What are you reading just now and what can you learn from the reading?

I've just started Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard. Leonard has a knack for intricate and entertaining plots and characters. You seem to know the players instantly in just a few words. Definitely a learning experience in characterization.

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin. I love his characterization - for me writing and reading is all in the characters, and Rankin does a good job of making them come to life without overdoing anything. His descriptions are quick and to the point while also being very full - he's using only as many words as necessary to tell a good story, and that's what I'm trying to improve upon myself.

A Taste for Death by P.D. James. I wanted to read a few mysteries, because I haven't touched them in so many years, and I was so blown away by her Children of Men that she seemed the best one to start with. She is a genre writer with literary sensibilities, which is my favourite type of writer. That and literary writers who tell rocking good stories. I want it aaaaaaaaaaaaall, riveting stories with lots of depth and subtlety.

I'm trying to read more Urban Fantasy, and currently I'm working through 'Moon Called' by Patricia Briggs. I'm about halfway in, and the really interesting/jarring thing is that she gives the reader a lot of historical detail about her world. She'll stop the plot to tell the reader all about the history of the fae, werewolves, everything.

I guess it beats being horribly lost as a reader, but I can't help but feel I'd like her to just chuck me into the middle of the story, and keep the story going. She's built a very detailed world, and I applaud her for that, but I don't feel like stopping to check out all the architecture.

Novelust said:

She's built a very detailed world, and I applaud her for that, but I don't feel like stopping to check out all the architecture.

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What a great way of expressing it!

It gets better Novelust. I just finished it. Better than this other book of a similar vein where I spent 3/4 of it going, "Huh?"

When I get home, I can give the rundown on some of the really cool things I've learned in the massive quantities of books I purchased and read recently.

Hey TJ - I'm sticking with it. I like the plot and her writing; both are keeping me interested, but I sort of want to take a red pen to the infodump passages. "Do I need to know all this? Really? Right here? Right now? ...You sure? There's not going to be an exam later, is there?"

I loved Regeneration too, Scarlet. Right now, I'm looking at Graham Greene's thrillers (Quiet American; Our Man in Havana) to see how a character-driven suspense novel can work.

I only read nonfiction, so what I learn tends to be whatever the book is about.

I've recently begun work on a new screenplay idea, so everything I'm reading is research for that. Given that I know nearly nothing about the world I'm going to be writing about, I guess I'll be at it for quite some time.

I have just started Plan B by Emily Barr.
I have been trying to find a novel I can really get into for a while now. I've borrowed so many from the library that lose me within the first chapter. I'm just happy I've been able to get into this one.

pconsidine said:

I only read nonfiction, so what I learn tends to be whatever the book is about.

I've recently begun work on a new screenplay idea, so everything I'm reading is research for that. Given that I know nearly nothing about the world I'm going to be writing about, I guess I'll be at it for quite some time.

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If your screenplay is for a story as opposed to a documentary, you'd better start reading some fiction. You'll need it.

I wanted to read authors I had never read before, so last week I finished Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I discuss it in the AW Book Club if anyone wants to check it out. Overall, I thought it was good, but meandering, confusing, and at times, overwritten. And lots and lots of colons.

A few days ago I bought The Abandoned by Douglas Clegg at Borders. I've never heard of the book nor the author. I based my choice on the publish date (2005--I wanted to read recent horror), the back cover blurb, and the first page. I'm on page 68. It's good. It's kind of a twist on the haunted house story, and its main characters are all teenagers, so it's weird to read characters using modern vernacular. (In some ways, it reminds me of a RL Stine YA novel, but it's much more vulgar. Definitely adult fiction.) It's told in third person omniscient mostly, and I've spotted a few instances of headhopping and POV issues (since I'm always on the lookout in my own revisions). I'm enjoying it, though. I'm also studying it for characterization, setting description, and dialog structure. Trying to learn from it, as it were.

allen

I'm reading the latest Jim Butcher. His pacing leaves me breathless. It's a rocket ride, but sometimes I need to catch my breath.

I am re-reading CJ Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time as a scene-comparison with my own WIPs (on someone's excellent advice), and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer just for fun.

scarletpeaches said:

I realise we have an AW book club, but this thread isn't intended to be about any one particular book or author, so figured it would fit here.

Anyhoo, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the books we're reading just now or have just started reading, and what we can take or learn from each to improve our own writing, concentrating on the positive aspects of each book. Even the worst book ever written must be able to teach us something - even how we don't want to write!

I've just got Pat Barker's Regeneration from my local library and cannot believe I didn't realise it features two of my favourite poets as main characters - boy do I feel daft! I've never even picked up the book before, so don't know what made me do so today. I can already tell I'm going to enjoy it.

So. What about you?

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I'm reading Eldest by Christopher Paolini, on a somewhat off-and-on basis right now. What I have learned so far is, although I have no real problems with his writing in this book, I have a sense of "If he can get published, so can I". It's a major encouragement to me.

