The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This modern work of philosophy is a must-read for anyone who reads. No, really, it’s that good. It is the world seen through the eyes of a child re-told by an author with a child-like view of the world.

The Little Prince has a great deal of charm, with the occasional sting, just so you know. From the stupidity of bureaucracy through to self-destructive behaviour, expressions of love and the vanity of greed and power, this book provides a welcome, gentle poke at society in all its strange forms.

The author urges us to be more like the Prince, and you can tell this is something he wants for himself too. de Saint-Exupery died in 1944, probably shot down over the Mediterranean (he loved the solitude of flying), fortunately for us, his work lives on.

Reading Communities

Many of you may have been in reading groups, book clubs and the like. A group of people come together, read a book, and then talk about it.

Something I haven’t found yet (but maybe it’s out there) is a community site where people talk about the books they love, to people who have never read those books.

Sites, like book clubs tend to focus on drawing like-minded readers together, often based around genre. So there will be a sf reader site, where people who care about such things can argue the pros and cons of ‘hard sf’ versus ’space opera’ to their hearts’ content.

I would like a site that encourages me to seek out interesting things I’ve never heard of, with a structure that serves them up to me, since all that mouse clicking can be exhausting. A reading community, of people drawn by a love of reading, a love of stories, and a willingness to share and discover.

It’s Monday, and I’m dreaming. Realistically, if I want such a site, I should build it. Hmm.

Cutting the Genre Cake

To me, there are just two valid categories of books – those worth reading, and those not. I think this is how it works for everyone else too, individually. When we want to discuss books with others, as well as the breathless recommendations “oh, you must read…” there’s that grey area of “you’ll like this one if you enjoyed that one”.

This is where genre starts to creep in, at least for me. Other than as an aid to communication, I don’t care for it. So when I wanted to list off some recommended books, I decided to divide things by genre. This I thought would be a way of dividing the books into small, themed bite sized chunks that would fit easily into an article.

More fool me.

My main lesson was more of a reminder – that genre, like taste, is subjective. When I write a top 5 fantasy list and then get taken to task for not including books such as Perdido Street Station and the Baroque Cycle, I do a double take. Those aren’t fantasy as I cut my genre. Those are speculative fiction and historical fiction, respectively. But it’s not helpful to point that out. Here genre obfuscates rather than aids discussion of what really matter – books worth reading. Who cares what genre those books are – what they are above all if great books worth anyone’s time to read.

Genre, as I’ve mentioned before, is a device invented by booksellers to facilitate the selling of books. Genre tends to apply only to subsections of books – fantasy, science fiction, and crime fiction. The terms science fiction and fantasy are often used interchangeably. We know what they mean. Genre is a selling tool, not a discussion aid. I knew this, and should have approached things differently from the start.

So I’ve abandoned the lists. I will create a recommendations page and put as many books on there as I think should be on there. That will be far more helpful, and, as per the list articles, all reader suggestions for further reading are most welcome. Hopefully this time they will be made after a clear article that encourages and doesn’t narrow discussion.

A Short Break

Normal posting service will resume on Wednesday July 16.

The Mystery Box

I haven’t spoken much about television here so far. At all, really. Music videos sure. But not the TV.

Television has a bad reputation, but it’s not a lost medium, just a terribly misused one. TV has a lot of untapped potential, but a few series and shows are able to tap into the potential for using television to tell incredible stories.

The Documentary which has taken over the movie theatres in recent years has its home on television, And what is a documentary other than the telling of a true story?

Fiction shows also have their home here. I must now declare myself a fan of Buffy. So it goes.

This TED link is JJ Abrams, creator of Lost and Cloverfield, talking about what he does. This was posted five months ago, but better late than never right? Enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/205

Oh, and the title isn’t allegorical. He really has a box.

Somewhere Different

XKCD has started a very interesting thing (as they do) – Geohashing. Every day, a new set of coordinates are generated through the algorithm, providing aficionados with a new, random place to visit.

It could be anywhere.

I’ve blogged before about trying different things, reading a new author, or looking for stories in places other than books. Is there a story in geohashing? I think there’s a million. At least.

