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Jan. 22nd, 2013 05:47 pmI spent the last week and a half FAILING TO READ BOOKS once more.
The books I was attempting to read were The Wood Wife, by Terri Windling, and Dream Messenger, by Masahiko Shimada. They were both Magical Realism reccs made to me at one point, and I think maybe they're...I don't know, good books but not for me? They are definitely both Magical Realism, which is a hard genre to find, but why must this genre about infusing wonder in everyday life be so tedious.
The Wood Wife is about a woman who inherits a house and all the papers from a poet she befriended, and her attempts to make sense of his life and death and the strange circumstances surrounding the community of people he lived with. It's a weird meld of Pagan British mythology -- the spirits of the woods, the man-as-stag, a few other elements -- and Native American traditions like Crow and Coyote. I felt like perhaps Windling was trying to mash them together a bit too hard, and I wondered why she couldn't just run with the Native American side. On the other hand, I wasn't sure she'd actually done enough research there, though admittedly with the amount of new-agey misinformation floating around about Native American faiths in general that's a bit hard to do. Anyway, I reached a point where I was done with the Romance Of The Desert, plus I thought the poet's poetry wasn't terribly good, so I put it down.
I got about the same length into Dream Messenger before I put it down as well. Told in a different way I might have been more interested; it's the parallel story of a woman's search for her employer's long-lost son and the son's youth and travels. I'm sure they met up eventually. Anyway, there was just so much exposition, there was so much talking about the son's past rather than anything actually happening, and as an adult he came across as a bit of a douchebag. The past he lived would have been more fascinating, I think, if I'd been able to watch him live it in the narrative, though I suppose that would have shifted all the tension and made for a very different story. It had some really interesting themes, of nationhood and the meaning of childhood and identity, but I was on the verge of dropping it anyway when the free verse started. At which point I gave in and gave up.
Maybe I just don't have enough patience anymore, I don't know. Part of it was probably that they're due at the library tomorrow. Seems like the list of books I tried and discarded gets longer and the list of books I finished gets shorter and much more nonfiction-y. Anyway, here is a record of two I didn't manage. :D
While I appreciate how helpful you guys are and how well-read, too -- you made a HUGE list for Rebecca of SFF books about archival -- please don't take this failure as an opportunity to recommend books to me. I'm trying to get my "to read" list down to nil. Save them up; eventually I'll be ready for them, and at that point I will be much more gracious about accepting them, too.
The books I was attempting to read were The Wood Wife, by Terri Windling, and Dream Messenger, by Masahiko Shimada. They were both Magical Realism reccs made to me at one point, and I think maybe they're...I don't know, good books but not for me? They are definitely both Magical Realism, which is a hard genre to find, but why must this genre about infusing wonder in everyday life be so tedious.
The Wood Wife is about a woman who inherits a house and all the papers from a poet she befriended, and her attempts to make sense of his life and death and the strange circumstances surrounding the community of people he lived with. It's a weird meld of Pagan British mythology -- the spirits of the woods, the man-as-stag, a few other elements -- and Native American traditions like Crow and Coyote. I felt like perhaps Windling was trying to mash them together a bit too hard, and I wondered why she couldn't just run with the Native American side. On the other hand, I wasn't sure she'd actually done enough research there, though admittedly with the amount of new-agey misinformation floating around about Native American faiths in general that's a bit hard to do. Anyway, I reached a point where I was done with the Romance Of The Desert, plus I thought the poet's poetry wasn't terribly good, so I put it down.
I got about the same length into Dream Messenger before I put it down as well. Told in a different way I might have been more interested; it's the parallel story of a woman's search for her employer's long-lost son and the son's youth and travels. I'm sure they met up eventually. Anyway, there was just so much exposition, there was so much talking about the son's past rather than anything actually happening, and as an adult he came across as a bit of a douchebag. The past he lived would have been more fascinating, I think, if I'd been able to watch him live it in the narrative, though I suppose that would have shifted all the tension and made for a very different story. It had some really interesting themes, of nationhood and the meaning of childhood and identity, but I was on the verge of dropping it anyway when the free verse started. At which point I gave in and gave up.
Maybe I just don't have enough patience anymore, I don't know. Part of it was probably that they're due at the library tomorrow. Seems like the list of books I tried and discarded gets longer and the list of books I finished gets shorter and much more nonfiction-y. Anyway, here is a record of two I didn't manage. :D
While I appreciate how helpful you guys are and how well-read, too -- you made a HUGE list for Rebecca of SFF books about archival -- please don't take this failure as an opportunity to recommend books to me. I'm trying to get my "to read" list down to nil. Save them up; eventually I'll be ready for them, and at that point I will be much more gracious about accepting them, too.
