The Book Thread

[Rynjin]

Ok, granted. I suppose the problem isn;t with seeing meanings in general. It's with seeing rhetoric and important -isms. And especially with seeing rhetoric and important -isms when I'm trying to relax.

Then relax lmao.

Not learning an important skillset because you're afraid it will disrupt your ability to live in blissful ignorance is very silly. You may as well have not learned to read at all at that point.

[Bohandas]

Then relax lmao.

Not learning an important skillset because you're afraid it will disrupt your ability to live in blissful ignorance is very silly. You may as well have not learned to read at all at that point.

Not afraid it will. HAS. After many years of being told of supposed rhetoric and important isms in random nonsense, they've got me seeing rhetoric and important -isms in random nonsense automatically now, without them having to interject. And I can't stop it.

Have you ever read Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett? Do you remember the scene at the end where the vampires go insane and start seeing religious iconography in random phenomena? It feels a little like that

[warty goblin]

I suspect this rather comes down to what you think the point of looking for meaning in a work actually is. If you think it's to decode the ONE TRUE MEANING inherent in the text, yes it can be annoying. And I used to think much more along those lines.

More recently I've come around towards the idea that it's less about the meaning in the work, and more about using the text as a reflective tool or device to explore thoughts and meanings in my own mind. The text plays a roll, like a magnifying glass or a prism it can reveal things that, unaided, I would miss. But it's simply a lens through which to view those ideas. You can - and often should - disagree with how that lens bends the idea, but its the way it gets you to think about that idea that matters.

[LaZodiac]

Not afraid it will. HAS. After many years of being told of supposed rhetoric and important isms in random nonsense, they've got me seeing rhetoric and important -isms in random nonsense automatically now, without them having to interject. And I can't stop it.

Have you ever read Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett? Do you remember the scene at the end where the vampires go insane and start seeing religious iconography in random phenomena? It feels a little like that

I would love for you to provide examples of what you think are random nonsense people have read rhetoric into, just for fun.

While I have not read that book, I feel like it is worth noting that you WOULD, actually, be surprised how many crosses you can find in architecture if you're looking for crosses. Which is to say, if you go looking for symbolism and there's any hint of it there, you'll probably find it- and if you don't know how to look for it, you won't, because you can't see what you don't know exists, you know?

... as an aside, "the curtains are blue" is actually a meaningful statement, for multiple reasons, the main one being I'm pretty sure the writing that this "infamous" bit of "supposed rhetoric" is coming from is in fact directly stated by the work itself that yes, the curtains being blue is symbolic for this exact reason. Remember, books generally don't get bogged down in describing details unless they are Important, for one reason or another.

[Ionathus]

I would love for you to provide examples of what you think are random nonsense people have read rhetoric into, just for fun.

While I have not read that book, I feel like it is worth noting that you WOULD, actually, be surprised how many crosses you can find in architecture if you're looking for crosses. Which is to say, if you go looking for symbolism and there's any hint of it there, you'll probably find it- and if you don't know how to look for it, you won't, because you can't see what you don't know exists, you know?

... as an aside, "the curtains are blue" is actually a meaningful statement, for multiple reasons, the main one being I'm pretty sure the writing that this "infamous" bit of "supposed rhetoric" is coming from is in fact directly stated by the work itself that yes, the curtains being blue is symbolic for this exact reason. Remember, books generally don't get bogged down in describing details unless they are Important, for one reason or another.

Yeah, I cut myself short but the long version of that post about the blue curtains included a rant about how it’s a silly observation about overly simplified high school literature classes, but it somehow started getting treated by the internet as an actual, legitimate criticism when it…really isn’t.. Symbols are absolutely a thing, and even details as minor as color choice can play a huge role in the tone and theme of a story. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Was just using that as a jumping off point.

[theangelJean]

Book sale at the library! Snagged a bunch of kids' books in Traditional Chinese, a copy of Good Omens because I mistakenly thought we'd misplaced ours, and Andy Weir's The Martian.

Absolutely devoured that last one, of course. Perfect level of nerdery, suspense, human nature and humour.

I've been seriously thinking about whether to read it to my 10yo and/or gift a copy to her cousins (12/14). Pretty much only one problem: the swearing.