Mapping Connections

Not perfect, but a worthy start. Try Literature-Map for some recommendaitons. The site is based on the ‘people who read this author also read’ concept that has worked so well for Amazon.

The imperfections here are based on data entry errors. Too many authors appear multiple times, with different spellings to their names. If that could be cleaned up the process would really sing. I have no idea on the data sources for this project, but it’s worth a look.

Beware, you may spend an hour or two surfing from author to author. Or even playing the Kevin Bacon game with an author you read, building a path to the other authors you read (I chose Tolkien).

Thin and Crispy Genre Slices

I’ve passed on a small dose of my thoughts on genre.

In 2006 I really enjoyed reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. I would like to read more books like it. But what if I don’t know where to go for recommendations online? What if I have no friends who read? Help me, oh incessant and pedantic labellers of things!

Apparently, it’s called Mundane SF. Catchy. This is SF written for today, tomorrow, next week. Okay, I get that. I understand why a writer won’t want to spend all day saying “I write science fiction. No, not like Star Wars.” I’m not sure ‘SF that’s not like Star Wars’ needs its own separate label.

These guys are serious. They even have a manifesto. May dog have mercy on their soles.

Actually by manifesto, I just mean some guy and his Clarion workshop students decided to pontificate about what ‘proper’ SF should and shouldn’t be like. You know, dictating to writers about how to express themselves through writing? How utterly pointless. Genre is a dead end street, I’m just saying. The silver lining on that pareticular cloud comes as the occasional amusing rebuttal. Okay, that part is fun.

Rudy says in part, “A manifesto needn’t be a universal strait-jacket. But maybe some forms are self-defeating. Like a novel that doesn’t use the letter E. Or a piano piece that doesn’t use the black keys. Or a painting with no red or yellow.”

I like that, and following a decent interval, I intend to steal it, and use it in conversation to sound witty. Now there’s my manifesto! No Red Dwarf quote too obscure, no Simpsons reference too irrelevant. Actually there’s probably a label for that too.

Shared Understanding

Understanding a story is not that simple. To tell a story is to share a story, and the act of sharing presupposes a number of things. The major one being a shared understanding of the world.

This is why more fantastic stories, such as Lord of the Rings, are often considered allegorical. Readers often look for similarities between an imaginary world and the real one, between imaginary characters’ concerns and our own concerns. This is only to be expected. An author may think he or she is only ‘telling a story’ but in reality this is an act of sharing that requires a shared understanding of the world, of history, of people.

Foreign works are often considered to have been ‘lost in translation’ but this phrase belies the real truth. It is not the words or sentences that are lost, but the shared understanding that the storyteller has assumed. Transferred to another culture, the story becomes difficult to understand.

And so to the link. Here we have Alisa Miller talking about the kind of worldview you might get if you exposed yourself to American news.

A weird world indeed.

It would be easy to respond by being smug, especially if one is not American, but really, do any other countries do so much better? For all its faults, American media contains more voices than media typically found in many other countries. How can the sharing of stories take place within such limited and self-limiting world views? Do yourself a favour. Read something you’ve never read before. Listen to someone you’ve never heard before. Repeat.

Anticipation

Part of reading books is waiting for new books to read. It always takes the avid reader far less time to read a book than the writer takes to write it. Sometimes years can elapse between one bookhit and the next. The only good side of that is that it does encourage the reader to try other books, and so extend their reading circle.

Here’s my current ‘eagerly awaiting’ list, in no particular order:

Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik. The Temeraire series was my big new discovery last year, and a great series it is too. Like Hornblower, but with added dragons. Brilliant. It would make a great TV series too, like Hornblower.

The Temporal Void by Peter F Hamilton. I’m a big fan of SF out of the UK right now (maybe there’s a t-shirt in that) and this book tops my list. After the Dreaming Void, I’m keen for more.

A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin. This book almost shouldn’t be on the list. In a moribund fantasy section, Martin’s books are some of the few worth taking the time to read. However the slow pace of recent book releases has my patience worn thin. I’m not angry, just tired of waiting. My eyes are turning elsewhere.

I’m also waiting for Lords of the Bow, Halting State, and Making Money to hit paperback, but I won’t count those. You’ll see my review of each not long after they come out.