The Reading Room

Damien said:
Yeah, I've probably only re-read LotR twice since 2003. To be fair, though, I think that also has a lot more to do with how much time I have available. I love comfort reading my favorites, but I also hate myself for doing it nowadays because I'm so time-constrained and I have so many NEW things I want to read. It's faster/easier to throw in a movie I've watched and let it play while I kind of do other things or when I otherwise wouldn't be able to read for whatever reason anyway.
And honestly, I usually don't make it through my movie re-watches either. I bought the blu-ray set like a year ago. My son and I made it through the first half of Fellowship and haven't gone back since.
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I totally get that, and was probably the same way about allowing myself time to wallow in books I love. I also, as a writer, feel like I should be reading other authors as much as possible to expand my horizons and so on. But I don't have a ton of free time anymore, which is really lame... and of course I spend a lot of that time watching shows I've already seen (or... last night my wife's aunt passed away and we watched 'something dumb' as mindless comfort, which in this case was Perfect Match on Netflix), or re-reading books from the same three authors who have been my favorites for many years.

With watching the movies though... I forgive myself a lot. Maybe it'll take me all year, but I'll get through them eventually heh.
 
@Damien Feeling the same about John Gwynne's stuff. It's funny, I don't think he's a brilliant, takes your breath away storyteller, but he's not trying to be - he's fuckin' EFFICIENT. That's what I like about it. He tells a story like a craftsman and not an academic. He knows the parts of the story need to fit together and work like carpentry. I feel like a lot of epic fantasy writers huff their own sauce too much these days.

Damien said:
I think I've said this before, but I also cannot recommend Rage of Dragons strongly enough. It's the first book by Evan Winter. Fires of Vengeance is the second one. The final book isn't out yet. It's African-themed fantasy. It's REALLY good. I've been stamping my feet waiting for book 3. I will literally put down whatever I'm reading the day that book comes out. Unless it's the new Gael Song book, because that series is also incredible.
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No joke, Rage of Dragons was in my cart WITH Shadow of the Gods and was going to be my next pickup if I hadn't decided to read the full trilogy by Gwynne first. I'll grab that next. (Only about a third into book 2 as of today.)
 
Damien said:
I don't read a ton of sci-fi these days, but I enjoyed the hell out of Children of Time and really need to get through some other stuff so I can get to the other two books. And I definitely want to read some of the other stuff from the same author. Of course, I read a lot of Warhammer 40k as pallet cleansers, but I'd almost call that more fantasy than sci-fi despite all the spaceships and laser guns.
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Probably you already know this, but Tchaikivsky has written Warhammer novels too.

I liked Children of Time a lot. Definitely my fave of the trilogy, but that whole series sits squarely in my sphere of interest. There's a fourth coming next year, Children of Strife.

Two recent standalones of his I was quite into were Shroud and Alien Clay. Also heard good things about his Tyrant Pholosophers fantasy series but haven't got round to it yet.
 
docsilence said:
Used to read more of it, not so much lately. My last novel was technically urban fantasy, according to the industry, but not intended that way.
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Heh, care to elaborate? What was your intention, and why was it categorized that way?
 
Damien said:
When I get home and can focus on looking at my shelves, I'll make up a list of some of my favorite stuff, for sure.
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No rush. My daughter got me a batman novel that's a sequel to the 89 movie for Christmas. That's next on my list.
 
If we're talking favorites...
  • Octavia Butler's Earthseed series
  • N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy
  • The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
  • No Country for Old Men & Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
  • Any collection by Ted Chiang
  • Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy
Damien said:
I've read 3 different books from different series, because he comes so highly recommended, and I hated them all.
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I'd be curious to know which three you read. I didn't like Warbreaker or Mistborn.
Damien said:
Children of Time
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I was both blown away and bored to tears by Children of Time. As much as I appreciated the first book—the ending was beautiful—I won't read the others. I read enough serious stuff between my job and the news. When I read at the end of the day, I need escapism. I bounce off the hard sci-fi stuff. I gave up on Asimov for the same reason. It's just too dry.
 
