Must Have Map

16.12 – A Clash of Kings

 

When setting out on my Game of Thrones journey, my brother mentioned (repeatedly!) that I needed to find a good map. Clearly that message was meant for the second book.

It is a lot of riding here to there and troops amassing. So and so holds this or that, he is now dead, and now a different so and so is in charge.  Everyone lying to everyone, no one trusting anyone.  I skipped over half the names because they would be killed a chapter later, and there are far more places talked about than noted on the maps.  But the map did help me kind of keep track of where the main families were, but I do admit to a lot of eye blurring as I carried on.

The use of character names as chapter headings, and then as points of view, is critical.  It was the only thing that brought a sense of familiarity from the first book.  By now, I know these characters well enough that when I see their name I am able to adjust my concentration level because I know what will follow – with Tyrion it is plotting and humor, with Jon it is traveling and deep though, with Catelyn it is hearing about a bunch of people in a bunch of places and sadness.  But mostly it is just a sense of continuity and also being in the action.  You don’t see everything in this story and a lot of really important plot developments take place off stage.  I think Martin handles this really well and stays true to the time he is writing about.  No cell phones or email here; just a bunch of crows flying around carrying letters.  Safe to say some miscommunication occurs. 

I loved the first book, but found the second a bit more tedious. Sadly, knowing I have three more to read, and Martin two more to write, my sense of excitement dwindles a bit just faced with the glut of it all.  Only a bit though.

Concentration

15.12 Mistress of the Art of Death

For the past three months I have been anxiously awaiting our vacation in Cancun.  Seeing as how my honeymoon (over ten years ago!) was my last vacation, it had been awhile. I had lots of time to plan, probably too much.  I had to get everything ready for my parents to take care of our child and I had to figure out how to take care of only myself for a week.  My main concern was reading material.  Didn’t want too much, certainly not too little, and I wanted to have stuff I was sure to love.  A dear friend sent me a copy of Mistress almost a year ago and I socked it away for just such a time.

So there I was: free of child, free of housekeeping and cooking duties, free of anything but sitting by a pool and reading.  And I COULDN’T FUCKING DO IT!!!  My mind literally would not settle down, and I could absolutely not concentrate on reading.  I was very frustrated, which only made it all worse.  I would read about ten pages and realize I had absolutely no idea what happened.  I got to the reveal of the murder mystery and couldn’t even remember who the character was.  SO FRUSTRATING! 

So, I read this, but I almost wish I had left it to read at home as an escape from the chaos swirling around me.  I loved the main character (See, no idea what her name was) and all of the secondary characters around her; although I did get a bit frustrated at how mushy she got around her love interest.  And I always love books set during this time period.  So it should have meant all kinds of win for me, but then again, this was me, and generally speaking for me things that should be all kinds of win are generally all kinds of fail.  Next vacation I will just pick something up at the airport!

Oddly Delightful!

14.12 – It’s So Easy, and other lies

At 17, I was a huge Guns and Roses fan; I guess I still am although much of my connection to the music has moved to the periphery.  The boys I ran with liked Guns but they loved Motley Crue, Metallica, Joe Satriani…  But there was something about GNR that made them my favorite.  In many ways it was the lyrics, somehow a young girl from Boulder, CO could relate to the anger and issues of five punks from LA.  But more than that it was the music.  That rhythm of the bass line.  It is still what I love about any song.  It is what makes me move.  It is what still gives me goosebumps when I hear a GNR song, not so much the angry lyrics anymore.

This is Duff’s story, he never uses it to gossip about or take anyone else down, and because he was the bass player in the band he had always been my favorite.  There are wonderful tidbits here that made me smile: Duff having business cards that said “Duff McKagan, Pastry Chef” prior to giving up the business to play music full time, Slash’s mom being all up in their business when they started out, Duff’s daughter finally picking up a guitar but only because she loved Taylor Swift.  Things that made me sad: The breakdown of the bands’ friendships, the loss of his friends, the loss of his mother.  Things that made me shake my head:  Basically things were good for GNR for a very short period of time, they lived essentially separate lives, and everyone sat by and let Axl’s personality kill it. Like I said, I was a big GNR fan but the only time I saw them live was during a co-headline tour with Metallica.  I went to the show a Guns fan, but after Axl showed up late and walked off the stage, I left a Metallica fan.

