Read All The Things! progress report

[flemmings]

For practical purposes, I'm declaring the Kitchen Table Stack formally demolished. A respectable six weeks, but with side trips for the occasional library book or basement book or 'been sitting in the bedroom since October' book.

For unpractical purposes, must finish The Pastel City. Not at all sure how Viriconium wound up on Mieville's list of-- whatever it was a list of, because the site was down when I went to look at it and I had to do it from cache. Anyway it's not Pastel City he listed, which is stock 70s Elric-begot swords'n'stuff, but IIRC Viriconium Nights. Or maybe The Floating Gods? or is The Floating Gods merely Viriconium Nights by another name? There's a problem with the manuscript tradition of Viriconium, but I can't be arsed to go look up what it is.

Equally of course I've finished neither My Name is Red nor The Quincunx, and put Oryx and Crake out on the sidewalk after ten pages. (I can't read Atwood; can't. And to think she doesn't even have an LJ to make me hate her.) Obviously this is the worst kind of cheating, because Quincunx is a door-stopper and Red respectable, and removing them renders the stack a molehill. No matter. I shall transfer them to the Coffee Table Wall, to replace the Wall books I shall start reading next. (The coffee table is flush against a wall, is why the books on it form a wall and not a stack.)

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

If/When you ever finish The Quincunx, please tell me what the hell happens in it, because I couldn't make sense of a damn thing. Thank you.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

What? You mean I'm supposed to wade through 700 pages plus of Victorian pastiche and the ending is *not* as clear (to say nothing of edifying) as Dickens? Out on the boulevard it goes.

(I've had hints so far that the author is being too clever for his readers' comprehension, and have had to go back to ascertain what names everyone is using so far and to construct family trees and all, and this is still not out of the first section. I was hoping for exposition eventually.)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's exposition all right. The problem is that each and every character, including the protagonist, is an ungodly unreliable narrator in the extreme. There are supposed to be at least two "solutions" to the storyline, but I do not have a mystery-solving mindset.

In other words:

Q: Does it Get Worse?

A: Yes.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ohh not the unreliable narrator again.

Is there a cheat sheet online, maybe?