bookstore trials and travails

[bedlamsbard]

I do not think I told you all about my bookstore trauma.

Okay, so on Sunday three of my friends (for reference: Chicago, New York, and Texas. They also have names as well as home states/towns) and I went out for lunch at the Camellia Grill, which is this New Orleans classic fast food restaurant. Bundles of fun -- wait in line for about half an hour (we took shifts going to the Coldstone next door, except for me, if I went to Coldstone I wasn't going to be eating) and then wait inside until you get to sit at the counter and order food. I had a salad and a chocolate freeze. (Okay, I know I sound facetious, but it really was fun.)

Then we took the streetcar to the St. Charles Ave. Borders to hang out. (As my roommate said, "Wait, you're going to a bookstore to hang out?" Me: "Three of us are English majors." "OH.")

I had very definite plans for this trip. I was going to get a book that I had not read before.

I did not buy any books. AT ALL. That I had read before or not. (Look, it's very hard for me to resist buying books that I own but that are at home. I weep. It is very traumatizing.)

I had very definite plans for the kind of book I would buy (well, to be fair, there was actually a specific book I wanted, but they didn't have it, and I think I may just wait until it comes out in paperback next month). High fantasy. Adventure. Action. Bundles of fun. (Basically, um, what I write.)

Like I said, I didn't buy any books. (I'm still trying to work out why I didn't buy either of the two new books by two of my favorite YA authors, especially since I haven't read them yet, or the book by another of my favorite YA authors that I've read but don't own. Apparently I was only in the mood for adult fantasy?)

I did pick up Chronicles of the Black Company and carry it around for about an hour, because hey, it looked exactly like my sort of thing! "Vietnam war fiction on peyote"! Hardbitten mercenaries in a fantasy land! (The Red Company is not based on the Black Company. I have never read the Black Company books. I will get into the Westria drama in a minute.)

Then I read about the first 10 pages and realized that I couldn't stand the author's writing style.

I am very, very picky about writing style. VERY picky. There are only a handful of authors I read regularly: Dennis Lehane, Carol O'Connell, S.M. Stirling, George R.R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Scott Lynch, Naomi Novik (god, for another book I didn't buy, Victory of Eagles. I'm waiting for the paperback, although I should add that she doesn't rank as high up on this list as the others), Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones. I occasionally break out of this group -- I love The Terror by Dan Simmons, but I've never read anything else he's written. Of these writers, only three are high fantasy (in the adult section, not YA. The tone's different. Bear with me here): Martin, Lynch, and Lackey (and actually, let me clarify even more: my interest in high fantasy Lackey is very limited at the moment to Lackey and Mallory's Obsidian Mountain Trilogy, even though I've read almost all the rest of her stuff). The other writer I've been reading a lot of lately is Stirling (I love Stirling, oh my God. STIRLING).

It takes a lot for me to pick up a book by a new author. A lot. And even then, it doesn't take much for me to put it down again. Occasionally I will slog through something if it's come especially highly recommended.

My beloved S.M. Stirling recommended Diana L. Paxson's Westria books, so when I found The Golden Hills of Westria at Goodwill, I pounced on it eagerly. Let me just say, the only reason I slogged through it and read it as quickly as I did was so I could finish it before I left the state of Washington and I wouldn't have to bring it to Louisiana. Originally, I also wanted to read it because the blurb on the back reminded me of, um, a certain personal canon for a certain High King of Narnia. Crown prince! Kidnapped! Lost his memory! Traveling with an army that's marching on his native land!

I was abruptly reminded why I don't venture outside of my comfort zone while reading. (Over break, I also read The Privilege of the Sword, since Ellen Kushner was being recommended all over LJ a few years ago and whatever, the library had it. I did not hate it. I also did not particularly give a damn about it.)

