Ah, Nebraska weather.
Apr. 10th, 2011 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinJust a couple of weeks ago we had snow on the ground. Now it's officially too hot to sleep in my room. I'd hoped to be able to wait until summer proper to get the window AC set up, but I can already tell that's not going to be the case. I'm hanging out downstairs now while I wait for the temperature to come down a bit up there.
Last year we had the window unit set up in the stairwell between the third floor (my room) and the second floor, because a poorly ventilated bedroom on the second floor was also occupied. Unfortunately the stairwell window is blocked by the stairs, and since cold air doesn't rise the bulk of it ended up in the space underneath it. It made the windowsill conveniently frosty... I kept bottles of soda there so I didn't have to go very far for a cool drink, but it didn't have much affect on my sleeping space.
This year the spare bedroom really is spare, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get my bedroom down to a tolerable temperature and keep it there.
In the meantime, I've just finished reading Claire Cooney's Jack o' the Hills (publisher link, Kindle link). I've seen reviews calling it "dark fantasy". Now, "dark fantasy" often means there's a vampire or werewolf or other monster boy or girl who is very pretty and who feels deeply morally conflicted about all the sex he or she has. That's not the case here. This is a story about monstrous folk doing monstrous things for monstrous reasons. And it is wondrous.
Basically, Jack o' the Hills is a lush retelling of a classic and much loved fairytale that Ms. Cooney made up. Really, reading it, one would swear that it's but the middle story of a much larger Jack Yap cycle which one has heard (likely debased and Bowdlerized) pieces of all of one's life. The whole thing has a very Holly Golightly style of authenticity about it: sure it's a phony, but it's a real phony.
Now, I'm sure that I've seen mention of this book before tonight, but I'll be honest: my flists are full of authors and everyone's always talking about their projects. A lot of it goes right past or through me. What attracted my eye to this was a discussion on her Livejournal about the importance of audience. An acquaintance of the author presented a copy of the book to her mother, thinking she would enjoy it on the basis of "This is a good book."
This proved not to be the case.
I don't mean it's not the case that it's a good book. I mean the acquaintance's mother didn't enjoy this good book very much at all. Why not? Because it wasn't written for her.
Now, this is something I've written about before. I don't believe there are any objective measurements of quality, and if there are, I don't think it matters, because if the best book in the world by this metric were less interesting to you than one that is technically crap you'd still prefer the crap one. As an example: I have now read two of C.S.E. Cooney's novellas. This one speaks more directly to my interests, but I thought The Big Bah-Ha is the superior story of the two. So which one's better? Which one is a better story for me? I really don't know... my brain's not exactly wired for favorites.
You could maybe take similar books that interest you and rate them in terms of quality, but that list would only be useful to anyone else to the extent that their tastes match yours.
"Know your audience" is advice given to writers, but it's only sort of intermittently useful. How often are we presented with a specific audience to suit a story to? It does happen, but in this day and age, it also happens that we write stories and books and send them out into the world for people to read or not as they see fit. If one took a story like Jack o' the Hills and got the entire English-language-story-reading audience to read and rate it, I don't like to think how it would fare. Stories about brutally wicked and wickedly brutal puckish boys who stomp and shake things (and people) to death with nary a moral lesson or hint of comeuppance in sight don't tend to be crowd-pleasers, unless the crowd is self-selecting... that's why books like this tend to be bought largely on the strength of direct recommendations and prior familiarity with the author.
So, this is not a categorical recommendation. This is a very nuanced recommendation. If reading about wicked things behaving wickedly (and I don't mean "tee hee naughtily", I mean wickedly) doesn't appeal to you, don't buy this book... you'll only end up complaining to me for recommending it or the author for writing it or the publisher for publishing it. If you like your Grimm a little grim and you don't mind a little blood on your boots, though, then this should be an entertaining diversion.
Last year we had the window unit set up in the stairwell between the third floor (my room) and the second floor, because a poorly ventilated bedroom on the second floor was also occupied. Unfortunately the stairwell window is blocked by the stairs, and since cold air doesn't rise the bulk of it ended up in the space underneath it. It made the windowsill conveniently frosty... I kept bottles of soda there so I didn't have to go very far for a cool drink, but it didn't have much affect on my sleeping space.
This year the spare bedroom really is spare, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get my bedroom down to a tolerable temperature and keep it there.
In the meantime, I've just finished reading Claire Cooney's Jack o' the Hills (publisher link, Kindle link). I've seen reviews calling it "dark fantasy". Now, "dark fantasy" often means there's a vampire or werewolf or other monster boy or girl who is very pretty and who feels deeply morally conflicted about all the sex he or she has. That's not the case here. This is a story about monstrous folk doing monstrous things for monstrous reasons. And it is wondrous.
Basically, Jack o' the Hills is a lush retelling of a classic and much loved fairytale that Ms. Cooney made up. Really, reading it, one would swear that it's but the middle story of a much larger Jack Yap cycle which one has heard (likely debased and Bowdlerized) pieces of all of one's life. The whole thing has a very Holly Golightly style of authenticity about it: sure it's a phony, but it's a real phony.
