Sunday Ramblings: cliques, conventions, and books I’m reading
Happy Sunday, everyone! If you have a partner, I hope you’re enjoying your Valentine’s Day. If you, like me, do not, I hope you’re at least going to buy yourself some chocolate.
Sorry for the stream-of-conscious rambling style of this post. I can’t be bothered to write a coherent essay. I’ve been feeling low-grade nausea all day, and I’m really hoping I’m not about to get sick, because that would suck.
Around the blogosphere this week I’ve noticed a few conversations about cliques in blogland. To be honest, I think cliques happen no matter what community you belong to. It’s just how people operate. And I take a pretty zen view of the whole thing. I know I’m small potatoes in blogland, and I’m cool with that. I could probably increase my page ranking, do more contests, etc. if I wanted to. But I don’t really feel the need. And I consider a handful of bloggers and authors to be friends, but I don’t want to make my blog a popularity contest. I don’t have the time in the first place, and in the second, I don’t know what I’d do with minions and fangirls if I had them.
Of course, sometimes those sentiments are a little easier to maintain than at other times. For example, all the talk on the blogosphere about the book blogger convention does depress me. I am a poor college student. I simply can’t afford to go, and even if I did go, while it would be awesome to meet my fellow book bloggers, I’d still have to deal with the fact that I’d be going to New York. By myself. As a blind person. Even the thought makes my introverted soul weep a little. But man, it would be so much fun to get together and talk about books with other people who are as passionate about them as I am! And, since there aren’t many local bloggers in my area–if there are any at all–it’s never going to happen, and that thought does depress me, because I do feel like I’ll always be on the outside looking in.
Anyway, enough about that. I wanted to start keeping better track of what I’m currently reading, more for my own reference than anything else.
Books I need to review:
- Eye of Heaven by Marjorie Liu
Books I’m currently reading:
- Fugitive by Cheryl Brooks – I’m a little over halfway through this one, so I’ll probably finish it today I love Brooks’s cheesy futuristic romance series, but this one suffers from plotting that’s all over the place. Also, the sex scenes are increasingly unsexy.
- Bitterwood by James Maxey: This is a validation for Bookshare. It’s surprisingly good so far, but I’m not far into it.
- Love by Toni Morrison: I got this from the Library, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to finish it. It has an interesting premise, and God knows I don’t read enough books by and about people of color, but I’m just not in the mood for something so literary.
So that’s my Sunday. How are the rest of you? Read anything awesome lately?
I want to be a part of the cliche with the hot menz and cute kittens. Want to join me?
Whenever you come to NYC, tell me so I can be your tour guide.
Long live the snard!
KB,
Touring NYC with you would be so much fun. If I ever have money, I would be all over that.
:/ I still have Bitterwood if you need the page numbers, but I’ve given up trying to read it. I got about halfway through, and it’s so hamhanded in its wrangling of fantasy cliches, it makes me cringe.
I sometimes get a little sad about all those bloggers meetings too – I’m a poor person in a different continent, so it’s never going to happen for me either. But we’ll always have our Twitter chats.
That link didn’t work–the blogger convention one. ::cough:: But I’m 44 years old, and travelling now (when I can ride the coattails of my husband’s business travel) is a luxury I’m grabbing onto while I can. I wish there were bloggers around here too. You’d think in CT people would blog. But no.
I’d go to see you, too–to NY and join KB for a day.
On an entirely different note–I LOVE THE NEW DIGS. I’ve been following in reader and haven’t popped in. It’s lovely. I am ever your minion.
LB
LB and I will drag you around. Knowing LB, she’ll get us lost in the village surrounded by all the hot gay boys. hee.
Oh, I don’t know. I feel like I could keep a minion pretty well occupied
Primavera – I know. The hamhandedness is what has kept me from really getting into the book. I like some of what he’s done, but I’m not sure I’m going to be compelled to read more.
Nymeth – Thank God for Twitter. It makes not getting to meet various people much more bearable. LOL.
LB: Thanks for the love. I’m always your minion, too, even if I still lurk mostly.
KB: Bwah. I’d love to get lost in the Village. It seems like a great place for it.
Aarti: LOL yeah who am I kidding? I have a list of things it’d be awesome to have a minion for.
I also feel a bit sad every year when people are talking about attending the RWA conference, etc. I’d love to make it to Nashville but it’s a long way to go while my kids are so small. We’re hoping to make a family holiday of it next year and go to the one in New York.
Sarah – Oh yes. I’d love to go to RWA. If it ever hits Kansas City, I will be there, but so far the locations have always been prohibitive. It’s just that now there are so many other conventions/gatherings/meetups these days!
I was surprised to read that you thought it “surprisingly good”. Seriously, it wouldn’t be half so painful if it weren’t so earnest. Take Simon R. Green’s space opera (I’m thinking here of the Deathstalker books): they’re full of cliche and the author has a glorious sense of humor about it, as the narrative makes plain over and over again. Bitterwood, sadly, reads to me as earnest and straightforward. I’m pretty sure that “omg! humans are the exploited and inferior species!” ceased to be a shocking element of worldbuilding when Charlton Heston battled it out on the Planet of the Apes. And then we have the not-even-thinly-veiled Holocaust subtext …
After giggling about various bits and reading them aloud to hubby, I handed the book over to him and he leafed to the back, where we learned that Maxey is a graduate of Orson Scott Card’s writing workshop extravaganza. That just makes it all the stranger to me. As politically incorrect as it may be to dislike Card, the man wrote Xenocide; I’d expect a protege of his to be more artful with fictional genocides. And as for fantasy, Card wrote freaking Hart’s Hope. Imagine what Bitterwood could’ve been with an ounce of that sheer weirdness infused into it.
Well, I hadn’t gotten very far, and I feel obligated to finish since I’m validating it for Bookshare. But I did like that Bitterwood became a religious zealot. I didn’t see that coming, and it impressed me. But considering this is the second or third time I’ve felt the need to restart this book, I honestly don’t have a lot of faith in it.
Sorry you’re feeling crappy!
Re: minions – I used to have a minion for a little while at my very first job ever and it was AMAZING. He was all cute and strong, and he moved things around and did my bidding. GET A MINION.
If it weren’t for the fact that I live 30 min from NYC by train, I wouldn’t go to the conventions either. It would be cool if they could implement some remote dial-in option.
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