Plus, it shows that dragons are not so dead in Fantasy as some writers would claim they are. This is good, as I have an endless love of dragons and their lore.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick - just because, and

The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky - because I'm researching Basque culture to flesh out the hero in my romantic thriller. Information I found in the book led me to investigate my own lineage, and it turns out my great-grandmother was descended from a Basque who arrived in Nova Scotia with the rest of the Acadians in the late 1600's!

sunna7kore said:

I am re-reading CJ Cherryh's Fortress in the Eye of Time as a scene-comparison with my own WIPs (on someone's excellent advice), and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer just for fun.

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I love the Fortress books. Recently I've been reading a fantasy series that is less than inspiring, and I'd like to read a really good one as a comparison (or as an antidote?).

I'm also reading Dan Simmons' The Terror, which is wonderfully suspenseful. I've been looking at how he intersperses horror scenes with the depiction of the characters' simple and terrible struggle to survive.

kpmcneil22 said:

I'm about 150 pages into Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian. This is the first book I've read from this author and I'm enjoying it. I'm learning quite a bit from Bohjalian about pacing and character development.

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Bohjalian is a...funny writer. Perhaps that's because you really can't place him in a genre. His The Double Bind was a collision of about four different genres, if you count the Great Gatsby stuff as science fiction.

Yet his writing is tremendously accurate. There were some scenes in Bind that were really hard for me to read because they were so true. He reminds me of Laura Lippman a lot; Lippman is an absolute master at creating scenes and situations and realistic emotions. Bohjalian has that knack as well.

The Double Bind was from Shaye Areheart, BTW, which is my publisher.

Reading a bunch at once:

Ender's Game, and wishing Card would get on with this after 200 pages.

Meg--another Jaws.

Subtereanean (sp?) by Rollins. Gak. He writes like I do!

I guess I'm learning how to keep so many commas out of my work and use periods. Damn good thing I'm not reading King, eh? Learning about snappier transitions.

Tri

triceretops said:

I guess I'm learning how to keep so many commas out of my work and use periods. Damn good thing I'm not reading King, eh? Learning about snappier transitions.

Tri

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Let me put in a recommendation for James Sallis's Drive, then.

I just finished Fables: Animal Farm, the second in what's turning out to be a delightfully fun graphic novel series. I'm hoping to get into doing graphic novels, so I'm paying attention to things like layout and pacing. But the real charm for the series for me is the great characterization (especially the banter between Bigby Wolf and Snow White).

I've also just started Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, which is just totally awesome. And even though it seems to break a lot of 'writing rules' (he's been in like twenty different heads so far, for one), he really pulls it off.

Conversely, on the backburner, I'm trying to get myself to finish reading One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, simply because the more I read of it, the more I can see what not to do as a writer. The story has so much tell that it makes me want to grab a pen and start rewriting it.

At the moment, I'm reading Red Dragon, Frankenstein and a collection of Bradbury's short stories called The October Country. I'm about halfway through the Bradbury and have been blown away by each story. He makes the stuff I write look like a big bag of poo.

I've usually got a whole lot of different books on the go at one time. So...

For work:

• "1-0-1 Intersex" (catalogue to an exhibition/number of installatins about intersex)
• "Hermaphrodites and the medical invention of sex", Alice Dreger and just finished
• "Middlesex", Jeffrey Eugenides

I highly recommend both of the latter ones. Dreger writes very good, well-researched and exceedingly readable non-fiction. And Eugenides is just very readable, and very well-written. It's not the sort of book I would usually read (a family saga-cum-(fictional) autiobiography) and I only did read it because my radio editor thought I should.

For fun:

• "Antigua vida mía", Macela Serano. Partly to keep my oar in with my Spanish, & partly because I'm "homesick" for Latin America & the books is set in Chile & Mexico, both of which are countries I really want to go to. Soon. This is very oddly written, it feels like two or three novelas stuck together, the tense keeps jumpig back between present & past (a thing Ive found wth a number of Lat Am Spanish novels, mebbe it's a done thing there?) and at one point the first-person narrator becomes omnicient 3rd person. So I'm picking up
  on how-not-to, but I find it very readable and enjoyable despite that, and actually very well written -- much better than Allende for example, who can write a wonderful yarn and tells it all and shows almost nothing, whereas Serano is very good at showing. And at constructing a withheld character and managing to write from within that restriction.
• "Four to Score", Janet Evanovich. Wonderful, wacky, funny, sexy, mad -- this is pure escapism and pure pleasure. Long may she live and write. And I guess I'm also picking up useful stuff for my own mystery novel. Which I really, really must get back to & revise. Really.
• "States of Denial - Knowing about Atrocity and Suffering", Stanley Cohen. Nonfiction. I'm reading this for the good of my soul, and because a good friend of mine is a human rights lawyer & currently living in Palestine. She recommended this & I want to know more about what her work & daily life is like. And ... yanno. How to change the world. And it is actually telling me lots of stuff about the world. And poeple. And myself. Very, very good. Wish I could write nonfiction like that.

I think thats it...