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Jul. 15th, 2009 03:13 amI'm not a well person and the unwellness means I can't sleep. The doctor doesn't open for four hours and I'm wondering how much work I can get done in that time. Tomorrow I get Life through Cellophane back for selected edits and I'm hoping that the final edits for The Art of Effective Dreaming will appear shortly, so clearing the decks is not such a bad thing to do. Getting well would be an equally good thing to do, but it appears my body doesn't want to do that by itself.
One thing I promised (not work, but still, I promised) was the fourth of Angry Robot's new books. It's Chris Roberson's Book of Secrets.
We're besotted with books that contain secrets, whether they be of the Albertus Magnus variety or the Deathnote kind. It makes it rather dangerous to use 'Book of Secrets' as the title of a novel, because we carry so many expectations with us of what we shall find in that novel. I'll get back to that thought. Not tonight, though. It's tough on a book to have a title that carries so many burdens, and so I didn't worry about whether the book matched my expectations of it from the title.
Roberson's writing flows out sentence after sentence, practiced and mellifluous. Very easy to read, but also very even in tone. Almost lulling. I need to be occasionally shaken to wake up so I pay attention to the story.
It's an easy read. A very good book for a lazy day. The fact that I want to shake up Roberson's prose means it's not my style. The themes and storyline aren't quite my style, either. I can see that it would suit a bunch of other readers: a touch of noir, a touch of bad boy dealing with a rough world will work for quite a number of people.It's a superhero comic of a book, with a vast amount of explanation and backstory.
It's a careful book, a structured book, with just the right amount of surprise in just the right places. And as I typed this from the notes I took when I read it last month, I realised that I didn't make many notes of the contents. I had to open the file up and remind myself. This just goes to show that even a very good book - with just the right amount of surprise in just the right places – won't work for all readers. With all the other books I've taken notes of things that delighted me or horrified me. My notes are mostly to do with Roberson's craft.
I want to apologise to it, for not falling in love with it. Reading it was like a first date where we each see how very worthy the other is, but ring up our friends when we get home and say "There was no spark between us. None at all."
I do recommend it, especially for the beach during summer, but not to those whose book tastes are precisely the same as mine.
One thing I promised (not work, but still, I promised) was the fourth of Angry Robot's new books. It's Chris Roberson's Book of Secrets.
We're besotted with books that contain secrets, whether they be of the Albertus Magnus variety or the Deathnote kind. It makes it rather dangerous to use 'Book of Secrets' as the title of a novel, because we carry so many expectations with us of what we shall find in that novel. I'll get back to that thought. Not tonight, though. It's tough on a book to have a title that carries so many burdens, and so I didn't worry about whether the book matched my expectations of it from the title.
Roberson's writing flows out sentence after sentence, practiced and mellifluous. Very easy to read, but also very even in tone. Almost lulling. I need to be occasionally shaken to wake up so I pay attention to the story.
It's an easy read. A very good book for a lazy day. The fact that I want to shake up Roberson's prose means it's not my style. The themes and storyline aren't quite my style, either. I can see that it would suit a bunch of other readers: a touch of noir, a touch of bad boy dealing with a rough world will work for quite a number of people.It's a superhero comic of a book, with a vast amount of explanation and backstory.
It's a careful book, a structured book, with just the right amount of surprise in just the right places. And as I typed this from the notes I took when I read it last month, I realised that I didn't make many notes of the contents. I had to open the file up and remind myself. This just goes to show that even a very good book - with just the right amount of surprise in just the right places – won't work for all readers. With all the other books I've taken notes of things that delighted me or horrified me. My notes are mostly to do with Roberson's craft.
I want to apologise to it, for not falling in love with it. Reading it was like a first date where we each see how very worthy the other is, but ring up our friends when we get home and say "There was no spark between us. None at all."
I do recommend it, especially for the beach during summer, but not to those whose book tastes are precisely the same as mine.