a fistful of linkage

[anotheranon]

Attn. Naughty knitters and other yarn sorts: vree has an icon for you.

ladyaelfwynn discusses fanfic as an expected and even transformative act after an overwrought author compared fanfic to someone stealing her husband(?!) Further linkage here, complete with long list of published works that could arguably qualify as fanfic. (Full disclaimer: I read part of one of the overwrought author's books. It was ok, I guess - I wasn't interested enough to finish and actually found the botany more interesting than the characters).

Off LJ:

Can You Update Pulp Science Fiction Without Being F-ed Up? - I certainly hope so because while the cheese is grand some of the stereotyping is jawdroppingly awful.

Tor Books blog is rereading Cherryh's Atevi series: Foreginer; Invader. Reading these to refresh my mind as I left off at #4 2 years ago and #11 (!) is just out.

They're also rewatching Firefly....

Comments

[dustdaughter.livejournal.com]

Neat links! I'm thinking of doing One Book, One Twitter (@1B1T2010). They're reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman and tweeting about it as they go. It's one huge global book club!

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Oh, that looks cool!

Thanks for the link to the crowdsourcing site as well - something I need to read more about!

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

***chuckles*** Yep, seen the knitting icon before ... there's another variant that goes "frog frog frog" back to the mistake instead of cussin' ("frog" is the term for pulling the needle out of your work and tugging the yarn out of the stitches back to the mistake ... rip it, rip it, rip it ...)

Yep, there's pulp and there's pulp. I always thought of George Macdonald Fraser as the epitome of the modern pulp-style writer ... adventure rather than science fiction, but successfully show how ludicrous old stereotypes were still treating the reader to great entertainment. (now that you've read "The Pyrates" you should try his Flashman series ... Flashy is a complete and total racist and sexist ... and cowardly ... Victorian upperclass bastard** whose only redeeming feature is that he admits it to the reader in his memoirs, and by doing that opens the way to taking the mickey out of his own culture through a lifetime of adventures he'd rather not have had)

Ah yes, MUST get to my Cherryh re-reading (the summaries just aren't enough for all the details I need to refresh on ... and every detail is important in Cherryh). Interesting that the book isn't out in the U.S. until next week ... I ***whispers*** actually had my copy when I posted the "it's out tomorrow" announcement ... just wasn't allowed to admit I'd been given it a day before official release ***resumes normal voice***


**Flashman's parents were legally married, but his personality is bastard through and through.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I did enjoy The Pyrates but it was almost a guilty pleasure, because I could never figure out whether Fraser was going along with or poking fun at the stereotypes :P The Flashman series sounds obvious enough that I won't flinch.

Re: Cherryh - gotta whittle down the current stack before I delve back in again. At ~2 years out, should I start with 4 or start over completely?

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Fraser was definitely poking fun ... guess it was easier for me to know that because I grew up with that type of humour and I'd already read the several Flashman novels in print before Pyrates was published (the Flashman books are very obvious ... the memoirs of an elderly Flashy who clearly states that his only purpose in writing them is to embarrass the hell out of his family with the truth about his exploits and the Empire). BTW, Fraser's three-volume series of short stories based on his RL service with a Scottish regiment in North Africa are also excellent ("The General Danced at Dawn", "McAuslan in the Rough", and "The Sheikh and the Dustbin")

Re: Cherryh ... I'd recommend that you at least re-read #4 as that's volume one of the second trilogy. And your gap is much shorter than mine, so if your recall of the events of the first trilogy if reasonably good, you'll be okay. But if you find you're fuzzy on the details of the first trilogy, I'd say go back to the beginning because Cherryh is complex and only gets more so the further a series goes. That's what I plan to do ... with all the twists and turns and keeping track of whose man'chi is to who in the growing cast of characters, I figure it's the only way for me to have a proper mental scorecard again.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Re: Fraser - yes, it sounds like you were coming at his work with more context than I was :P I think the library has several of the Flashman novels - do they need to be read in order?

Re: Cherryh - I may start over anyway, if only to refresh my memory on names, roles, and jargon (paidhi, man'chi and the like). You're right that the Atevi series is dense and it's been long enough and I read so widely it's likely I forgot something in the intervening years.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

It helps to read Flashman in order because he makes references to adventures past and yet to come, and just the usual reason of following the character's growth as he was written. The trick is to read the books in publication order rather than chronological order ... they contain spoilers for each other otherwise and they just plain ol' flow better read in the sequence Fraser intended. And you'll learn a ton of history tidbits (loads of well-researched footnotes).

1) Flashman
2) Royal Flash
3) Flash for Freedom!
4) Flashman at the Charge
5) Flashman in the Great Game
6) Flashman's Lady
7) Flashman and the Redskins
8) Flashman and the Dragon
9) Flashman and the Mountain of Light
10) Flashman and the Angel of the Lord
11) Flashman and the Tiger
12) Flashman on the March

And now I have an urge to re-read these as well!

P.S. Beware the newly-released 3-in-1 Flashman volumes ... these have been bound in chronological order rather than the proper reading order.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Oh, and saw the anti-fanfic link via a libwitch post ... the reply from the published author who started out writing fanfic and is now thrilled that readers are fanficcing her was my favourite. ;-)

[kiya.livejournal.com]

Aaargh. My reading list just got longer. *sigh*