Wednesday, January 05, 2005
50 book challenge.
Amber Taylor, says crescat, is going to read 50 books and blog about them in 2005.
I suppose this is a more doable goal than writing a novel in november.
I'm not setting a goal of 50 - I avoid commitments, and this one seems like much effort little payback. But I might end up reading 25 books in 2005, and i'll be blogging anyway. I would not start with 'the crying of lot 49' - I'm not sure I would make it past book one.
In her spare time, when not reading 50 books, amber blogs and oh yeah attends harvard law school. In my spare time I drink coffee and wonder if it will ever stop raining.
So one to book one.
Pattern Recognition. William Gibson.
When I was a kid, we'd go to cutlser's pharmacy after church and for five cents I'd buy a lemonheads or reeses cup and my folks would get the sunday new york times.
In that space now is a used bookstore. $3 pricetag and the "uncorrected proof for limited distribution" caught my eye.
It's ok. Set in next week, our heroine jetsets from london to tokyo to new york tracking down some elusive footage.
Now I can relate to that. I don't fly - I rarely leave the house. But the hunt for elusive footage is fun. I'm looking for a film by weegee, arthur zelig. I know him as a photographer, but he did make one short film, and I'd like to find it.
I'm looking for the movies Bruce Lee made as a kid in Hong Kong.
I'm on p 245 after reading for about a week. I read in snatches before bed or in the bath and otherwise I'm online all day. Doing nothing.
It's not that bad a novel. We care about the main character, and the plot moves along ok, and the descriptive style of the writing has something going for it.
But frankly, if it didn't say "William Gibson" on the cover, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read to p. 245.
I had heard the buzz about neuromancer when it first buzzed, and I'd read either mona lisa overdrive or burning chrome from the library way back when,
and I have Gibson stories involving a waitress at a tibetan restaurant (Idoru) and an S&M club in muncie (is neuromancer the one with girl who lives on the bridge in a post-punk apolocolypse? that one.) But cyberpunk is held to a higher standard after Snow Crash, and this doesn't really measure up. Was it worth $3? Sure. I have another week's entertainment to get out of it, and it's raining outside, and it's less dull than the kennedy bio i have up next, and i'm not sure if I'll like the neil gaiman i'm probably going to read instead of the kennedy one, so really it's fine.
But this is faint praise for a guy who invented a genre that inspired a generation.
later update:
blurb on the back says "reaches out to a wider readership than anything he has ever written." That is to say, it's dumbed down to the mainstream. Spoilers: she finds the mcguffin, girl gets boy, girl's quirks get cured, all live happily ever after.
Now, I'm not against writers cashing in, and I'm not against writers breaking out of a narrow genre to address a wider audience. And this wasn't a bad book; as mainstream novels go it was quite acceptable. I don't know how it sold; I don't know how to check where a book is on the amazon charts. But I don't see this as winning a wider audience for either his better earlier works or the genre as a whole.
Next up:
Either 1-L, or Gaiman's American Gods. I ran one of my errands and took out the trash. I'm thinking of going to the store for coffee and light bulbs, but I'm pretty sure... fuses! That was it. Ok, I'll go in the next hour, he says.
Amber Taylor, says crescat, is going to read 50 books and blog about them in 2005.
I suppose this is a more doable goal than writing a novel in november.
I'm not setting a goal of 50 - I avoid commitments, and this one seems like much effort little payback. But I might end up reading 25 books in 2005, and i'll be blogging anyway. I would not start with 'the crying of lot 49' - I'm not sure I would make it past book one.
In her spare time, when not reading 50 books, amber blogs and oh yeah attends harvard law school. In my spare time I drink coffee and wonder if it will ever stop raining.
So one to book one.
Pattern Recognition. William Gibson.
When I was a kid, we'd go to cutlser's pharmacy after church and for five cents I'd buy a lemonheads or reeses cup and my folks would get the sunday new york times.
In that space now is a used bookstore. $3 pricetag and the "uncorrected proof for limited distribution" caught my eye.
It's ok. Set in next week, our heroine jetsets from london to tokyo to new york tracking down some elusive footage.
Now I can relate to that. I don't fly - I rarely leave the house. But the hunt for elusive footage is fun. I'm looking for a film by weegee, arthur zelig. I know him as a photographer, but he did make one short film, and I'd like to find it.
I'm looking for the movies Bruce Lee made as a kid in Hong Kong.
I'm on p 245 after reading for about a week. I read in snatches before bed or in the bath and otherwise I'm online all day. Doing nothing.
It's not that bad a novel. We care about the main character, and the plot moves along ok, and the descriptive style of the writing has something going for it.
But frankly, if it didn't say "William Gibson" on the cover, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read to p. 245.
I had heard the buzz about neuromancer when it first buzzed, and I'd read either mona lisa overdrive or burning chrome from the library way back when,
and I have Gibson stories involving a waitress at a tibetan restaurant (Idoru) and an S&M club in muncie (is neuromancer the one with girl who lives on the bridge in a post-punk apolocolypse? that one.) But cyberpunk is held to a higher standard after Snow Crash, and this doesn't really measure up. Was it worth $3? Sure. I have another week's entertainment to get out of it, and it's raining outside, and it's less dull than the kennedy bio i have up next, and i'm not sure if I'll like the neil gaiman i'm probably going to read instead of the kennedy one, so really it's fine.
But this is faint praise for a guy who invented a genre that inspired a generation.
later update:
blurb on the back says "reaches out to a wider readership than anything he has ever written." That is to say, it's dumbed down to the mainstream. Spoilers: she finds the mcguffin, girl gets boy, girl's quirks get cured, all live happily ever after.
Now, I'm not against writers cashing in, and I'm not against writers breaking out of a narrow genre to address a wider audience. And this wasn't a bad book; as mainstream novels go it was quite acceptable. I don't know how it sold; I don't know how to check where a book is on the amazon charts. But I don't see this as winning a wider audience for either his better earlier works or the genre as a whole.
Next up:
Either 1-L, or Gaiman's American Gods. I ran one of my errands and took out the trash. I'm thinking of going to the store for coffee and light bulbs, but I'm pretty sure... fuses! That was it. Ok, I'll go in the next hour, he says.
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