Reading Slumps, Part 2

via Pinterest

  

Or, will Alex ever stop whining about her first world problems?*

 I’ve decided that they’re two types of stories—the ones that show you how you want to write, and the ones that show you how you don’t want to write. Not that anything I’ve read in the past couple of months has been outright terrible. Everything has been good, decent, or okay. And that’s the problem. I’m ready for something like The Monstrumologist or The Reapers Are the Angels. Something that makes me want to cry because I didn’t come up with the idea first.

Through all the good-to-okay books I’ve read since fall semester started, one thing that most of them had in common has stuck with me. None of them are unexpected. It’s not so much a question of plot or character development but some weird, impossible to define ingredient—that bit of whatever-it-is that makes a story seem new and unfamiliar, even if the plot’s actually been done ten billion times before. I don’t expect each book I read to have that, but when it’s missing, I notice.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading a bunch of short stories on Tor.com. Some of them are better than others, but they’re all just the right length for reading in between classes.

That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn

Modern day fantasy of two prisoners of war who meet to finish the game they started years before. I ended up loving the concept a lot more than the story itself (mostly because of the length—I’d love to see this as a book). Still well-written and emotional.

The Night Cyclist by Stephen Graham Jones

This one didn’t scare me. At all. Bicyclist vampires are still a cool idea, though.

Men Who Wish to Drown by Elizabeth Famma
 The best atmosphere out of these three, plus it’s about mermaids and whaling (two of my favorite things), so I can’t complain. The narrator’s voice is also wonderfully lemony:

 “As long as you have known me, I have been Grandfather Henry. But when I met my wife, Martha, I was still Resolved, a name that since our wedding day I have only signed to legal documents. No man was permitted to call me Resolved, because none could accuse me of any such virtue."                                                                                                                                A man after my own heart.

     

 What have you guys been reading lately?

*Not likely.