Miles wins

I've been in a bad mood for a while now. I'm crabby enough from pain-related clumsiness, sleeplessness, and frustration that I can't even like books I don't want to read because they are by authors I like but not in the series I want a new book in. (I promise that totally makes sense.) I was afraid my discontent would stretch even to books I love, but I am happy to say Miles is still Miles. 

My genuine enjoyment of Vor Game actually puzzles me because, when I'm like this, I hate reading nonfiction books about people who have it worse than me and succeed and are truly inspiring because they make me feel like an even bigger failure. But Miles? Crippled worse than me and a huge success? Love it.

Science Fiction is transformative in a less threatening way? Sure. Anyway, I'm glad. Now I'm going back to Kyril Island while I exercise. Forensic plumming. Snort.

Reading Miles again - ah, youth, edition

My friend who started reading Miles at the end of last year and I were talking about one of Miles' disasters. 

"Aral would have done it better," my friend said. 

Well, of course.  Aral at 44+ would have done it much differently.  Heck, Miles at 44 would have done it differently (and I hope to someday read the book about it).  But Miles is not Aral, and he's in his twenties, and he takes after his mother, really.  So it makes sense.

Oh, Miles.

New Miles book out before my birthday: enough said

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Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (Scheduled for November 6, 2012)

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(Lack of) Regrets

.
I regret
that I was 100% utterly lacking
in the willpower needed
to prevent myself
from reading
"Borders of Infinity"
this weekend.

Really, I regret nothing.

Except not knowing
what happened
to a certain character
who got injured
in the home stretch.

I hope that character lived.
.

Reading Miles Again: It's okay if you don't love Miles as much as I do (we can still be friends [probably])

I am introducing a friend to the Vorkosigan books, and he likes them well enough for a single read but doesn't love them like I do.  (He had to take a breather after reading a bunch over break.  He left off with "Labyrinth."  Was it an email or a text that he sent when he kind of couldn't believe what was happening?  I don't remember, but it made me laugh hard.)  I am using his reading as an excuse to re-read, and I am giddy and full of MilesQuotes.  My friend seems apologetic about not being as enamored with Miles as I am, but I really do understand.  How could he be?  They've only just met. 

He is in his mid-twenties and meeting the younger Miles.  I would think that wouldn't be the stuff of epic book crushes.  I've known Miles for years.  I met him when he was 17 and I was 12.  I watched him grow up.  I watched him while growing up.  I've read some of these books more than a dozen times.  The kind of relationship that creates is completely different from the one created by a one-time casual meeting between two young men. 

The act of reading the same stories as a different person is a powerful one.  Miles, Ender's Game, the Bible: these are the books I've read so many times that they have to have affected me. 

My favorite Miles stories now are not the same as they were when I was in high school.  Or college. Or graduate school.  Growing up with Miles shaped my world; not only did the way I saw the stories change as I aged, but the way I saw the world changed as I looked at it through Miles as I changed.  I might be getting a bit out of hand . . .

One of my friends once said after reading Miles for the first time, "You're a lot like Miles."  I don't think he ever explained, but I was too busy basking in the glow of what I perceived to be praise to really push.  Years later, I think I asked him, and he didn't remember why he said it.

I tell my new friend that I understand that he doesn't love Miles like I do.  I suspect that his opinions may change a little further on, but I don't know.  It's the darkness in Miles that makes him tired, and the darkness doesn't really go away, at least not until A Civil Campaign.  So for now, we'll wait and see. 

I wonder whether I can hold off jumping ahead and reading "Borders of Infinity" . . .  Willpower!

What makes something worth revisiting?

I am sobbing right now.  You see, this character died suddenly and with little fanfare, and it's kind of rough.  Even though this is the fifth time I've seen the show.  In fact, this time, I started crying early, in the episode before, because I knew it was coming.

It reminds me of the way I cry earlier in The Warrior's Apprentice the more times I read it.  This is why I think I don't ever want to be involved with any prophecies of the future and stuff.  I'd be (more of) a wreck if I knew it was coming.  (Or maybe I'd get really stubborn about making a different future happen . . . :)

Anyway, all this crying and reflecting got me thinking about the topic of what gives a book good reread value (or a show/movie good re-watch value). 

