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I gave up on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It was just flat bad, and life is too short to waste time on boring, pointless books. I put it on my to-be-donated pile, which by the by, currently consists of one book. I usually keep books unless I'm forced to surrender them by circumstance, whether it be a move or a dangerous lack of space, but this one was so godawful that I begrudge it the space on my shelves.
I started The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell. This is another book I've tried to read before. Campbell's prose possesses a singular diction and peculiar flow that can be confusing and irksome if you're not ready for it, and the man hates commas. While he uses them between clauses, he omits them between adjectives and ordered lists, which often makes for muddy interpretations of scenes or descriptions. In some cases, I suspect this is deliberate, a technique by which to create unease or a sense of distortion and dislocation, but in others, I suspect sheer laziness. He's earned his bones in the pantheon of horror, and as such, is no longer bound to the common rules of clear punctuation. Fine, but sometimes, the story he tells isn't worth the headache his prose inspires. I actually binned The Overnight in disgust at its sheer inanity. I hope that Woods will prove to a return to the formidable form of works like "The Companion" and "Mackintosh Willy", which gave me a genuine case of the creeps when I read them a few years ago.
Damned if Sprache didn't develop some slashy subtext on me last night while Fictional!Richard was reminiscing about a threesome with a groupie and Schneider. He started thinking about the feel of Schneider's skin beneath his hands, and oh, dear. Whoops. Nothing happened between them but incidental contact, but wow, the unintentional subtext. I'm going to end up like Mr. Garrison, writing the greatest homoerotic novel since Huckleberry Finn.
I started The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell. This is another book I've tried to read before. Campbell's prose possesses a singular diction and peculiar flow that can be confusing and irksome if you're not ready for it, and the man hates commas. While he uses them between clauses, he omits them between adjectives and ordered lists, which often makes for muddy interpretations of scenes or descriptions. In some cases, I suspect this is deliberate, a technique by which to create unease or a sense of distortion and dislocation, but in others, I suspect sheer laziness. He's earned his bones in the pantheon of horror, and as such, is no longer bound to the common rules of clear punctuation. Fine, but sometimes, the story he tells isn't worth the headache his prose inspires. I actually binned The Overnight in disgust at its sheer inanity. I hope that Woods will prove to a return to the formidable form of works like "The Companion" and "Mackintosh Willy", which gave me a genuine case of the creeps when I read them a few years ago.
Damned if Sprache didn't develop some slashy subtext on me last night while Fictional!Richard was reminiscing about a threesome with a groupie and Schneider. He started thinking about the feel of Schneider's skin beneath his hands, and oh, dear. Whoops. Nothing happened between them but incidental contact, but wow, the unintentional subtext. I'm going to end up like Mr. Garrison, writing the greatest homoerotic novel since Huckleberry Finn.