52 pickup and thoughts from the media trenches

[pbray]

Last year I made a promise to myself to find more time to read--despite the pressures of the day job and writing. I failed miserably. This year I'm trying again, proving that there is an optimist deep inside me:*

Books read: Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth by Simon R. Green, Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs, Moonshine by Rob Thurman.

Ratio of books purchased to books read: 5 to 1. (See optimist).

Books started and abandoned: 2 (titles withheld)

I'm way behind the curve if I want to read 52 books this year, however there was a massive period of writing in the middle there so I may catch up.


One thing I've noticed is that I rarely read extended series. Though I finished the sixth installment in the Tales from the Nightside, and the seventh in the Dresden series, neither book left me wanting to read more. Should I want to spend more time in those worlds, I'll go back and reread the early books from those series.

I often have that problem with long series, whether it's Sue Grafton's Alphabets, Martha Grimes's Richard Jury mysteries, or Robert Jordan's tree-devouring monstrosity. At some point I lose interest. If I like the first book, I'll probably read the next two in the series, but if the series stretches past four or five books, I almost always find that whatever drew me to the series no longer holds my attention and I give up. In some cases it's because the characters aren't evolving or changing, so they wind up rehashing the same conflicts from one book to another. This is a common failing (IMO) in many mystery series. In F&SF the problem is often that each book introduces new characters and new plot threads without every tying up the old ones. When I reach that cast of thousands point, I give up.

Yet I know that there are many, many readers who enjoy these books--and what I see as flaws are the elements that draw them to the books and keep them coming back for more. It's a neat trick, but not one I'll ever master. If I can't keep interest long enough to read this kind of series, I can only imagine the special hell it would be for me to try and write one.

The authors I like best are the ones who write one or more books in a world and then move on. Sometimes they keep writing in the same world but pick up new characters and situations. Other times they create entirely new worlds, or change genres to explore new themes. These are the books that I enjoy reading, and the ones that I want to write.

Which, I suppose, is a long-winded way of saying that I'll never commit a seven-book trilogy, or find myself writing the "W is for Warlock" installment of my long-running mystery series.

FWIW, I made it through K is for Killer in the Alphabets, and the first 11 Richard Jury novels. Each author has published at least nine more books in their series, so they've clearly tapped into a demand.


In other media news, so far I've loaded 16 CD's (195 songs or 13.3 hours) of music onto the iPod, and managed to create my first playlist. Since I'm only using the iPod at the gym for the moment, I already have enough music to hold me for the next 3 or 4 weeks, and I've only used about 20% of the storage space. I'm amused by the various genres that are assigned to the albums--what I consider to be Rock is arbitrarily divided into Alternative, Metal, Pop or Rock--I think I need my own classifications of CrankVolume, MustSingAlong, MustBopHead, AirDrumSolo and PedalFaster.

*Note: And yes, he was delicious.

Comments

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I tend to keep reading out of habit, although the older I get the more I'm learning to just stop reading when the book (or series) stops grabbing me. But it's often true what you say about re-reading the earlier books in a series and leaving the later ones alone...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

When I had more free time I would keep reading series out of habit--the last couple of Sue Grafton Alphabet mysteries definitely fell into that category. Now that I can barely manage 3-4 books a month (as opposed to 4-5 a week), I find I'm much more selective in what I read.

Plus it's a bit of reading ADD. I crave New! and Shiny!

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my reading time has been drastically curtailed, too. I always had a long commute (about an hour each way by subway and bus), and pre-baby I used all that time for reading; now the commute is shorter, and anyway I've always got the offspring with me, so if I do read it tends to be Pinkerton, Beware! rather than, say, Possession. Also, I'm trying to write on a serious basis now, which eats up a lot of time. (Also, of course, I play on the Internet too much :P.) So I'm a lot less inclined to keep reading something that bores me, despite that sense of duty that keeps saying "Hey! You started that book, and you haven't finished it yet! Hey! You! I'm talking to you! etc."

[pbray.livejournal.com]

And "Hey! Books cost money, you can't just decide not to read it."

Yeah, I know those voices well :-)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I don't get that one as much, because most of my reading comes from the library -- but I do of course get "Hey! Other people are waiting to read that! Get a hustle on!" ;)