I suppose I ought to explain a few things concerning my sudden interest in posting about books, and no, it has nothing directly to do with my own attempts at fiction.*
Several months ago, a long-time blogger friend of mine put out a request for beta readers of a novel she was completing. Given that I’d long been an admirer of her artistic endeavors, I raised my hand and volunteered. “Why not,” I figured, since I was very curious about how her writing had been progressing.
A month or two later a PDF file was sent to me, and that meant I had to buckle down and get to work. Still, it was the holidays, and I’d already committed to installing some office furniture in the dining room of the house, effectively turning it into the home office we’d been using it as for over a decade.** So when I finally sat down to begin reading, I wasn’t sure if I had the time commitment to finish reading the novel to make any review useful.
I guess I need not have worried, because once I got into the groove of reading, my usual issues with being sucked into a story reared their head and I found myself staying up far past 3 AM multiple nights. It got so bad that I would start reading during some particularly boring meetings at work. I have read books that I’ve simply had to give up because there was no drive to continue with the story, so kudos to my friend for writing an engaging novel.
Oh crap, I hope I didn't look like THAT. From Ranker. |
When I finished, I sat back and said to myself “What now?”
I knew I should write up my thoughts and send them off to her, but I did ask several questions during a chat session we had after I reached the ending. I think I can count the number of romance novels I’ve read on one hand (two hands if you count Sharon Shinn, whose novels straddle the line between Fantasy and Romance), so I had questions about the genre, the word choices, some of the tropes I noticed, and how some parts of the novel fit together. She is currently well on her way toward finishing the second novel featuring the same characters, so I’m glad she’s continuing to write in the same world.***
Still, there was the nagging hole in my free time that only fiction could fill.
Alcohol and reading books generally don't mix well. Don't ask how I know that one. From Imgflip. |
I glanced over my long standing “to be read” pile, which had grown into a fairly large collection over the past decade, and poked at it for a while, wondering what to do. I eventually settled on The Chronicles of the Black Company rather than finish a series or two I’d started years ago as I would likely have to start over for those, and that can be a bit daunting.
I’ve since reread my post on The Black Company, and one thing I noted was that while I tried to explain away my liking of the omnibus trilogy, the post itself was rather bland. I don’t think that I was intentionally avoiding taking a hard stand in either direction, because I realize that different people like different things about a book review, but watching the brouhaha over the Wired profile of Brandon Sanderson I realized that I was being the anti-rabble rouser. It’s not as if I have any grand, incisive commentary on the prose or the story, but even if I did I would have never have written my review in the same fashion that the author of the Wired article did.
TL;DR: I don’t believe in being a dick.
Yes, they are modeled after The Devil's Panties. If you haven't read this webcomic yet, GO! |
So in the end, I'm going to stick to my guns and not be an asshole about these reviews. That doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical when I feel the need for it, but I can separate being critical from being a jerk.
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