It's an extremely appropriate level of profanity, to be clear. It's used in the right places for frustration, helplessness, informality and occasionally humour. But I'm pretty sure it would be uncomfortable for my kid and give her the giggles, and giving it to other people's kids is doubtful. But it's so much fun! Hmm.

[Morgaln]

Over the weekend, I listened to "After the Revolution," written by journalist and podcaster Robert Evans (of Behind the Bastards fame).

It's a science fiction novel, set a few decades in the future, in a world where the US broke apart into several smaller states in a second civil war. The book is about a new offensive the Heavenly Kingdom (a fundamentalist christian fascist state) starts against the Republic of Texas, and three people who get caught up in that conflict. Manni, a fixer from he Republic of Texas who is trying to get enough money to flee to the EU and apply for refugee status there; Roland, a super solder/mercenary with memory issues; and Sascha, a teenage girl who runs away from home to the Heavenly Kingdom with romantic notions of helping god's army to fight the good fight.

The book is written passably, but somewhat rough around the edges. It's full of action, violence and a little bit of gun porn. The book is also very clearly written by Robert Evans if you know him. He's definitely bringing his experience as a war correspondent into it, especially in the early chapters. The portrayal of the inner workings of the Heavenly Kingdom do show Evan's expertise on fascism and the way cults work. It's also not a big surprise that the good guys turn out to be a group of anarchists who spend most of their time having sex and doing drugs. Occasionally, a character will turn into an obvious mouthpiece of the author and preach at you a bit, but those moments are thankfully short and rare; not because I mind the message, but because they are not subtle and thus fit awkwardly into the narrative.

Overall, I enjoyed the book; the characters are written well enough that I did get invested. A sequel is in the works and I will be checking that out when it gets released. The book can be found for free online, in case anyone is interested. Just don't expect high literature.

[warty goblin]

Started 34, a book with an... odd authorship. In a literal sense it's written by Tanith Lee, but Lee held that it was written by Escher Garber, who happens to be a fictional character created by Lee. So it's an autobiographical novel written by a fictional character through somebody else.

It is also, naturally, lesbian erotica.

A concept that arch is either going to make you go "huh" or "gotta read it" and, unrepentant Lee fanatic that I am, I've wanted to read the Escher Garber/Julian Garbah (they're a brother and sister pair both of whom wrote with/through Lee, as well as a third sibling who appears a a background character, this is elaborate in its weirdness) novels for some time.

This is the rare Lee that appears devoid of the outright fantastical. Which is not to say it's normal, a ln idea this inherently metatextual really can't be. It seems the closest to her 1988 collection of linked novellas, The Secret Books of Paradys: the Book of the Damned, specifically the first story, Stained with Crimson. Both 34 and Paradys take place in Paris (though Paradys is sort of an echo of actual Paris), and both play very heavily with ideas of self-recreation through extremely queer desire, with a healthy dose of gender transformation and a similarly ambiguous, remote and very gender fluid tempter/temptress. And a lot of sex, not surprisingly.

As with most of Lee's really high concept stuff, I don't think I quite get it. Possibly I'm not a skilled enough reader, possibly I'm just too straight. But the bafflement is not unpleasant, Lee's prose is fantastic as ever, and I think there's some virtue in reading something too challenging to quite grasp.

[Wookieetank]

As with most of Lee's really high concept stuff, I don't think I quite get it. Possibly I'm not a skilled enough reader, possibly I'm just too straight. But the bafflement is not unpleasant, Lee's prose is fantastic as ever, and I think there's some virtue in reading something too challenging to quite grasp.

This puts me in mind of Mark Z. Danielewski's books, which are much more of an experience than just reading a story. Only Revolutions has a story in there somewhere, that I've glimpsed bits of, but overall came away with the experience of having come in contact with something truly unknowable.

[theangelJean]

I've been making my way through the back archive of Naomi Kritzer's short stories - those that are published online anyway. About to take the plunge and buy some of her e-books.

Can't even remember how I got linked to it, might have been to the story "Cat Pictures Please". Anyway her writing is a delightful set of near-future musings with a sprinkle of the supernatural, and an optimistic view of human nature. I think my favourite is "Better Living Through Algorithms", but "The Thing About Ghost Stories" is probably a close second.