Some books are harder for me to reread because of the tragedies (Mirror Dance); while the tragedies in other works are the things that make them worth revisiting.  Some comedies are great for one watch and then pointless while other funny works need to be appreciated over and over again (Hogfather).  One friend once said that he reads David Eddings' books just for the chance to hang out with the characters again, and some people reread the same mystery over and over because they love the plotting.


What is it for you?  What makes you revisit a work over and over again?  (How long do you usually wait?)  What works do you regularly revisit (and why)?

Why Lois McMaster Bujold Is Awesome

I was having a rough week.  A really rough week.

I came home to find an email from Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite authors for the last seventeen years or so.  She'd been cleaning out her work room and stumbled across something I'd given her at a signing event a couple of years ago, and she went to the trouble to write me a note and to let me know that there is a new book coming out in time for my next birthday.  (!!!!!!!!!!)  She didn't, of course, know that it was in time for my birthday, but I did.  :)

She was funny and self-deprecating and told me about her own experience with chronic pain and about a pain textbook writer who used a Miles quote in a textbook to head up a section about pain management.  Hooray!

She was responding because of an essay I wrote that was basically made possible by Miles.  I had been having trouble with my writing because chronic pain and sleeplessness were taking their toll on my concentration, and I could no longer create the longer form essays I wanted. 

With the help of "Miles Quotes" written by Lois McMaster Bujold in her Vorkosigan series and a wonderful professor who encouraged me to create my own essay form, I was able to create an essay about my helplessness and some of my experiences with pain.  It was held together by quotes about pain, most of them from Miles Vorkosigan, a wonderful con-man with a lot of experience with pain.

I included a note telling her I wasn't looking for comments or criticism; rather, I just wanted to thank her and show her how important her work has been in my life.  That's why I was so surprised to discover a response.

If I ever become an author, I will remember this.  If I can make someone as happy as this favorite author made me, I would like to do so.

Now, you should all go read her books.  They are wonderful.



Do you have a favorite Miles book?  A favorite series?

To kill or not to kill

I am being a big, huge coward right now.  I am not only not writing a story I really want to write but am actively avoiding even thinking about it because someone in the story does something that is worthy only of death, and I just don't want him to die. 

It's not that he doesn't deserve it, and it's not that I feel sorry for him.  He's an adult who made his own choices, and he chose to betray everyone who loved him.  I just feel bad for the people who must pass judgement on him.  They are the ones most cruelly betrayed because they really love him.  To ask them to condemn and execute him is really hard on me.  (It's like that bit in Barrayar.)  But coming up with any other outcome seems fake and forced and thoroughly unfair. 

He doesn't want pardon; he wanted to betray everyone and then die.  It's not that he hated them.  He was mostly trying to get back at someone else entirely, but he had to go through them.  He's consumed by bitterness.  His revenge plot was thwarted (yes, I think he was relieved about that, but despair can warp you).  You can't leave dynamite like that sitting around for so many reasons both general and specific.  The only appropriate ending in this fantasy world is death.

But I still want pardon, somehow, or mercy or grace that isn't forced but flows organically from the plot, the story, the characters, the world.

I really need to just start writing and see what happens, but I'm afraid I know how this ends.


Have you ever read a book like that, where you start liking people and suspecting that things just won't end well, and you drag your feet reading it?

More dead characters

So, continuing yesterday's morbid thoughts on character mortality . . . 

Some authors go out of their way to bring mortality into the story early.  It's part of the world they're building.  They want you to know that in their world bad things can suddenly happen to anybody, that sometimes people die by accident or for stupid reasons, that good things can be smashed and destroyed between eye blinks.  Brent Weeks mentioned that he learned from George R.R. Martin that killing off a main character early on shows you're serious and gets people to pay attention. 

Or, as my sister points out, it makes some people stop reading.  Her philosophy is that the world is dark and sad enough, thank you.  Why spend additional time reading depressing things?  She doesn't like to start watching epic shows unless they're over, so she can know who dies and who lives.  She wants to know who she can safely attach to. 

Don't we all.

