Code Name Verity 2

I ended up staying up late to finish it last night. Thoroughly enjoyed! My feeling about what Verity was doing was mostly accurate, but I didn't at all expect the denouement.

It's books like this that make me annoyed when people criticise Young Adult fiction, or say people shouldn't read it. It's a good book! Accessible to teenagers, but not infantilised or preachy or overly romanticised. Why shouldn't adults read that sort of book?

Code Name Verity

I assume everyone had an English teacher who tried to get them to engage with a book by reading a page and then making you guess what was going to happen next?

I've found myself doing that quite a lot with Code Name Verity. I've been reading it for a Goodreads book club, and finding it engrossing, but I keep thinking it is going to go a bit Sarah Waters. Of course, as it is a young adult novel, the chances of it involving explicit lesbian sex are fairly remote.  The Scheherazade aspect, of a young woman spinning a story to save her life - or at least postpone her death - is well done.

I won't say how I think it'll be resolved, but my guess is that the name, Verity, is quite important.

ETA I just got up to a bit where Queenie gets called Scheherazade, so apparently that was a deliberate motif, not just my interpretation. 

A Song of Ice and Fire - A Feast For Crows

I am now, for the first time, ahead of the Game of Thrones TV series in my reading. I don't mind the elision of characters and events - the different medium does require different story-telling techniques. What I am finding interesting is the way some characters are portrayed quite differently between the books and the series. It's hard to know if they are sometimes being written more sympathetically for the screen because the actors are popular, or if the showrunners have a plan for the character that isn't quite the same as the author's plan.

Another theory I have is that the difference in portrayal is the difference of perspective. Jaime Lannister appears much more chivalrous and heroic in the series than he does in the books. My feeling is that it is because he is a point of view character - his actions appear heroic from the outside, but some of his self-talk is decidedly not. Arya Stark appears quite confident and assured from the outside, but her self-talk is convincing herself not to be afraid. It reminds me, in a way, of the Bridget Jones books. The problem I had with that on screen was that I never really felt she was supposed to be quite as useless and pathetic as she told her diary she was, but of course that was what they had to show to convey some of the humour of the books.

I can't believe I just compared Game of Thrones to Bridget Jones. Good thing it rhymes. 

The Dresden Files

I'm on a re-read of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, ahead of the release of Skin Game at the end of the month. It's not the first time I have re-read them, I tend to take a run at the last couple of books at least before the next comes out, but it's the most concentrated burst of re-reading I have done. Over the course of the series his writing becomes much more fluid and engaging, but even in the first couple of chapters we are introduced to characters and ideas that are vital throughout the series. I don't know if he had an overarching plan when he started, but Butcher weaves the threads beautifully. It really stands out how much control he has over his plotting. I like that.

I also like the sense Butcher conveys that Dresden has a life outside the books. You feel that time is passing in between episodes, that things happen that we have no knowledge of. Dresden is not the only character who develops. Even little things like Murphy's haircut changing, or the Alphas aging and leaving college - they all make a three dimensional world.

In fantasy/sci-fi, you hear a lot about world building. World-building isn't just understanding the geography of a fictional world, it's creating a believable physical, mystical and emotional landscape in your world. I think some contemporary or urban fantasy writers skimp on that a little bit, with a "heck, it's New York, everyone knows New York" attitude, but Dresden shows how well it can be done even in a familiar real-world environment.

I've been thinking about maybe attending my first con, and Jim Butcher is going to be over here for Easter Con next year, so that may be a good first visit!

A Song of Ice and Fire

I read the first book a few years ago, loved it and immediately bought the second. But somehow, it's never been the right time to start reading it. Until this week. Is it because season 4 of Game of Thrones has just started? Possibly. I didn't watch seasons 2 or 3 of the show - I found the unrelenting violence a bit much - but I did watch s4e01, and thought I would have a better idea of what was going on if I caught up with the books.

Recommending books

I find recommending books harder than recommending restaurants. If someone goes to a restaurant I love and doesn't like it, well clearly they are wrong, but c'est la vie. But if someone doesn't like a book I have recommended, well, that tears at the heartstrings.

The books I have been recommending most vocally, of late are:
Longbourn by Jo Baker
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K Jemisin
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

So far, these recommendations have gone well, but one person only gave The Night Circus 3 stars on Goodreads. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and ask why? But sadly, her review made it very clear. She just didn't love it as much as I did. I must learn to be as philosophical about books as I am about restaurants. Of course, a long time ago I stopped recommending my favourite restaurants to some people because I knew they wouldn't love them as I did. I should adopt that for books, rather than go through the pain.

Who am I to say this is shit?

"An author on Facebook the other day noted, quite correctly, that writing is a craft and as a craft it can be evaluated fairly easily. This isn’t about whether a story is to your liking, but rather, does the author know the basic rules of writing a story? Rules can be broken, of course, but they must be broken with some skill — breaking the rules out of ignorance creates, you know, a fucking mess. A writer not knowing the difference between a possessive and a plural is not some avant-garde hipster trick. It’s a basic lack of craft awareness. At that point you’re not a marksman doing tricks; you’re a toddler with a handgun." More brilliance from Chuck Wendig

This actually ties into a really good piece I read the other day on the death of expertise. There is this bizarre notion that everyone's opinions are equally valid and it is just mean to provide critique. Here's a little tip - an educated opinion is more valid than a uneducated opinion, and educated critique is actually a really important tool to raise the quality of a work, be it dance, cooking or writing. I think a lot of writers could benefit from more critique and harder editing, and a bit less having sunshine blown up their arses.