Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
This sounds like an editorial CFM, ita
Yes, one with an open cast. I still haven't finished Dhalgren. I love it, but I can't fucking READ it. I'm fascinated by the opinions of people with more reading and more critical reading than mine.
Nook is having a sale right now on book bundles. Is the Divergence series worth $29.99. Three Dragonriders for $9.99--Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon, maybe. I'm curious to see how rapey they feel to an adult reader. Outlander for $50 (that is probably more than I can justify right now, but I could pull tight on other things--it is 7 books)? Here's the full list, for anyone interested (remember, you can read them without having a Nook (Amy).
Has anyone else read the Martian yet? SO GOOD!!!
Oh man, the Outlander series is so tempting. I still haven't read the last few books, and I need to reread from the beginning.
ita, if you want the Divergent books, give me a day or two and I'll mail you the first two. I have them, and I'm not going to read them.
Also, explain the editing question some more? This is someone you would want to edit because you feel s/he needs editing that doesn't get done?
This is someone you would want to edit because you feel s/he needs editing that doesn't get done?
No--someone who you think you'd be good at editing, whose prose you'd like to be part of fixing up, and could produce a book you'd be proud of.
Why aren't you reading Divergent? I mean, should I?
How much does it bother you when the third book in a trilogy goes off the rails?
Oh. Well, that can vary from amusement to stopping reading. Hmm.
It's just not my kind of dystopia. I'm actually not a huge fan of dystopia -- I really prefer post-apocalyptic stuff. The Hunger Games books were fantastic, but they also made a weird kind of sense to me that some of the other really contrived dystopias don't.
I forget how I ended up with them. When I was promoting Cold Kiss, I ended up getting a lot of books from my editor and other people.
No--someone who you think you'd be good at editing, whose prose you'd like to be part of fixing up, and could produce a book you'd be proud of.
That's a complicated question, I think because any author I'm already reading has already been edited, so it's hard to tell where the raw material ends and the editor's work began. If that makes sense.
I do remember what it felt like to come across new authors I wanted to acquire who blew me away,though. That's a great feeling.
I wouldn't pay for the Divergent series, it's not something I have any desire to re-read. First book was pretty good. Second, meh. Third total waste of reading time.
I feel the same way as erin I really enjoyed the first book (until the whole love story kicked in, then ugh.)
I was told by a Professor in college that he knew the man who edited "Brave New World". He claims that he was told that it was tightly written that it could not be edited, that for the most part that changing a word would ruin a transition or some other part of the flow. The only editing that was done in the end was proofreading for typos and misspellings of which there were almost none. I don't know whether this was myth or truth, and it has been so long since I read "Brave New World" that I can't judge based on internal evidence of the work either.
I will note that I have never heard this even about many writers that are acknowledged greats. Also the one other writer I heard it about was an LA Times columnist I found boring - Jack Smith. (I doubt Jack Smith is still alive; he wrote column that basically just narrated his life as it happened, along with not very profound musings. )