[Sapphire Guard]

Finally finished Mother of Learning

It's really something special. Top rated on RoyalRoad for a reason.

Spoiler

Show

I think the biggest benefit is that it doesn't have the sneering attitude that turns me off so many similar works, where the lead looks down on everyone around them. There is a good balance of danger (mind/soul magic, which is uncommon enough to not be everywhere, but common enough to keep the leads from becoming complacent.)

[Rynjin]

MoL is definitely one of those rare Royal Road favorites that is exactly as good as the hype. The ending feels a LITTLE rushed, but not to a degree that it ruins the story by any means.

[Sermil]

Book sale at the library! Snagged a bunch of kids' books in Traditional Chinese, a copy of Good Omens because I mistakenly thought we'd misplaced ours, and Andy Weir's The Martian.

Absolutely devoured that last one, of course. Perfect level of nerdery, suspense, human nature and humour.

I've been seriously thinking about whether to read it to my 10yo and/or gift a copy to her cousins (12/14). Pretty much only one problem: the swearing.

It's an extremely appropriate level of profanity, to be clear. It's used in the right places for frustration, helplessness, informality and occasionally humour. But I'm pretty sure it would be uncomfortable for my kid and give her the giggles, and giving it to other people's kids is doubtful. But it's so much fun! Hmm.

Andy Weir wrote a version without the swearing, specifically because a bunch of middle school science teachers said "We'd love to use The Martian to teach science but we can't with all the swears"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/b...-makeover.html

[ProgressPaladin]

Has anyone here read the Rangers Apprentice series?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Has anyone here read the Rangers Apprentice series?

Love those books.

There was a sequel series, too, but I think I only read the first book (the only one out at the time).

[LibraryOgre]

Has anyone here read the Rangers Apprentice series?

I read the first one, a few years ago. I was a bit too old for it by that point; while not as bad as the Spirit Animals series in that respect, it was very "generic character becomes generic hero in Standard Fantasy Setting" when you're reading it at 40.

[warty goblin]

My continuing attempts to summit Book Mountain... continue.

Finished 34, the odd Tanith Lee lesbian/trans erotica novel written as the autobiography of a fictional character. This was a complete mind screw of a book, every section recontextualized everything previous, to the degree I don't even think you can meaningfully talk about what is or is not "canon". Ultimately and inevitably, given the weird genesis, I think this is a book about what a relationship to a fictional character - like, say, your own past self - is, and what makes it more or less real, and whether that matters.

Also there's a weird clockwork chair made out of hands that is really good at sex. Justin case you thought things might get normal for a moment.

I then immediately started the next Lee/Garber collaboration(?), which is a collection of short stories. The first one is about a woman who poisons bad men for other women, it's extremely, deliberately theatrical, told in about five timelines at once, and an odd sort of quite challenging, conceptually highbrow, and very dirty, trashy, fun.

Started, then very quickly stopped, For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten. This book wins the Terry Goodkind Questionable Dedication Award for

To those who hold anger too deep to extricate, to those who feel too knife-edged to hold something soft, to those who are tired of holding up worlds.

Ma'am, this is an Arby's "Dark Fantasy" mashup of Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast.

So it started out irritating, a pattern continued in the first chapter, which sets up a really boring love triangle thing and the basic scenario where the protagonist, as the second daughter, has to be sent into the enchanted forest to placate an entity called the Wolf. This might be interesting, but the book is being all mysterious about stuff your average lentil could work out, and just clunks along into painful cliche after painful cliche. For instance, this sentence;

"She was going to the Wilderwood to save everyone she loved from herself." (Italics in the original.)

just hurts me.

But I pushed onwards. Lots of otherwise decent books have terribly overwrought first chapters. Sadly the irritation was quickly replaced by boredom, yadda yadda cursed forest, the Wolf is inevitably a grouchy sad boy, the forecast is broody today with a 90% chance of enemies to lovers romance, the heroine has tree-related magic powers that she's afraid of and has PTSD about because she got them when attacked by bandits and then killed all the bandits using the local flora* and said powers are also very likely to be the key to saving the forest from monsters once she embraces them and learns self acceptance.