Ru1977 said:
Heh, care to elaborate? What was your intention, and why was it categorized that way?
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Honestly, the answer is: genre is a construct for shelving in bookstores and is wildly dependent upon the moods of the day, meaningless as it realigns every few years. I wrote my first books when Philip Pullman was endcap Young Adult and he wrote starkly beautiful novels about how important it is that we kill God and that was YA for sure cos it had a kid in it. Then there was a shift where YA could not be dark and usually needed a love triangle and I get yelled at that my books aren't YA, they're too scary and cynical.

I wrote that last book as a love letter to weird magicians in comic books who stand on the edge of the world and keep the things that go bump in the night at bay. It weaves myths into a modern world so it falls into urban fantasy, but I usually just say "hey, you like Hellblazer and Doctor Strange or Harry Dresden? You might like this one." But also because publishing loves to shove authors into a category and leave them there like jocks shoving nerds into lockers in 80s movies, any time you step outside your original genre people get angry. I got "how dare you" emails when I wrote a fantasy book after five superhero novels. Bookstores want to shelve that book into YA and I'm like dude...

Publishing is a mean drunk, basically, changing its mind on a whim.
 
docsilence said:
any time you step outside your original genre people get angry.
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Thank you for all that. The question was the forming in my mind as I read your post was compounded by the bit I quoted, heh. My first book was urban fantasy, monsters and shit in an otherwise normal, modern world. Even though it's set in the late 90s. But the second thing I published was a coming of age road trip (with SLIGHT supernatural elements in the peripheral), and definitely a different type of thing that my editor suggested I publish under a different name, which I did even if the second name isn't too different. I wanted people to be able to tell it's the same author, but different genre. I also keep the colors used on the covers and spine different to distinguish the genres further. So I guess what I wanted to ask is, how do you feel about what I've done? Because at this very moment I'm taking a break from writing a prequel to my urban fantasy series that has some supernatural stuff but it's far more about the characters and what they go through to get to the first book. So I'm kinda changing genres in the series, and part of me really wants to say "well, fuck it...."

Which is pretty easy to do when I have like a dozen readers, heh.
 
Ru1977 said:
Thank you for all that. The question was the forming in my mind as I read your post was compounded by the bit I quoted, heh. My first book was urban fantasy, monsters and shit in an otherwise normal, modern world. Even though it's set in the late 90s. But the second thing I published was a coming of age road trip (with SLIGHT supernatural elements in the peripheral), and definitely a different type of thing that my editor suggested I publish under a different name, which I did even if the second name isn't too different. I wanted people to be able to tell it's the same author, but different genre. I also keep the colors used on the covers and spine different to distinguish the genres further. So I guess what I wanted to ask is, how do you feel about what I've done? Because at this very moment I'm taking a break from writing a prequel to my urban fantasy series that has some supernatural stuff but it's far more about the characters and what they go through to get to the first book. So I'm kinda changing genres in the series, and part of me really wants to say "well, fuck it...."

Which is pretty easy to do when I have like a dozen readers, heh.
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I see the LOGIC behind changing names, but look at it this way: Stephen King and JK Rowling (may she rot for what she's done in the years since) sold better once people found out who was writing the books they did under a pseudonym. In modern publishing, your name is your brand and it has value. People will voraciously ONLY read books by two or three authors, so I'd rather befuddle a few readers by changing genres than lose readers by starting from scratch (esp. because unless you are a top five author - not top five percent, like literally one of the top five sellers for a publisher) the publisher will put zero dollars into marketing your new persona, so you'll be building from the ground up all over again.

I got an angry email because I didn't "stay in my lane" when I switched from Superhero to Fantasy for a few books and "how dare you charge full price for a book in a genre you haven't proven yourself in," but trust me, those dickfucks are one in a million. Most readers who like your stuff won't care.
 
Ru1977 said:
Does anyone here read urban fantasy stuff?
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Not sure if it's the same as "urban fantasy", but what I call "low fantasy" is usually a huge pet peeve of mine. I basically hate the tropes of magic and monsters existing in some kind of analogue of the real modern world.

Obviously I don't dislike all fiction like that, I've enjoyed plenty of Gaiman (unfortunately?), read half of Charles Stross' The Laundry Files, and tons of superhero stuff that would probably fit the urban fantasy or low fantasy genre. But if I read a book's description and it's something like "normal London teenager discovers a magical world through a doorway in the alley down the street" or 'hardened noir detective investigates the seedy magical underbelly of New York", I usually instantly dismiss it.
 
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