I am still kind of shocked about the fact I couldn't find a single book to buy. (I looked at Robin Hobb, since I actually do own a couple of Hobb books, I just haven't read them since I, uh, own the second books from two separate trilogies. One was from Goodwill and one was from St. Vince's? I still didn't buy any, since they were in first person and it takes a lot for me to read first person. Lehane and Gabaldon are exceptions.) Apparently I am just that picky of a reader. It's just that all the high fantasy looked boring, or cliched, or I have been warned off the authors, or just that I couldn't stand the writing style. And I am kind of sick of urban fantasy. (And there are very few alternate history writers I will read. The list pretty much begins and ends with S.M. Stirling. I can't stand Turtledove -- writing style, again. Wait, that's a lie, there have been a couple others that are all right over the years, but I don't love them with an undying passion I do Stirling.)

Either this is a sign that I am far too picky a reader, or I need to start writing my own damn fantasy. Which I have been thinking of, and I unfortunately appear to be combining Criminal Minds, The Unit, and (my) Narnia in a high fantasy 'verse. *considers* No named characters yet, but there's an Edmund-based character and a Reid-based character, along with vague formless shapes of the rest of the team. (It's basically a fantasy special forces unit, except they're all human. For now.) Also a Peter-like character, but he's not part of the team; he's the king. (Actually, in retrospect, this may be what my Narnia would have become if the Pevensies had lived out the Golden Age and the Dying Times had never come.) Also, there is a version of the Red Company.

So that was my bookstore drama, in a rambling sort of way.

Also, my friends and I got asked if we knew where to get weed in New Orleans. Now that was funny.

At some point in the future I will do a rec post of authors that have influenced the Warsverse and Dust (my reference novels. I actually can pretty much pick them out of a line-up).

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

My recommendation for you: Sara Douglass' The Troy Game. Don't bother with her Axis and Wayfarer books (well, you can, they're fun, in a standard epic fantasy kind of way), go straight to the head-trippy historio-fantasy with incredibly twisty plots and lots of violence and betrayal. You might also like her Crucible trilogy, wot is set in mostly-12th-century Europe, with some borrowings from the 14th.

I'm not sure what it is you prize in writing style, but I've never read anything like Douglass' style in the Troy Game and Crucible series(es).

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Douglass I have heard of but haven't read. Possibly I have had them anti-recced to me. (Anti-rec being...DO NOT READ THESE.) *checks* Yeah, I have, which is one of the reasons I haven't read them. Hmmm. I think my library at home has them, so I'll check them out there, probably.

As an English major (*rolls eyes*) I should probably be able to articulate exactly what it is I prize in writing style. Key word being probably. (I didn't like Guy Gavriel Kay; I'm not sure how much of that was writing style and how much of it was pacing. Too florid. Glen Cook, though, from the ten or so pages of I read of him, was the opposite: not enough. My own style probably falls closer to Stirling and Lackey.)

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

If the Axis/Wayfarer books were anti-recc'd, that makes sense. The first half of the six, published in Aus. as the Axis Trilogy, is half decent, but by the time she whacked another three on and called them the Wayfarer Series, the total was a lot less decent.

The Crucible and Troy Game are both very... confronting, shall we say. Both need specs with warnings for violence and rape, as I recall. The Crucible took me AGES to get through because the main character was so convincingly misogynistic I felt ILL. Until he got his comeuppance in book three or so, that is.

If you're such a style snob, I am amused that you read T.Pierce... ;)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think the Wayfarer ones are the ones which were anti-recced.

Pierce and Lackey imprinted on me before I got to be such a style snob. (And if you've never read early Lackey, well...yeah. Later Lackey, especially the ones where she's co-writing, is pretty good, though.)

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I ROUSINGLY anti-rec the last three books of what's published in the states as the Wayfarer six-part series. The first three, the Axis trilogy, are good if... fairly generic fantasy. The later three are interesting ONLY for the way they develop one particular character. I have her next book set in that world, but I'm kind of scared to read it. Her writing's got a lot better so hopefully she can absolve herself.

I think I've only read Lackey once, and it was a co-written, not that I can remember what it was.
Pierce is love :D.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Lackey's early stuff is, well...it has its points. It also has its faults. Then again, you have to remember that I was around, oh, 9 or 10 when I started reading it, probably. (Maybe a little younger or a little older. I know I'd definitely been reading it in 2000-2001, but I don't remember when I started precisely.) With Pierce I was younger, but I'm not sure by how much.

...I feel old. *headdesk*