So I gave up after 100 pages or so. My complaint here isn't that this is trash, or even trash with pretense, it's that it isn't my trash with pretense and is, therefore, agonizingly boring.

So I replaced that with a children's King Arthur from 1955, which has prose so dry and arch they could be used to hold to the roof of an industrial desiccant plant. All the knights are worshipful and doing deeds of worship and it's got lovely line drawings in it including some that flow throughout the text across two pages which must have been a beast to typeset in 1955. So, you know, my trash.

*I didn't actually read far enough to get to the part where this is made 100% clear. Just, as somebody who has read books before, 99% clear.

[Metastachydium]

stuff your average lentil could work out

HEY! Lentils are people too! No talking about them like that!

because she got them when attacked by bandits and then killed all the bandits using the local flora

(I used something like that in a character backstry once, except it was perfectly nice soldiers, not bandits, startled rather than attacked, projectile-vomited acid, not power of nature, and nobody actually died.)

[Rynjin]

Started, then very quickly stopped, For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten. This book wins the Terry Goodkind Questionable Dedication Award for

To those who hold anger too deep to extricate, to those who feel too knife-edged to hold something soft, to those who are tired of holding up worlds.

Ack! This is too far even for the average YA novel.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am reading the Nightfall duology. The protagonist is described as an assassin (and a rogue). The Assassin as the protagonist isn't a common story, but there are some examples. (Fitzchivalry Farseer being one such).

There are a couple of things I like in terms of world building:
Magic is powerful, rare, and dangerous ... so are the sorcerers who use it.
There are some using magic (to include a healer and a person called Magebane) who use magic for Good.
The island with its four kingdoms is big enough to make for differences in region, but small enough to remain well scoped.
Some differences between kingdoms are well described, others not so much.

Book 1: Legend of Nightfall

The Protagonist arrives as an already developed character (of a sort) who then has to undergo a change in point of view.
How the author does this surprised me somewhat (That's most of book 1).
We slowly get to know the protagonist via some flash backs, and of course some 'on screen' interactions.
We get to know the other characters bit by bit.

No spoilers.

Second book: Return o Nightfall

There was a substantial gap in time between writing the first book and the second.

Picking up the first book's ending and tossing curve balls to the reader was well done, as was the character driven motivation for the King to travel and be in danger (and the Protagonist needs to keep the king safe as part of his role in the entourage)
but, - and this is a big butt -
there is a tiresome amount of recapitulation of stuff from book 1 interwoven into the progress of the action in book 2.
I think the author overdid that.

Both books have plenty of "OK, we are going to do this - oops, something happened, we need to change plans" throughout the stories.
For the most part this is quite well done.
The pacing is good in book 1, and mostly good in book 2.

I am about 2/3 through book 2, on a pirate ship that just docked, disguises are donned ... I'll just say that there have been some hand waves and plot holes/gaps that have jumped out at me. I think that these were done for pacing purposes, but I don't think they were all necessary.

When it's done I'll update this.
It's a good enough story that I've been staying up late to get in one extra chapter, so regardless of how it ends, I already give this one a

Read it, You'll Enjoy it! review.

---

EDIR
Now that I have finished The Return of Nightfall.

The last quarter of the book was somewhat jarring, in terms of pacing and theme. It also delved into a lot more "the goings on at court and rules lawyering" (as had other parts of Book 2) that were shallowly set up as compared to how things were set up in Book 1.
It felt a little more bloated, in terms of the prose needing a few more scrubs/edits, as compared to how Book 1 flowed.

Was the resolution satisfying? Somewhat. I was hoping for a darker ending...

Spoiler: what could have happened

Show

...where Nightfall goes back to being a criminal, the prince marries Nightfall's special lady (whom the Prince was very attracted to in Book 1), and she finds the Prince/King worthy and because Nightfall displaced Sudain in a contradiction to his promise to her.
That would have put nightfall back out in the world, rebuilding his network of informants and other criminal contacts so that "The Return of Nightfall" would be complete. It would still have shown a sacrifice, and it would have fit. But it would have been a darker ending.
The author went for a lighter, happier ending that was consistent, in tone, with the ending of Book 1.

