Books, Books, and Books

I'm on a reading kick. I'm always wanting to read, but for the past long while it seems like life and work were always precluding me from it. Between teaching, grading, and committees at school, then getting home to help out with the boys all evening, plus teaching an extra class and taking my voiceover classes on weekends and some nights, when free time rolled around all I could do was slouch helplessly on the couch, the willing thrall of TV (or occasionally the X-Box).

But we ditched the TV (again--we'll see how long this time), and since her pregnancy started Joanna has been on a voracious reading regimen. Her demand for good books (especially good fantasy fiction and not my dull treatises of Old English and medieval literature or Greek philosophy) quickly outstripped my personal library, so she's been getting books from me as presents for the last several holidays (St. Nicholas Day books, Christmas books, Valentine's Day books, Knute Day books...). She tears through a novel in two days if the boys cooperate by not killing one another, so her reading volume has been impressive. It's inspiring.

Coupled with that was my desire to go back and read some of my favorite fiction in order to kick-start the ol' writing engine; this has the added benefit of allowing me to examine these texts more critically to see how the author does what he or she does so well and makes me mad with jealousy. It's been nice to get back to reading regularly again, though I admit that my teaching and grading are starting to suffer (how can student autobiographical essays compare the the unutterable horrors and mysteries of Lavondyss?

I'm a writing snob (and a movie snob, and a music snob, and... okay, I'll stop there) and find most fantasy fiction to be pretentious, hokey, overdone, and/or annoying regurgitations of cliched themes, characters, and plots, so it's not easy to make my list. My heart goes dead reading Harry Potter novels--the writing is clean enough, but there's nothing really new, nothing that grabs me and makes me hunger for more. I'm annoyed by the fact that in the Potter universe, all you need to be a wizard is a store-bought wand and a few phrases of basic adulterated Latin. There's no magic in Harry Potter magic; it's a mishmash of fantasy and fable tropes and ideas from better works tied on to the back of a (let's admit it) fairly bland adolescent boy. Sorry, Potter fans--I just can't join you, try though I have. I'm of the opinion that any book based on D&D can safely be ripped apart by wild book-eating yaks the moment it comes off the presses. Galleys of books which will eventually end up with half-dressed, heaving, glistening women warriors on the cover should be burned before they ever reach the presses in the first place.

So I thought I'd share with you, dear readers, some of the books that I've been perusing lately and those that I think are the cream of the fantasy fiction crop.

Carpe Jugulum, Night Watch, and Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett--I'm an old Pratchett fan from way back, and it's fun to watch his Discworld evolve over time, watching characters from his various cycles grow and change (or, comfortingly, not change). I give a cheer whenever Granny Weatherwax shows up, and I wait each novel for Death to put in his requisite appearance. I have to admit that Pratchett goes stale for me from time to time, as a lot of his books have the same rhythm and sensibility--they just run out of funny, after a while. But going back to them after a break is always reviving, and his books go down easily. I'm still partial to his older work (Mort, Guards, Guards!, most of the witches books (for Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, mostly), Pyramids, and Small Gods, especially), though I was quite taken with Monstrous Regiment recently, and I've found a new favorite in Wee Free Men. The Nac Mac Feegle are coming close to being my all-time favorite characters from any fantasy work. They put in an appearance in Carpe Jugulum, but Wee Free Men and the "sequel," Hat Full of Sky entirely belong to them and our plucky heroine, Tiffany Aching. Any time a band of incredibly strong, fast, and rowdy blue-skinned, red-haired, six-inch tall magical Celts wants to come by my house and brawl with our squirrels, they are welcome (though they'd almost certainly be mortally disappointed in our lack of liquor). I've been shouting, "Ach, crivens!" at the slightest opportunity, and not soon shall I forget the pictsies' war cry of They can take our lives, but they'll never take our trousers! I'm thinking of giving the boys new nicknames like Rob Anybody and Slightly-Bigger-than-Wee-Jock-but-Not-as-Big-as-Big-Jock Jock, though I doubt Joanna would approve of nicknaming our daughter Daft Wullie... I'm shocked to find these listed as "young adult" books, as I enjoyed them as much as any other Discworld novels.

