Recent readings

Ok, so right now I'm reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, and it's eating my brain. Considering that I've been up for an hour and a half, it's amazing I haven't read more yet today, but I've been being all communicative, writing email to beanworks, only to get distracted by IM with joyquality and siobhan1. Also I've been drinking tea (mmm, Earl Grey) and forgetting to have breakfast, but I'll fix that last problem soon, really I will. In fact...

Tracy wanders off to get herself a bowl of granola and yogurt

Ok, now that that's taken care of, where was I? Oh yes: reading. The last book I finished was springbok1's sister's first novel, Fires of the Faithful, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and I'm not just saying that because I know springbok1 will read this. Since National Novel Writing Month last year, I've been reluctant to say anything bad about other people's fiction, and especially first novels, because there's a voice in my head that says, "Oh yeah? Where's your book?" that shuts me up pretty right quick in the literary criticism department. Sigh. I really don't know if I'm ever going to finish The Witchworld, let alone how. Mostly I think the problem is I'm sick of my viewpoint character and kind of dread writing the chapters and scenes I haven't written yet from her perspective, but on the other hand I don't want to switch viewpoint characters too much because that's a recipe for disaster (and I've got enough problems with characters knowing things they shouldn't as it is). So I'm not sure what to do. Also there's a few characters I really don't know well enough to write more about them, and blah blah blah...

But speaking of fantasies with strong female characters and other worlds where imagination reigns supreme, I got Alan Moore's Promethea out of the library a while back and I've been rereading it every few days ever since. I love it. In case it wasn't clear from the first sentence of this paragraph, this comic panders to me in every way, and I love it. (It also makes me a little embarrassed that I tried to write a novel pandering to myself when surprise! Alan freaking Moore already did it, and he's ever so much more the master of story... on the one hand it makes me wonder why I even try, and on the other hand it makes me feel like hey, my story idea must be pretty okay, even if I centered it around a setting rather than a whole host of interesting characters that give everything layers and depth and whatnot...) Anyway, I recommend Promethea a lot. (I also liked that pants_of_doom mentioned her in one of her "5 question interview" entries.)

Ok, time to read now. I have a student at 3:30, and I don't think I can finish Pattern Recognition by then, but we'll see.

Pattern Recognition

Well, I finished it. That went faster than expected, so I think I must've started skimming pretty hard in there somewhere. Peter was right; I'm going to have to reread it, if only because towards the end I was reading so fast that I must have missed some stuff. I saw one plot twist coming, but the whole story strikes me as so carefully constructed that I'm wondering if I was supposed to guess the twist in question... it's that kind of book. Anyway, for my own reference mostly, here are some passages I marked while reading because they struck me as interesting, or entertaining, or important: ( Quotes )

There could be lots more, but I'm cutting myself off. Also I'm a big dork for marking a few typos. Lunchtime now, I think.