A few books I'm reading right now, part something

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson: Finished Mistborn: The Final Empire miffed that I somehow got the version with art I personally find hideous (partly because it does not match the art of the other two in the series, which nicely match each other).  Fantasy full of mystery, terror, sacrifice, and smiling, dang it, because they can't take your happiness away unless you give it to 'em (or they rip your head off).

Ten Steps to a Federal Job by Troutman: Not terribly exciting, but quite fascinating.  Applying for jobs with the government is every bit as grueling as I remember, and it's unlike any other job application process ever.  Best to go into this battle well-armed.

Moyasimon Tales of Agriculture: What I have discovered from this graphic novel so far is that people will eat things that are so gross I could have been completely happy going through my entire life without knowing about their existence.  (I would probably have preferred an actual human corpse to have been dug up because there are some things you unfortunately can't unsee.) The book itself is sort of about two childhood friends who go away to university and get involved with assorted whackjobs and nutjubs on campus.  One of the friends can see bacteria, which leads a professor and grad assistant obsessed with fermentation and fermented food to pursue him while eating horrible things that no one should even talk about.  It's pretty gross and pretty great (and sometimes highly [revoltingly] educational). Also, the bacteria have makeovers and are incredibly cute, leading to me actually getting a couple of cell-phone straps and stickers of them while visiting my sister in Japan.

Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play by Danny Wallace: Yep, that pretty much says it all.  Danny is bored and alone and apparently in possession of quite a bit of discretionary income.  So he does what we'd all like to do and goes to find all those childhood friends he lost track of because they're all over the world, for Pete's sake!

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti: Oooooooh.  I have been looking forward to reading this for a while, and it is sooooo goooooood.  If you liked Kidnapped and Dickens (books or movies), and you love a great adventure, you should be reading this now!

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by ?:  Culture shock is a good descriptor for this book about a Liberal Sinner who goes undercover to study abroad at one of the most conservative and straight-laced church-affiliated colleges in the US.  Learning and hilarity ensue.

What about you?  What are you reading at the moment?

Ballet and other book-related obsessions

I just finished with a new volume of a series I love that is set in the world of professional ballet.  I am an armchair ballet fan and have been probably since I was working at the public library as a teenager and found all those biographies about Maria Tallchief (you should go find some yourself because she is completely fascinating, and be sure to watch her on DVD in The Art of Maria Tallchief).

I am not a big fan of modern dance, and the last two volumes of this story have been focused almost exclusively on this kind of dance.  I love the story anyway because I care about the characters, and I can identify with their struggles (especially the main character's inability to fully grasp modern dance).  She seems to be closer to connecting to it, and I am probably better able to appreciate it, but I'm still unlikely to enjoy it.  Not the book's fault.  :)

One of the results of reading this series, published sporadically, is that whenever a new volume comes out, I find myself needing to read Dance Magazine (Yuan Yuan Tan rocks!) and move some ballet DVDs higher up my Netflix queue and maybe see if the library has any more photo books.  One of these days, I'll have to see The Red Shoes and The Turning Point.  I should also see Dancing for Mr B, again.  I kind of want to watch Fame, too . . . 

Are there any books that do this for you?  (Make you passionately want to learn more about a subject or just immerse yourself in a non-fiction world that isn't yours?)  What are the books or what are the topics?

When the past creeps up on the present

I just read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, and it made me think of Kristen Britain's First Rider's Call from the first page, which is interesting since they're not really similar at all.  I think the reason was the way that someone's diary from the past was used as at the beginning of each chapter to tell a different story that had a bearing on the main story.


I would just like to point out here that you should start from the last entry whenever you get a mysterious diary.  Just saying.

Orson Scott Card used a similar device in Ender's Game, although that was more of a parallel story giving insight outside the point-of-view character's sphere of knowledge.  I really liked that way of getting around the proscriptions of a limited POV.  It keeps the rest of the story more unified than varying the POV for each chapter, another structure I've been considering.

I've been paying attention to this device because I like what it can do, and I'm considering using it in The Napkin Epic somehow.  I thought it was quite effective in FRC, a tad less so in Mistborn.  If I do it, I'd kind of want my attempt to be more like FRC.  Although, for people like my sister who "read ahead" and try to figure out the twists, such a device could ruin the story.  Not so with Sanderson's use of it, which I guess is a strenth and a weakness . . .

So many ways to write a story!  It's quite overwhelming sometimes.

Have you read any other books that use this snatch-of-a-diary-to-head-each-chapter device well (or poorly)?

Christmas presents and other plot devices

As a child, I took Christmas presents very seriously.  We were told that if we touched the wrapped presents under the tree, our parents would know, and we would not get the presents.  Putting aside my willingness to believe that my parents would just somehow know, I wanted to get the presents, so I never touched them.

I was careful not to even get too close to the tree in case I fell over and accidentally touched one and then lost it.  Yep, I've always been a bit of a dork, and I'm proud of it.

I assumed that my sisters were the same way, but my sister has since informed me that she didn't need to touch the wrapped presents because she could always find where my mom hid them before she wrapped them.  I am seized with a sudden desire to look through photo albums to see how obvious it is that she is never surprised.  Maybe she was just a good actress.

Needless to say, this idea was a shock to goody-goody me.  I had honestly never even thought of searching out gifts before they were wrapped.  Such deceptiveness!  About gifts people were giving you!  Why would you want to spoil that moment of discovery for yourself, especially as a child?!  Better to be patient and get the whole reward.

I was talking with some folks lately, and only one person in the group was like me.  She never looked for presents.  The others were varied.  Some always looked and found everything every year; others did it for a while but then decided they wanted the surprise and stopped doing it.

My sister proudly admits to turning to the last page or the last chapter to find out who makes it to the end or whodunit.  I cannot imaging doing such a thing.  Why spoil the end for yourself before you get all the anticipation leading up to the end that makes the ending a real payoff?

When I started getting into Japanese pop culture, their habit of often telling you what was coming up in the next episode or the next volume really threw me off.  I felt like the next bit was spoiled if I knew what was coming.  Eventually, I adjusted because knowing what plot point will happen next does not have to ruin the road to that point and the road from it. You can manage a lot of suspense even if you've already told folks what's coming.  

I've started experimenting with how I might be able to use this device in a story I'm working on. I'm studying works that use it to see what might work for my story.

But I still don't want to know what's behind that wrapping paper or in that closet awaiting wrapping paper.  And I refuse to read ahead.

How about you?  Where did you fall on the gift discovery scale?

What makes you revisit a work over and over again?

A reader pointed out that maybe I asked too many questions at once in this post, so I decided to break it down and ask one at a time.  Sort of. :)

Do you have a movie or a book you just keep re-reading or re-watching?  What makes you keep coming back to that particular work?

Doorways

All my thinking yesterday reminded me of a blog post I read last week about the doorways into a work of literature.  That sounds really stuffy, but the article is not. 

Story, character, setting, and language are suggested doorways people take into books.  Some people have one preferred doorway; others probably have favorites from each doorway.

What are the doorways that led you to some of your favorite books?  (And what are those books?)  If you've read them more than once, do you find yourself being grabbed most recently by the same doorway or another one?  If that's too much, maybe just pick one book you've read a lot over a long period of time.  I'd love to hear about it.  :)

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)?