The latest rant over at Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books got me thinking.
Their complaint is about a romance publisher who is apparently increasing the font size and the margins of books by decreasing the word count.
On one hand, I can understand precisely where they’re coming from–paperback prices are up to $7 or $8 now, which is getting pretty expensive in my opinion, especially when they’re putting out so many books in hardback and trade paperback first.
However.
As far as fantasy books go, I really wish that someone would put a limit on authors. A major peeve of mine is that only a handful of authors seem to be able to complete a story in only one or even two books. Why? It’s not like it’s physically impossible to write a good fantasy story in one book. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett can do it, Charles de Lint does it–in fact he repeatedly manages to do it in short story format.
So why can’t I find single books when I go to the book store? Why is it that books always seem to be Book One in a series? And why is the series more often than not a trilogy? Is this J.R.R. Tolkein’s fault? He wrote The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy and so that’s what everyone else has to do? This is especially maddening with New Authors whom I have never read before. They’re asking me to invest in an unknown not just one book, but three–at least if I want to know how the story turns out.
Why can’t more fantasy authors do what Charlaine Harris and Steven Brust and Terry Pratchett do? Which is write a complete tale in a single book, and then write another complete tale about the same characters in another book. Mystery authors do it all the time–everything is resolved in a single book, but you get to enjoy all your favorite characters again in the next book. Why are fantasy authors incapable of the same thing? Are they so unsure of the loyalty of their fans that they want to make sure they’ve got you for a minimum of $24?
All I know is that sometimes I don’t want invest the time to read three or five or ten books. I just want to read a single book, and then move on (usually because I’ve got something else I need to be doing). Why do they make this so hard for me?
The Great Book of Amber (1999) Roger Zelazny
If you’re wondering why I haven’t written any reviews recently, The Great Book of Amber is why. A compilation of all ten of Roger Zelazny’s Amber books, The Great Book of Amber comes in at 1258 pages.
This omnibus edition contains the first Amber series: Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos; and the second Amber series: Trumps of Doom, Blood of Amber, Sign of Chaos, Knight of Shadows, Prince of Chaos.
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For those keeping track, (that would be me) my total number of books read so far this year is 139. That’s up from 115 total last year.
However, I read a lot more comics this year, and I can read most comic compilations in less than an hour. And no year tracks the number of books and journal articles I had to read for school.
So the number of books read may not accurately reflect the volume of reading material for the year.
And now, I must decide what I want to read next.
Watchmen (1987) Alan Moore
So, after so many people recommended it to me, I feel guilty saying it. But. I didn’t like Watchmen. Not at all.
I’m not saying it isn’t good, and it isn’t compelling, because it is, on both counts, I’m just saying I didn’t like it. I kept wishing it was over but I also kept reading till I found out what happened.
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The Innkeeper’s Song (1993) Peter S. Beagle
I read The Innkeeper’s Song several years ago–probably soon after it was published, and I picked it up solely on the strength of it’s cover. I’m a sucker for fantasy books with strong female, and the three women on the cover–especially Lal on the left–look strong. Well, I wasn’t sure about the woman in the middle, but she turned out okay.
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The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (1998) Alexander McCall Smith
My mom got me the first three books in this series for Christmas, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading the first book until now.
This is a rather unusual book for a mystery. It’s almost a collection of short stories tied together by an overall arc. The book tells the story of Mma Ramotswe life and how she came to be the only detective agency in Botswana, as well as her first few cases as she settles into being a detective.
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The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (1999) Neil Gaiman & Yoshitaka Amano
The Dream Hunters is my favorite Sandman story. It’s not a comic proper, but is instead an illustrated story.
And the illustrations are gorgeous. I tend to do little more than glance at illustrations, but the art here is impossible to ignore.
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A Moorland Hanging (1996) Michael Jecks
Okay, I give up. At least for now. Michael Jecks is a good storyteller, I will give him that, but his writing… The Merchant’s Partner was slightly better than The Last Templar as far as his writing style, but A Moorland Hanging is just as frustrating to read as the first book.
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The Merchant’s Partner (1995) Michael Jecks
This is the second Knights Templar Mystery, and I’m still undecided about whether I’ll continue the series.
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The Sandman Vol 10: The Wake (1996) Neil Gaiman
The final book in The Sandman collection, volume 10, The Wake tells of the funeral of Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, and of how Dream rebuilds his realm, and meets the rest of his family.
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The Sandman Vol 9: The Kindly Ones (1996) Neil Gaiman
This is my least favorite book in the Sandman series. Part of it has to do with the fact that it’s a sad storyline. Normally in a book you have the good and bad parts together, however in the Sandman, there were eight books leading up to The Kindly Ones, so it’s pretty much all heartbreak.
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The Sandman Vol 8: World’s End (1994) Neil Gaiman
This is my second favorite book in the Sandman series. Like my favorite, Fables and Reflections, it’s a collection of short stories. A disparate group of people are caught in storms and end up at World’s End: A Free House. As they all wait for the storm to abate, the sit, and eat and drink, and tell stories, and World’s End tells some of these stories.
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The Sandman Vol 7: Brief Lives (1994) Neil Gaiman
In Brief Lives Delirium decides that she wants to search for her brother Destruction, who abandoned his job 300 years earlier. She goes first to Desire and Despair, both of whom tell her to abandon her idea of finding Destruction. After all, he had reasons why he left, and if he wanted to be found then he would have returned to them on his own.
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1999) John Berendt
I read this book several years ago, after listening to the abridged version as an audio book. I was looking for something that I could read a little bit of and put down, so this seemed a good choice.
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