The Pirate Captain.
This secondary / supporting character had some great moments, and some not so great ones. Would have liked more attention to this one.
The Final Enemy

Spoiler: Coulda done this better

Show

Two sorcerers (with slightly different goals, but working together) was an interesting final problem to solve since sorcerers and sorcery keeps cropping up as a malevolent influence throughout both books. It just seemed to all come together and then get resolved too quickly, as compared to the sorcerers who plagued Darkfall in the first book-they were there all book long. That he needed help to overcome them - and he got it - was consistent with the first book.

The gap between these two books being written, and the second one being crafted in part due to fan acclaim/request, shows.
Book 1 is more tightly constructed. For my money it has a better and more satisfying ending.
Book 2 wanders a bit where some of that time and text could have been devoted to
a. developing the pirate captain more
b. developing the final enemy more and weaving that influence into the story as a whole.

Last observation:
the "bickering and deceitful nobles" theme was reasonably well presented. It too could have benefitted from a more thorough characterization for some of the personalities in court at the expense of some of the meandering that goes on in the early and middle parts of the book.

I still recommend them both.

[warty goblin]

So today I'm gonna talk about trash. Specifically what makes trash enjoyable vs boring.

What brought this to light was reading an exorable little novel called Gothikana, by somebody using the pen name Ru Nyx, which is just the word "runic" split in half, with the latter part replaced by the Greek name for the goddess of night. This is your first clue to to the sort of book we're talking about here.

The basic plot is the protagonist lady goes to this mysterious college somewhere that's all mysterious and dark and gothic - hence the title, gothic academia. Our heroine reads Tarot, charges crystals, has a nose piercing, only wears skirts with an underwear optional policy, and is pretty much a Wicca themed Instagram page turned into the standard issue hot but totally virginal 22 year old. With nipples - this is a recurring theme. She immediately is irresistibly attracted to the hot, super hot, mega hot English teacher who has a dark and mysterious reputation and also plays piano at midnight because of course he does. He's Draco Malfoy in leather pants except that he's only got a white streak in his hair and doesn't, technically, wear leather pants. On a spiritual level he absolutely wears leather pants. Because it's that sort of romance novel, he's also a totally hot dominant alpha utter jerk*. There's some mystery, and a lot of sex, and a trem. Look, if you've seen the Wednesday show on Netflix, just imagine that, but with way more sex. And nipples. I'm really not kidding about the nipples. It's like somebody read one of those Facebook memes about how men write female characters and went "yeah, that's a solid piece of writing advice." Because there's nipples everywhere, they're stiffening and crinkling so much it's a wonder the heroine doesn't wear holes in her shirts. Also at one point the text clarified that her nipples were on her breasts, which I'd been assuming up until that point, but I'm glad it clarified things. Saves me wondering, like the nagging question about what country this book is supposed to happen in*.

So this book is terrible. If you ever wondered what would happen if the Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal had the serial numbers ground way the hell off and turned into a novel, you'd get this, right down to the paranoia about using the word "said" more than twice in a row. There's a lot of adverbs is what I'm saying proclaiming.

I also found this compulsively readable. The whole thing teeters on the edge of being so godawful it's utterly unreadable, but stays just this side of that line. It moves decently fast, the mystery isn't completely terrible (just 70% terrible) and it commits to its bit about 120%. Every chapter opens with a two page spread, where the first page is a black and white photo of something gothic, with a completely out of context quote from a gothic novel. About half the chapters end with a picture of a raven flying around a moon, and if you pay far too much attention you realize they would actually make a flip book animation, except there's entire chapters of stuff in the way. It gives the whole thing a sort of awful, utterly unselfconscious artistry that isn't good at any level, but is sort of fascinating. It's clearly a very personal fantasy, but it's just so alien to my mind I had to keep going. How much of a jerk would the love interest be next scene? What would be the impact on the heroine's nipples? Why does the book even have side characters? Does anybody do any homework? How can a college be prestigious if nobody's heard of it? How much sex can two people have? How is it always brooding? OH GOD MORE NIPPLES!