Now, I'm sure that I've seen mention of this book before tonight, but I'll be honest: my flists are full of authors and everyone's always talking about their projects. A lot of it goes right past or through me. What attracted my eye to this was a discussion on her Livejournal about the importance of audience. An acquaintance of the author presented a copy of the book to her mother, thinking she would enjoy it on the basis of "This is a good book."
This proved not to be the case.
I don't mean it's not the case that it's a good book. I mean the acquaintance's mother didn't enjoy this good book very much at all. Why not? Because it wasn't written for her.
Now, this is something I've written about before. I don't believe there are any objective measurements of quality, and if there are, I don't think it matters, because if the best book in the world by this metric were less interesting to you than one that is technically crap you'd still prefer the crap one. As an example: I have now read two of C.S.E. Cooney's novellas. This one speaks more directly to my interests, but I thought The Big Bah-Ha is the superior story of the two. So which one's better? Which one is a better story for me? I really don't know... my brain's not exactly wired for favorites.
You could maybe take similar books that interest you and rate them in terms of quality, but that list would only be useful to anyone else to the extent that their tastes match yours.
"Know your audience" is advice given to writers, but it's only sort of intermittently useful. How often are we presented with a specific audience to suit a story to? It does happen, but in this day and age, it also happens that we write stories and books and send them out into the world for people to read or not as they see fit. If one took a story like Jack o' the Hills and got the entire English-language-story-reading audience to read and rate it, I don't like to think how it would fare. Stories about brutally wicked and wickedly brutal puckish boys who stomp and shake things (and people) to death with nary a moral lesson or hint of comeuppance in sight don't tend to be crowd-pleasers, unless the crowd is self-selecting... that's why books like this tend to be bought largely on the strength of direct recommendations and prior familiarity with the author.
So, this is not a categorical recommendation. This is a very nuanced recommendation. If reading about wicked things behaving wickedly (and I don't mean "tee hee naughtily", I mean wickedly) doesn't appeal to you, don't buy this book... you'll only end up complaining to me for recommending it or the author for writing it or the publisher for publishing it. If you like your Grimm a little grim and you don't mind a little blood on your boots, though, then this should be an entertaining diversion.
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no subject
on 2011-04-11 03:23 am (UTC)It's funny, because my boss -- who loved Jack o' the Hills so much -- did not at all like what she'd heard of The Big Bah-Ha and sounded skeptical when I told her I thought it was among the best things I've written.
"It's just not for everybody," I said, "but as far as conveying a concept to the page clearly, and doing something I meant to do, Big Bah-Ha did that."
Jack's just a bit of fun. The idea of violence begetting violence, and a fairy tale word that is unforgiving. Where you have to help yourself, and there ain't no little talking doll or bird gonna save you, and yet for all that, for all that you stomp some folks, that doesn't mean you're entirely incapable of love. I like Jack fine; I always did. But he's not really very COMPLEX!
Audience is interesting. Who AM I writing for, after all? To please myself? For a few friends? Someone away out there I've never met? Someone who is NOT my grandmother?
Every story I write so vastly diverges from the last that I feel like I'm flying by the pulverizing end of the pestle every time I sit down. Do you find this when you're writing? Or do you always know what you're doing.
I find your reflections so thoughtful -- and thought-provoking. Thanks for making me think in new ways.
no subject
on 2011-04-11 03:43 am (UTC)I can definitely see where The Big Bah-Ha is the more complex and contemplative or deliberate work, but Jack o' the Hills is just more my Cup o' the Tea. I hope you have more bits of fun like that in you.
Every story I write so vastly diverges from the last that I feel like I'm flying by the pulverizing end of the pestle every time I sit down. Do you find this when you're writing?
Well, my main line as a writer is a giant serial of (currently) somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million words, so most of the time the next story that I write is also the last story that I wrote. But the other stuff that I write does kind of go all over the place.
no subject
on 2011-04-11 03:57 am (UTC)Having done so, all I can say is
I'll be in my bunkwow.Tee hee
on 2011-04-11 04:01 am (UTC)...Or is it?
I never can tell anymore, really!
It came from a really cool panel discussion at World Horror in Toronto a few years back, about "building monsters." John Picacio and some cinema guys were talking about Del Toro, and how he obviously takes the thing that freaks him out the most, then makes it and gives it to the rest of us.
And I got to thinking about what disturbed me, and why it did, and I thought about that story I heard about voluntary cannibalism...
Two different film students from two different states have asked me if they could adapt it. I said, "Oh, sure, why not?" because I understood that they really just wanted to do the scene with the bone saw. Because WHO WOULDN'T, really?
no subject
on 2011-04-11 04:03 am (UTC)There's a third Jack Yap story in mah heed. It might be a whole novel. And it may or may not be loosely, oh very loosely, based on the Drowning of Ys. Sort of. In that myth, there is a man in red who rides into Ys, seduces the king's sorceress daughter, and opens the sea wall. There's also a saint involved.
But, after reading that, I deliberately put Jack in a red suit in Oubliette's Egg, so he'd be dressed for the occasion wherein I send him to the Sea...
And it would stay bought.
on 2011-04-11 04:06 am (UTC)