Thursday, November 6, 2008

picky picky

I went back to the eye doctor and got my contacts today! And then I came home and immediately put on makeup, because now I can see my face. It looks all naked and vulnerable without glasses. And I have those pale circles around my eyes that glasses-wearers often get in the summer.

I bought a paperback in celebration, Fairie Wars by Herbie Brennan. I couldn't find anything else that looked even remotely interesting in B&N. Last week I bought Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff and took it with me to read in the eye doctor's waiting room, and it was a real disappointment. She kept changing POVs for one thing, initially breaking to new sections to do so, but then she just gave up and wobbled back and forth from paragraph to paragraph. That's not omnicient, that's sloppy. For another thing, the supposedly 27-year-old main character acted and spoke like a 40-year-old. That made it vaguely creepy(er) that she was all about the other main character, a 19-year-old kid. Cradle robber much? Not to mention that the pace seemed really slow and I didn't actually like the characters, and the talking cat did not actually act much like a cat. Cats don't frown.

I know, I'm horribly picky. While I was browsing the shelves, I kept adding to a mental list of what I don't want to read:

too much hard SF, or indeed much SF at all
epic fantasy
most urban fantasy
retold fairy tales
retold myths
anything about Roman times
anything about King Arthur
anything about Robin Hood
anything Celtic
[because look, those themes have been mined WAY too much]
anything based on a game or a movie
wolves or werewolves
vampires (mostly--I do make rare exceptions)
political machinations (see epic fantasy)
twee fairies (a la The Good Fairies of New York, which is pretty much unreadable)
evil fairies (sorry, E. Bear, I just can't get into it)
heavy-handed humor (i.e. most humor)

And I could go on and on. And on and on and on. It's a wonder I can ever find anything to read.

5 comments:

Jamie Eyberg said...

I am a horridly slow reader. I rarely get through a book a week. I think it is my mind revolting from my college days when I would be juggling three books a week for my English lit classes. I had to try to comprehend between 1000 and 1500 pages a week and I think I blew a neuron or two.

K.C. Shaw said...

I avoided that by skipping most of the assigned reading. My academic career is littered with the corpses of books I never finished. They should have given me half a diploma, and held the other half until I'd finished reading Frankenstein at the very least. How can anyone put down Frankenstein halfway through?

Aaron Polson said...

I quote: "How can anyone put down Frankenstein halfway through?"

Um, I can show you plenty of students of mine...I promise I won't tell you how it ends. ;)

Carrie Harris said...

I'll be interested to know what you think of Faerie Wars. I thought it was good but just couldn't get into the characters.

K.C. Shaw said...

Aaron--at least I know I'm not alone in putting Frankenstein down and never picking it back up! Although that's not actually a good thing.

Carrie--the writing seems good so far (I've only read the first few pages). It feels YA even though I found it on the "regular" shelves, which is partly what I found so interesting about it. I'll let you know what I think after I finish it.