On the writing side, I realized long ago that I can't come close to Pratchett's style of humor. His comic timing and asides are extremely well done and stay witty, even when you can see them coming (though much of their charm comes from the fact that often you don't). I am not as fond of his consistent reference to the modern world and the subsequent effect it has on his fantasy world--it sometimes feels as if he's introducing new technology or social phenomena into Discworld just so he can make some political or cultural commentary, and that sits badly with me. These sometimes reduces his work to simple cleverness, which can't sustain my interest in a work for any great length of time. However, Pratchett's ability to weave together various storylines seemingly effortlessly, his sometimes inspired use of minor foreshadowing to bring about an "Aha!" moment later in the novel, and his fantastic dialogue are all inspirational (or would be to a better writer; for me, as always, it's just intimidating and depressing. But that's another post).

The Innkeeper's Song and Giant Bones, by Peter S. Beagle--I stumbled on The Innkeeper's Song as I was heading up to Eastern Washington University to start my master's degree--I needed a good book in the evenings and the cover art caught my eye. I've been a huge Beagle fan ever since reading it over the course of three nights; it was only later that I learned that most people know him from the cartoon of The Last Unicorn, which I have still never seen (I have yet to read the book, either, though I own it now).

I was tremendously impressed by The Innkeeper's Song, one of the only books I've ever read that made me cry at the end (and still does, actually, whenever I reread it--I'm normally highly resistant to all human emotion). Skipping among half a dozen character points of view, the story is affecting and involving in the extreme. There are a few scenes of frank sexuality (prompting Devin, to whom I had lent the book, to call and complain--though I note you still have the book, sir...) and I agree with some reviewers that occasionally the main characters are too formidable, but overall the book floored me.

I was especially impressed by the depth of the world Beagle creates; everything feels real, and references to cities, to peoples, to tales and songs and ideas are all handled deftly, becoming part of the background without drawing attention to themselves in big bold letters as SETTING DETAILS. I actually included this on my reading list for my master's thesis for that reason. Admittedly this can be overdone at times, but on the whole it is entirely convincing. Those of us always stymied by an obsessive need to define every aspect of a fantasy world before writing often blame J.R.R. Tolkien for our inability to write; imagine my chagrin, then, when Beagle, who comes as close to Tolkien's depth as anyone I've read, revealed that he planned out literally nothing of his world, and only filled in names of places and people he made up on the spot. Curses--another excuse gone.

Giant Bones is a series of short stories set in the same world, and they're also great. They are especially notable in that each has an entirely different style and tone. "The Last Song of Sirit Byar" is another story that can bring on the tears though it's got one of the gruffest narrators you're likely to meet; "The Magician of Karakosk" is a classic fantasy story done with incredible heart; "The Tragical History of the Jiril's Players" is a comic opera of medieval proportions; "Lal and Soukyan" brings back the only returning characters from The Innkeeper's Song and feature the only two elderly fantasy heroes I can recall who aren't wizards; and "Choushi Wai's Story" (told by a character from another story, no less) is a fable in the classical sense but still manages to surprise in the telling. Terrific stuff.

The Wizard of Earthsea books, by Ursula K. LeGuin--It had been a long time since I read the original Earthsea trilogy, recommended at the time by Chris Slater and Dan, and I recalled having enjoyed them but not much beyond that. There were wizards, and an island, and boats, and that was about all I could dredge up. I had a copy of the trilogy and pointed Joanna toward it--when she thoroughly devoured them, I decided to give them another read.

