Vacation Reading

I'll probably write up the long story version later, but for now I'll just outline it - after Plan A for Thanksgiving went out the window, we settled on Plan B and were about to lay in supplies when we wound up going to Plan C, then ditched that and wound up in Moab instead (Plan D). Since I'm saving up my allowance for a side project, I only bought one book for the trip (Sandman Slim) after previewing several possibilities, and hit the library to fill in a proper holiday reading basket:

• Jailbait Zombie, Mario Acevedo
• The Blight Way, Patrick McManus
• Just After Sunset, Stephen King
• Mercy Thompson: Homecoming, Patricia Briggs
• Welcome to the Jungle, Jim Butcher
• Dreamsongs, Volume 1, George R.R. Martin
• Characters, Emotion, & Viewpoint, Nancy Kress
• Copy Editing, A Practical Guide, Karen Judd
• The Writer's Path: A Guidebook for Your Creative Journey, Todd Walton & Mindy Toomay
• The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel, Joyce & Jim Levene

And because no trip is complete without buying a book while on holiday, I acquired the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library volume American Indian Myths and Legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.

Didn't actually finish all of them - I'm one story away from the end of the George R.R. Martin volume, and most of the craft books will require actual study rather than the somewhat cursory reading I gave Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint (though that was enough for me to decide I'll need to own a copy, possibly of the entire Write Great Fiction series, and probably subscribe to Writers' Digest sometime in the near future).

Two Down...

Finished up two volumes on my "in progress" list - Stephen King's Everything is Eventual and Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft. I borrowed the former from a friend of mine after reading King's On Writing and realizing that I'd gotten fed up with Stephen King during the height of his issues with drugs and alcohol. Somehow, this makes a certain amount of sense - Cujo was not a favorite of mine (King admits to not really remembering writing that one), but it was really the sex magic scene in It that really had me closing the book and deciding enough was enough - I'd read my fill of King for a good, long while. I'm still not going to leap right into his novels - I'll stick with the short story collections until I've really started to enjoy him again.

Everything is Eventual is a good re-introduction, though - one of the stories was initially started as an exercise to demonstrate draft vs. first editing for On Writing, and it makes a good yarn once finished and polished. When King has to keep his word count down to short story format, he's very, very good - and these stories are as good as the ones I remember from Night Shift, Different Seasons, and Skeleton Crew. The short story featuring Roland the Gunslinger may eventually get me to read the Dark Tower novels...

I bought Shop Class as Soulcraft during a trip to Washington, D.C. earlier this year, and got a few chapters in before setting it aside. It's an interesting combination of philosophical exploration and discussion of educational policy, along with a spirited defense of the validity of trade work in a largely service-based economy, but it bogged down in places. I finished partly out of sheer bloody-mindedness - his opinions on current trends in gifted education don't sound like anything I experienced back in the day, so I'm guessing things have shifted too far in the other direction since I and my little brother went through very different versions of our district's "Challenge Program" - our programs had an emphasis on math and science, as well as more 'creative' endeavors, but Crawford rails (briefly) about a sort of hand-holding and ego stroking that were (perhaps mercifully) nowhere in evidence when I was in school...  He does have a number of good points about the intellectual value of work that's judged largely by whether or not it works, or whether it works well, rather than on more nebulous sorts of metrics, but it wasn't quite what I'd expected when I picked it up.

Back Catalog

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I both have Kindles, and associated Amazon accounts. Since we have several devices each now that tie into said accounts, we decided to each use one of our devices (in my case, my Android phone) to access the other's Amazon accounts. Since sharing Kindle books is not particularly intuitive, it seemed the easiest way for me to read, say, Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, and for my wife to (eventually) read The Dresden Files.

So - another urban fantasy/paranormal romance quick list. These are the books that I've read from her account:

• Soulless, Gail Carriger
• Blameless, Gail Carriger
• Changeless, Gail Carriger
• Heartless, Gail Carriger
• Moon Called, Patricia Briggs
• Blood Bound, Patricia Briggs
• Iron Kissed, Patricia Briggs
• Bone Crossed, Patricia Briggs
• Silver Borne, Patricia Briggs
• River Marked, Patricia Briggs
• Alpha and Omega, Patricia Briggs
• Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs
• Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs
• Magic Bites, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Burns, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Strikes, Ilona Andrews
• Magic Bleeds, Ilona Andrews
• Agatha H and the Airship City, Phil & Kaja Foglio
• Hexed, Kevin Hearne
• Hounded, Kevin Hearne
• Hammered, Kevin Hearne
• Tempest Rising, Nicole Peeler
• Tracking the Tempest, Nicole Peeler
• Tempest's Legacy, Nicole Peeler
• Eye of the Tempest, Nicole

Plus three of the Sookie Stackhouse True Blood novels, which series I've given up on. Can't stand the main character, so why waste time reading her story?

How-To Books

So this weekend, I finished up reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel, by Thomas Monteleone, and purchased Stephen King's On Writing. And then proceeded to read all of On Writing on Sunday evening. 

I heard about Monteleone's book from Mario Acevedo at MileHiCon 2011 - Monteleone was one of Acevedo's instructors, and his book does have a lot of very practical advice, not only on the craft of writing, but on the business of writing (which is just as important, if one plans to make any money from one's prose). Stephen King's book, in turn, was mentioned by Monteleone as another good resource, and was also recommended by a friend of mine who is willing to be one of my early readers (in exchange for me providing a similar service). So far, so good...

I'm finding that reading about the process of writing is fairly interesting, though I suspect I'll have the same problem writing as I do with any other hobby - making time to do it regularly. It's one thing I'm seeing in every interview, blog post, or book on the craft of writing - regular practice and time management are critical in developing one's talent/skill. And time management is not high on my list of skills - it may be time to do something about that.