The tenure of books
May. 8th, 2007 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angharaThis musing got triggered by this blog post, and a sudden urge to go back and run a finger down my bookshelves and remember books - why I got them, why I loved them, why I still own some (but not others), what it is that makes a book get tenure on my shelf.
(Let's keep it genre, shall we - for this post, at least - or else this would get really unwieldy...)
I still have a bunch of the early Asimov stuff - the robotics stories, the Lije Bailey detective-in-the-stars tales - and this is what I cut my SF teeth on, one of the first SF-nal forays I ever made that were frankly genre novels, my badge of courage, my entry into this brave new world. I read Asimov, and I loved it, and it was my password - "Hello stars, Asimov sent me".
I still love some of the robotics stories, but it's a sentimental affection - when I re-read some of them (and in the interests of accuracy it hasn't happened in more than a decade, really) I read them with an indulgent smile on my face. They are LINEAR. They start at a beginning, and they go on until an end, and they stop. Most of the time that end is dimly visible from that beginning anyway. *There are no surprises*. And yes, I know, I've read them all before - that's belabouring the obvious. What I'm getting at is that I, and the world, have moved on from the early simple sweet Asimovian storytelling. Comparing Asimov with, say, Stross, is like going from a Newtonian to an Einsteinian universe - one where the earlier tenets still hold, in many simple cases, but where the nature of the latter world has been explained in a way that would make the former world blink and clasp its hands and breathe, "wow, magic".
Asimov himself moved on, up to a point - the Foundation books were an order of magnitude more complex and layered than the laws of robotics stuff. We all grow - writers and readers both - it's part of being alive. We grow up as people and with us an entire genre is also growing up and out, changing even as we watch, kicking its baby feet one bright shiny morning and getting kitted out to go fight a war in a distant galaxy that night and a hundred years later all at the same time.
But I still have them, the early Asimovs. They remain my badge of honour, my password, my certificate of passage. They may be, now, slightly battered vintage cars sitting retired in a safe garage somewhere and not being taken out much any more because their tires are balding and their shock absorbers are shot - but they were the cars in which you took your date to Lovers's Leap and made out in the back seat while the lights twinkled in the town down below. They've got tenure, those books. They done earned them.
Then there's the books that the blog entry I referenced above is dissecting. The Pern books. Once again, I've got them - or most of them, anyway. I don't own the Menolly books, Menolly irritated me in many of the same ways that Robert Jordan's women irritate me (and that's a whole another can of literary worms, whoa, back on the topic...) I read them, what, twenty years ago now? More...? When were they published again - my copies are upstairs and it's too far to go check now, but it's been a fair while. I can pinpoint exactly when Mccafffrey began to go south on me, though, and that was not with the Pern books, not then, not in the beginning - it was the Crystal SInger books. Good grief, but that woman was unpleasant. Tough, sure, able to fend for herself, sure, talented, way sure, but MAN was she unpleasant - and with that, all the rest fell away for me. WHy would I care about what happened to an unpleasant woman? I read the Crystal Singer books. I no longer own them. I still - warts and all! - have the Dragonflight/Dragonquest/White Dragon trilogy. I haven't touched them for years and years and years - and EVERYTHING that has been said in that blog post is absolutely true, so help me, and I have no idea why I go back to that idea and insist that I still love the whole sense of Dragons and Telepathic Bonding and all that. Tolkien said once that he "desired dragons with a profound desire" - he knew of whereof he spoke. Mccaffrey tapped into a powerful fantasy with her dragon-human bond - who wouldn't want to have such a creature for a pet, a friend, a companion? I have to say, though, that once again those books fail me TODAY in that they are too linear, too simplistic, too damned obvious. Over many years of reading my tastes have obviously gravitated towards the complex and the layered and the rich and the lush, and Pern no longer delivers that. Besides, if we're talking worldbuilding, they lost me way back at agenothree.
Another example. I first read Orson Scott Card's Songmaster novel in a partial published in - what was it, Analog, Asimov's one of those, may years ago. I fell in love with the story, with the power of the tale, with the voice in which it was told, with the compassion and the tragedy that followed the development of the relationships of young Ansset and those who surrounded him, loved him, molded him, ruined him, redeemed him.
