Book Hype? Where?
Hype is certainly something I'm familiar with and quite often a victim of. Movies, games and gadgets are all paraded in front of me, glittering in their finery. It makes me want them.
Apparently there's a similar thing going on with books. Somewhere out there is a machine churning out shining prophecies of great books to come. It seems to be missing me. Maybe I'm not talking to the right people? Maybe I'm not subscribing to the right blogs? Maybe I need to pay more attention to billboards at train stations?
Last year I was given a copy of Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton and never got around to reading it. A few weeks ago at Alt.Fiction in Derby I discovered that this was supposed to be one of the brightest new stars of the fantasy genre. Last month Amazon briefly recommended The Passing by Justin Cronin. It looked okay, but I saw the word 'vampire' and moved on. Now I'm hearing that it was hyped to hell and back and is apparently amazing.
Now I read quite a lot and this kind of hype is something I'd quite like to expose myself to. So far the closest I've come is when Warren Ellis and John Scalzi recommended Cherie Priest's Boneshaker.
So where can I find the book hype?
Update
So I went on holiday. It's the first proper holiday I've had in a long time. That's to say it's the first holiday where the soul purpose was be a tourist, relax and take photos of things my camera isn't nearly good enough to take photos of. Anyway the whole thing was just great but I also figured out a way around multi-tome epics. The answer is not to pay attention to what volume you just picked up. I thoroughly enjoyed book four of Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series and by the end was pretty sure I didn't need to read the previous three. Score!
Then I came back and started writing again. I immediately ran into tense issues. The story is in first person present and there are flashbacks to when the main character is a child. So do I re-write in third person past, write the flashbacks in first person past or try and write the flashbacks in the voice of a child. I'm not sure if the two character voices would be too jarring...
Anyway... At least I'm writing again 
.
Less than two weeks till class starts up again. Trepidation!
Multi-Tome Epics
While in Waterstones on Saturday I made a list of fantasy books I thought looked interesting. When I looked them up on amazon to see if they'd be worth the effort I discovered that not a single one was stand-alone. Each already had at least one sequel and had aspirations towards longer series with a trilogy being the absolute bare-minimum. After reading the reviews I was surprised to find that a lot people considered the books "okay" but didn't actually tell a complete story. They merely set up what was to come and gave a few hints and cliff-hangers without tieing up the majority of plot lines. In this day and age there are so many books to read. Is it too much to ask for an author to tell a good story in a single volume? Maybe in 400 pages or less? Ugh...
I have high hopes for Debatable Space.
Terry Pratchett
It was on the BBC news today. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's disease. He says he'll be able to finish his current commitments (two books) and there should be time for a few more. This has hit me hard. When David Gemmell, the author of my favourite book, died it was more of a fact of life. It may be the idea of a mind as amazing as Pratchett's being eroded slowly but surely. Maybe it's the fact he's seems like such a nice bloke. His books have been a massive, huge, gigantic influence on me as a reader and as a writer. I'm not sure what else to write or if I should even be writing anything at all.
I salute the man. That is all.
Lorna Doone
I'm curious exactly what I'm supposed to be learning from classic stories like this. The first four pages consist entirely of descriptions of how a candle should be correctly inserted into a desk in order to "read one's lessons" and then something about floods. I shall persevere however...
On Classic Novels
Sam
21:05
I really want to give up with Owen Meany too but I just hate to let books beat me.
It's like an obsession and it's disrupting my studies.
<blank>
21:06
You're right, you should keep torturing yourself with it.
Sam
21:06
But what if it gets really good, fast paced and modern in 20 pages time?
The guy can't spend 600 pages meandering!
<blank>
21:06
I like how you try to read "classic" books and torture yourself with them!
Sam
21:07
Well they're meant to be the best books of their kind. There's got to be something to learn from them.
<blank>
21:07
Nope.
Well. I take that back.
You can learn how not to bore 90% of the population to tears.
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