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Jan. 11th, 2013 10:29 amWow. Lots of snow today! I'm about to go out and shovel, even though it is still lightly snowing, because once you get past a certain depth, it just gets too heavy. But I think I'll make my kids take the second round today when they get home. It's a good workout and you feel like you've had some real exercise afterwards...but once a day is enough!
Today my oldest turned 15. Incredible, he was just a baby! He's a rather pleasant 15YO and the only thing I don't like about this age is that they are close to graduating and being an adult away from home. We are hoping to cash in on the rent-to-own plan for his violin today, and have an appointment this afternoon to look at violins and get him his very own. Um. If we can get out of the driveway, that is...
After gorging on books over Christmas, I've still got a lot of unread ones lying around, but I've been having some good writing days, so some of my reading has been on hold. I did finish two last night, though. One was Be My Enemy, sequel to Planesrunner, by Ian McDonald. If you have boys who like scifi, this is a good one. It's a similar concept to The Long Earth, by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, only there is um, a plot to this one, and not just worldbuilding. I think Orson Scott Card has a parallel worlds series, too--but so far I like McDonald's best. Everett Singh's father is a physicist who is abducted one evening, leaving behind a computer program for Everett that has a map to anywhere in the multi-plane universe. On earth (our earth, E10), the ability to make a gate to a parallel earth has just been discovered--but so far, you can only travel from gate to gate. No one anywhere has made an actual map. And there are interplane forces that will do anything to get that map. Everett's trying to get his dad back, protect the Infundibulum (the map), and escape the clutches of the evil Charlotte Villiers. To help him, he has the crew of the E3 airship Everness. There's plenty of adventure and science to entertain a scifi fan, and since it is not currently an overrun genre in YA, it makes for refreshing reading from depressing dystopia.
I also finished the first book in a MG fantasy series that was... Well, I don't like to name books I didn't like (especially since many people on Amazon and Goodreads apparently DID like it). I know that no novel will please every single person, and I know what it's like to write a book and hope that someone likes it. But--it was so disorienting! Like, 250 pages of ADD. Halfway through the book, I wasn't even sure what the main plot was. There was worldbuilding, yes--but it was all thrown together with no explanations, even though it was the first book in a series (possibly the author has written other works about this world, but I still think if you are starting a series, you need to ground your reader in the setting). There are only so many wacky hijinks, crazy names, random rescue operations that have nothing to do with the main plot, and unreliable characters that you can pack into one book before the reader ceases to care. So I guess that's why I'm analyzing it here. I assume that most people writing a book want the reader to care. To care, they have to understand first. Even in wackiness, there has to be something to ground the reader, or they'll just give up. So uh...that's your writing message for today, or something.
Which brings me back to writing. I had a great writing day yesterday, and hope to continue today. The driveway is calling me, though. And I'm going to have to get some birthday stuff ready for tonight as well. So, things are shaping up busy.
What do you have going on today? And what books have you enjoyed this new year?
Today my oldest turned 15. Incredible, he was just a baby! He's a rather pleasant 15YO and the only thing I don't like about this age is that they are close to graduating and being an adult away from home. We are hoping to cash in on the rent-to-own plan for his violin today, and have an appointment this afternoon to look at violins and get him his very own. Um. If we can get out of the driveway, that is...
After gorging on books over Christmas, I've still got a lot of unread ones lying around, but I've been having some good writing days, so some of my reading has been on hold. I did finish two last night, though. One was Be My Enemy, sequel to Planesrunner, by Ian McDonald. If you have boys who like scifi, this is a good one. It's a similar concept to The Long Earth, by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, only there is um, a plot to this one, and not just worldbuilding. I think Orson Scott Card has a parallel worlds series, too--but so far I like McDonald's best. Everett Singh's father is a physicist who is abducted one evening, leaving behind a computer program for Everett that has a map to anywhere in the multi-plane universe. On earth (our earth, E10), the ability to make a gate to a parallel earth has just been discovered--but so far, you can only travel from gate to gate. No one anywhere has made an actual map. And there are interplane forces that will do anything to get that map. Everett's trying to get his dad back, protect the Infundibulum (the map), and escape the clutches of the evil Charlotte Villiers. To help him, he has the crew of the E3 airship Everness. There's plenty of adventure and science to entertain a scifi fan, and since it is not currently an overrun genre in YA, it makes for refreshing reading from depressing dystopia.
I also finished the first book in a MG fantasy series that was... Well, I don't like to name books I didn't like (especially since many people on Amazon and Goodreads apparently DID like it). I know that no novel will please every single person, and I know what it's like to write a book and hope that someone likes it. But--it was so disorienting! Like, 250 pages of ADD. Halfway through the book, I wasn't even sure what the main plot was. There was worldbuilding, yes--but it was all thrown together with no explanations, even though it was the first book in a series (possibly the author has written other works about this world, but I still think if you are starting a series, you need to ground your reader in the setting). There are only so many wacky hijinks, crazy names, random rescue operations that have nothing to do with the main plot, and unreliable characters that you can pack into one book before the reader ceases to care. So I guess that's why I'm analyzing it here. I assume that most people writing a book want the reader to care. To care, they have to understand first. Even in wackiness, there has to be something to ground the reader, or they'll just give up. So uh...that's your writing message for today, or something.
Which brings me back to writing. I had a great writing day yesterday, and hope to continue today. The driveway is calling me, though. And I'm going to have to get some birthday stuff ready for tonight as well. So, things are shaping up busy.
What do you have going on today? And what books have you enjoyed this new year?