And then I bought the entire novel when it came out, and the second half of it - the part not published in the magazine - was weaker, for me. Lots weaker. But I liked it enough to continue reading. I picked up Ender's Game - and really loved it. But then that franchise ran out of steam fast, and by the third book in that series I was gone - I did borrow Card's attempt to re-harness the original storyline, the Ender story told through Bean's eyes, from the library and read it, but I don't own it. And other Card books - particularly the Ships of Earth novels - annoyed me so much that I was literally growling at the things when I was reading them. Those books, or at least some of them, I still have - but the only reason they're still on my shelf is inertia. I'm just too procrastinatory. But they'll go, eventually, probably. I KNOW I'll never return to those books again.
Other classics - Dune. THe original Dune took my breath away then, and still does today - here was my thrist for complexity slaked, and then some. It was incredible, and powerful, and it found a deep place within me. But the sequels - ah, the sequels - I managed to read the first three. I haven't touched any since then, especially not the ones written in collaboration by people other than Frank Herbert. Sorry, but that was HIS story. Being someone's child doesn't necessarily mean you have the God-given right to continue that person's "Legacy", and indeed sometimes it is probably the wiser course of action not to. But I can't really speak for the later books in the Dune franchise. I haven't read them. If anyone has anything positive to say about them please feel free.
Zelazny's Amber. LOVE the original five. Less devoted to the second set, but I still have them. I hated with a flaming passion the attempt to resurrect "Roger Zelazny's Amber" a couple of years ago. Sure, the story he told had potential prequels or sequels dancing around in the stars. But *Zelazny is gone*. NOBODY else does Amber. NOBODY. This was a place of his heart - he understood it, even the things about it that he didn't talk about in the books - and perhaps he MEANT those prequels and sequels to stay untold. In fact, I seem to remember him saying as much just before he died - that he didn't particularly want anyone else playing in that sandbox after he was gone. Those books? Full tenure. And not just because one of them happens to be signed.
Mary Stewart's Merlin books? Keepers, all. One of the best and most powerful tellings of a story told many, many times. ANd it makes things like "Mists of Avalon" strike a particularly sour note for me.
Spider Robinson's stuff - ye gods, do I have to explain? The man's a Pun King, and for someone similarly afflicted his books are a constant joyride of rolling-eye groaning delight. Keepers, again - and once more not because one of them is signed thusly: To Alma, who obviously has The Callahan Touch herself.
What else have I got there? Gene Wolfe? Larry Niven? Michael Moorcock?
Guy Gavriel Kay? Oh, him I've got - ALL of his books I've got. I could rank them for you, sure, from the astonishingly sublime (Tigana) to the merely magnificent (Song for Arbonne, Lions of Al-Rassan) to things like his newest, Ysabel, which I found a tad "meh", and not only because he apparently makes a conscious return to his Fionavar roots in this book - and I consider the Fionavar Trilogy to be his training trike, the fantasy novel(s) in which he cut his teeth and which led him to write gems like Tigana. But I've got 'em all. He's a keeper. Always will be.
Glenda Larke - friend and colleague - who understands story, worldbuilds with passion, and Writes Good Character. Keepers.
Newer favourites, like Catherynne Valente, Elizabeth Bear.
Space will always be at a premium in my bookshelves, where things are shelved double-thickness and books often stuffed in sideways on top of the stacked paperbacks where there's room. But some books get bought, get read, get evicted. Others... stay. They've got their hooks into my heart and my memory, somehow, and they are more than just the contents of a bookshelf. They are a set of signposts for the literary road I've travelled so far, and may be choosing in the future. They are not possessions. They are that part of me that is - that part that CAN be - written in other people's words. They represent the bits of my mind and heart and spirit which THAT writer, THAT story, made possible.
So. What's on your bookshelves, then...?
(Let's keep it genre, shall we - for this post, at least - or else this would get really unwieldy...)
I still have a bunch of the early Asimov stuff - the robotics stories, the Lije Bailey detective-in-the-stars tales - and this is what I cut my SF teeth on, one of the first SF-nal forays I ever made that were frankly genre novels, my badge of courage, my entry into this brave new world. I read Asimov, and I loved it, and it was my password - "Hello stars, Asimov sent me".
