ARGH-- I lost half the list somehow!
ARGH!
Jayne: We was just about to spring into action, Captain. Complicated escape and rescue op. Wash: I was going to watch. It was very exciting.
'Shindig'
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."
Barb - Oct 15, 2008 7:40:46 am PDT #7763 of 28414
“Not dead yet!”
Toddson - Oct 15, 2008 7:49:31 am PDT #7764 of 28414
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"
Typo, doing it to make a point is one thing. It just irks me when an author feels compelled to drag in just about every prominent person in that time/place and not only have them appear in the story, but be a prominent part of the story. (Historical fiction about famous people is an exception for me, but that's me.) Give me the same kind of feeling I get with Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake. Mary Sue'd to the max.
Strega - Oct 15, 2008 7:58:51 am PDT #7765 of 28414
I just finished Kurt Anderson's Heyday, and it has a fair amount of "Oh, look who we ran into!" But the novel's basically constructed to be a encyclopedia of 1848, so the plot is thin and built on unlikely coincidences. I think it was kind of like the Vidal book -- if it was meant to be realistic, the cameos would be the least of its problems.
The only bit that really bugged me was when they were in Illinois and start talking about a politician/lawyer, and it's obviously Lincoln but they don't say his name for most of the conversation, and it's too cute by half. Lincoln himself doesn't "appear" though.
Typo Boy - Oct 15, 2008 8:27:15 am PDT #7766 of 28414
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.
Vidal is a novelist, not just an explorer of ideas. The main character is genuinely interesting if not always pleasant. He survives truly dangerous situations - both through luck, and through occasional exercise of intelligence. He is in danger from his (literal) witch of a mother, from the Harem and the court Eunuchs in Persia. He survives dangerous journeys, and deadly wars (civil and not) and intrigue in India, China, and in Greece as well.
Ginger - Oct 15, 2008 9:50:21 am PDT #7767 of 28414
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
This weekend, a headline said "Norbert Batters Mexican Coast." What does it say that my first thought was dragon, not hurricane?
sumi - Oct 15, 2008 10:48:44 am PDT #7768 of 28414
Art Crawl!!!
Norbert?
And we already have Omar building up steam too. (Or so I heard.)
What's the "P" name this year?
Ginger - Oct 15, 2008 10:51:04 am PDT #7769 of 28414
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
Palin
sumi - Oct 15, 2008 11:11:31 am PDT #7770 of 28414
Art Crawl!!!
Hee.
Hil R. - Oct 15, 2008 7:01:35 pm PDT #7771 of 28414
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
I think that Ragtime also did the famous-people thing well, but that book was really ... I'm not sure of the word I'm looking for. "Stylized" comes to mind, but it's not exactly what I mean. It's like, it wasn't just random famous people inserted into the ongoing plot; the famous people were part of what held the book together.
Typo Boy - Oct 16, 2008 11:10:35 am PDT #7772 of 28414
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.
Yeah, Creation has a lot in common with Ragtime. It is *about* makers of history and expounders of new ideas, and the relations between them. Along with Vidal's quirky theory about where this intellectual revolution came from.