Quick Book Meme
Oct. 5th, 2024 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2k1. Almost everyone will recommend a book or two to read, but are there any you would tell people to avoid?
Like, no. Tastes vary, and that's a good thing.
For instance, I recently grouchily finished Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, an f/f monster romance which seems to be pretty well liked by its audience, but that I found twee, grating, and one-note. I found it to be a book that scraped one indifferent joke over about three hundred pages, and resolved its only interesting plot thread off-page during a time skip. That doesn't mean the people who did like it were wrong, it just means I wasn't the intended audience.
Similarly, I have just started catching up on Tom King's run on Wonder Woman, which I really like even though it seems pretty widely hated. And again, no one's wrong - it's just that tastes vary.
All that said, I though that The Time Traveller's Wife was creepy and gross back when that book was everywhere and that was an extremely spicy take indeed - so sometimes I am right and other people are wrong.
2. If you take a book on holiday, are you more likely to take something you haven't read yet or an old favourite?
If? If? What sort of insane person doesn't take a book on holiday?
Some of my best bookish memories are of being on holiday - I remember reading Kushiel's Mercy while Eurorailing across Germany, I remember getting chatting with an older lady who worked at the Hague poolside in Portugal because she'd seen my copy of Death and the Penguin, I remember reading A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet in a single day, in bed, because I'd overdone it at the Galway Guinness and Oyster Festival.
3. Do you read any genres by the season? Like horror around Halloween? Cozy mysteries in the winter? Romance in the summer?
First things first, I do not read or watch horror in October. Or at all, really, for I am a giant wimp. But especially not in October - US Halloween having made its way to Scotland is not the worst thing the US has done, but it is for sure top fifteen.
4. If you read a lot of fiction do you prefer an author who has a series with the same character(s), or do you prefer stand-alone stories?
Now this does depend on genre. If it's a mystery series with a recurring detective, or a romance series where the secondary characters from one book are the protagonists of the next, then fine, grand.
But as a SFF fan who is approximately three hundred and eighty (forty-one) years old, hear me when I say that I do not have time to reread your series of five hundred page doorstoppers in order to know what's going on in your new one.
5. Is there a book that you wish you could read again, but experience it like it was the first time?
Fingersmith! Like, Sarah Waters is good enough that it's still worth revisiting, but you only get one shot at reading it without knowing the twist.
Like, no. Tastes vary, and that's a good thing.
For instance, I recently grouchily finished Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, an f/f monster romance which seems to be pretty well liked by its audience, but that I found twee, grating, and one-note. I found it to be a book that scraped one indifferent joke over about three hundred pages, and resolved its only interesting plot thread off-page during a time skip. That doesn't mean the people who did like it were wrong, it just means I wasn't the intended audience.
Similarly, I have just started catching up on Tom King's run on Wonder Woman, which I really like even though it seems pretty widely hated. And again, no one's wrong - it's just that tastes vary.
All that said, I though that The Time Traveller's Wife was creepy and gross back when that book was everywhere and that was an extremely spicy take indeed - so sometimes I am right and other people are wrong.
2. If you take a book on holiday, are you more likely to take something you haven't read yet or an old favourite?
If? If? What sort of insane person doesn't take a book on holiday?
Some of my best bookish memories are of being on holiday - I remember reading Kushiel's Mercy while Eurorailing across Germany, I remember getting chatting with an older lady who worked at the Hague poolside in Portugal because she'd seen my copy of Death and the Penguin, I remember reading A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet in a single day, in bed, because I'd overdone it at the Galway Guinness and Oyster Festival.
3. Do you read any genres by the season? Like horror around Halloween? Cozy mysteries in the winter? Romance in the summer?
First things first, I do not read or watch horror in October. Or at all, really, for I am a giant wimp. But especially not in October - US Halloween having made its way to Scotland is not the worst thing the US has done, but it is for sure top fifteen.
4. If you read a lot of fiction do you prefer an author who has a series with the same character(s), or do you prefer stand-alone stories?
Now this does depend on genre. If it's a mystery series with a recurring detective, or a romance series where the secondary characters from one book are the protagonists of the next, then fine, grand.
But as a SFF fan who is approximately three hundred and eighty (forty-one) years old, hear me when I say that I do not have time to reread your series of five hundred page doorstoppers in order to know what's going on in your new one.
5. Is there a book that you wish you could read again, but experience it like it was the first time?
Fingersmith! Like, Sarah Waters is good enough that it's still worth revisiting, but you only get one shot at reading it without knowing the twist.
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Date: 2024-10-05 09:28 pm (UTC)2. Respect for this though: "I remember reading A Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet in a single day, in bed, because I'd overdone it at the Galway Guinness and Oyster Festival." That's hardcore post-indulgence.
4. Yep, F/SF would have taken a lot more of my money over the years if more authors managed to write standalone books.
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Date: 2024-10-06 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-05 11:35 pm (UTC)That said, I am also a Tom King Wonder Woman hater, though it is at least better than his Batman.
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Date: 2024-10-06 11:01 am (UTC)My main thing with Wonder Woman at the moment is that nothing will ever be as good as Wonder Woman Historia again. Perfect comic, that one.
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Date: 2024-10-06 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-06 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-06 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-06 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-06 01:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, Fingersmith would be my answer for No. 5 too (with Waters' Affinity a runner-up).
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Date: 2024-10-06 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-09 12:49 pm (UTC)Admittedly I don't often take books with me-- well, apart from travel guides, because I just find no time for reading?? Everything is so exciting, and then I fall asleep. XD
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Date: 2024-10-12 02:38 pm (UTC)