I still love some of the robotics stories, but it's a sentimental affection - when I re-read some of them (and in the interests of accuracy it hasn't happened in more than a decade, really) I read them with an indulgent smile on my face. They are LINEAR. They start at a beginning, and they go on until an end, and they stop. Most of the time that end is dimly visible from that beginning anyway. *There are no surprises*. And yes, I know, I've read them all before - that's belabouring the obvious. What I'm getting at is that I, and the world, have moved on from the early simple sweet Asimovian storytelling. Comparing Asimov with, say, Stross, is like going from a Newtonian to an Einsteinian universe - one where the earlier tenets still hold, in many simple cases, but where the nature of the latter world has been explained in a way that would make the former world blink and clasp its hands and breathe, "wow, magic".
Asimov himself moved on, up to a point - the Foundation books were an order of magnitude more complex and layered than the laws of robotics stuff. We all grow - writers and readers both - it's part of being alive. We grow up as people and with us an entire genre is also growing up and out, changing even as we watch, kicking its baby feet one bright shiny morning and getting kitted out to go fight a war in a distant galaxy that night and a hundred years later all at the same time.
But I still have them, the early Asimovs. They remain my badge of honour, my password, my certificate of passage. They may be, now, slightly battered vintage cars sitting retired in a safe garage somewhere and not being taken out much any more because their tires are balding and their shock absorbers are shot - but they were the cars in which you took your date to Lovers's Leap and made out in the back seat while the lights twinkled in the town down below. They've got tenure, those books. They done earned them.
Then there's the books that the blog entry I referenced above is dissecting. The Pern books. Once again, I've got them - or most of them, anyway. I don't own the Menolly books, Menolly irritated me in many of the same ways that Robert Jordan's women irritate me (and that's a whole another can of literary worms, whoa, back on the topic...) I read them, what, twenty years ago now? More...? When were they published again - my copies are upstairs and it's too far to go check now, but it's been a fair while. I can pinpoint exactly when Mccafffrey began to go south on me, though, and that was not with the Pern books, not then, not in the beginning - it was the Crystal SInger books. Good grief, but that woman was unpleasant. Tough, sure, able to fend for herself, sure, talented, way sure, but MAN was she unpleasant - and with that, all the rest fell away for me. WHy would I care about what happened to an unpleasant woman? I read the Crystal Singer books. I no longer own them. I still - warts and all! - have the Dragonflight/Dragonquest/White Dragon trilogy. I haven't touched them for years and years and years - and EVERYTHING that has been said in that blog post is absolutely true, so help me, and I have no idea why I go back to that idea and insist that I still love the whole sense of Dragons and Telepathic Bonding and all that. Tolkien said once that he "desired dragons with a profound desire" - he knew of whereof he spoke. Mccaffrey tapped into a powerful fantasy with her dragon-human bond - who wouldn't want to have such a creature for a pet, a friend, a companion? I have to say, though, that once again those books fail me TODAY in that they are too linear, too simplistic, too damned obvious. Over many years of reading my tastes have obviously gravitated towards the complex and the layered and the rich and the lush, and Pern no longer delivers that. Besides, if we're talking worldbuilding, they lost me way back at agenothree.
Another example. I first read Orson Scott Card's Songmaster novel in a partial published in - what was it, Analog, Asimov's one of those, may years ago. I fell in love with the story, with the power of the tale, with the voice in which it was told, with the compassion and the tragedy that followed the development of the relationships of young Ansset and those who surrounded him, loved him, molded him, ruined him, redeemed him.
And then I bought the entire novel when it came out, and the second half of it - the part not published in the magazine - was weaker, for me. Lots weaker. But I liked it enough to continue reading. I picked up Ender's Game - and really loved it. But then that franchise ran out of steam fast, and by the third book in that series I was gone - I did borrow Card's attempt to re-harness the original storyline, the Ender story told through Bean's eyes, from the library and read it, but I don't own it. And other Card books - particularly the Ships of Earth novels - annoyed me so much that I was literally growling at the things when I was reading them. Those books, or at least some of them, I still have - but the only reason they're still on my shelf is inertia. I'm just too procrastinatory. But they'll go, eventually, probably. I KNOW I'll never return to those books again.
Other classics - Dune. THe original Dune took my breath away then, and still does today - here was my thrist for complexity slaked, and then some. It was incredible, and powerful, and it found a deep place within me. But the sequels - ah, the sequels - I managed to read the first three. I haven't touched any since then, especially not the ones written in collaboration by people other than Frank Herbert. Sorry, but that was HIS story. Being someone's child doesn't necessarily mean you have the God-given right to continue that person's "Legacy", and indeed sometimes it is probably the wiser course of action not to. But I can't really speak for the later books in the Dune franchise. I haven't read them. If anyone has anything positive to say about them please feel free.
