as to whether these, too, should be recorded.

Anyway, buke #1 for 2008 has been Harps in the Wind (1945) by Robert Hichens; I was reading a copy of the US edition, retitled The Woman in the House (the original UK title is far more appropriate), that I think I picked up at World Fantasycon this year. It's printed on that wartime economy paper for which I've always been a sucker. The book's a supernatural romance involving a couple brought together because she yearns so much for a man who was kind to her during her adolescence that, in much later life, she unwittingly draws his astral projection to her. He experiences these events as strange dreams, and ya-de-da-de-da-da.

In fact the whole tale could have been told quite easily as a short story -- or, if one wanted to create a bit of yer atmosphere thingie, a novelette -- and I spent much of the time wanting to throw the book at the wall as Hichens's indescribably prissy narrator flanneled around in all directions for pages on end when he could have told us something in a sentence. The novel does have its moments, though; overall, worth reading.

** The new book I've started (also in the small hours of this morning) is Last Rituals (2007) by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, translated from the Icelandic -- sounds pretty damn' posh, eh? -- by Bernard Scudder.

** For another perspective: pds_lit has posted her views on the Hichens novel at http://pds-lit.livejournal.com/14935.html.

Comments

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

You would think that, since I own and work in a bookshop, I'd read more than 50 books a year, easily.

Not so. I read catalogs ABOUT books, instead. And internet posts ABOUT books. And many bloggy things. And LiveJournal. And three million emails.

So the quantity of things I've read is no doubt much higher than 50 books, but actual books completed--right about that. In 2007 I read to the bitter end 52 books that I tracked in a spreadsheet, including six novel-length drafts I edited for others. There were 30 others I started and discarded, or only browsed for research.



What is it about the wartime economy paper that you're so fond of?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Ah, you weren't around the year I was a World Fantasy Award judge. I was getting through a book at least every 2-3 days for something over six months; short books were read in a single day. This was on top of my usual load of writing and editing . . . and it just about killed me! For the three or four months afterwards I was lucky if I read half a dozen books in the entire time; it was probably more like a year or two before I read another fantasy/sf book. I had never, ever thought it possible to build up an allergy to book-reading, but I did, and it took me a certain while to recover from it. The problem was, I think, not the concentrated amount of reading that I did (I'd had periods earlier when I'd read just as intensely) as the fact that I had to read ceratins books -- i.e., those that had been submitted for the award -- and none other.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Ah, something like how foie gras is created, or working in the proverbial candy store. Except you weren't able to pick your own poison.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Ah, something like how foie gras is created"

More or less. I read far, far more slowly nowadays than I used to be able to then, and I think part of the slowing down was as a result of the trauma of the WFC judging experience.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"What is it about the wartime economy paper that you're so fond of?"

Not sure. It's probably because, while I was growing up and becoming a major-league book consumer, a lot of the second-hand books that I was finding and rejoicing in were printed on it, and a lot of the books in the local public libraries were wartime editions, still hanging around. Not only were these fascinating, like miniature editions are, but so many of them were holders of wondrous delight: many of the "real" Ellery Queens, for example, or those Daphne du Mauriers, or . . .

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

*nodnod*

So many of our customers come in and point to our shelves with delighted shrieks: "That was on my parents' bookcase when I was growing up!" Sometimes the books even smell the same.

Mmm, Du Maurier...a favorite of mine. I have one sitting at home I've not read yet: "The Scapegoat."

[realthog.livejournal.com]

By odd coincidence, it was precisely The Scapegoat that came to mind when I thought of reading her novels in wartime editions. I read a couple of her books earlier in Penguin paperbacks (Jamaica Inn and . . . and . . . the title's on the tip of my tongue, I'll wake Pam at 4am to tell her it), but The Scapegoat was the first hardback of hers I owned; I found it in an Oxfam bookshop somewhere and snapped it up . . .

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

Rebecca?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Rebecca?"

I first read that, too, as a wartime hardback. The other Du Maurier I read in Penguin was one of the lesser known ones, and like Jamaica Inn a historical romance. Oh, poot: I'll have to go and look it up now. Just wait a mo . . .

Gotcha! Frenchman's Creek.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Oh, but wait a minute: I spotted when looking up F's C that The Scapegoat wasn't published until 1957, which means it certainly wasn't a wartime economy edition that I read.

Oh, what a klutz I am. It was The Parasites I was thinking of, not The Scapegoat. My apologies, quietselkie: the coincidence that never was . . .

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Eh, no problems at all.

I love Jamaica Inn. I visited Cornwall when I traveled to England, simply because I had to see Bodmin Moor for myself. I think Du Maurier was the first to make an albino villain, wasn't she? Certainly she beat Dan Brown to it...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It was in Cornwall I read Jamaica Inn too, at the age of about 14 I'd guess, on the family holiday. My mother and my much older brother got first dibs on it, obviously, which was why I grumpily read Frenchman's Creek in the earlier part of the vacation, before we actually got to Jamaica Inn -- where we had lunch and I wasn't allowed to sample the grog even though, as I explained pointedly and at length, smugglers would have.

I confess I don't remember the albino villain.

[thisplacehere.livejournal.com]

Ah, so you're having a go at it, too. Well, if you felt inclined to throw a book that was worth reading at the wall, I shudder to think what you'd do to a bad one...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Strong walls, is the answer.

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

I have a 50 page rule. If I am not enjoying or engaged in a book by page 50, out it goes. I find that life is too short to read books I don't like. That has changed my reading list considerably, as most of them are given high marks -- simply because the lower marks never made it to the list of "read."

I do hope to read 50 books this year, but it really doesn't matter that much to me. I enjoy the journey. I read 38 in 2007 and 47 in 2008, so I'm upping my list a bit. And those are full books, not novelettes or short stories.

Also, my parents had an Ellery Queen on their shelves. One of THREE books that were on their shelf... how can I possibly genetically related to them? I have millions of books... well, slight exaggeration, but not much.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"If I am not enjoying or engaged in a book by page 50, out it goes."

I usually keep going past page 50 to more like page 100, simply in order to be sure the book actually is without merit (or, more precisely, without merit for me). Often enough I've been glad I made the effort.

Ruthless abandonment

[rou-killingtime.livejournal.com]

I'm with you 100% on the policy of putting down any book that either is irritating, or just downright fails to entertain. I got two-thirds of the way through Catch-22 (having enjoyed the first half of the book immensely) before putting it down in disgust. I've no idea what Heller was thinking in the latter part of the book, but I found I was no longer looking forward to reading any further part of it.

Then there was Bram Stoker's Dracula, which struck me as a prime example of style over substance. I like to have both style *and* substance, but if I have to choose one, I'll take the substance, thanks.

I came very close to putting down the third part of the Lord of the Rings, trilogy as I found reading the (seemingly) hundreds of pages of slogging around in the wilderness of Mordor with nothing actually happening to be a tedious chore indeed.

Re: Ruthless abandonment

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I'm with you 100% on the policy of putting down any book that either is irritating, or just downright fails to entertain."

One's got to be a bit careful about it, though, because some of the eventually most rewarding books of all are slow starters. For example, I recently read and enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, but there was no real clue in the first few dozen pages of the riches that were to follow.

Re: Ruthless abandonment

[rou-killingtime.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would be the main potential pitfall. Although, I don't have a problem with slow starters... a recent example of which that I read recently is Iain M Banks' The Algebraist which took at least a hundred pages or so of exposition and scene-setting to get going, yet proved to be a superbly enjoyable read.