Quite honestly, this book was a delight for me to read.  To go back to that place and remember how I felt about the band and who I was then, to remember how I imagined their life to be and to see who they really were.  In fact, oddly, I feel like I had a lot of similar experiences to Duff and it makes me wonder if that is in fact why I was such a fan.

When it came to partying, drinking, and drugs, Duff had a sense to not go to far.  An invisible line of how much you could do while still knowing who you were. I was the same way when it came to partying. I didn’t ever want to lose control.  That doesn’t mean I never did, but it was some sort of self-control I believed I had.  Duff thought he had it all under control too, until his pancreas exploded.  It is nice to think we have it all figured out right?  Then to get all he wanted, have it not turn out to be exactly what he expected, and see it all fall apart. To feel totally alone and secluded as a result.  Then turn to literature and for that to become the way to realize that his shared experiences were normal. So like me.  Then to go back to school once you knew what it was you wanted to achieve and do really well in all of those traditional ways. So like me. 

You can tell Duff has prior experience writing because he moves back and fourth in time instead of writing a time line narrative. But you can also tell it is journalism writing; I feel like you could mix up all the chapters again and it would still work because they are self-contained. This isn't a bad thing.  It was in many ways not at all what I was expecting and yet at the same time exactly what it would have to be, the story of a normal guy trying to find his way.

We All Hold On

13.12 Never Let Me Go

This book is labeled Science Fiction but I didn’t find that to be accurate, and it isn’t really an alternative future either.  There is no reason to think that the world outside of the school was any different than the world we know.  The students’ world may seem different but it is simply what they were exposed to juxtaposed to our own experience.   

A lot of stories like this are full of shock and awe, full of in your face horrors of war and disease; but this one was very subtle and that was nice to read.  It developed like life does.  We grow and learn more about the world around us, and our place in it, and it is often upsetting.  But it was also told as a series of memories and that took some of the sting out of the sadness since the time had already passed and nothing could be done.  My main issue was that the relationship between Tommy and Kathy felt very surface.  I didn’t see them really grow with one another and so that made the final third of the book much less powerful.

I also see people wondering why they didn’t try to flee their fate; well… Why don’t any of us?  We grow up and go to school, on to college, careers, and families; very few challenge that expectation and none do it without questioning their actions.  So why are we asking more from the characters of a novel?  This was just the way things were.

On a side note:  Why must we ruin wonderful book covers with those damn movie tie-in covers?  They are embarrassing!  I hate them and avoid them at all costs, but I had to use it above because that is the edition I read.  Ugh... 

A Boon or a Farce?

12.12 Wraith

Ever since the Kindle came out there has been a boon in the self-publishing industry.  It started with people taking works from the public domain and “selling” them on Amazon.  So, if you searched for Great Expectations you would find 20 different listings with various prices even though the original is free to all. 

Then we started getting a bunch of free books that were self published originals and were basically just converted Word documents that had no editing or real literary worth.

Then we started to see a push towards getting things cleaned up, and self-published authors finding mainstream success.  Some authors took down the self-published links and replaced them with traditional publishers, while others left their publishers and took on the tasks themselves.

When I first got my Kindle I would try anything for free but have pulled back because there are some real stinkers out there.  Just recently, I found a YA self-published book called Wraith that looked interesting, and was free, so I picked it up.  To be fair it is one of the better free book I have read, but to also be fair it needs some work.  I think the idea of self publishing is very exciting, but there is an over all hint of lazy that I find attached to it.  This book had a pretty good plot, a bit too familiar, but pretty good, and the writing is good.  But there were too many mistakes with easy fixes and that drives me crazy!  You need to use the right word, and you need to have things stay consistent, and you need to use punctuation correctly.  Authors are excited to share their work and that makes me excited but it does need to be done well. 

So this book isn’t great, but I also don’t want to discourage anyone, because the talent is there.  I would just say that readers are fickle so slow down, take time to get it as close to perfect as you can, and invest a bit in your product.