However, in real life we have no guarantees.  We can't take anyone for granted because we could all die really at any moment.  To take it down a notch, we don't make friends only with those who we foreknow will stick with us through life.  I frequently strike out in this area.  I befriend people and enjoy their company immensely and think they enjoy mine just as much, but then they drop me and leave. 

It's true that I am more cautious about investing in people now, but I seem to have transferred that fearless befriending ability to characters in stories.  Shows where everyone dies in the end?  Bring it on (and bring the tissues).  Books where everyone pretty much dies in the first chapter?  Hit me.  Stories set in dark and horrible worlds full of unexpected mortality, cruelty, and the evils of humanity?  Yup. 

Sometimes experiencing works like this is like being spiritually pummelled.  It's like having your face ground into the broken fallenness of humanity.  Of course no one likes that!  That's not what I like about these works. 

What I like is hope.  I have become a bloodhound of hope.  I sniff out the faintest traces in the story, the smallest whiffs of grace and mercy and God, and when I find them, it's like He's whispering in my ear, "See what I can do?  I love you."

I think maybe most of us in American are too used to being comfortable and having things our way.  We like nice things.  We don't like to think about things that aren't nice.  We are self-deluding and blind, aren't we?  We like to imagine the world is a nicer place than it is, and so we try to only listen to stories that make us feel good and safe and happy.  We only want our children to know about nice, safe, happy things.  But is that what's best for them?  For us?  Is that's what's best for the world we live in?

It's not that I like pain.  I think maybe I love pain transformed.  I want to write stories like that.  I'm sad that I will lose a lot of readers who aren't willing to go through the grit and dirt and sludge to see just how amazing that hope is, shining like a diamond in a swamp. I wish more people would brave the swamp for the chance to see the beauty.

I wonder if this is part of my wishing for the last lines from the story "Aftermaths" from Bujold's Shards of Honor to be true: 

"Yes, he thought, the good face pain.  But the great--they embrace it."

How do you react to character mortality in stories?  Do you try to avoid the sad ones?  Do you try not to read anything too dark and gritty?  Too graphic?  Do you read just about anything?  What will make you stop reading a story, and why?

Plot summaries and other challenges

Have you ever tried to give a plot summary of something you really like?  I've read Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books over a dozen times, and I have a long, deep relationship with them.  I find it nearly impossible to give an elevator pitch about what makes them so great.  (It's the same with most books I love and have read multiple times.  It's also the same with books I've just discovered and read once recently.)

Often, I'm reduced to mentioning a scene that I think will make someone interested.  "You should read this one," I say, because it has a zombie dinosaur.  Or "There's a beautiful scene in this one, one of the best I've ever seen that shows (instead of telling) the characters getting so drunk that they eventually drop a bomb in a lake, so they can 'fish' successfully."

Some books, like The Name of the Wind, are slightly easier to describe because you get such a strong feeling/impression from them that you can say, "You should read this book because it's written beautifully like the most tragic, adventurous ballad ever told by one of the best storyteller's you'll ever meet."


How do you summarize books (or movies or musical groups or whatever else you try) to recommend to people?  Do you go for concise and pithy?  Talk about character?  Plot?  Ramble on and on hoping your passion will be contagious?

What do you do when a character dies?

If you reread books, what do you do when you're coming up on a character's death?  Some books I've read dozens of times, and when I know someone will be dying again soon, sometimes I start crying earlier in anticipation (The Warrior's Apprentice is especially rough if you read it again after reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar).  Every moment that character is "on-screen" seems more momentous and precious (or maybe just more valuable somehow) because I know the end is coming.

The recent spate of parallel novels has given me a new way to re-experience a character's death, and it can be pretty hard.  Ender's Shadow by Card had me reeling.  More recently, Zoe's Tale by Scalzi was really hard to get through.  A character who was peripheral in The Lost Colony became a main character because of the change in point-of-view for Zoe's Tale.  He turned out to be a really great character.  The more I got to know him, the more sad I felt, anticipating his tragic loss.   It was a bit like making friends with someone with a terminal illness.  Their time is strictly limited, and you have to be present every moment you have with them.

How do you prepare for or deal with a character's death on re-reading?  Does the foreknowledge of death make the next read-through more poignant for you, or does it just make you detach?