Re: Bad books you can't help re-reading
- From: Joe Bernstein <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 10:46:37 +0000 (UTC)
In article <1148658642.128659.174190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Hoi-Polloi <terry_tn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Perhaps "bad books" is too strong of language, but lately I've noticed
that there are a number of deeply flawed novels that I cannot help but
re-read every so often. Some examples:
Oh, sure. But one can master this urge, ya know. Meanwhile...
Eddings' Belgariad:
Well, *some* people might find it tough to resist, I suppose; there
are probably people out there who compulsively re-read phone books,
right? Me, I'm still waiting for the day when I have to actually
give Eddings a second chance. (And the first was in 1983.)
Heinlein's Almost Anything:
Eh. To start with the Early/Late divide is relevant here; yes,
people delight in pointing out flaws in, say, <The Door into
Summer> but nobody is seriously going to mock you for re-reading
it. That said, I will 'fess up to this much: for several weeks
now I've been resisting the urge to re-read <Friday>, which
*certainly* is the kind of bad temptation we're talking about,
and sooner or later I'm likely to succumb. [1]
Weber and White's Starfire books:
To each their own. I tried to read <On Basilisk Station> not too
long ago, and gave up partway in due to pretty much the flaws you
identified. Maybe someday I'll try Weber, probably in a different
series; or maybe not.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:
Turgid, long, cariacatured, long, hammers it's premise into
the ground multiple times, and, well ... long. But I can't
stop reading it for:
-- Any of Francisco's dialog. Nobody does the urbane
insult anymore
Well, actually, they do, just not as compulsively. Lois McMaster
Bujold's characters tend to be good at it, for a handy example;
I'm sure there are more.
Still, the only reasons *I* can think of to re-read any of that book
are indeed that dialogue, one, or wanting a stiff moral bracing-up,
two. But neither has brought me anywhere near it for years and
years.
Anyone else have a problem with flawed novels that keep sucking
you back in? (Yeah, yeah, I can hear you now, "well these books
certainly keep sucking!" I know you have a copy, and the cover is
held on with tape.)
Sorry, wrong. OK, to be fair, my copy of <The Moon Is a Harsh
Mistress> did at one time pretty much fall apart - but that was
before I clearly perceived flaws in it. (Sigh. Thinks carefully.
Oops, yes, I think there was also tape involved in my copy of <Atlas
Shrugged> at one time. Sigh. At least I haven't replaced that one.)
On the other hand, I've owned a bunch of Lovecraft books for years
without being even slightly tempted, and can't imagine the
circumstances that would lead me to deliberately acquire the
Starfire books given your description and my attempt on <On
Basilisk Station>.
But the books I think of first, faced with this kind of question,
are the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay, and those books never
even came close to falling apart. I suppose Gym Quirk's nomination
of Pern also fits me, though there the re-reads come much further
apart and I haven't bothered to acquire a complete set. (But one
of the ones I've owned longest - I forget whether it's <Dragonsong>
or <Dragonsinger> - does also have a cover fallen off.)
This whole cover-falling-off thing ... perplexes me, now that I
think of it. I can sorta explain <DragonX> because I was a kid,
and <Atlas Shrugged> because it's so freakin' *long*, but how
did I manage to annihilate a copy of <Moon> and not more recent
re-reading addictions? It's not enough to note that I was a
teenager back then - I re-read <The Last Unicorn> probably dozens
of times as a teenager and never destroyed a copy of *that*.
Maybe it's because of a different *type* of re-reading; with <The
Last Unicorn> I would normally go start to finish, but with the
others I'd have been much likelier to dip in at random. Hmmm.
Looking at my 'favourites' shelves (which means, where I keep books
I don't want to have to go look for in the attic), I see little
that raises any particular shame. I've even succeeded in exiling
Fionavar; it may be a year now since I dipped into those. Granted,
<The Butterfly Kid> is still there, but what's embarrassing about
*that*, for crying out loud? So the only current representative
of that class to get special treatment from me is the <1632> series.
Which suggests to me that one can contain the problem, but perhaps
not entirely conquer it. Or maybe I just haven't been trying
long enough.
Joe Bernstein
[1] Succumbing to <Friday> may be helped along by what I'm just
now reading, an early Dean Koontz book called <The Crimson Witch>.
In which not only do we get spell-check errors like "reigned his
mount" but novelties like "cranned its neck", topped off with a plot
driven largely, far as I've gotten, by a he-said-she-said argument:
"You raped me!" - "No, you wanted it! See, you were dressed
provocatively, that *proves* you wanted it!" - which (I've peeked)
ends in Twoo Wuv. Yuck. Also, Koontz has difficulty referring to
the title character (the female half of the aforementioned couple)
without emphasising her good looks in a lascivious way, even
when she's alone.
Here's a sample that conveys several of these problems at one go:
"She settled through the last whisps of the storm's hair, the
breezes fluffing her red robes behind her in the darkness,
tickling her pretty face and dancing across the sleekness of
her body. She stirred the air with her passage, making the
thunder to go mute and the lightning to lose its ferocity so
that they would not alert her prey to her coming."
Was he being paid by the word, ya think?
I presume Koontz has gotten over this sort of thing? I have
the impression that nowadays women make up at least half his
readers...
Anyway, for all that's undeniably wrong with <Friday> vis-a-
vis rape, it sure isn't *that* bad.
--
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
.
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