*A fact that continues to perplex me is the tendency of straight romance novels - a genre written by and for women - to have the heroine getting all soppy over utter troglodytes, the kinda guy you'd expect to have a couple arrests for bar fights and restraining orders covering the better part of a time zone. It's very weird that the Raven Sword and Sorcery novels I read a while back, the ones that redefined combat leotard on the cover art and were definitely horny on main, and are also 50 years old, are less creepy.

**The college offers an Associates Degree, which seems like an American thing, but it's also in a castle, which we don't really have. It happens somewhere. Somewhere gothic. With nipples.

[Saph]

A fact that continues to perplex me is the tendency of straight romance novels - a genre written by and for women - to have the heroine getting all soppy over utter troglodytes, the kinda guy you'd expect to have a couple arrests for bar fights and restraining orders covering the better part of a time zone.

This is sort of like reading fantasy novels and getting perplexed that all of these male fantasy authors keep writing stories about magic and warfare instead of a nice sensible story set in an office where people spend their time reading and writing emails.

[Metastachydium]

has a nose piercing

…
And why is that one wrong?

This is sort of like reading fantasy novels and getting perplexed that all of these male fantasy authors keep writing stories about magic and warfare instead of a nice sensible story set in an office where people spend their time reading and writing emails.

Didn't they make not one, but two rather succesful series with a premise like that?

[warty goblin]

This is sort of like reading fantasy novels and getting perplexed that all of these male fantasy authors keep writing stories about magic and warfare instead of a nice sensible story set in an office where people spend their time reading and writing emails.

I guess the thing that confuses me is that the premise isn't particularly fantastic. A magic sword quest with demons and whatnot is exciting and also 100% definitely can't happen. But this is just dating a garden variety jerk, something the entire audience can do at any time, and a reasonable proportion will have done. So it doesn't seem so much a fantasy as a banal and unpleasant reality. Which doesn't make it wrong - I have no desire to police other people's fantasies - I just don't get the appeal.

Maybe I'm missing the point. The jerk love interest isn't so much the fantasy partner as it is the character type who amps up the emotion as massively and rapidly as possible. Adds that allure and excitement of a risky choice in a framework that's basically an ironclad contract with the reader that everything works out.

…
And why is that one wrong?

Where did I say it was wrong?

[Saph]

I guess the thing that confuses me is that the premise isn't particularly fantastic. A magic sword quest with demons and whatnot is exciting and also 100% definitely can't happen.

Stories don't get popular because they're fantastical. The point is that asking "Why do all these women like love stories featuring dangerous exciting domineering edgy men?" is exactly like asking "Why do all these men like stories set in dangerous violent unpredictable worlds?" If you have to ask . . .

I always find these sorts of comments interesting, because whenever someone complains about the love interests in romance stories being "jerks", there's a not-very-subtle implication that the target audience is supposed to be fantasising about a different kind of love interest instead. And if you call them on it, they'll invariably claim that of course they're not trying to tell anyone else what to think or to fantasise about, it's just that they don't understand it, because their deep fantasies are entirely wholesome and socially-approved and would certainly never feature anything questionable . . .

[warty goblin]

I always find these sorts of comments interesting, because whenever someone complains about the love interests in romance stories being "jerks", there's a not-very-subtle implication that the target audience is supposed to be fantasising about a different kind of love interest instead. And if you call them on it, they'll invariably claim that of course they're not trying to tell anyone else what to think or to fantasise about, it's just that they don't understand it, because their deep fantasies would certainly never feature anything questionable or edgy . . .

Mostly I don't enjoy male leads like that because to me they don't make for an enjoyable story. I'm not putting my various dumbass and deranged fantasies on any kind of pedestal, I just don't enjoy this one, and it's extremely common in the genre. If it were less common, I'd probably read more romance. As it is, any given romance has a high probability of making me spend a few hundred pages in the extremely intimate company of a character whose company is boringly rote, doesn't go anywhere as a character study, and is just kinda unpleasant. It kinda gets in the way of the fantasy, you know?

(I'm in general quite OK with characters I find unpleasant, obnoxious, grating or boring, it just has to do something interesting with that. At least in the romance I've read (admittedly a quite random and fairly small selection) this doesn't tend to be the case. Maybe my sample's bad.)

