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Oct. 18th, 2005 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starzkiI finished my bus book. It
was a V.I. Warshawski novel. I kind of liked it. It was
exactly like every other P.I./detective story out there with the spunky
investigator and the big bad evil to bring down with only the coolest
close friends to help. It was like all those A is for Alibi
books or Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta novels. Nothing surprising
and I knew "whodunit" as soon as they started trying to give his
character a personality.
Now that I'm trying to write stories, myself, it makes reading other stories a little more predictable. Authors rarely spend time on giving a new character a background unless it's going to be important in the plot. It's too cheesy to just leave the "bad guy" alone, as a complete stranger. Readers can get angry because they want to feel like they could have figured it out, too. It's also a lot of work to give a ton of the suspects all of the same treatment in terms of character background.
I really like mystery novels that keep the story a real mystery. Like Tim O'Brien's The Lake in the Woods or Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! I like a lack of resolution. It just seems more realistic, but more surprising at the same time. I like well-written books that don't try to have all of the answers, that reflect how incomplete everything ever really is.
Ten people climbed on the bus this morning, all carrying Oprah's new book from her book club. Someone said that it was their book club pick before she announced it as hers. Whatever. I just need a new book to read and I think I've run out of fare light enough for the bus (it's too hard to read "good" books when I'm looking up every other stop to make sure I haven't missed my stop).
Now that I've mentioned it, I suddenly want to bring Hey Nostradamus! with me on the bus tomorrow. But I don't think it's a good idea. I don't want to be known by the people on my route as "That-girl-who-cries-while-reading-on-the-bus." That book is brilliant. It blew me out of the water. It's up there with Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Maybe I'll bring White Noise. Hmm.
Now that I'm trying to write stories, myself, it makes reading other stories a little more predictable. Authors rarely spend time on giving a new character a background unless it's going to be important in the plot. It's too cheesy to just leave the "bad guy" alone, as a complete stranger. Readers can get angry because they want to feel like they could have figured it out, too. It's also a lot of work to give a ton of the suspects all of the same treatment in terms of character background.
I really like mystery novels that keep the story a real mystery. Like Tim O'Brien's The Lake in the Woods or Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! I like a lack of resolution. It just seems more realistic, but more surprising at the same time. I like well-written books that don't try to have all of the answers, that reflect how incomplete everything ever really is.
Ten people climbed on the bus this morning, all carrying Oprah's new book from her book club. Someone said that it was their book club pick before she announced it as hers. Whatever. I just need a new book to read and I think I've run out of fare light enough for the bus (it's too hard to read "good" books when I'm looking up every other stop to make sure I haven't missed my stop).
Now that I've mentioned it, I suddenly want to bring Hey Nostradamus! with me on the bus tomorrow. But I don't think it's a good idea. I don't want to be known by the people on my route as "That-girl-who-cries-while-reading-on-the-bus." That book is brilliant. It blew me out of the water. It's up there with Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Maybe I'll bring White Noise. Hmm.