Zelazny's Amber. LOVE the original five. Less devoted to the second set, but I still have them. I hated with a flaming passion the attempt to resurrect "Roger Zelazny's Amber" a couple of years ago. Sure, the story he told had potential prequels or sequels dancing around in the stars. But *Zelazny is gone*. NOBODY else does Amber. NOBODY. This was a place of his heart - he understood it, even the things about it that he didn't talk about in the books - and perhaps he MEANT those prequels and sequels to stay untold. In fact, I seem to remember him saying as much just before he died - that he didn't particularly want anyone else playing in that sandbox after he was gone. Those books? Full tenure. And not just because one of them happens to be signed.
Mary Stewart's Merlin books? Keepers, all. One of the best and most powerful tellings of a story told many, many times. ANd it makes things like "Mists of Avalon" strike a particularly sour note for me.
Spider Robinson's stuff - ye gods, do I have to explain? The man's a Pun King, and for someone similarly afflicted his books are a constant joyride of rolling-eye groaning delight. Keepers, again - and once more not because one of them is signed thusly: To Alma, who obviously has The Callahan Touch herself.
What else have I got there? Gene Wolfe? Larry Niven? Michael Moorcock?
Guy Gavriel Kay? Oh, him I've got - ALL of his books I've got. I could rank them for you, sure, from the astonishingly sublime (Tigana) to the merely magnificent (Song for Arbonne, Lions of Al-Rassan) to things like his newest, Ysabel, which I found a tad "meh", and not only because he apparently makes a conscious return to his Fionavar roots in this book - and I consider the Fionavar Trilogy to be his training trike, the fantasy novel(s) in which he cut his teeth and which led him to write gems like Tigana. But I've got 'em all. He's a keeper. Always will be.
Glenda Larke - friend and colleague - who understands story, worldbuilds with passion, and Writes Good Character. Keepers.
Newer favourites, like Catherynne Valente, Elizabeth Bear.
Space will always be at a premium in my bookshelves, where things are shelved double-thickness and books often stuffed in sideways on top of the stacked paperbacks where there's room. But some books get bought, get read, get evicted. Others... stay. They've got their hooks into my heart and my memory, somehow, and they are more than just the contents of a bookshelf. They are a set of signposts for the literary road I've travelled so far, and may be choosing in the future. They are not possessions. They are that part of me that is - that part that CAN be - written in other people's words. They represent the bits of my mind and heart and spirit which THAT writer, THAT story, made possible.
So. What's on your bookshelves, then...?
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REH, ERB
Date: 2007-05-09 09:02 am (UTC)Part of what you describe - IMHO - is to do with there being a limited number of slots, which get filled by best of breed. For example, from a different idiom, name me a rock and roll star.... 90% of the time, you'll say Elvis.
So, I think everybody has a slot for "Early C20th lyrical milieu fiction with archetypal elves etc", and there were several writers who produced such material, but Tolkien was the best so fills the slot. Ditto "Dragon-hugging" and "Sentient robots".
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 10:04 am (UTC)In my previous house I had a regular revisits shelf also referred to as my rainy day bookshelf. There were a few Andre Nortons, Katherine Kurtz, Nancy Springer's Books of the Isles series (particularly for Book of Suns - my copy is badly mangled at this stage from re-reading but even the cover art gives me a certain satisfaction); Mercedes Lackey featured heavily, particularly her Diana Tregarde series; Marion Zimmer Bradley had a space; Lois McMaster Bujold and Judith Tarr's Hound of the Falcon and Alamut series. In some cases I think it was remembrance of past and previous enjoyment and not merit that kept some books there.
I read your Secrets of Jin-Shei as a bookcrossing book and then hunted it up to add to my collection.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 02:12 pm (UTC)I do think my favorites are still social science fiction, the likes of BEGGARS IN SPAIN or DOOMSDAY BOOK or THE MOON AND THE SUN, what I like best to read and to write.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 03:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 03:23 pm (UTC)Oh, and I forgot to add Tamora Pierce. I read her when I was 11. And I own all the Alanna books.
....
