Repercussions

[ladysprite]

The true tragedy and horror of the holiday season is this:

Winding up with a new Charles DeLint novel - the first collection of Newford short stories in years - and a new Kelley Armstrong novel, finally focusing on your favorite characters again, both waiting and teasing and tempting you on your to-read pile while you're about 100 pages from the end of the most dull, poorly-written, mediocre urban fantasy novel that it's ever been your dubious pleasure to plod through.

I've put enough time and effort into finishing this book that I don't want to give up now, this close to the end. But it's getting harder and harder to push through it with such delicious brain candy waiting for me and calling my name.

Of course, then I have the added trauma of having to choose between the two...

My life is so hard.

Comments

[pixel.livejournal.com]

So what's the bad novel, so we can all be warned?

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

I have fears about being the author who writes That Book.

yes please

[andreas_schaefer]

warn us!

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

"Greywalker," by Kat Richardson. I don't mind them trying to mix physics into my urban fantasy, but the physics is just poorly written. Plus inconsistent characterization and a gratuitous ferret. It's not utterly horrid, but it's... so aggressively mediocre that it's making my eyes cross.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

The thing is, as far as I can tell, for almost any author there's going to be someone who feels that way about them, and someone who thinks they're the best to ever put pen to paper.

I can't stand this book. But other people liked it enough that the author got a trilogy deal and the books sell pretty well. I would walk through fire for Charles DeLint's fiction; other friends of mine think his writing is pathologically dull.

This is why it is awesome that there are many different writers out there - we all get to have something we like.

[braider.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, putting a book aside is a healthy activity called "cutting your losses".

Alternately, you could "read several books at a time" and "get back to" the boring one later.

Caution: reading multiple books at once can cause interesting bouts of, "But wait, if they can do X, why don't they solve their dilemma by doing Y? Oh, wait, that's a different series...."

[gmkieran.livejournal.com]

ooooh....new de Lint! what is it? we wantssss it preciousssss, we wantsssss it! ;)

and I'm a fan of the multi-book theory - I think I have at least four I'll be "getting back to" sometime close to never. :D

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

"Muse and Reverie" - it's a new collection, just out in hardcover - I first saw it a few weeks ago. I'm only just starting it, but I'm already in love. :)

Sometimes I read multiple books, but most of the time when I'm reading something I'm enjoying it enough that I want to focus on it, and my reading time is limited enough that I don't want to split it....

[gmkieran.livejournal.com]

well, now I know where *some* of my christmas money is going! :D and yes, when I'm enjoying a book, I read it through and nothing interrupts that. lately, though, my taste in books has been poor and I haven't finished anything I've picked up in the last several months. amusingly enough, the first I'm likely to is a piece of non-fiction entitled In Defense of Food.

in any case, I will join you in de Lint delight as soon as may be arranged!