[Thane of Fife]

Maybe I'm missing the point. The jerk love interest isn't so much the fantasy partner as it is the character type who amps up the emotion as massively and rapidly as possible. Adds that allure and excitement of a risky choice in a framework that's basically an ironclad contract with the reader that everything works out.

People fantasize about things that they would not want in real life. Whether that's a jerk or a creepy vampire or a sadistic dominatrix or a partner who's good-looking but dumber than a bag of hammers. There may be some people who would legitimately like those things, but for most people it's a fantasy. Possibly the difference is that a fantasy can be stopped or put aside when the partner is too much of a jerk or too creepy or too sadistic or too dumb, but a real life person can't be.


Unrelated, but of curiosity, warty goblin, have you ever read
A) On the trashy books front, any of the Richard Blade novels?
B) On the goofy author names front, anything by Lilith Saintcrow?

I feel like you might enjoy either or both.



Speaking for myself, I've finished reading a handful of John Moore's books (which I will describe as sort of fairy tale fantasy written as a sex comedy), and now picked up Sasha Miller's Ladylord, which seems a more traditional fantasy. I'm hoping it picks up, because the first chapter hasn't done much for me.

[Saph]

(I'm in general quite OK with characters I find unpleasant, obnoxious, grating or boring, it just has to do something interesting with that. At least in the romance I've read (admittedly a quite random and fairly small selection) this doesn't tend to be the case. Maybe my sample's bad.)

I mean, it sounds like you're specifically seeking out romance books that you think are "trashy", so yeah, you're probably going to get a lot of that. If you want Harlequin romance with a non-violent-criminal love interest, try Barbara Cartland. If you want something more literary, try Jane Austen.

[KorvinStarmast]

a nice sensible story set in an office where people spend their time reading and writing emails.

If hell is your fantasy, go ahead.

[Ionathus]

I bounced off Tombs of Atuan months ago and kept trying to get back into it. I finally restarted and pushed past my last stopping point: enjoying myself immensely. LeGuin's scenery and prose are second to none.

I'm in general quite OK with characters I find unpleasant, obnoxious, grating or boring, it just has to do something interesting with that.

(My bolding)

Yep, I'm with you here. A character can range the entire spectrum from unhinged to milquetoast, but as long as the story does something interesting with them I can enjoy myself. A boring character in a story that's saying something about stagnancy/novelty is compelling to me, even if the character themselves is a dud. It's all about whether I trust the creator to give me the payoff for their setup.

I've read the whole conversation upthread and can't quite be sure about the judgment that's being made about "dangerous man" characters in romance novels, but my thoughts are similar there. If he's meant to be the "mistake" that the heroine makes before switching to the "good" man by the end of the story, that tracks. If the dangerous man is meant to be the final, correct choice, I might be more lost on the writer's/reader's motivations.

On a weird tangent, that conversation makes me think about all the "nice guys finish last" discourse that saturated my friend group as a male teenager in America. My friend group was very broody about girls dating "bad boys"₁ who disobeyed authority, were crass or disrespectful with the people they were dating, and drank/smoked/etc. I'm not going to get into a full rant against the "niceguys" mentality here (I would never stop), I just wanted to point out a common thread: my friend group thought that a guy like that was a bad choice, because of these "bad" qualities. But people don't choose who to date based on a lack of negative qualities -- they choose based on a presence of positive qualities.

A person who is rude, difficult, or even dangerous, but is charismatic or compelling in some other way, can often be an appealing partner (at least at first). Comparatively, someone who is "safe" but has no compelling features, personality, or opinions is not automatically owed partnership just because they lack bad qualities. I saw a play once unpacking a character like this, and it had a great exchange describing him:

"C'mon, give him a chance! He's not that bad!"
"Yeah, well, he's not that good either!"

I think it's a similar concept to fictional characters. Humans are drawn to interesting people, often despite their flaws. That doesn't mean you should date or tolerate terrible people, but it does mean that just "not being a bad person" isn't enough on its own. You have to actually have worthwhile, positive qualities to be compelling to others. Realizing that difference as I grew up gave me a much healthier perspective on both relationships and writing fiction.

1. as defined by us, of course