On the subject of Orson Scott Card, I pretend that only Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide exist. Children of the Mind didn't need to, not in my brain, and the whole Ender's Shadow series kinda messes with the potency of the original Ender's Game in my brain.
Re: Dune - I never read any Dune books after Chapterhouse. God Emperor was already putting a strain on my love for the world. I actually did enjoy Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. As for the books written by his son......well, I subscribe to the Penny Arcade view of the Butlerian Jihad book.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 05:51 pm (UTC)Part of this, I suspect, is that I'm only two generations away from a feudal society. (My grandmother grew up in a village a day's ride by oxcart from Warsaw.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 08:39 pm (UTC)Heinlein was my intro to SF - Red Planet and Farmer in the Sky (8yrs old)and I was hooked. My intro to fantasy ... dunno. I really have no idea if I read Narnia or the Hobbit first. I know I'd read Lord of the Rings before I discovered Heinlein.
And then I accumulated secondhand books and worked my way through the SF titles in the adult section of the library and so common names on my shelves include, Asimov, Aldiss, Clarke, Blish, Van Vogt, 'Doc' Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and Mars), Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, John Jakes, Niven and Pournelle, Vonda McIntyre, Stephen King, James Herbert, Barry B Longyear, Lee Killough and oh, so many collections of short stories and single-author anthologies and hundreds of other names of which I may only have one or two titles. Tigana, yes, 2/3rds of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. More recent names like David Gemmell and David Eddings, David Feintuch, David Weber, Mary Gentle, Karen Traviss and, of course, about 5ft of Trek fiction and probably a good 18 inches of Dr Who. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 10:03 pm (UTC)Well, yes - sure - I liked it too. Sometimes a story IS just a story and that's fine - but I just seem to have grown away from the "garden path" stories, the straightforward ones weaving their way on precise trajectories between carefully cultivated flowerbeds, to the "old woods" tales where there ARE no paths, or more to the point every direction would serve just as well. What can I say - these days I like complicated stuff [grin]
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 09:08 pm (UTC)[Sidebar: why is everyone so down on the Pern novels, particularly the early ones? They're products of their time, for Crom's sake. Dragonflight was published in the same era that Kathleen Woodiwiss invented the romance novel, complete with domineering-male-who-rapes-heroine-but-she-likes-it. Romance readers/novelists have a lot to say about the evolution of romance heroines in the past 40 years, but they don't revile the early stuff; they understand it in its context. Backintheday, being raped/forcibly-seduced was the only permitted expression of "women like sex, too!" because being willing from the get-go meant being a Bad Girl and Whore. We should be enjoying the fact that the modern era is no longer so repressive. We couldn't have gotten to the current state without going through that stuff 40 years ago. Wars are not one in single battles. But that's another topic entirely and this sidebar has gone on too long.]
ANYWAY, the stuff on my shelves that I still reread on occasion:
Zelazny's Amber, particularly the first two books.
Katherine Kurtz, the earlier Deryni novels.
Lois Bujold, particularly Mirror Dance, which is IMO her best book ever.
Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser collections. (Wanna talk rape scenarios? There's a very matter-of-fact assumption on the part of both Fafhrd and Mouser that rape is a-okay. This, however, does not interfere in my enjoyment of the stories.)
Dune
LOTR (though honestly, I like The Hobbit better).
The Borderlands anthologies (edited by Terri Windling). Back when punk elves were new!
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 10:13 pm (UTC)I hate to even admit this, but *I hadn't even noticed until you pointed it out*, and I'm usually better than THAT. I think I need more coffee. Like, right *now*.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 10:11 pm (UTC)Absolutely, and all that. Twenty twenty hindsight is always wonderful, ain't it.
I have to say that *at the time that I was first reading those books* none of the sexual subtext really jumped out at me. Not that hard. That other blog entry delves in depth about the sexual shenaningans in the Lower Caverns of a Weyr - and none of that even occurred to me as a subject to wonder about. As for Lessa herself - yes, she does ring for klah a lot, and yes she does go all gooey and little-girly whenever F'lar enters the picture - but I was all gooey and romantic when I first read those books and I had no problem with that. And she DID go off and do her own thing, like going back in time all by herself to save the day, all that cool stuff. No, mostly I liked Lessa a lot.
Today, those stories would probably have a hard time getting published. But today is a different place from twenty or thirty years ago. We can't judge those books by putting today's "covers" on them...