I'm always afraid to reread things I liked when I was younger for fear they'll turn out to be awful. This was the case with the works of Piers Anthony, for example--other than a few of the early Xanth novels (I still like A Spell for Chameleon), his stuff is really bad--fascinating to a twelve-year-old, yes, but they lose their luster quickly as adolescent interest in being titillated dries up (there's a whole treatise on male prurience here, but I'm not going to touch it). Terry Brooks' Landover novels have the same effect, as does Jack Chalker's River Gods series. I'm nervous about looking over anything by David Eddings again, as they were pretty borderline the first time I read them (and yet, horrifyingly, they are the novels I think most resemble something I would actually write. If being unimpressed with a writer most like you isn't a buzzkill, I don't know what is).

Imagine my delight, then, at finding the Earthsea books to be a good deal better than I remembered them. There are several more books now past the original trilogy (including Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind, which Joanna has burned through but I have yet to read), but I found myself caught in rereading the very first novel and haven't gotten past it yet. I read it through, then immediately turned back and started reading it again--The Innkeeper's Song is the only other book I've ever done this with. I'm trying to force myself to read Wizard of Earthsea slowly, deconstructing how in the world LeGuin created such an involving epic with such tremendous style. Her ability to weave in image with just a few phrases, her skill at creating dialogue that is at once iconic and believable, and her talent for conveying complex plot and character issues in a short space is nothing short of amazing. I have to admit I'm not a great fan of her other works (though, in truth, the only other of her works I've read have been her science fiction, a genre with which it is much harder to please me), but I was powerfully struck by her work. If you haven't read these before, do so right now. It's okay--I'll wait.

The Gunslinger, by Stephen King--By far my favorite work of King's to date. King gets a bad rap in literary circles; he was thoroughly reviled in my master's writing program for being "commercial," and that's a fair accusation. But King is, above all else, a terrific storyteller and you have to give the man credit for that. I've read several of his horror novels, and I had a great time reading The Stand in all its thousand-page glory, but I wouldn't list myself as a fan if it weren't for this little beauty (and his book about writing, but that'll go in another post).

By far my favorite of the Dark Tower books (thought admittedly I only read the first three), The Gunslinger is dark, enigmatic, and spooky. Again, I seem to have a particular liking for deep histories hinted at, vast tales touched upon lightly, and King has that all sewn up here. How terrific is it that we have essentially a cowboy in a fantasy setting, yet it never feels cheesy? That we can have wizards and demons, yet the player at the honkey tonk piano is playing "Hey, Jude"? Roland is one of the darkest "heroes" you're likely to find in fiction, but we're still on his side. How many authors could have their main character gun down an entire town and still have you rooting for them by the end, even if you're not a fan of Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme? The austere characterization, the cryptic and clipped writing, and the sense of real human emotion are what carry this book so well.

I understand that there's a revised version published that takes away some of the mystery and ties The Gunslinger more closely to the following books, and I consider that a great pity. I did not care for the later books nearly as much, mainly because they became too big, too grand in scope and patchwork in quality, and lost a lot of the mystery that was so thrilling at the beginning. This nifty little dark tale of one man on a quest, filled with unfathomable depths of which we only glimpse the surface, remains my favorite King novel. If only he'd write more stuff without really knowing where he was headed.

Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock--Another work that I had read so long ago that I could only remember a sense of liking it without being able to pin down many other details. A guy exploring a modern forest that generates mythagos, archetypal figures from ages past. Another book I recommended to Joanna and she enjoyed, I also found this work stood the test of time relatively well. It was clumsier than I remembered--in this early work, Holdstock often overstates what seems obvious, or forces his main character to draw conclusions that are clearly erroneous only to bring on the obvious answer later as a shock--but this book was still a fine read. A complex and satisfying work overall, and I look forward to rereading the other works in the trilogy, Lavondyss and The Hollowing. If I recall aright, Dan liked these a good deal, too. I haven't read his other works, starting with Celtika, though now I'd like to.

And well done if you've made it this far. I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on these books, and even more delighted if you have recommendations in the same vein. I suppose I ought to do some work now.

Ach, crivens!