Linking is the first refuge of the incompetent…
Posted by jaytomio on March 22, 2007
You know, I have been reading around and I’m thinking everybody on earth is getting Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies - except me! 
What do I have to say to that? Rock on people!
- John C. Wright podcast interview.
- Neal Stephenson talks 300.
- Women’s books are trivial according to The Telegraph.
- NY Times on Joe Hill.
- Comic Power! - honestly I thought Hudlin’s Black Panther comics were just atrociously written and made more of a mockery of the character than it did to empower a character. Sometimes criticism isn’t about what’s outside the book - sometimes the book just sucks, no matter what the intentions. They literally felt like a bad movie - it’s isn’t about black or white - it should be about writing the best stories - if that means tabbing Jim Brown or Brooke Shields to write it - so be it. It was simply one of the most cliched and dumbed down books I had ever read. The best statements are unintentional via the art of story. The message: give readers some credit.
- Somebody didn’t like The Terror.
- Eve’s Alexandria discusses the Clarke Finalists.
- The NY Times is taking a beating this week…century. Andrew Wheeler tells us SF is alright after all.
- Meme Therapy is back (via SF Signal) and asks Is there a writer that’s cranked your head open?
There are two ways to approach this. One, with the luxury of hindsight how can I reply to sound the coolest, really trace back the work that really blew my mind - and I was consciously aware of it at the time. When I was a kind I wanted to be a comic book writer (I still want to be a comic book writer) but even at a young age in a medium I knew was so vast when I ran across a work that now that I think about it - it reminds me of what Robin Hobb said in an essay about another work:
“one was the simple unbelievable void of it’s over, there is no more to read.” Her second sensation “And I have never encountered anything like this. I’ll never find anything this good again.” The third she said alarmed her, “in all my life I will never write anything as good as this. He’s done it; He’s achieved it. Is their any point in my trying?”
Hobb was speaking of Tolkien. I’m thinking of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. In my life I have come to grips that some people don’t appreciate Tolkien, Moorcock, sport cars, the National Football League, - everything else - and can file under it diversity of taste - but I still can’t help thinking if somebody doesn’t admire Watchmen they are simply buffoons. I recently saw somebody say a negative statement about the series online and I literally felt my mind trying to trick me into making me believe the person was joking to save my sanity. I couldn’t even reply - it’s synonymous with debating the short-bus league.
- I had some time this morning and decided to check out Gabe’s new online pad, and I find him outside, taking criticism to the streets.
There some other topics over there that may be of interest:
Bland Criticism
cod-ification: what’s this new criticism all about, anyway?
How to write a Negative Review
- David Louis Edelman’s Five Things That Do Happen When You Become a Published Author
6. Random Ass-hats will link to your bog.
Also - his Five Things That Don’t Happen When You Become a Published Author.
His first (and only comment at FBS) makes me a fan of this guy:
To call Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora a “novel” does a disservice to reconstituted tree pulp everywhere. The book lacks verve, wit, and style; its surprises can be gleaned not only before one has opened the book, but before one has even walked into the bookstore to buy the book; even its cover design displays a unique combination of rehash, decadence, and pure, unadulterated nausea (which does, in fact, make it a very good representation of the book’s contents).
Mr. Lynch, I implore you, a seven-book series? You insult not only fantasy readers everywhere, but the very integer that sits between six and eight. I urge Mr. Lynch to spend his energies instead performing community service in some local ditch or sewer, so as to repay the rather sizable debt to society he has racked up with this act of literary pollution.
If you have yet to pick up The Lies of Locke Lamora, I plead with you, stay away. Stay far away. Purchase a collection of “Garfield” comic strips instead, or perhaps one of those “Chicken Soup” books.
In short: I haven’t read The Lies of Locke Lamora, but everyone says it rocks. I vote for Scott Lynch.
*Picks up Infoquake*
