I like plots ... silly, I know, but I do. And character development. And things happening. That sort of thing has been relegated to genre fiction to a large extent, so a lot of what I read falls in that category.

It seems like mysteries and YA fiction are the last bastions of the plot.

I don't read that much, but I haven't had much of a problem finding plots when I need them. Thrillers, chicklit, science fiction and fantasy, wherever.

Hmm, reading the bestseller list reminds me of two things:

• Must read Dexter
• Hate James Patterson

Hmm, reading the bestseller list reminds me of two things:

There's a new Pratchett! Ankh-Morpork!

SANDWORMS OF DUNE, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson?!!

This is why I should never read bestseller lists. I need to put the new Kathy Reichs on hold at the library. I'll probably be about 200 down the list.

I read across a variety of genres (even including litfic--I'm expanding my horizons, Hec!), but historical fiction and whatever you call the kind of fantasy you get from writers like Novik and Bujold and Jacqueline Carey and so on that feels like historical fiction are my home genres. Which makes it not that surprising that my muse fed me an alternate history plot bunny, I guess. Best of both worlds.

I'm just baffled by my coworker deciding to critique my taste, because I wouldn't do that. If a friend or coworker consistently reads books I dislike, I wouldn't go to them for book recommendations, but I don't get in their face and demand to know why they're reading such trash. (Though I do kinda want to give the guy who gets on my bus at the stop after mine every afternoon a novel or some fun nonfiction, because he's always reading these For Dummies software guides and the like, and I'm all, "Dude! Workday is OVER. It's time to unwind." But I don't, because it's not my business and I'm too busy with whatever I'm reading myself. And he's probably posting on a board somewhere about the weird woman on the bus who's been reading a book about Napoleonic military tactics for the past two weeks.)

I like to look at list other than the NYT bestseller list I tend to find more books I want on other lists such as the SF list

[link]

DH reads a bunch of tech stuff ( but not lately) I think he found it not necessarily relaxing in the short run, but over the long run, having the info at his finger tips was relaxing. I'm still not sure what he gets out of the political stuff - but it is his choice.

(even including litfic--I'm expanding my horizons, Hec!),

::thumbs up!::

When the beatniks started being ironic and sophisticated, and enthusiasm became gauche.

Yeah, the beats were more about grubby experience and transcendent pre-hippie wow and they themselves were (and to some extent still are) not included in the canon.

Kerouac gets sneered at with the equivalent of Truman Capote's famous put-down of On the Road: "That's not writing. That's typing." Ginsberg is canonical, and Burroughs is famously counter-canonical, and Kerouac languishes in the backpacks of adolescent hitchhikers.

Irony and sophistication predates the Beats.

Since we're on the subject of lit and genre again, I'll share some quotes I really liked from Mary Gaitskill's introduction to Dickens' Bleak House which specifically addresses the power of his language vs. the occasional silliness (or melodrama or unlikely coincidence) of his stories.

*************

"...a story is the outer weave, or conscious personality of a novel, but its numinous unconsciousness -- which the reader can feel if not so easily see -- is in the secret life that glimmers in the margins or bleeds out from the core."

"But what is particularly striking in Dickens is the contrast between his melodramatic narrative tropes and the protean force that infuses them with a kinetic, dreamlike power more fully dimensional than psychological realism."

"But on a more subtle level Dickens is not repeating. He is deepening, rapidly taking you through layers of images and movement that develop your sense of the character and his world almost nonverbally -- an extraordinary thing to do in a verbal medium. Dickens accomplishes this by using words to make concepts into visceral pictures, as eloquent and fluid as dream images...The images made of words transcend words to become something more primal in their affect and the apparently simple characters become conduits for essential forces that we can just glimpse in these rushing images."

"...these outsize images and antics do not increase our understanding of Smallweed --rather they saturate the scene with him, like heavy paint crosshatching a canvas."

"In those fever visions and in those sunny, silvery pools there is a hint of a world unknowable not only to the chracters but to the reader and even to the writer. This world and the tingling peculiarity of its inhabitants can be briefly revealed in moments and images that may be amusing or beautiful or terrible that are finally mysterious."

Must read Dexter

Have you read the first two books? I think I'm staying away from the books so I can enjoy the series; I feel like I'd concern myself too much with the differences if I read the books now.

Hate James Patterson

I went through a James Patterson phase in high school. It was pretty good times, though I'm not sure I ever forgave him for what I saw as a big narrative cheat in The Midnight Club. He must be really tired of writing now if he keeps pairing with authors I've never heard of just to finish his books.